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The Book of Aphrodite

PROGRAM NOTE
This work, like the persona of Aphrodite, is both detached and erotic. It is drenched in flower imagery: the telling of the Adonis story is prefaced by a picture of Aphrodite steeped in the perfumes of various flowers, and by the description of a tulip. This latter is restrained and cool, although the intense focus of the description betray a fierce engagement with this peculiarly charged flower. After The Death and Metamorphosis of Adonis the work closes with two shorter texts, the first a still quiet setting framed by a looping vibraphone solo, and the second a short lament. I am indebted to Geoffrey Grigson's The Goddess of Love which traces the path of Aphrodite as she appears in her many guises, under many names, but always the goddess of roses, of swans, and of love

TEXTS
Aphrodite's Perfumed Clothing
She clothed her body in garments the Graces
And Hours had made and steeped in the flowers of spring,
Of kinds which come with the seasons, larkspur,
Crocus, rich violets, exquisite, delicious,
. . . flowers of the rose, ambrosial cups
Of narcissi . . . and of the lily . . .
. . . Every season
Had perfumed the garments divine Aphrodite put on. 
Stasinos (c.900BC) trans. Geoffrey Grigson 


Sheikh Mohammed Lalezaré in Speaking of a Tulip Speaks of Aphrodite
She has the colour of the violet, and the curved form of the new moon. 
Her markings are rightly placed, clean, and well-proportioned. 
Her shape is like the almond, needle-like, and ornamented with pleasant rays. 
Her inner petals are like a well, as they should be; 
her outer petals a little open, this too as it should be. 
The white, ornamented petals are absolutely perfect.
She is the chosen of the chosen. 
Sheikh Mohammed Lalezaré (c.1750) 


The Death and Metamorphosis of Adonis
Cupid, it seems, was playing,
Quiver on shoulder, when he kissed his mother,
And one barb grazed her breast; she pushed him away,
But the wound was deeper than she knew; deceived,
Charmed by Adonis’ beauty, she cared no more
For Cythera’s shores nor Paphos’ sea-ringed island,
Nor Cnidos, where fish teem, nor high Amathus,
Rich in its precious ores. She stays away
Even from Heaven, Adonis is better than Heaven. 

Aphrodite loved him to madness, and was afraid that he would be killed or injured if he insisted on hunting big game in the Cyprian forests. He went after wild boar against her advice. A boar broke cover and drove its tusks into his white flesh (according to some the boar was Ares, made jealous by Aphrodite’s love for Adonis). Aphrodite in her bird-drawn carriage heard the groans of Adonis, and came down to find him laid ‘all along for dead upon the yellow dust’ in a pool of blood. 

Aphrodite thought to cheat the Fates, as far as that was possible, 

"They shall not have it always
Their way," she mourned, "Adonis, for my sorrow,
Shall have a lasting monument: each year
Your death will be my sorrow, but your blood
Shall be my flower . . ."
Over the blood she sprinkled
Sweet-smelling nectar, and as bubbles rise
In rainy weather, so it stirred, as crimson in color
As pomegranates are, as briefly clinging
To life as did Adonis, for the winds
Which gave a name to the flower, anemone,
The wind-flower, shake the petals off, too early,
Doomed all too swift and soon. 
Ovid (43BC–18) trans. Rolfe Humphries 

The Song of the Anemone
If my heart were as my body,
I should be above
The crying of the coloured flowers. 

For his girl’s cheek
A lover carries my blood as a flask of praise. 

Yet the vases of the feast do not invite me
Because my heart is black. 

I will fight no more. 

I am the bright still of unhappiness. 
from The Book of the Thousand and One Nights trans. E. Powys Mathers 

Adonis, Adonis is Dead
Tears fall from the Paphian goddess, blood from Adonis,
And they change on the earth into flowers.
Her tears are anemones now, his blood is roses.
Adonis, Adonis, O sweet Adonis is dead. 
Bion (c.100BC) trans. Geoffrey Grigson