Beauty's enduring name.
花容月態 (화용월태) means A face like a flower and a bearing like the moon — surpassing beauty.. adonis means A handsome man; a beautiful youth.. East Asian idiom and Western myth mirror the same human truth.
The Meeting
The Greek Adonis was a youth so beautiful that even Aphrodite fell in love with him, yet he was torn apart by a wild boar, and from his blood the anemone bloomed. In East Asia, the pinnacle of beauty a human could attain was expressed in four characters — a face like a flower (花容) and a bearing like the moon (月態). One is a tale in which beauty ends in tragedy; the other, a way of making beauty eternal by likening it to nature.
Western Myth — The Youth Even a Goddess Loved: Adonis
Adonis was the most beautiful mortal man in Greek myth. His beauty drew even Aphrodite, goddess of love, to abandon Olympus and descend to earth. But Adonis loved the hunt, and ignoring Aphrodite's warning, he pursued a wild boar and was gored to death by its tusks. Where Aphrodite's tears mingled with Adonis's blood, the anemone bloomed. Zeus, moved by Aphrodite's grief, decreed that Adonis should spend half the year in the underworld and half on earth — and this became a myth explaining the turning of the seasons. From the 1620s, 'Adonis' began to be used in English as a common noun for an exceptionally handsome young man.
That 'Adonis' became a common noun is a rare instance of beauty itself becoming a name. Yet tragedy is built into that name. Adonis's beauty could not save him; rather, it became the cause of his ruin. In Western myth, extreme beauty almost always arrives hand in hand with destruction.
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Oxford English DictionaryAdonis, n. 1620s, a very handsome young man, from Greek Adonis, youth beloved by Aphrodite.
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Online Etymology Dictionaryetymonline.com/word/adonis — from Semitic adon lord.
Eastern Lore — Beauty Shaped from Flower and Moon: Hwayongwoltae
Hwayongwoltae (花容月態) means a face beautiful as a flower (花容) and a bearing lovely as the moon (月態), and it is among the highest praises in East Asian literature for surpassing beauty. The phrase originates in Wang Shifu's Romance of the Western Chamber of the Yuan dynasty and thereafter became an idiom for describing a peerless beauty. In the Eastern classics, the standard of beauty was nature itself — the vitality of a flower, the serenity of the moon, the suppleness of the willow, the clarity of water. China's Four Great Beauties were all described through natural phenomena. Of Xi Shi it was said the moon hid shyly behind the clouds (閉月); of Yang Guifei, that even flowers bowed their heads in shame (羞花). It was a rhetoric of reversal, in which beauty overwhelms nature itself.
The Eastern aesthetic revealed by hwayongwoltae: the crucial point is that the standard of beauty is nature. The Western Adonis embodies a human beauty that makes even gods fall in love, but the Eastern hwayongwoltae is a human likened to the beauty of nature. The West places the human at the center; the East places nature at the center.
Where the Mirrors Meet — Where the Two Myths Converge
Both share the theme of human beauty measured against nature. From Adonis's blood comes the anemone; in hwayongwoltae, flower and moon become the measure of human beauty.
Both live on in everyday language. 'Adonis' still means a handsome man in English, while hwayongwoltae still names surpassing beauty in Korean.
Yet their endings differ. In the West, Adonis's beauty ends in tragedy; in the East, hwayongwoltae perpetuates beauty by likening it to nature.
Their attitudes toward beauty differ. Western myth warns of beauty's destructiveness; Eastern literature celebrates beauty's harmony.
Mnemonic — One Line to Take Home
- ✓ Adonis = derived from Adonis. A handsome man; a beautiful youth.
- ✓ 花容月態 = a face like a flower and a bearing like the moon. Surpassing beauty.
- ✓ Remember it all at once: 'Adonis' and hwayongwoltae — two different civilizations telling the same story.
"Myths never die. They still breathe today, alive within 'Adonis' and hwayongwoltae."
