the space comes closer and becomes more oppressive, will determine one's mood in a very different way than a sunny day, with that clean space that characterizes it and invites one to go places.45
Another example of the direct influence of the external space upon one's internal being is color. It has always been known that light colors produce joy in humans, while dark colors, particularly blue, can trigger sadness. When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published Zur Farbenlehre (1810) he described the aesthetics and psychological impact of colors to a degree of accuracy and relevance that is unsurpassed still today. For instance, Goethe writes regarding the color yellow:
4 Paolo Santarcangeli, El Libro de Los Laberintos: Historia de un Mito y de un Símbolo, transl. César Palma, Madrid, SP: Ediciones Siruela 1997, p. 102. [Henceforth cited as LLL]
5 Hermann Kern, Labyrinthe: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen; 5000 Jahre Gegenwart eines Urbilds, München, DE: Prestel Verlag 1982, p. 64. [Henceforth cited as LED]
Thus, it is according to experience that the yellow makes a thoroughly warm and restful impression...One can notice this warming effect most vividly when one looks at a landscape through a yellow glass, especially on dull winter days. The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded, the temper cheered; an immediate warmth seems to blow upon us.6
This stimulating effect of the yellow color increases the closer it comes to red. Blue has a diametrically opposite effect: It moves away from the viewer, like the blue of the sky, and it widens space, like bluish hills at dusk. However, at the same time, according to Goethe,
Blue gives us a feeling of coldness, just as it also reminds us of shadows. [FL 155, § 782]
Green, however, is the color of balance and neutralizes the opposing effects of yellow and blue. Goethe tells us about green:
The eye experiences a distinctly grateful impression from this colour. If the two elementary colours are mixed in perfect equality so that neither predominates, the eye and the mind repose on the result of this junction as upon a simple colour. The beholder has neither the wish nor the power to imagine a state beyond it. Hence for rooms to live in constantly, the green colour is usually chosen for wallpaper. [FL 157, § 802]
Now, this subjective aspect of the objective space is what Hubertus Tellenbach calls "the atmospheric."7
The question would be, then, what is the atmosphere of the labyrinth? In the myth, the mood
6 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, Berlin, DE: Holzinger 2014, p. 153, §§ 768-9, http://www.zeno.org/Lesesaal/N/9781499556315?page=153&ps=%21, transl. Existenz editors. [Henceforth cited as FL]
7 Hubertus Tellenbach, Geschmack und Atmosphäre: Medien menschlichen Elementarkontaktes, Salzburg, AT: Otto Müller Verlag, 1968.
Figure 2: The labyrinth as a historical phenomenon: Etruscan vase depicting Theseus slaying the Minotaur (left).4 Etruscan bucchero pitcher depicting Theseus' fight against the Minotaur (right).5
