Narcissus.
Outline of the myth
(from Julia Kristeva's Tales
of Love)
Born at thespia,
in Beortia, son of the river Cephissus (we shall later encounter the water that
held the image) and the nymph Liriope (leirion, the lily, will eventually be
metamorphosed, as the myth tells it, into that other flower of moist areas, the
funeral narcissus), Narcissus is a youth whose beauty is as dazzling as he is
scornful. Spurning youngsters of both sexes alike, Narcissus encounters a
prefiguration of his doubling in a watery reflection in the person of the nymph
Echo. In love with him but spurned, Echo, who can only repeat the words of
others, (Juno willed it so in order to punish her for having overly protected
the adulterous loves of her father, Saturn), ends up by wasting away, "her
body dries and shrivels" and "then she is voice only, for the bones
are turned to stone." Finally Narcissus' deluded lovers ask of Nemesis.
the Goddess of Rhamnus, that he may "love one day, so, himself, and not
win over the creature whom he loves." The punishment is carried out when,
bent over a spring to quench his thirst during a hunt, the youth is seized with
thirst of a different sort: "As he tried to quench his thirst ... he saw
an image in the pool, and fell in love with that unbodied hope, and found a
substance in what was only shadow."
We are here confronted with what we can but call the vertigo of a love with no
object other than a mirage. Ovid marvels, fascinated and terrified, at the
sight of a twin aspect of the lure that will nevertheless continue to nourish
the West's Psychological and intellectual life for centuries to come. On the
one hand there is rapture at the sight of a non object, simple product of the
eyes' mistake; on the other, there is the power of the image, "what you
seek is nowhere. The vision is only shadow, only reflection, lacking any
substance. It comes with you, it stays with you, it goes away with you, if you
can go away."
One then witnesses an erotic scene between Narcissus and his double, all woven
with impossible embraces, missed kisses, deluded contacts. With the eye, the
mouth is the main organ of amorous longing, like the skin that is frustrated by
a "thin film of water" that keeps them apart.
At last the moment of understanding is at hand. After many frustrations,
Narcissus gathers that he is, actually, in a world of "signs":
"You nod and beckon when I do, your lips, it seems, answer when I am
talking though what you say I cannot hear." The exertion for deciphering
leads him to knowledge, to self- knowledge. "He is myself! I feel
it, I know myself now."
We have reached the crux of the drama: "What shall I do?... What I want is
with me, my riches make me poor. If I could only escape from my own body!"
The tragedy reaches a higher level when Narcissus, at the moment when his tears
disturb the pool, realizes not only that the loved image is his own, but
furthermore that it can disappear -- as if he had thought that, for want of
touching, he could nevertheless be satisfied with contemplation alone
("let me keep looking at you always"), which has henceforth also
become impossible. In desperation he "beat his bare breast with hands as
pale as marble"; and so Narcissus dies at the edge of his image and Ovid
adds, "Even in Hell he found a pool to gaze in, watching his image in the
Stygian waters;" When mourners, whose lamentations Echo repeats, prepare
the funeral pile and seek his body, "they found nothing." Through a
strange resurrection, the narcissus flower has taken his place.
