Today is the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere.

 

Dionysos, His Louche Fabulousness, has, of course, been with us since late autumn and throughout the winter months.

And is now leaving with the approach of Apollo.

 

Apollo cannot stand the cavorting of Dionysos and his people.

 

 

A painting related to Dionysian rites on a wall of a villa in Italy, 50 to 40 BCE. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

He thinks it wasteful of divine energy. 

Disordered movement, gale force winds, sleet, murky dawns, grey skies all day which fragment light and blur colour and rumble relationships so that all we see is frenetic movement and we don’t know what is going on.   

 

And when Dionysos boasts that it is he who was most widely worshipped in the Ancient World – which is true – pointing to his South Asian representation, 

 

 

Head of Dionysos, God of Wine and Intoxications, 4th-5th century ACE, terracotta. Pakistan or Afghanistan

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Apollo laughs because, of course, it is he who is everywhere; without whom no sentient life.

 

 

Dionysos wants to know what is orderly about Apollo’s murderous rages and his childish carnival disguises to the end of his obsessive seductions of women, divine and mortal.

 

 

 

Apollo chasing Daphne;  Florence; 1535, maiolica  (with light interference).  

Guido Durantino workshop, Florence.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

Daphne, 1930, bronze.

Renee Sintenis, 1888-1965, German.  MOMA, NY

With divine help, Daphne transforms into a laurel bush to escape Apollo’s pursuit.

 

 

Laurel, Sweet Bay (Laurus nobilis), the Cloisters, NY

Sacred to Apollo for his pursuit of Daphne, the laurel is evergreen as a gift of Apollo.

Crowns of laurel or its image are made to this day for victors in memory of Apollo’s patronage of  Orpheus, poet, whose poetry and songs were never bettered. Some people ‘rest on their laurels’.

 

 

And what, Dionysos reminds, about Apollo’s cruelty to the boy, Icarus?

 

 

Icarus Falling, engraved print

Hendrick Goltzius, 1558 – 1617, Dutch; Philadelphia Art Museum

 

Just a kid!  Fun-loving, energetic, still unformed;  and uninformed about the balance between taking risks and taking advice.

 

 

 

Icarus, 1947, pochoir. 

Henri Matisse, 1869-1954, French.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

 

Apollo’s response is that, were he, Apollo not divine, the contradictions of his ridiculously layered archetype would have driven him mad before he was out of his teens.

Drunk and disorderly all the time like Dionysus.  

 

Instead, he is more or less coherent and thoroughly, radiantly glorious.

 

 

 

Apollo, 1971, oil on canvas

Martha Mayer Erlebacher, 1937-2013, American. Woodmere, Philadelphia

 

 

And the boy Icarus had been warned not to approach him, a god, closely.

 

I don’t want to say that Apollo is more fabulous than Dionysos because I am superstitious. 

The two are complementary and pour energy into each other’s negative spaces.

 

 

 

The Four Seasons:  Summer, 1994, synthetic polymer paint, oil, house paint, pencil and crayon on canvas.

Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American; MOMA, NY

 

 

And I don’t want to end up like Orpheus, prince of poets, either, even if I have only very small skills. 

He was was ripped limb from limb and decapitated by the maddened ones of Dionysos because Orpheus swore allegiance to Apollo only.

 

Even if, the Spring in force, the streams and rivers unfrozen, Orpheus’ song to Apollo’s gift of the Spring equinox is carried by every impeded stream.

Every year for ever.

 

 

 

Water sculpture, Chanticleer, Wayne, PA

 

 

Apollo, Fabulous Complexity Himself,  appears in bright sunlight in our windows. 

 

He is to be thanked for the light of spring and summer, still here in early autumn.  I can thread my needle and work without eye strain.

 

No greys.  No falling down in dark, drunken Dionysian thumping heaps.

 

Apollo casts bright light on what moves and on what is still so that everything and everyone can be seen in pin-prick detail in order to be relished in fullness. 

 

 

Winterhazel in Winterthur, DE in late March and early April

 

 

A million shades of colour;  forms without number; contexts and relationships as clear as clear.  Long, bright days.

 

The streams and rivers, little children, streets, budding branches, skyscrapers, cellphones, teaspoons, the great horned owl, singing:   Spring.

 

 

******************

 

 

Our parks and gardens begin to don the god’s colours in late February and these spread through springtime: 

yellow, gold.   

 

In the realm of our native plants (Mid-Atlantic), the transition occurs in stippled yellows in Dionysian wine-colour which occur on the flower of the first native to flower, the skunk cabbage (Symplocapus foetidus).  Its flower pushes through snow in February.

 

 

photos from the web

This is a thermogenic plant:  it is able to create temperatures around it of 15-35 C above the temperature of the air by means of mechanisms not totally understood. 

Its flowers are pollinated  by, among others, carrion-feeding insects attracted by its foul odour.

 

 

Non-native plants in the Mid-Atlantic begin to flower in March.

 

 

Winterthur, Delaware in early and mid-March; winter aconite is on the ground

 

 

Apollo’s approach burns off the wine-red flush of bushes where Dionysos’ followers have danced many nights.

 

 

 

Spirea as it appears in mid-March at Winterthur, DE.  

 

 

 

One of several varieties of Lenten rose in late February and early March, Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Chinese winter jasmine  ((Jasminum nudiflorum) in late February and early March.  Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Fragrant Asian witch hazel in the park at Winterthur in early March. Usually the first bush to flower there

 

 

 

Winter aconite with its triple-lobed leaves. Early March, Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Amur adonis. Early and mid-March. Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum), a native.  Spring flowering begins among the natives in April.  Mt. Cuba, Hockenville, DE

 

 

 

Forsythia. Late March.  Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Fern-leaved cordyalis (Cordyalis cheilanthifolia). A small crevice plant. Winterthur, DE in March

 

 

 

Common primrose. April. Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Cornelian cherry tree (Cornus mas) in late March. Winterthur, DE. The first tree blossom to my knowledge in metro Philly.

 

Boxwood fronted by a miniature form of forsythia, late March, marching past the quince bushes and towards the dawn redwood. Winterthur, DE

 

 

 

Gold thread false cypress, mid-March, April.  Winterthur, DE

 The tree presents a cone-shaped wall of gold-green leaves.

Behind this front and in deep shade is its main trunk, encircled by its auxiliary trunks which stab the ground, rooting, at intervals.

 

 

 

Yellow spike winterhazel

Cherry prinsepia (Prinsepia sinensis)

Winterhazel Walk planted, after his death, for Henry Francis du Pont, (1880-1969, American) in his favourite colours: yellows. 

These are interplanted with early Korean rhododendron  in pale pinks.  They bloom at the same time: mid- and late March.

 

 

In Autumn, massed yellow-golds appear here again in larger and more riotous form with the approach of Dionysos at the beginning of Autumn when Apollo migrates to the southern hemisphere.