About those flowers . . .

I've waited nearly five years for this subject to come up on its own. Now that it has, I want to get something off my chest. My florigraphy post was well received; I don't recall anyone arguing against it, and it spawned a lot of discussion. There was plenty of evidence in the text for me to lay out, and Wolfe even mentioned the Language of Flowers in LONG SUN. My theory was right, and I knew it. Two years later, I asked Wolfe about it and asked him to confirm my basic premise. Not that he had read it, mind you; I gave him a synopsis. He shot it down. He had not been deliberately using the Language of Flowers in the manner I suggested. He softened the blow by saying that he had chosen the flowers he used to "evoke a mood", or something to that effect, and that amounted to much the same thing. But I was still wrong, and that's the moral of this story. -Roy

Artists and their conscious intentions are often at odds with the functions of their works. The greater the artist the greater the risk/serendipitous chance of this being true. I'm behind you as a possible on this one Roy, never doubting the conscious intent was not there in the artist's mind.

I've waited nearly five years for this subject to come up on its own. Now that it has, I want to get something off my chest. My florigraphy post was well received; I don't recall anyone arguing against it, and it spawned a lot of discussion. There was plenty of evidence in the text for me to lay out, and Wolfe even mentioned the Language of Flowers in LONG SUN. My theory was right, and I knew it. Two years later, I asked Wolfe about it and asked him to confirm my basic premise. Not that he had read it, mind you; I gave him a synopsis. He shot it down. He had not been deliberately using the Language of Flowers in the manner I suggested. He softened the blow by saying that he had chosen the flowers he used to "evoke a mood", or something to that effect, and that amounted to much the same thing. But I was still wrong, and that's the moral of this story. -Roy