THE BLOSSOMS OF LOSS: OVID'S FLORAL METAMORPHOSES AND POUSSIN'S REALM OF FLORA

Alluring and fertile, the flower connotes a locus of desire. The floral metamorphic myths narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses (AD 8a) thematize the price of desire—the shame, grief, and rage of rejection and rivalrous defeat—and symbolize the generative transformation that frustrated desire and competitive loss can promote. In the deceptively beautiful painting Realm of Flora of 1631, Nicolas Poussin enlists these myths as allegories of his own great creative leap, an aesthetic metamorphosis that followed shattering defeats. Extending the association between creativity and object loss to competitive loss, Poussin holds a mirror to our powerful drive to prevail and create anew from the ashes of loss.