Painting by Susan Boulet
An excerpt telling the story of Clytie’s love, her rejection by the sun-god Helios, and her transfiguration into a plant…
“The god of light no longer visited Clytie, nor found anything to love in her, even though love might have been an excuse for her pain, and her pain for her betrayal.
She wasted away, deranged by her experience of love. Impatient of the nymphs, night and day, under the open sky, she sat disheveled, bareheaded, on the bare earth.
Without food or water, fasting, for nine days, she lived only on dew and tears, and did not stir from the ground. She only gazed at the god’s aspect as he passed, and turned her face towards him.
They say that her limbs clung to the soil, and that her ghastly pallor changed part of her appearance to that of a bloodless plant: but part was reddened, and a flower like a violet hid her face. She turns, always, towards the sun, though her roots hold her fast, and, altered, loves unaltered.”
— Ovid, Metamorphoses (Bk IV: 256-273)