Narrative
Helios, having loved her, abandoned her for Leucothea and left her deserted. She was so angered by his treatment that she told Leucothea's father, Orchamus, about the affair. Since Helios had defiled Leucothea, Orchamus had her put to death by burial alive in the sands. Clytie intended to win Helios back by taking away his new love, but her actions only hardened his heart against her. She stripped herself and sat naked, with neither food nor drink, for nine days on the rocks, staring at the sun, Helios, and mourning his departure. After nine days she was transformed into the turnsole (which is known for growing on sunny, rocky hillsides), which turns its head always to look longingly at Helios' chariot of the sun. The episode is most fully told in Ovid, Metamorphoses iv. 204, 234-56.
Modern traditions substitute the turnsole with a sunflower, which is also known for turning in the direction of the sun. Sunflowers originate in North America and did not grow anywhere in the ancient old world.
Read more about this topic: Clytie (Oceanid)
Famous quotes containing the word narrative:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)