The smell violet in mythology, customs, art and literature

Antiquity

The smell violet was in the Greek and Roman antiquity several divinities geweihte cult plant. On the day of the Saturns the celebrating themselves with violet blooms; Pan violet bunches brought and also Persephone was geweiht the plant. Due to the smell and the dark blooms the violet applied for the Greeks also as a flower of the love. Already they gave violets gladly the Angebeteten, in order to refer in such a way to the moving affection.

Mythology

As is the case for many other plants the Greeks also explained themselves a developing of the violet mythologisch: One for her beauty well-known daughter of the sky-basic God Atlas was pursued by the sun God with its jets. The brittle beauty fled however before it and asked Zeus desperately for assistance. It had compassion and transformed the and desperate girl into a violet. Protected against the jets of the sun God it grows since then in the bushes of the forest.

The Greek and Roman mythology that it did not succeed to the by any means good-looking God volcano, which was hopelessly in love with Venus yet, by the goddess to be stated also kissed, because it smelled after violets. And Zeus, which the Nymphe IO as protection before the jealous Hera into a bezaubernde heifer (= cow, which used still no calf to the world) transformed, let a whole meadow of smelling violets for it. This plant was only one its beauty appropriate meal.

After a wendischen legend the daughter of the Tschernebog was transformed into a violet that every ten years once in the Walpurgisnacht flowers. Who picks it then, the virgin releases and receives her with all the treasures their to father as a woman.

Customs

As one the first messengers of spring that enjoyed probably-smelling violets always of special appreciation. At the Viennese yard was already celebrated around 1200 the first violet with rushing celebration. After the legend collecting tank Perger was celebrating the first violet a custom celebrated in the Middle Ages in completely South Germany.

The trailers erkoren the violet to their emblem, when the emperor was banished after Elba and swore that he will return with the violets to Paris. With violet bunches and the carrying of veilchenfarbener articles of clothing the trailers Napoleons demonstrated their political convicition. The violet the favourite plant Napoleon was alleged, after its large love Josephine Beauharnais in the evening of their becoming acquainted with threw a violet bunch to it. After its death one found two dried violets on its chest in a golden cap.

Violets symbolize humility and modesty. Beuchert points however also rightfully thereupon that this symbolic allocation can probably come from no experienced gardner. It writes:

Hardly another plant family is so toughly, as purposeful and successful in their fight around the existence as the Violaceae. At small climbing, which train it after the first flowering phase in March, develop with the violets course peppering moose, which withdraw these again and again into the soil, so that from it around the nut/mother plant young plants can develop approximately and unfold like a broad pad.

Art

One finds one the smell violet occasionally as attribute plant Mariens in pictures of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance - e.g. in the picture of Stefan Lochner: "“Madonna with the violet"”. Again after Beuchert violets beside the cross Christi symbolize the pain over Christi death as violet mourning color both as well as the world-wide spreading of its teachings, which began in this instant.

On postcards and Postern far common is also a violet bunch painted by Albrecht

Violet in the literature

The spring messenger violet is the favourite flower of many poets and writers. Among these among other things Homer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as well as dieTroubadoure rank.

Theodor Storm writes over the violet:

The children picked the violets,

all, all, flowered there at the mill ditch.

There spring is; they want it firmly

Have in their small fists.

And Goethe writes:

A violet on the meadow stood

Bent in itself and unknown;

It was herzigs a violet.

There a young came

With easy step and munterm sense

Therefore, therefore it,

The meadow ago, and sang.

Oh! The violet thinks, `I only

The most beautiful flower of nature,

Oh, only a small while,

To me the sweetheart picked

And pressed at the bosom matt!

Oh only, oh only

A long!

Oh, but oh! The girl came

And not in eight the violet took,

Ertrat' s, the poor violet.

And sank and died and is pleased still:

And sterb `I, so sterb I nevertheless

By it, by it,

To their feet nevertheless!

As spring messenger Eduard has the violet in his poem "„it is' s "“perpetuated:

Spring lets blue volume be

Again flutter by air;

Sweet, well-known smells

Strip notionful the country.

Violets dream already,

want balde to come.

- Horch from a distance a quiet harp clay/tone!

Spring, you is' s

You I heard!

The sittsamen sayings, which were written still a few years ago young girls in the poetry album, are less poetic:

Equal the small violet,

in the Verborgnen flowers,

is always pious and good,

even if nobody sees you.

Is like the violet in the Moose

Sittsam, grant and purely

and not like the proud rose

those always admired wants to be.

Literature

• Marianne Beuchert: Symbolism of the plants. Frankfurt/Main 1995
• Heinz Dieter Krausch: Kaiserkron and red"… Hamburg 2003
• Gertrud Scherf: Charm plants - witch herbs; Myth and magic of domestic wild and cultivated plants. Munich 2002

See also

• Violet

Related links

• Smell violet

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