Adonis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In Greek mythology, a beautiful young man loved by Aphrodite. By extension the term is used to refer to any beautiful man. He is exemplified by Michelangelo's David.
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Modern association with physical beauty and youth
An extremely attractive, youthful male is often called an Adonis, often with a connotation of deserved vanity: "the office Adonis". The legendary attractiveness of the figure is referenced in Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac, which describes an unrequited love of the main character, Sarrasine for the image in a painting of an Adonis and a castrato. The allusion to extreme physical attractiveness is apparent in the psychoanalytical Adonis Complex which refers to a body image obsession with improving one's physique and youthful appearance.
Cultural references to the rebirth mythology
The myth of the death and rebirth of Adonis has featured prominently in a variety of cultural and artistic works. Giovan Battista Marino's masterpiece, Adone, published in 1623, is a long, sensual poem, which elaborates the myth of Adonis, and represents the transition in Italian literature from Mannerism to the Baroque. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the poem Adonais for John Keats, and uses the myth as an extended metaphor for Keats' death.
Such allusions have continued to the present day. Adonis (an Arabic transliteration of the same name, أدونيس) is the pen name of a famous Syrian poet, Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, who was nominated more than once for a Nobel Prize for literature, including in 2006. His choice of name relates especially to the rebirth element of the myth of Adonis (also called "Tammuz" in Arabic), which was an important theme in mid-20th century Arabic poetry, chiefly amongst followers of the "Free Verse" (الشعر الحر) movement founded by Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Adunis has used the myth of his namesake in many of his poems, for example in "Wave I", from his most recent book "Start of the Body, End of the Sea" (Saqi, 2002), which includes a complete retelling of the birth of the god.
The Adonis myth and associated artwork is the subject of an episode of the anime series DNAngel. In specific homage paid to the undead archetypes of the myth, an Adonis statue comes to life and lures young girls with vampiric overtones.
See also
Namesakes