La Dafne of the river god. The second arrow causes the object of his desire to flee from him. As Daphne rejects his advances, she calls out to her mother for help and is turned into a laurel tree to avoid his love. Still in love with Daphne, Apollo makes the laurel the emblem of his love forever and a sign of victory and award throughout ancient Greece. Notes Sources La Dafne La Dafne ("Daphne") is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a "favola
The Wood Nymph life, they experienced a certain type of female sexual adventurousness that their wives could not easily match." He hypothesizes that "The Wood Nymph" and other contemporaneous compositions were Sibelius's method of dealing with the emotional consequences of this and his guilt towards his wife Aino. With its focus on sexual fantasy, "The Wood Nymph" differs sharply from the Rydberg poem "Snöfrid" which Sibelius set in 1900. In "", Gunnar, the patriotic hero, resists a water nymph's sensuous "embrace" to instead "fight the hopeless fight" for his country and "die nameless". The contrast between Björn and Gunnar, Murtomäki argues, reflects Sibelius's