花言葉 ... langage des fleurs

Hana kotoba (花言葉), the language of flowers, a once fluently spoken tongue, has now disappeared into nostalgic oblivion. The eternal appeal of the flower will always be, but its greater purpose in our lives seems to have diminished to gifts for the occasion, such as love, death, sickness, birth, and simple human joys and pains. What of the appreciate for the flower itself? Thankfully, in Paris many flower lovers can still be found, and in Japan, o-hanami (お花見) is still charted with anticipation every year. But the more man expands his creations into the natural world, the more we take from the flowers, especially in our attempts to capture them for our own sake. No one better contemplates this than Okakura Kakuzō (岡倉覚三) in his writings in The Book of Tea, which I just finished reading:

Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits you? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will close around your throats. You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes. The wretch, she may be passing fair. She may say how lovely you are while her fingers are still moist with your blood. Tell me, will this be kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the button-hole of one who would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst that warns of ebbing life.

Thankfully, the tradition of o-hanami still preserves the beauty of the cycle of the seasons, of blooming and death, as we revel in the passing glory of nature's art. We become one in our admiration of their sacrifice, ceasing only to exist for the presence of their beauty. Even the samurai stopped the enjoy the flowers, aware of their ethereal beauty, drawn towards the fleeting presence of the petals. The flowers die, in in their withering fill our world with beauty to remind us of the universe beyond ourselves.