"Wine-dark sea" is a formula (frequently repeated phrase) in Homer. When he says her hair is like the wine dark sea, he's directly quoting from The Odyssey.
What I find interesting is the line "Don't it make you feel blue". The Ancient Greeks' definitions of colour were very different to ours, for instance Homer describes the sky as bronze and honey as green. As such, they effectively had no concept of "blue", either because of linguistic relativity or because our eyes have evolved to perceive more of the colour spectrum. As a literary guy, I feel like Nick Cave must have known this.
Also, he could be referring to the band Betty X, though I have no idea what that has to do with The Odyssey.
"Wine-dark sea" is a formula (frequently repeated phrase) in Homer. When he says her hair is like the wine dark sea, he's directly quoting from The Odyssey.
What I find interesting is the line "Don't it make you feel blue". The Ancient Greeks' definitions of colour were very different to ours, for instance Homer describes the sky as bronze and honey as green. As such, they effectively had no concept of "blue", either because of linguistic relativity or because our eyes have evolved to perceive more of the colour spectrum. As a literary guy, I feel like Nick Cave must have known this.
Also, he could be referring to the band Betty X, though I have no idea what that has to do with The Odyssey.