The fruit Apple enjoys immense plurality in etymology across languages. The English name is borrowed from proto-Germanic ‘Apfel’ which in turn borrows the prefix ‘ap’ from Old Celtic languages. In Spanish it is called ‘Manzana’ which is the Iberian pronunciation for matianum referring to the apples produced by the Roman horticulturist Matius. But the most interesting for us is the French name for apple ‘Pomme’ which comes from Latin pomum which originally referred to all fruit.
Apple as ‘Pomme’ is the fruit of all fruits, this composition tries to understand why it overpowers all other fruits. Why does the motif of the fruit recur across timelines from mythical to contemporary in a clockwork manner: The Ouroboros of Apple.
I) Genesis
Eden, the garden of paradise, the tree of knowledge, the forbidden fruit, the serpent, the bite, the sin, the fall.
Depicted in the Sistine chapel by Michelangelo and versified by Milton in Paradise Lost, the fall of man is the most potent allegory involving the fruit.
Milton in his book describes God’s speech about the act.
“Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I form’d them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves…”
Now why is it such a historic moment? If we see the above lines more clearly we understand why. The act was committed by Adam without any impulse both Adam and Eve judged and chose to act, they chose to fall from paradise.Milton has misinterpreted this as the loss of Paradise and conceived it to be the original sin.In real it is the first act of free will, the first existentialist act , Paradise Abandoned, The Original Act.
Hence we see two things with respect to the motif of Apple.
1) It unseats the idea in power (here being the Man of Paradise)
2)It carries the sperm of existentialism
II) Medieval Europe
Dark Ages, rule of religion, God-the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, a mundane garden, the gravity, the fall, a new Adam.
Apple fell on Issac Newton to awake him to the secular laws of the world that affects all men equally, that denies the existence of anything that cannot be scientifically verified, the birth and march of reason; The Fall of God.
The form of apple echoes to again demolish power structures and this time it is not Man but God himself is dethroned. The karma in Apple.
II) 20th Century
The age of Men, rigid ideas of sexuality, Homosexuality- the new Original Sin, an Adam for Adams, the cyanide, the bite, the fall.
The suicide of Turing will the image of a bitten apple next to him is one of the most commanding images for the LGBT community. The image subverts the idea of that men are sexually monolithic. Years later an entire society shall apologize for the treatment vetted out to one of the most intelligent men of his generation.
Hence we see that the motif of the fruit is antithetical to ideas in power, it would repeat itself in a clockwork manner to put a new helmer o to the throne of ideas. No other fruit in the history of humans has had such an impact, making it the pomum: the fruit of all fruits.
