95: Ovid: Metamorphoses - 5. Colors

This session explores the significance of Colors in Metamorphoses.

The prototypical color for this session is Pantone 17-5641 Emerald Green (Color of the Year, 2013) but let's not forget about the whole palette. The fragrance is Jo Malone’s Red Roses (2001). Tree is Cherry Blossom. Art work is Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh (1889), Novel is ***My Name is Red ***(Turkish: Benim Adım Kırmızı), a 1998 Turkish novel by Orhan Pamuk. Musical work is Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune (1905)

This session explores the significance of colors in Metamorphoses, focusing on how Ovid uses color to enhance imagery, symbolize transformation, and evoke emotions, all the time being aware that the color vocabulary of the Romans, and even more so of the ancient Greeks, was more limited than in moderns times.

Colors appear in descriptions of nature, divine interventions, and metamorphoses, serving as markers of change, beauty, or power. Through descriptions of colors, Ovid bridges the sensory and the symbolic, allowing students to appreciate how color heightens the poetic and emotional resonance of his stories.

Read these key passages related to the theme

• Metamorphoses 6.1-155 (Arachne’s Tapestry)
• 11.1-69 (The Singing Head of Orpheus)
• 1.289-290 (Iris's association with the rainbow)
• 10.1-92 (Orpheus in the Underworld)
• 5.411-611 (Proserpina’s Abduction and Return)
• 4.432-465 (The Story of Clytie)
• 11.616-636, 11.637-679(Iris at the ending of The Storm at Sea and in The House of Sleep)

Pantone Color

• Pantone 17-5641 Emerald
• This vibrant green symbolizes renewal and transformation, capturing for us moderns the life-affirming power of nature and the vivid imagery in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Fragrance

• Jo Malone’s Red Roses (2001)
• This lush, floral fragrance evokes the passion and beauty of Ovid’s use of red, particularly in stories like Pyramus and Thisbe or Venus and Adonis.

Tree

• Cherry Blossom Tree
• Known for its vivid pink and white blooms, the cherry blossom represents ephemeral beauty and the fleeting yet impactful nature of transformation.

Artwork

• Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh (1889)
• Van Gogh’s swirling blues and yellows capture the dynamic interplay of celestial and earthly colors, reflecting the cosmic and transformative elements in Ovid’s narratives.

Musical Work

• Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune (1905)
• This piece evokes a palette of silvery moonlit tones, paralleling the delicate interplay of light and shadow that Ovid uses to describe transformations and emotions.

Literature

• Red Colors My Name by Orhan Pamuk (1998)
• Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red explores the intersection of art, perception, and individuality in 16th-century Istanbul. The novel delves into the subjective experience of color and its interpretation in art. It presents debates about color perception, including how color signifies meaning and its role in illuminating or obscuring truth.

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We're using a new translation of this wide ranging masterpiece that covers the history of the world, from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in 42 BC in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines. The translation is by Stephanie McCarter, a Classics professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee: Metamorphoses (A Penguin Classics) – Published November 8, 2022.

This will take us well into 2025. BCE read the Metamorphoses before in 2020/2021.

A Latin text is online at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0029 (Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892).