In Defense of the Rose

The rose is a much aligned flower. True, it's still quite popular as the symbol of love, and many innocent blossoms are snipped en mass for a certain abhorrent February holiday, but in recent memory the rose has become considered common, its delicate, velvety scent infused with a definite whiff of the banal.

However, the rose has never stopped inspiring artists. Renoir painted them as a still life in a vase. Monet dabbed them growing in a garden. O'Keeffe, perhaps the best known painter of flowers in history, brushed them into her canvases, both on their own and adorning horse and cow skulls. Robert Maplethorpe even captured a few with his sometime-controversial lens.

But the reign of the rose doesn't stop there. Who could forget Lynn Anderson's too-catchy country sensation “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden”? Even 60s French chanteuse Francoise Hardy tips her hat to this fleur classique in her melancholy melody “Mon Amie la Rose,” singing of a tragic rose who is born beautiful in the morning but withers by dusk.

Writers, too, have paid homage. Modern language deconstructor Gloria Stein is known, most notably, for her line, "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Likewise, Ralph Waldo Emerson chimes in with, "The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are.... There is simply the rose." In addition, Shakespeare himself puts this lovely bloom on Juliet's ruby lips as she ponders words and their meanings: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet."

Surrealist poet, and Willow favorite, Robert Desnos also found inspiration in the simple rose at the dreadful end of his brilliant life. During the occupation of France during World War II, Desnos, braver than most, refused to submit quietly to the new Nazi rule and began anonymously composing moving resistance poems, poems that eventually landed him in the Terezin concentration camp in what was then Czechoslovakia. Right after the liberation of his prison, Desnos, suffering from a fatal case of typhoid, was visited by two Czech students who recognized him from his photo in Andre Breton's Nadja. Later, they would recall that even at such an unimaginable end, the poet, holding a single rose with which he would later be cremated, instructed them not to relinquish the belief that one could always find the marvelous in everyday life.

After-all, the rose -- flower, symbol, and scent – is marvelous. Without it we would not be able to hop hopefully out of our homes each morning and slip on a pair of rose-colored glasses, pink being a color that imbues us with positivity, tranquility, happiness, and, yes, that old cliché, love.

related links

Rose Nuit de Mai Eau du Toilette from L'Occitane

rose color meanings

Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden"

Francoise Hardy's "Mon Amie la Rose"

Photos: Virginia Rose take by me; Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Cow Skull with Calico Roses; Robert Desnos

Strange Relations: Ballet and Bullets

When one thinks of pieces of performance art that have something in common, ballet and modern crime dramas don’t come immediately to mind. However, Igor Stravinsky’s startling The Rite of Spring (Sacre du Printemps) and gritty HBO drama The Wire aren’t as disparate as appearances may suggest.

The Rite of Spring, subtitled “Pictures from Pagan Russia,” was conceived when painter and archeologist Nicholas Roerich related to Stravinsky a strange vision he had of a young girl dancing to death in a pagan ritual. Retaining much evidence of this inspiration, the final ballet has disturbing, dreamy choreography, and is oft plunged into nightmare-eque tableaux though Stravinsky’s radical, powerful score.

Repeatedly, Stravinsky lulls the listener, putting him at ease with delicate folk-inspired melodies, then hurling him into a storm of seemingly chaotic dissonance, full of anxious sounding clarinets and oboes, staccato horns, and primal drums. This musical savagery keeps the audience on edge, hearts racing, continuously uncomfortable. Yet they keep watching, intrigued by the unnerving scenarios that they are observing, aware of the performance’s currents of violence, terrified, but distant, safe behind the orchestra pit. So new and distressing was this ballet at the time of its premiere that the audience began to riot, the bourgeoisie screaming during the "Augers" in primitive wails of horror.


Likewise, The Wire, with its true and unflinching depictions of modern drug culture from the points of view of both the police and the criminals, puts its audience in a similar situation of fascination and discomfort. Unlike most other crime dramas, in The Wire there are no heroes, only anti-heroes, and nothing is black and white except for the squad cars. The audience is repulsed, confused, and uneasy, yet soon emotionally engaged with characters from both sides. Even so, like in The Rite of Spring, most viewers are unable to forget their eternal status as outsiders, enthralled by this base and violent world, its unique relationships and struggles, but comfortable in their seats high in the mezzanine, secure in their suburban worlds.


photos: The Rite of Spring performed by the Joffrey Ballet and HBO's The Wire promo