Morfeo

Morfeo è una figura della mitologia greca, figlio di Ipno e di Notte.

Varianti del mito

Esiodo indica che i sogni erano figli della Notte. L'idea di una divinità specifica dei sogni chiamata Morfeo è più tarda e viene generalmente attribuita ad Ovidio, che nelle sue Metamorfosi diede un nome ai tre figli di Ipno, il sonno: Morfeo, Fobetore e Fantaso. Nell'Iliade e nell'Odissea, infatti, troviamo invece un'altra divinità, Oniro, che riassume in sé le caratteristiche di tutte le altre. Morfeo, nelle sue apparizioni notturne, prendeva le forme delle persone o delle cose sognate. Egli quando inviava sogni popolati da forme umane portava sempre con sé un mazzo di papaveri con cui, sfiorando le palpebre dei dormienti, donava loro realistiche illusioni. Gli altri due figli di Ipno popolavano i sogni con animali (Fobetore) e paesaggi, case, oggetti inanimati (Fantaso). Spesso Morfeo era rappresentato nell'atto di abbracciare il padre Ipno.

Nella cultura popolare

Morfeo è uno dei tanti nomi del personaggio DC Comics Sogno.
Morfeo è uno dei protagonisti della saga letteraria Ragazze dell'Olimpo, in cui è innamorato di Atena.
È presente nella saga letteraria Percy Jackson e gli dei dell'Olimpo; nei romanzi, tuttavia, la figura di Morfeo è per lo più basata su Ipno, il padre del dio dei sogni.
Morfeo è l'antagonista secondario del videogioco God of War: Chains of Olympus.

Ceice/Morfeo appare ad Alcione. Incisione di Virgil Solis per l'XI libro delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio.

Morpheus

Morpheus ('Fashioner', derived from the Ancient Greek: μορφή meaning 'form, shape') is a god associated with sleep and dreams. In Ovid's Metamorphoses he is the son of Sleep, who appears in dreams in human form. From the medieval period, the name began to stand more generally for the god of dreams, or of sleep.

Ovid

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Morpheus is one of the thousand sons of Somnus (Sleep). His name derives from the Greek word for form (μορφή), and his function was to appear in dreams in human guise. According to Ovid "no other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men; the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents." Like other gods associated with sleep, Ovid makes Morpheus winged.
Ovid called Morpheus and his brothers, the other sons of Somnus, the Somnia ("dream shapes"), saying that they appear in dreams "mimicking many forms". Ovid gives names to two more of these sons of Sleep. One called Icelos ('Like'), by the gods, but Phobetor ('Frightener') by men, "takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent", and Phantasos ('Fancy'), who "puts on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things".
The three brothers names are found nowhere earlier than Ovid, and are perhaps Ovidian inventions. Tripp calls these three figures "literary, not mythical concepts". However Griffin suggests that this division of dream forms between Morpheus and his brothers, possibly including their names, may have been of Hellenistic origin.

In the Arts

Robert Burton, in his 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy, refers to a depiction of Morpheus, saying "Philostratus paints [Morpheus] in a white and black coat, with a horn and ivory box full of dreams, of the same colours, to signify good and bad". In Carl Michael Bellman's Fredman's Epistle No. 72, "Glimmande nymf", Morpheus is invoked as the "god of sleep".

Derivation

Friedrich Sertürner derived the name of the opiate drug morphine from the name of Morpheus.

Parc de Versailles, bosquet du Dauphin, Morphée, d'après Nicolas Poussin

dal 1656 al 1672

Evening or Morpheus by Charles Le Brun

Le Soir ou Morphée

Réalisée entre 1664 et 1677

Fresco in the gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence: Charon's boat, the sleep of Night and Morpheus by Luca Giordano (1684–1686)

René-Antoine Houasse - Morpheus Awakening as Iris Draws Near, 1690

Aurora wakes Morpheus by Bartolomeo Altomonte (1769)

Morpheus by Jean-Bernard Restout

circa 1771

И. Прокофьев. «Морфей», 1782, ГРМ

Morpheus by I.Prokofyev (1782, GRM) by shakko

Morpheus and Iris, by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1811 Hermitage Museum

Morpheus by F.Tolstoy (1852, Tretyakov gallery) by shakko

Mariemont Fraikin Le Sommeil

1857

Stift Admont, Bibliothekssaal, Deckenfresko von Bartolomeo Altomonte. Dargestellt ist das Erwachen des Geistes (Aurora und Morpheus), Grammatik, Didaktik und die alten Sprachen Griechisch, Hebräisch, Latein. Weitere Details auf http://www.stiftadmont.at/deutsch/museum/bibliothek/Fresken.php.

Morpheus the god of dreams - YouTube

YouTube

Morpheus in weiblicher Engelsgestalt mit Schlafmohn in seiner Hand

"King Sleep was father of a thousand sons -
indeed a tribe - and of them all, the one
he chose was Morpheus, who had such skill
in miming any human form at will.
No other Dream can match his artistry
in counterfeiting men: their voice, their gait,
their face - their moods; and, too, he imitates
their dress precisely and the words they use
most frequently. But he mimes only men..."

Morpheus

Morpheus | Disney's Hercules

Hamburg, Friedhof Ohlsdorf, Grab

Ceyx/Morpheus appears to Alcyone. Engraving (or etching more likely)by Bauer for Ovid's Metamorphoses Book XI, 633-676.

morpheus_by_undeadkitty13

Statue Of Morphues

Morpheus' Shade

Morpheus

Morpheus at City of Dreams, Hotel in Macau

Morpheus, god of dreams (Artist unknown?)

Card Spotlight

Marybeth

"morpheus" 107/365

Morpheus by Antonio Caparo

Morpheus
Sculpture, 11 H x 4.3 W x 3.1 in
Denis Grace

morpheus: lord of dreams Neil Gaiman conceived Morpheus looking like the Cure’s Robert Smith. Author Steven Millhauser wrote him as a roly-poly Oscar Wilde-type character. In both cases, the god of dreams was represented as an adult. I’ve chosen to render him as an adolescent, mostly because I spent a great deal of time at that age sleeping.
I wanted to show Morpheus as a poet-soul, prone to drift into reverie. Part Jim Morrison, part Aubrey Beardsley, he sits on his poppy throne while three owlish moths await his awakening. As he is the brother to Death, I show him as being rather skeletal and wraith-like. The idea for the single wing on the side of his head was inspired by a bust of Hypnos—who was both the god of sleep, and Morpheus’s father.
The poppy is the flower where opium comes from, from which can be extracted the sedative morphine.

John Aardema