Life & Death of Lilacs (Part I)
I received a bunch of brilliantly purple lilacs this afternoon, an official sign of spring, some flowers already open releasing their strong floral scent, the rest simply red-purple buds waiting their turn. I inhaled deeply and within a few hours the leaves began to wilt and the blossoms dipped with thirst. They sit now, revived in a vase for the next couple of weeks at least, on my desk.
Here, lilacs, or syringa vulgaris, bloom only for a few weeks; its signal comparable to that of the cherry blossom, a reminder of spring, and a moment to cherish. The flowers are reddish purple but there are forms with darker red, nearly white, and even blue flowers. There are more than two hundred of these named varieties of syringa vulgaris now in cultivation.
The lilac also blooms in various ways in Western history; taking innocence, mourning, and life itself through its multifarious visual forms; studied in this three part series.
Tangible Innocence & Purity
According to Greek mythology, the story of the nymph, Syringa (genus of lilacs) is often interchanged with that of the naiad, Syrinx. In both stories, Pan, in love and lust, relentlessly pursued the beautiful virgin through the forest; until, with the help of her sisters, she metamorphosed into (we’ll just say) a plant to disguise herself. Recognizing the alluring beauty of the plant, Pan cut away some of the reeds to different lengths, and bound them together with wax, creating the first set of panpipes, also known as syrinx.
The main difference in their stories are the highlight of Syrinx’s chastity as a follower of the goddess Artemis and the resulting plant to which they transform, Syrinx to reeds found by river banks and Syringa to the noted lilac. The lilac’s perfume is just as haunting, invisible, and airborne as Syrinx (Bennett, 22, 57).
Both portray the godly creatures as (nearly) nude and fair skinned. Dulac draws your eye to the brilliant red hair atop Syrinx’s gently reed-covered curves. His soft, eerie, fantastic scene proudly displays Pan’s hoofs beside the spring riverbank. Rubens, on the contrary, only alludes to Pan’s satyr body with a hint of harry thigh. The pale, flushed Syrinx, with her 17th century-style braided hair, peers behind the reeds and desperately pulls the rippled fabric to her body.
No surprise Syrinx of purity and chastity appears pale-skinned, her innocence tied to this value of beauty. Both portrayals introduce that pop of scarlet for the passion and lust she protects.
The symbolism of Syrinx persists in our contemporary celebrations of lilacs. How to we enforce touch the innocence today? We often read white lilacs (really white flowers of any kind) as representations of innocence and purity. Because of this, white lilacs are deemed appropriate in bouquets for new mothers and wedding bouquets, signifying the purity of new life and a budding couple’s love.