Yonder stands the orange tree
Showing off its fruits to me,
Gleaming teardrops lovers shed
Stained by passion’s heartbreak red.
Balls of agate carmine-bright
Hung on boughs of chrysolite,
Sent a-spinning from the trees
By the mallet of the breeze.
Now I kiss them, now inhale;
Thus my senses I regale
With their cheeks’ so tender bloom
And the sweets of their perfume.
– Ibn Sara (d. 1123)
The story of the orange begins in South Asia, where the word “naranga” in Sanskrit and “nareng” in Farsi means “favored by elephants,” a nod to the fruit’s significance in the region. From here derived the Arabic “naranj,” the Spanish “naranja,” and the Old Provençal “auranja.”
But how did this citrus gem find its way to Spain? It is said that “For a long time Musa ben Nosair [Musa ibn Nusayr], the caliph’s delegate at Tangier, had gazed longingly at the Spanish coast. On a clear day it seemed within arm’s reach. He could count the houses, follow the movement of ships, and when the wind blew hard, he could sniff the odor of Spanish oranges.”[1] However, the well accepted theory credited the Moors with introducing citrus fruits to this part of the Iberian peninsula, which they named Al-Andalus, in the 8th century. They planted rows of bitter orange trees in towns and cities, creating lush courtyards and gardens designed to honor Allah and to symbolize an earthly paradise. Large-scale cultivation started in the 10th century, as evidenced by complex irrigation techniques specifically adapted to support orange orchards.
The bitter orange, also known today as the Seville orange, has a distinctly bitter, sour taste. While the raw pulp is not edible, it is prized for making British orange marmalade, being higher in pectin than the sweet orange, and therefore giving a better set and a higher yield. Once a year, bitter oranges are collected from trees in Seville and shipped to Britain to be used in marmalade. One of the earliest references to a “Marmelet of Oranges” comes from a recipe book written by Eliza Cholmondeley in 1677.
The Latin name for orange is “pomum aurantium”, which means the golden apple. The word aurantium is derived from aurum, meaning gold. In Greek mythology, Gaia, the personification of Earth, presented the golden apples to the goddess Hera as a gift upon her marriage to Zeus. Hera planted them in a divine garden located at the far western edge of the world, near the Atlas mountain range, which in ancient times was identified with the westernmost part of Libya, present-day Morocco in North Africa. For they were said to grant immortality, the apples were closely guarded by the Hesperides, nymphs of the evening, and the serpent-dragon Ladon. They were thus called the Apples of the Hesperides.
By the 15th century, both bitter and sweet oranges had been adopted throughout Europe. They were considered a luxury fruit and were cultivated in conservatories, called orangeries, to cater to the citrus’ warmer climate environment. King Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, had a great love for orange trees and built the grandest of all royal orangeries at the Palace of Versailles, where they were potted in solid silver tubs inside the palace, while the orangerie supplied the court oranges year-round. In 1922, the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, devoted one to the orange in his Sonnets to Orpheus. Considered a masterpiece, the sonnets were written in a period of three weeks while the author was immersed in what he described a “savage creative storm.” In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus, whom Rilke referred to as the “god with the lyre,” traveled to the Underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice with his enchanting music.
“Wait … that taste … it’s already flown.
… just a little music, a stamping, a drone:
You warm maidens, you silent maidens,
dance the taste of fruit we experience!
Dance the orange. Who can forget it?
How, drowning in itself, it struggles to
deny its sweetness. You possess it.
It preciously converts itself to you.
Dance the orange. The warmer season
weave around you, so it ripely shines
in the air of its homeland! Radiant, reveal
fragrance after fragrance! Create the liaison
between the pure, forbidding rind,
and the juice, with which this happy fruit is filled!”
[1] Jean Descola, A History of Spain.
hardlyplaying.blog 