Reflections on Narcissus

By Colin McKim

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who's the fairest of them all?

In fairy tales and fables, as in the course of human history itself, vanity has often taken centre stage, eagerly craving the spotlight.

From Snow White's evil stepmother to the Emperor Napoleon, obsessive vanity has driven a long line of mortals over the edge.

But no one has carried this human frailty to a more absurd length than Narcissus, the young man who fell fatally in love with his own reflection.

Thousands of years before Facebook turned the planet into a giant mirror ball, Narcissus was the poster boy for nihilistic self absorption.

Or so we have been led to believe.

The story of Narcissus is a well-known cautionary tale, illustrating the destructive consequences of self-obsession.

From this Classic myth we derive the psychological term narcissism – indicating emotional development arrested at an infantile, egocentric stage.

On the surface the story is very simple. Narcissus is hunting in the woods when he stops at a stream to drink. Bending down he chances to observe his reflection in the water and is enthralled by what he sees – spellbound in body and soul.

All day he has been deaf to the cries of Echo, the young beauty who loves him and mimics his words as she follows him through the forest. Like a vocal mirror, Echo can only reproduce the syllables she hears. She can only give what she receives. Narcissus is looking for something more.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus dies of thirst, after trying to kiss the lips of his floating image only to see it melt into the water. Afraid to harm the object of his desire again, he simply crouches and stares longingly at his reflection, transfixed by the handsome face looking back from the still pool. Locked in the prison of vanity, he finally dies of thirst.

Heart-broken, Echo pines away until nothing but her disembodied voice remains.

Psychologists, eager plunderers of ancient myth, have borne the corpse of poor Narcissus through the public square as a testament to the mortal danger of excessive self-love.

But should Narcissus truly be seen as a figure of foolishness, an object of pity?

Perhaps we have been too quick to judge, too fixated on our own assumptions about psychological norms. Maybe we have missed the point of the story altogether.

There is another reading of this tale that reveals the deeper and darker truths of the human condition and delivers Narcissus from foolishness to existential awareness.

To understand the young hunter's predicament, it helps to consider his origins and mystical relationship to water.

His mother, so the story goes, was seduced by a river god, who bound winding streams tightly about her before implanting his swimming seed. She later asked an oracle about her son's fate and was told the lad's life would end the moment he knew himself. Knowledge causing death – where have we seen this fate played out before?

In the Bible, of course – the Book of Genesis. In the story of the fall of man, it is the acquisition of knowledge that leads to ruin. Remember the forbidden fruit that Eve handed Adam was plucked from the Tree of Knowledge.

Isn't it strange that man, distinguished from all other animals by his inquiring mind, is doomed by the pursuit of wisdom, stripped of innocence and driven from the Garden of Eden with death raised like a sword over his hunched nakedness.

If we look again, we may find the story of Narcissus is not about the perils of self-love, but rather the mortal danger of self-knowledge.

Far from being bewitched and undone by a face floating in a liquid mirror, Narcissus may well have been trapped by a philosophical crisis from which he could not escape.

Only an imbecile would mistake his reflection for the face of another person. If we accept that young Narcissus is just such a dolt then we have our allegorical indictment of self-centredness and anti-social behaviour.

But Narcissus is not described as a dimwit. His fatal flaw may well have been thinking too deeply and then being unable to break away from the logical conclusions of his own unyielding intelligence.

As Albert Camus stated in The Myth of Sisyphus, there is only one question of any real consequence in this world, that being whether life is worth living or not.

Was it any different in Narcissus' day? In a godless universe where no one rises from the grave or returns from the underworld, life has no real meaning; no purpose except to repeat itself over and over again, each species stamping out living copies in its offspring, every generation that follows banging out more copies in turn.

That is the essence of nature: man, animal and plant, perpetually re-broadcasting themselves into the spiraling hollows of a gargantuan echo chamber. Helloooo?...Helloooo?...Helloooo?... Helloooo?...

For anyone who thinks about it, the lack of any purpose other than endless replication is profoundly troubling. Life is merely a strobe light, sending brief pulses of illumination into the darkness, over and over again.

We are all bouncing on a terrestrial trampoline, up and down, up and down, consuming and expending energy, but going nowhere. Finally falling off and flopping on the ground exhausted.

The absence of any superior intelligence to beseech for sympathy and understanding leaves us naked and afraid. We are babes in the wood. In our loneliness and helplessness, we seek holy fathers and divine mothers.

That's why human beings long ago began populating the forests and mountains, oceans and rivers, high heavens and the molten underworld with all manner of supernatural creatures drawn from their primitive imaginations. Like faces mirrored in a pool, these fanciful figures were created in our own image, reflections of human moods and longings.

The early generations of gods were not particularly kind to earthly beings or even their own divine offspring. Cronos, the father of Zeus and Lord of Time, feasted on his own children. Zeus only escaped because his mother tricked Cronos by feeding him a rock swaddled in a baby blanket.

Zeus, himself, did take an interest in human beings, but more in a predatory than protective manner. He pursued nubile, young maidens with prurient enthusiasm, fulfilling his libidinous urges in the shape of a swan, a bull and a shower of gold, his disguises helping him escape the jealous eye of his wife, Hera.

Prometheus was a friend to man, teaching him to walk upright so he could see the stars. He defied Zeus, brazenly stealing fire from heaven as a gift for his primitive proteges.

For his trouble Prometheus was chained to a mountain where everyday he endured the abdominal discomfort of an eagle tearing out his liver.

During the Trojan War the Olympian immortals took sides with fanatical excitement. The gods who backed the Greeks emerged triumphant, but Poseidon, god of the sea and a classic sore loser, blew victorious Odysseus all over the ancient map, angrily trying to drown him or otherwise do him in.

Still, despite their predominantly selfish motives and erratic behaviour, the gods provided comfort by imbuing natural forces with human emotion and by taking a passionate interest in the lowly affairs of man.

Did Narcissus believe in the gods, in mystical beings and divine influence? Did he see naiads in the waterfalls? Dryads in the trees? Did he believe in almighty, lightning-packing Zeus, Phoebus Apollo in his dazzling chariot of fire, voluptuous Aphrodite or gloomy Hades?

Or was Narcissus a skeptic – a seminal secular humanist?

His mother claimed he was fathered by a river. Really? Did he believe that far-fetched tale and consider every stream he approached a possible relative? Or did he come to doubt his mother's honesty or sanity? He may well have been conceived among the tall reeds along the water's edge. But by Old Man River himself? Sounds like a story Huckleberry Finn would call “a stretcher.”

Jesus, come to think of it, must have wondered about his own unorthodox conception. Was he really the product of artificial insemination – a divinely-fertilized egg, mystically implanted in his mother's womb by the holy spirit?

And all without Joseph's knowledge. Interesting. And how did Mary know the divine manner of this conception? A dream, of course. Compelling, but hardly irrefutable proof.

Even those who know for certain the identity of their earthly fathers may be troubled by questions about the origins of life itself. How did it all begin? Who was the Great Father? Was there a divine spirit that moved upon the face of the deep and lit all the stars like candles? What generative force breathed life into dull clay? Who planted the first seeds of life in Mother Earth?

Perhaps Narcissus was hunting for knowledge and understanding, as much as wild game as he wandered through the ancient woods.

He may have been startled on first seeing his face in the stream.

Who goes there? What water spirit watches me so closely? My father? My river twin?

It would not have taken Narcissus long to realize his mistake and perhaps laugh at his own credulity, mock his rapidly beating heart.

He might have laughed as well at the gullibility of all who see mystical creatures swimming seductively in the water or flying through the sky on flaming chariots.

Maybe he recognized the anthropomorphic impulse for what it was – a projection of human shape and impulse on the non-human world; wish fulfillment and childish dream.

And what is human identity, but a familiar shape shimmering on the river of life for one shining moment before the wind ruffles the surface and wipes away the image with dead leaves?

Narcissus was no fool. He knew his mother had lied. The river was not a god. Certainly not his father. The face he saw on the smooth surface was only there because he was there. It had no independent existence. He brought it into being.

The same was true of every god and goddess from the beginning of time. All were reflections of the human desire for divine companionship in a frightening world where death closes all.

As his image in the watery mirror held its place, resisting the flow of the river, so the immortal gods floated above the world, immune to the passage of time.

“So, I am all gods,” said Narcissus. “And all gods are me.”

Yes, he crouched by the river and stared at his own reflection.

But he didn't die as the legend says, bewitched and transfixed by the sex appeal of his own image.

It was not eros, but thanatos that held him captive and chilled his heart.

Death entered his consciousness in the most profound and irremediable way. Not just his own death, but the death of illusion. In a searing flash of insight, he witnessed the colossal genocide of a whole civilization of immortals.

In the reflection of his handsome young face he saw all gods and goddesses for what they were – projections of mankind.

And seeing through the anthropomorphic masks floating on the moving surface of nature, Narcissus brought the whole pantheon crashing to the ground like Samson toppling the pillars of the temple.

Narcissus didn't die beside the stream, but self-delusion did. He was forever a changed man, a thinker pierced to the bone by the arrows of existential reality. Where a golden pathway had curled up to heaven through the iridescent mist of fantasy, a stony plain now lay ahead, a godless wasteland stretching to the precipitous edge of the inhuman world.

Perhaps a yellow flower bloomed where Narcissus dropped to his knees to worship the dark truth. Nature is full of bright invention. The river of life abounds with manifold creations. In a metaphorical sense we are all fathered by that fertile river. The stream of life flows through our veins.

However, Narcissus wanted more than nature could ever provide; more than Echo in her perfect devotion could deliver. He wanted to live forever.

But as the oracle had predicted, his life ended with the inescapable realization of his own mortality and ultimate isolation in the universe.

And if the course of life could not transport him into eternity, but only drain away his youth and finally and ignominiously cast him down into the dirt, it had no value. It led nowhere. It was all pointless.

But what is the longing for immortality, but vanity in another form? Life everlasting. Ego without end.

So perhaps, Narcissus, following his intellect rather than his desire ended up in the same fix as a spellbound lover – obsessed with himself, clinging to his fragile identity, terrified of death and vainly seeking a union with the eternal.

But he was stood up at the altar of hope, left yearning for a divine consummation he could never bring into being, hopelessly longing to be carried into eternity by an immortal goddess he could never possess.

He bent over the stream until darkness fell and his face became a shadow floating in a sea of stars.

In the morning he was gone.

- - - - - - - - - -

One of the first to read this monograph was distressed by the ending, his assumption being that Narcissus had taken his life. But did he?

If Narcissus had died, his body would still be there by the stream, enthralled by illusion. But if he recognized his reflection for what it was, then he could break free and move on, driven by the life force, along the lonely path of existential reality. But in giving up illusion, Narcissus gives up life beyond death, so in a very real sense his life must end with his acceptance of the truth. He may also have decided, like inconsolable Ophelia, to yield to death by lying back and sinking into the stream. I somehow doubt it, but it is for the reader to decide.

I also considered an ending in which the spell cast by the reflection is broken by a wink. Narcissus understands the truth and ultimately sees the dark humour in the human condition. The wink is the final shattering of glassy illusion and an expression of understanding between Narcissus and the absurd. As he walks away his laughter echos through the woods.

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

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