Bengal light

plural Bengal lights · alternative Bengola light

1. A bright blue flare prepared from niter, sulphur, and the black sulphide of antimony; formerly used in signalling, but now chiefly as fireworks.

   […] until at last, as if given up on our common sense, they took their leave with a salute of Bengal lights from which irony may not have been entirely absent.

   2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Iceland Spar”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 144

   3 more examples

   I saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which the glow of a Bengal light or a searchlight beam will cut out and illuminate in a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness

   1922, Marcel Proust, “Overture”, in C[harles] K[enneth] Scott Moncrieff, transl., Remembrance of Things Past: Part One: Swann’s Way, volume I, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 40

   The last streetcar was disappearing in the mirrorlike murk of the street and, along the wire above it, a spark of Bengal light, crackling and quivering, sped into the distance like a blue star.

   2012 [1924], “Details of a Sunset”, in Dmitri Nabokov, transl., Collected Stories, Penguin, translation of original by Vladimir Nabokov, page 90

   “Everything suggests the fire started from the burning candles or ‘Bengal lights’ that had been attached to champagne bottles,” the prosecutor Béatrice Pilloud said on Friday. “These went too close to the ceiling.”

   2026 January 2, Angela Giuffrida, Jon Henley, “Sparklers held near ceiling started Swiss ski resort fire, investigators believe”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: Bengal fire, bengola, blue light