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The myth of Narcissus

The myth of Narcissus, in the two earliest sources, is a myth of selfknowledge and self-love. These two themes have an essential, not accidental, connection in the myth. Like all true myth, the myth of Narcissus is born of a dialectic of cognition and desire, and itself exhibits that process. It is that peculiar kind of love which Narcissus feels for himself which transforms self-knowledge from the healing vision of Apollo to a deadly (pathological) confusion of shadow and reality. Narcissus dies at a pool where he sees his own reflection. And in reflecting on Narcissus a society sees itself and extracts a therapeutic lesson: in Ovid's myth, the Thebans learn to pay more attention to their prophet, and in Conon's, the Thespians learn to pay more honor to the god of love. Although they bear certain surface resemblances to real people, or to literary characters which are the representations of real people, the mythical beings of Ovid's Metamorphoses are not characters at all. They are figurae — shadowy, ghostlike images — of a certain kind of reality. That is, they are configurations of passion and fantasy, configurations which seem hauntingly familiar. Ovid's figurae are of particular interest to the anthropologist of contemporary Western culture because they point to the inner life of our times. They are constellations of distorted sexuality and distorted spirituality which coincide with contemporary clinical pictures of certain 'pathological' conditions. Like dream images, figurae carry with them distinct emotional tones. The sensuous qualities of a figura, which make it appear to be a representation of a person in the world, are a kind of drapery, disguising a deeper dimension of reality. The uniqueness of Ovid's figura of Narcissus becomes apparent when we contrast it with Conon's version of the Narcissus legend. These two versions, in Ovid's Metamorphoses and in Conon's ΔΙΗΓΗΣΕ1Σ, are the earliest accounts that we have of Narcissus. Conon recounts the story of a beautiful boy, born in the Boeotian town of Thespeia, who scorned Eros and all those who loved him. When Ameinias, his most persistent lover, continued to woo the proud, cold, beloved, Narcissus sent him a sword.