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PRIMAVERA, tempera on wood, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1477–82
courtesy Uffizi Gallery, Florence. |
“Mars [Ares] also you may not know was formed by my arts.”
-Ovid, Fasti (5.229ff trans. Boyle)
FLORA'S STORY
one kiss thy arts will bring by name you him
and tell us how you fill thy garden trim
©2015 Manum Inicere stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
and tell us how you fill thy garden trim
©2015 Manum Inicere stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
#ohjDailyWords #mythopoetics #2lines #vss #micropoetry
notes
1. Manum inicere literally translates to put a hand into or onto something. For more on this term, intertextuality in ars poetica and more see Charles Burrough’s “Talking With Goddesses: Ovid’s Fasti and Boticelli’s Primavera in Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal and Visual Inquiry http://www.academia.edu/1590773/_Talking_with_goddesses_Ovid_s_Fasti_and_Botticelli_s_Primavera._
2. For Ovid’s telling of the myth of Chlôris/Flora see Ovid, Fasti 5. 193 ff (trans.Boyle) the myth is as follows:
"The goddess [Flora] replied to my questions, as she talks, her lips breathe spring roses: ‘I was Chloris, whom am now called Flora. Latin speech corrupted a Greek letter of my name. I was Chloris, Nympha of the happy fields [Elysion], the homes of the blessed (you hear) in earlier times. To describe my beauty would mar my modesty: it found my mother a son-in law god. It was spring, I wandered; Zephyrus (the West Wind) saw me, I left. He pursues, I run: he was the stronger; and Boreas gave his brother full rights of rape by robbing Erechtheus' house of its prize [Oreithyia]. But he makes good the rape by naming me his bride, and I have no complaints about my marriage.
notes
1. Manum inicere literally translates to put a hand into or onto something. For more on this term, intertextuality in ars poetica and more see Charles Burrough’s “Talking With Goddesses: Ovid’s Fasti and Boticelli’s Primavera in Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal and Visual Inquiry http://www.academia.edu/1590773/_Talking_with_goddesses_Ovid_s_Fasti_and_Botticelli_s_Primavera._
2. For Ovid’s telling of the myth of Chlôris/Flora see Ovid, Fasti 5. 193 ff (trans.Boyle) the myth is as follows:
"The goddess [Flora] replied to my questions, as she talks, her lips breathe spring roses: ‘I was Chloris, whom am now called Flora. Latin speech corrupted a Greek letter of my name. I was Chloris, Nympha of the happy fields [Elysion], the homes of the blessed (you hear) in earlier times. To describe my beauty would mar my modesty: it found my mother a son-in law god. It was spring, I wandered; Zephyrus (the West Wind) saw me, I left. He pursues, I run: he was the stronger; and Boreas gave his brother full rights of rape by robbing Erechtheus' house of its prize [Oreithyia]. But he makes good the rape by naming me his bride, and I have no complaints about my marriage.
‘I enjoy perpetual spring: the year
always shines, trees are leafing, the soild always fodders. I have a fruitful
garden in my dowered fields, fanned by breezes, fed by limpid fountains. My
husband filled it with well-bred flowers, saying: "Have jurisdiction of
the flower, goddess." I often wanted to number the colours displayed, but
could not: their abundance defied measure.
‘As
soon as the dewy frost is cast from the leaves and sunbeams warm the dappled
blossom, the Horae (Seasons) assemble, hitch up their coloured dresses and
collect these gifts of mine in light tubs. Suddenly the Charites (Graces) burst
in, and weave chaplets and crowns to entwine the hair of gods. I first
scattered new seed across countless nations; earth was formerly a single
colour. I first made a flower from Therapnean blood [Hyakinthos the hyacinth],
and its petal still inscribes the lament. You, too, narcissus, have a name in
tended gardens, unhappy in your undivided self. Why mention Crocus, Attis or
Cinyras' son, from whose wounds I made a tribute soar?’"http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NympheKhloris.html
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