t would seem as if the Germans are quite fond with the imagery of the blue flower. The use of the blue flower as a symbol began with the German writer Novalis, when he wrote his unfinished novel. Because of this, the blue flower began to symbolize desire and, more importantly, the quest for the unattainable. As C.S. Lewis elaborated later, the blue flower may not only be used to symbolize joy; it is also a symbol for the joy people get when desire that thing they found desirable. In short, the blue flower can also be the image for the sensation people get when they try to attain desire. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Blue Flowers in Art & Literature’ Category
Werner Helwig and The Blue Flower of the Wandervogel
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Blue Flowers and Batman Begins
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Batman Begins is but the latest in a long line of art works that use the Blue Flower as a symbol
The image of the blue flower has been used time and again in contemporary literature, art, and pop culture. Its meaning, of course, may already vary today, like a metaphor that had its resonance in modern life change due to the changes in society. In the Romantic period, the blue flower is a powerful image for hope and desire—and love. In the musings of C.S. Lewis, the popular author of the Chronicles of Narnia series wrote that joy is desire itself, that eternal search for the blue flower. This was a very well-philosophize but hardly discernible take on Novalis’ imagery. Of course, since the lives and times of Novalis and C.S. Lewis were greatly different than today, the blue flower as an image and a metaphor has already morphed into a different creature.
Still, what remains is the fact that, even until today, the blue flower is a powerful image used by contemporary artists.
Perhaps the most recent but certainly not the easiest to decipher is the image of the blue flower in Batman Begins. Here, the blue flower is some sort of illegal, fear-inducing substance used by the League of Shadows. The League of Shadows’ Henri Ducard (played by Liam Neeson) asked Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale) to go halfway up the mountain where he was captive to get a blue flower. The blue flower he would get will be in exchange for his martial arts training. According to Ducard, he will find what he is looking for in the mountain.
Anyone familiar with the Batman mythology knows Bruce Wayne was looking for revenge at that point, before he became the caped crusader. In a way, when he got to the mountain and saw the blue flowers, it was a symbol of the start of his quest for revenge. After all, once he finished his training, Bruce would be better equipped to avenge the death of his parents (which prompted him to become Batman in the first place).
However, revenge was not exactly what Bruce got. Instead of helping the League of Shadows destroy Gotham City, which was then already plagued with criminals, he instead turned against them, eventually becoming a protector of Gotham City.
Wouldn’t it be easier for Bruce Wayne to simply let the city crumble? It was Gotham City that claimed the life of his parents, after all. But how come he ended up becoming is savior?
Indeed, this is where one can place the significance of the blue flower according to how C.S. Lewis defined it. When Bruce Wayne first got the blue flower, it would seem like he would finally get his revenge. However, he didn’t. In a way, the joy of revenge, the positive prospect of vengeance, was only appealing when Bruce was chasing it. However, in reality, vengeance was his blue flower—it was his infinite. And his is how Batman was born, when he realized the blue flower cannot—and should not—be gained. The blue flower can only bring him joy if he did not pursue it further. And he didn’t.
The Symbolism of Blue Flowers
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Blue in itself holds a lot of symbolism and meaning, something that transcends race and culture.
For instance, the color blue is significant to the Christian and Jewish faith, and one can see this color figure prominently in many of these religions rituals and belief. For Christians, blue symbolizes the night sky’s color before the return of daylight. It represents heaven and truth, and it is currently used in many religious images. In fact, it is beginning to gain a wide acceptance as a color for Advent, as a replacement for the more tradition purple (which, on the other hand, means joy and love). The Jews believe blue is the color of heaven as well. One proof: the color blue should be present in their prayer shawls, as this represents that they are closer to heaven with this color on them.
These examples are important because they reflect the generally accepted meaning that the blue flower symbolizes. A symbol or metaphor that became the trademark or the key figure of Romanticism during the 18th century, the blue flower was used then to symbolize love and desire. However, ultimately, it was also used to symbolize something that is to be attained, that sense of longing and reaching for the infinite. This resonates with the meaning of the color blue in Christianity and Judaism. After all, what is more unattainable than heaven? Both religions believe in the concept of the afterlife. In a way, the blue flower symbolizes heaven on Earth, the thing that people long for beyond heaven.
This concept or symbol began in the Heinrich von Ofterdingen novel by Novalis, Here, the title character saw the blue flower in a dream, after which it was used to symbolize the woman he loved only from afar. For some like Heinrich von Ofterdingen, nothing is more attainable than an unattainable love. In fact, heaven might even be a more possible option for him. This love is his blue flower, as was heaven is for Christians and Jews, for instance.
The symbolism does not only exist in the Western literature. In the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, the Blue Waterlily became an integral part of the story. The epic’s hero, Rama, wanted to get the blessing of Devi Durga, who he heard will be pleased only if he offered 100 blue flowers. He managed to find 99 of these flowers, but failed to get the last one needed for the offering. So when he met Durga, Rama offered his eyes instead since looked like a blue lotus. Durga was pleased and decided to bless him. This part of the epic also establishes the idea that the blue flower is a symbol for the search and longing for the infinite, for even Rama was not able to complete the task. Yet, it is also a symbol of love and hope.
The blue flower still exists as a symbol for this even in current literature and popular culture. And while the blue flower, in the literal sense, is no longer as elusive as it was before, the symbol remains the same.
Novalis’s ‘Heinrich von Ofterdingen’
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Today, it would seem as if the concept of the blue flower as a metaphorical representation for longing and the eternal struggle to attain the infinite is cliché, if not passé. However, the general resonance of this idea actually stems from a very complex concept that dates well back during the Romantic period. It was further elaborated on by writers such as C.S. Lewis, John Le Carre, and Penelope Fitzgerald. In addition, the image of the blue flower was even used in contemporary forms of art—for instance, in Batman Begins.
To prove that the “blue flower” is a universal image, it should be noted that even the Japanese used this imagery, although differently. For instance, in the anime series Paradise Kiss, the main character used blue flowers (an artificially colored rose) to adorn of his fashion creations as a means to show that beauty is something that can be attained through other less orthodox ways. In Blood+, the image of the blue flower represents the main antagonist of the show.
And all this can be traced back to one writer: the German novelist Novalis.
Novalis, whose real name is Gerog Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hanrdenberg, first used the image of the blue flower in his unfinished novel, Heinrich von Ofterdingen. In this novel, the title character dreams about a blue flower after meeting a stranger. The stranger captivated him, much like the blue flower of his dream. In the translated text, Heinrich asked: where did the stranger come from? It is pretty much what he thinks of the blue flower. The appearance of the blue flower in his dream haunted him, something he called a vision from “another world.”
Heinrich’s father was opposed to the dream, but he revealed that he himself had a similar dream, one that involves the father and his wife, the man longing to see his woman. It was revealed that the dream also involved a blue flower as well, which emphasizes the point: the blue flower as a symbol for longing and for hope.
In the end, the blue flower is used vis a vis his longing and love for an attainable desire, which is pretty much what the blue flower is in his dream. This started the trend of the blue flower being the central figure in Romantic literature and art. And it is fitting indeed, because isn’t Romanticism marked by its aspiration for perfection? After all, the Romantics are often described as Byronic.
What really resonates with Novalis’ use of the blue flower image is the fact that it perfectly describes his life. The novelist fell in love with the 12-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. And while it seemed like an improbable romance, Novalis was engaged to the young lady a year after. Their engagement lasted for two years, as Sophie died in 1897.
And what does this prove? Perhaps the ever elusive blue flower is not that elusive after all, that even men’s longing for the infinite has its ultimate redemption. In may, however, come in different forms, much like the blue flower.
Penelope Fitzgerald’s ‘The Blue Flower’
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Penelope Fitzgerald defined the contemporary belief regarding writers. For one, she was a woman, and as a bad as it sounds, women during her time were not really regarded seriously as writers, much less novelists. And then there’s the fact that she was already 58 years old when she began her career as a writer. Her very first book was a biography of Edward Burne-Jones, and then followed by a biography of her father (a magazine editor) and her uncles (a crime writer, a cryptographer, and a Bible scholar). After her biographies, Fitzgerald worked on her novels—with sterling results. She won several major awards for her novels such as the Offshore and The Bookstore.
However, it was The Blue Flower where the critics agreed she reached her pinnacle as a writer.
The Blue Flower is a novel that centers on the German writer Novalis, before, as a New York Times review cites, became the writer that he is. At this point, he was merely Friedrich von Hardenberg, at a time when he met the first love of his life: the young Sophie von Kuhn. The title of her novel, of course, was named after the main image and symbol of the Romantic period, something that Novalis first used and further elaborated on by other writers.
As the meaning of the blue flower image is love and desire—and that ultimate longing for the supposedly unattainable—Fitzgerald’s novel worked on this central image in several levels. First was Novalis’ relationship with Sophie, something that was not exactly considered as normal during that time. Historians consider Sophie as a heavenly beauty; even during that age, she was considered as “spiritually lovely.” The use of the word “spiritually” is rather interesting. Anything that aims to achieve spiritual fulfillment usually has something to do with heaven, the afterlife. Heaven is usually represented by the color blue.
And in Fitzgerald’s novel, Sophie is Novalis’ heaven, his love and desire—his blue flower.
Looking into the further elaborations on the idea of the blue flower can point into the philosophizing of C.S. Lewis, a well-known Christian writer and author of the widely popular The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of novels that resonates with Christian undertones and symbolism (its major character, Aslan, is said to be a representation of Jesus Christ). In his essay “Surprised by Joy,” it would seem as if Lewis is saying that nothing is more desirable than the longing itself. This longing, Lewis said, is the promise of the blue flower.
With Sophie as the physical manifestation of the blue flower, what is Fitzgerald trying to say? Perhaps Novalis was not really in love with Sophie the way Novalis thought he was. After all, while the German author was devastated with the lost of her love, he recovered swiftly as he married a few years later. This “spiritually lovely” young girl may have spurred an inexplicable longing inside Novalis, something that he cannot control. Yet that may be exactly what it is.
In any case, Fitzgerald may have attained the “blue flower” of her career with Blue Flower. After all, it was her magnum opus, the finest work of her career. At least for this writer, the blue flower was not merely a longing for an unattainable desire, as it was ultimately fulfilled.
