About Clytie,
‘The heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose’
Clytie by Parodi
1680s
Marble, under life-size
Galleria di Palazzo Reale, Genoa
The Transformation of Clytie
extracted from Book IV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Tho’ guilty Clytie thus the sun betray’d,
By too much passion she was guilty made.
Excess of love begot excess of grief,
Grief fondly bad her hence to hope relief.
But angry Phoebus hears, unmov’d, her sighs,
And scornful from her loath’d embraces flies.
All day, all night, in trackless wilds, alone
She pin’d, and taught the list’ning rocks her moan.
On the bare earth she lies, her bosom bare,
Loose her attire, dishevel’d is her hair.
Nine times the morn unbarr’d the gates of light,
As oft were spread th’ alternate shades of night,
So long no sustenance the mourner knew,
Unless she drunk her tears, or suck’d the dew.
She turn’d about, but rose not from the ground,
Turn’d to the Sun, still as he roul’d his round:
On his bright face hung her desiring eyes,
‘Till fix’d to Earth, she strove in vain to rise.
Her looks their paleness in a flow’r retain’d,
But here, and there, some purple streaks they gain’d.
Still the lov’d object the fond leafs pursue,
Still move their root, the moving Sun to view,
And in the Heliotrope the nymph is true.
Phoebus here refers to Helius or Apollo or God of sun as the “shining-one”. In her unrequited obsession of Helius, she remained in one spot and kept her gaze on him alone, until she eventually turn into a plant. Though held fast by her roots , she turns toward Helius , and despite her new form , persists in her love for him. She continue follow the passage of Helius across the sky. But Helius “transformed her ….for her betrayal” It is implying punishment brought on by Clytie herself for her obsessive behavior.
It’s obsession..”how madness change to jealousy” is in the second stanza, about her sister comparing with others. So it’s concluded Clytie is just a little obsessive, and Helius change her into a sunflower for her own good. She is actually a good person.
