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Instances of lethal flowers and plants are already found in Hellenistic times, where coming close to a lethal plant is a mode of suicide. In present-day folklore, deadly flowers, either poisonous or predators, are not infrequent - poisonous plants even occur as opaque metaphors -, and sometimes deadly flowers or plants with extreme effects appear in modern literary, cinematographic or theatrical works, in computer games and other media.
I. Introduction
Offering a lethal rose is a ruse in one of the Islamic versions of the death of Moses, but also in an episode from the Fall of the Parthenopean Republic, told as an oral life narrative by the Neapolitan Jacobin Raffaele Settembrini and written down by his son, who had heard the report as a child.
We have discussed this in an article1, of which this is a sequel. In the present paper, we discuss several modern occurrences of the broad theme of deadly flowers or plants, or then of some rose whose effects on human beings is extreme. We draw upon the belles lettres, as well as cinematic or theatrical work.
II. The Role of Plants in Suicide
II. 1. Suicide by Smelling in "L 'Africaine" vs. an Occurrence of a Hyperbolic Idiom
Relia Kushelevsky2 remarks that apart from the narrative of Moses being made to smell a rose which brings about his death, the rose can in general be considered as a complex symbol of death (Mot. Z 142. 1 : White rose as a symbol of death) and of love. This is also reflected in the Roman custom of placing roses on graves and on the foreheads of the dead3. Whereas according to Freudian conceptions the rose signifies the Eros-Thanatos disposition, in Jungian psychology, it stands for the integration of the personality and the balance between the conscious and the unconscious as well as the circular world whose center is God. The rose is also related to the Garden of Eden4. These connotations of the rose signify a state of transition from life to death.
The motif of death through smelling a flower whose scent is poisonous is also found in act 5 of the opera L 'Africaine, set to music by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) from a libretto by his main collaborator,...