Calling all lighting technicians!

I'm having trouble with something I'm writing, and the words that shed some light on the subject are what I would like to gather up.

incandescent = brightly shining

Then the more poetic from Emily, "There is a certain slant of light..." (which some critic I read from a former lifetime said Emily'd reconstructed from WS's "There is a willow grows aslant a brook... -- critics are creative, huh?)

Question: Will you please help me take a look at the light v. dark words and phrases, famous ones very much appreciated.

In the dark,
DubDub

My Dear--I can think of a few: the cold light of day; the clear light of day; dappled light; heart of darkness. But if you click on the link below, you'll find a whole list of phrase-finding sites--way more than I wanted to go through. I tried the link--it works, though I was afraid it wouldn't, it was so long. If it makes the screen go wide, I can PM it to you, or--just Google "phrase finder".

http://www.google.com/custom?q=phrase+finder&sa=Go&cof=T:black;LW:282;L:http://
www.refdesk.com/rd.gif;LH:94;BGC:white;AH:center;
AWFID:6332576430c078b2;

EDITED NOTE It did make the screen go wide. I went back, picked a couple of spots in the address and hit Enter, and voila--a narrow screen again--and the link still works.

A couple of my favorite art terms have to do with light/shade:

chiaroscuro is defined as the technique of modelling volume by strongly contrasting light and shadow -- think Rembrandt and Rubens and check out this David http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/view1zoom.asp?dep=11&full=1&mark=1&item=49.7.21.

and sfumato (yes, that's spelled right) is the technique of blurring and softening lines to create a hazy or smoky effect. Popular with Renaissance guys like Leonardo http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/03/hm3_3_1b.html and Coreggio.

Not the kind of light you are looking for, but I remember in Dante's Inferno he mentioned "the pale blue light that served only to make the darkness visible."
"How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.". ..

Sine tenebris lux nulla

    -- Davus Scopulus

Roughly translated as "Without darkness there would be no light."

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"It was a dark and stormy night.... Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground."
--Madeleine L'Engle

"It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!"
--Snoopy

About Flatlander's post:

chiaro = light, or clear, and scuro = dark. Therefore, chiaroscuro = lightdark.

Also fumare is to smoke, and the s- prefix means something like "to make _____" so sfumato will mean "made smoky". Kind of. Actually, Italian words which start with the s- prefix are so much more compact than whatever they might be translated as in English. I'm rather fond of them.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"It was a dark and stormy night.... Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground."
--Madeleine L'Engle

"It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!"
--Snoopy

"It was a dark and stormy night on the Thames Embankment, and there I stood in my thrice-turned paper overcoat, with my toes sticking out of my feet!"
- Sir Harry Secombe aka Neddy Seagoon

critics are creative, huh?

"A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased--he hates all creative people equally."
--Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love

(I won't edit a quote, but critics aren't, of course, exclusive to gender)

Let there be Light

"Tonight's forecast...dark...with darkness increasing and then continuing until morning."
--George Carlin's The Hippy Dippy Weather Man

"Dark night that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes,
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense." --Shakespeare

"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightengale. Look love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tip-toe on the misty mountaintops." --Shakespeare

"Ethereal, first of things, quintessence, pure."--Milton

"Is not light grander than fire? It is the same element in a state of purity.--Carlysle

"Night whose sable hand
Hangs on the purple skirts of flying day." --Dyer

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." --Dylan Thomas

Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,
Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe delivered from prison;
But damn'd and hal'd to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne;
Or wash thee in Christs blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red soules to white.

John Donne

The imminent release of the first of the Tolkien trilogy on film reminds me that JRRT made extensive use of symbols involving light vs darkness all through LOTR. The gift of the lady Galadriel to Hamfast, the twilight into which Frodo falls when he wears the ring, the doors whose key can only be seen by starlight, the all-pervasive gloom of Mordor, etc. etc. Now that I come to think it over, "extensive" is not the word -- it's more than that. Indeed, the contrast/conflict between light and dark is almost a theme running under the whole work.

LOTR

And the Led Zeppelin lyric, "...in the darkest depths of Mordor/there lurks the Evil One... (that may be a paraphrase), usually cited by fundamentalists to condemn the group as Satanic, is nothing more than a literary allusion to LOTR! And rarely, if ever, have I heard this ridiculous charge of demonism rebutted by pointing out this simple fact.