My heart should be well-schooled
Content warning: mention of fictional rape
I read through Frank Zöllner’s Botticelli: Images of Love and Spring this morning. It is full of fascinating interpretations and contextualizations.
Zöllner posits that Botticelli’s Primavera is a message of consolation and encouragement for an (sidenote: presumed to be Semiramide Appiani, matched with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici ) within a politically arranged marriage.
He interprets the figures on the far right as Zephyrus abducting the nymph Chloris, who subsequently transforms into the goddess Flora, after a passage from Ovid’s Fasti:
In Fasti, Flora remarks that, although Zephyrus initially took her by force (rapina), he more than made amends for this by his loving behavior as a husband. ... it is now eternally spring for her. ... her spouse has filled [her] garden with blossoming flowers and has made her, Flora, the mistress of this magnificent display of flowers and blossoms.
And I thought of myself, and how, recently, feelings have come over me with as much force as the god of wind.
I feel bewildered by the attention I’ve been receiving from someone new. Even so, I find myself daydreaming of being as happy as Flora if we were to fall in love.
Anyway, I read until I heard the bell toll at noon.
When I left the library, the cold wind hit me. I had forgotten, Primavera in my head and heart, that I had not dressed warm enough for (sidenote: A few days ago, I spent a warm, sunny afternoon with the person I had mentioned – the very last of summer. )