SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 36
Close Readings of an Interpersonal Kind
Prakash Kona
I am not particularly affected by the thought of flowers. I understand that a feeling for
the texture of petals requires a particular temperament. We're not born to be in love with
flowers, but we are enamored by the sight of landscapes in a state of efflorescence, with
multiple tints and shades sending the heart's eye into a vertigo. Therefore, the question may
not be about our sensitivity to flower appreciation, but rather about our education to view
differences positively rather than with aesthetic distaste. It could be about colors, smells, or
the fragility of a flower, representing vulnerability against the hardness of a mind that fails
to give nature its due. “Weakness overcomes what is unyielding,”1 declares the Tao Te Ching
in no uncertain terms. Rose, lily, and jasmine, weak though they might seem, are symbols of
passive resistance; you crush them without ever breaking them; you destroy them physically,
and yet they resist the destruction with the unyielding force of fragrance that comes from one
that would rather die than let go of its nature.
Despite my lack of an innate predisposition to understand the hidden logic in what a
flower represents, Marcel Proust's novel Swann's Way, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and
Nâzim Hikmet's poem “Things I Didn't Know I loved” all featured flowers that I found
myself liking. Hikmet writes:
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadiköy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touches the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison2
I never bothered to embark on a systematic examination of poppies, cactuses, or jonquils,
but if I were to go to Istanbul, I would like to pay a visit to the jonquil garden in Kadiköy. I am
not sure if it exists now; if it does not, I don't think it would make a difference to my feelings
about the flowers in the poem. I stored the image of the “jonquil garden” somewhere inside
me, where I imagine young Marika with the breath of fresh almonds kissing the seventeenyear-old Nâzim, who one day, as a man of sixty, will recollect the moment while on a train
journey from Prague to Berlin.
The imagery of flowers in a visually perfect landscape, a feast for the imagination, still
doesn't captivate me. But, if I had to think of flowers, these three texts will haunt me for a
1
Lao Tzu, “The Tao Te Ching,” trans. Michael Lafargue, Terebess Asia Online (TAO), 1992, https://terebess.
hu/english/tao/lafargue.html.
2
Nâzim Hikmet, “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved.” Poets.Org, Academy of American Poets, Accessed 29 Aug.
2024, poets.org/poem/things-i-didnt-know-i-loved.
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