Читать книгу Heart & Soil - Des Kennedy - Страница 8

Romantic Gleanings

An unusually cool and moist spring on the coast might have prolonged the melancholia wrought by a very wet winter had it not been for spring bulbs and perennials exulting in the wet and cool conditions. The winter aconites, snowdrops and crocuses seemed to linger far longer than usual. Lines became hopelessly blurred among early-, mid- and late-flowering bulbs, so that we had crocuses still hanging around while hyacinths and narcissi were in their prime and the early tulips were already blooming. The ecumenical effect was a splendid show that compensated handsomely for seldom ever seeing the sun.

Plus, the time was right for pondering the myths and legends that attach to the flowers of spring, many of which originate in the fable-rich regions of the Mediterranean. It’s fascinating how so many of these ancient tales concern loss, rejection and death—tragic narratives one wouldn’t readily associate with the exuberance of spring.

Crocus is a classic example. Greek legend has it that the flower was named for Crocus, a beautiful youth of the plains who was consumed with unrequited love for Smilax, a shepherdess of the hills. The hapless youth pined away and died of a broken heart, whereupon the gods transformed him into the flower that bears his name.

Rooted in misogyny as it may be, this familiar theme of unrequited love, featuring a cold-hearted maiden and soft-headed swain, echoes an old Persian legend that tells of a young man smitten by a beauty who declined to reciprocate. She may have had her reasons, but being peripheral to the narrative arc, these went unrecorded. The snubbed lover fled to the desert to die a lonely death. As he languished in the wasteland, weeping for a love beyond his reach, each tear falling in the desert sand was transformed into a beautiful tulip in bloom.

The theme of tragic love is given a slightly more Hollywood spin in a tale about forget-me-nots. Here, the story is of two young lovers meandering together along a riverbank. The gallant youth takes to plucking forget-me-nots for a posy to give his beloved, but he accidentally tumbles into the torrent and is swept away. As he’s being dragged under, he flings the posy onto the bank and cries out to her to “forget me not!” And, indeed, who could after a dating stunt like that?

A more upbeat version occurred “on a golden morning of the early world” when an angel spied a daughter of Earth sitting on a riverbank twining forget-me-nots in her hair. Enraptured, the angel beseeched the powers of heaven to allow the lovely earthling to accompany him into paradise. But the powers of heaven, working the angles as they usually do, would only grant the damsel immortality after she’d sown forget-me-nots in every corner of the world (something forget-me-nots don’t really need all that much help with). Our girl set about the task, aided each evening by her doting angel. Eventually, the job completed, maiden and angel entered paradise together, since she had gained immortality “without tasting the bitterness of death.”

Still, the bitterness of death remained a major theme in heavenly springtime goings-on. Consider poor Hyacinthus. This beautiful youth was loved by the sun god Apollo, and also by Zephyrus, the west wind. One fateful day when Hyacinthus and Apollo were playing quoits (a celestial version of pitching horseshoes), Apollo tossed his quoit and jealous Zephyrus blew on it so that the heavy disk struck Hyacinthus on the head, killing him. Grieving Apollo changed the drops of blood spilling from his dead friend into hyacinths, a flower that came to symbolize vegetation reborn after being scorched by the hot disc of the sun and the desiccating west wind.

It was lecherous Zephyrus, too, who caused the death of the fair nymph Anemone. Noticing her windy husband’s infatuation with the young beauty, Zephyrus’s jealous wife had the nymph driven into exile, where she died of a broken heart, her body becoming the windflower that returns to life at the onset of spring.

And, for a final tragic tale, we have poor Narcissus, who idled away his days gazing at the reflection of his own face in pools. Though he came to symbolize self-absorption and egotism, this was an unfair legacy since the poor fellow was consumed with his own reflection only because it so closely resembled the face of his lost sister. Nemesis, the god of vengeance, turned him into the flower we know, destined to stand forever peering down at an image of himself.

What’s uncanny about all these old stories of springtime tragedy is how accurately they capture the sense of loss and unseasonal wistfulness one feels, even in a lingeringly cool and moist season, as successive waves of springtime flowers, like young love itself, flourish then so quickly fade away.