Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Reflections, refractions, mirages, Fata Morgana...

Reflections & Greek artists, modern Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Reflections, Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

In our times, it is difficult to make dreams about a better future...

It is difficult to be optimistic...

From now on, our hopes sleep in the mysterious world of hallucinations, delusions, illusions, optical illusions - the world of Fata Morgana...

Fata Morgana in poetry

Fata Morgana by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O sweet illusions of song
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!

I approach and ye vanish away,
I grasp you, and ye are gone;
But ever by night and by day,
The melody soundeth on.

As the weary traveller sees
In desert or prairie vast,
Blue lakes, overhung with trees
That a pleasant shadow cast;

Fair towns with turrets high,
And shining roofs of gold,
That vanish as he draws nigh,
Like mists together rolled --

So I wander and wander along,
And forever before me gleams
The shining city of song,
In the beautiful land of dreams.

But when I would enter the gate
Of that golden atmosphere,
It is gone, and I wonder and wait
For the vision to reappear.

Reflections, refractions, mirages, Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana, is the Italian name for Morgan le Fay, the half-sister of King Arthur in Arthurian legend. Reputedly a sorceress and able to change shape at will, Morgan le Fay was sometimes said to live below the sea in a crystal palace that could also rise above the surface. The fata morgana effect was so named for the superstitious belief among sailors that she created illusory visions to lure men into a false port and to their death.

The term first entered English usage in 1818, when it was used to describe an occurrence of the phenomenon in the Strait of Messina, a narrow body of water between Sicily and the region of Calabria in southern Italy

A special type of complex mirage, one that sometimes gives the impression of a castle half in the air and half in the sea, is named after Fata Morgana. She was known to live in a marvelous castle under the sea. Sometimes the enchantress made this castle appear reflected up in the air, causing seamen who mistook it for a safe harbor to be lured to their deaths.

The fata morgana mirage is one that can occur only where there are alternating warm and cold layers of air near the ground or water surface. Instead of traveling straight through these layers, light is bent towards the colder, hence denser, air. The result can be a rather complicated light path and a strange image of a distant object. A fate morgana actually is a superposition of several images of one object. Typically one image is upright more or less above two inverted images that may be mingled together. The images may undergo rapid changes as the air layers move slightly up and down relative to the observer.

Fata Morgana is most common in polar regions, especially over large sheets of ice with a uniform low temperature, but it can be observed almost anywhere. While in polar regions Fata Morgana is observed on cold days, in deserts and over oceans and lakes Fata Morgana is observed on hot days. In this form of mirage, images which would normally be concealed behind the horizon appear distorted in the sky.