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Literary Analogues: Epic Themes & Invocations
From Ovid's Metamorphoses
Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in
Figures
>> note 1
In Paradise Lost, Milton
alludes directly to the story of Narcissus
in Eve's recounting of her first responses
after creation (NAEL 8, 1.1897–98). Of
course the story of Narcissus was often allegorized:
a seventeenth-century example is here afforded
by the translator Sandys himself,
a modern one by Freud. The
image is a familiar emblem representing the
story and interpreting its meaning as "Amour
sui": self-love. Milton, however, may
invite as much contrast as comparison by
the intertextual allusion, attaching other
significations to the story as it pertains
to Eve.
![[Click on image to enlarge]](../../images/17thc/ovid2.jpg) [Narcissus spurned the love of many nymphs
and youths, among them Echo. One of the youths
pronounced a curse, that Narcissus might
fall in love with himself, and die.]
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A
spring there was, whose silver Waters were,
As smooth as any mirror, nor less clear:
Which neither Herdsmen, tame, nor savage Beast,
Nor wandering Fowl, nor scattered leaves molest;
Girt round with grass, by neighbouring moisture fed,
And Woods, against the Sun's invasion spread.
He
>> note 2 tired
with heat and hunting, with the Place
And Spring delighted, lies upon his face.
Quenching his thirst, another thirst did rise;
Raised by the form which in that glass he spies.
The hope of nothing does his powers invade:
And for a body he mistakes a shade.
Himself, himself distracts: who pores thereon
So fixedly, as if of Parian stone.
>> note 3
Beholds his eyes, two stars! his dangling hair
Which with unshorn Apollo's might compare!
His fingers worthy Bacchus! his smooth chin!
His Ivory neck! his heavenly face! wherein
The linked Deities their graces fix!
Where Roses with unsullied Lilies mix!
Admired all; for which, to be admired;
And inconsiderately himself desired.
The praises, which he gives, his beauty claimed.
Who seeks, is sought: the Inflamer is inflamed.
How often would he kiss the flattering spring!
How oft with down-thrust arms sought he to cling
About that loved neck! Those cozening lips
Delude his hopes; and from himself he slips.
Not knowing what, with what he sees he fries:
And the error that deceived, incites his eyes.
O Fool! that strivest to catch a flying shade!
Thou seeks what is nowhere: Turn aside, 'twill fade.
Thy form's reflection does thy sight delude:
Which is with nothing of its own induced.
With thee it comes; with thee it stays, and so
'Twould go away, hadst thou the power to go.
Nor sleep, nor hunger could thy lover raise:
Who, laid along, on that false form does gaze
With looks, which looking never could suffice;
And ruinates himself with his own eyes.
At length, a little lifting up his head;
"You Woods, that round about your branches spread,
Was ever so unfortunate a Lover!
You know, to many you have been a cover;
From your first growth to this long distant day
Have you known any, thus to pine away!
I like, and see: but yet I cannot find
The likest, and seen. O Love with error blind!
What grieves me more; no Sea, no Mountain steep,
No ways, no walls, our joys asunder keep:
Whom but a little water does divide;
And he himself desires to be enjoyed.
As oft as I to kiss the flood decline,
So oft his lips ascend, to close with mine.
You'd think we touched: so small a thing does part
Our equal loves! Come forth, what e'er thou art.
Sweet boy, a simple Boy beguile not so:
From him that seeks thee, whither would'st thou go?
My age nor beauty merit thy disdain:
And me the Nymphs have often loved in vain.
Yet in thy friendly shows my poor hopes live;
Still striving to receive the hand I give:
Thou smiles my smiles; when I a tear let fall,
thou shed another; and consent in all.
And, lo, let thy sweetly-moving lips appear
To utter words that come not to our ear.
Ah, He is I! now, now I plainly see:
Nor is it my shadow that bewitched me.
Love of myself me burns: (oh too too sure!)
And suffer in those flames which I procure.
Shall I be wooed, or woo? What shall I crave?
Since what I covet, I already have.
Too much hath made me poor! O, you divine
And favoring Powers, me from myself disjoin!
Of what I love, I would be dispossessed.
This, in a Lover, is a strange request!
Now, strength through grief decays: short is the time
I have to live; extinguished in my prime.
Nor grieves it me to part with well-mist breath;
For grief will find a perfect cure in death:
Would he I love might longer life enjoy!
Now, two ill-fated Lovers, in one, die."
This said; again upon his Image gazed;
Tears on the troubled water circles raised:
The motion much obscured the fleeting shade.
With that, he cried (perceiving it to vade),
"O, whither wilt thou! stay: nor cruel prove,
In leaving me, who infinitely love.
Yet let me see, what cannot be possessed;
And, with that empty food, my fury feast."
Complaining thus, himself he disarrays:
The blows that solid snow with crimson stripe;
Like apples party-red, or Grapes scarce ripe.
But, in the water when the same appear,
He could no longer such a sorrow bear.
As Virgin wax dissolves with fervent heat;
or morning frost, whereon the sunbeams beat:
So thaws he with the ardor of desire;
And, by degrees consumes in unseen fire.
His meager cheeks now lost their red and white;
That life; that favor lost, which did delight.
Nor those divine proportions now remain,
So much by Echo lately loved in vain.
* * *
Ah, Boy, beloved in vain! so Echo said.
Farewell. Farewell, sighed she. Then down he lies:
Death's cold hand shuts his self-admiring eyes:
Which now eternally their gazes fix
Upon the waters of infernal Styx.
>> note 4
The woeful Naiades
>> note 5 lament
the dead;
And their clipped hair upon their brother spread.
>> note 6
The woeful Dryades
>> note 7 partake
their woes:
With both, sad Echo joins at every close.
The funeral Pyre prepared, a hearse they brought
To fetch his body, which they vainly sought.
Instead whereof a yellow flower was found,
With tufts of white about the button crowned. |
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George Sandys's moral allegorization
of the Narcissus story
Narcissus * * * admires [his] bodily
beauty, frail and like the fluent water;
which is no other than the shadow of the
soul: for the mind does not truly affect
the body, but its own similitude in a bodily
form. Such Narcissus, who ignorantly
affecting one thing, pursues another; nor
can ever satisfy his longings. Therefore
he resolves into tears and perishes: that
is, the soul so alienated from itself, and
doting on the body, is tortured with miserable
perturbations; and dies, as it were, infected
with that poison: so that now it rather appears
a mortal body than an immortal soul. This
fable likewise presents the condition of
those who adorned by the bounty of nature,
or enriched by the industry of others, without
merit, or honor of their own acquisition,
are transported with self-love and perish,
as it were, with that madness. * * * Narcissus is
therefore converted to a flower of his name,
which signifies stupid: flourishing only
in the Spring, like those who are hopeful
in the first youth, but after fall from expectation
and opinion: the flower, as they altogether
unprofitable, being sacred to Pluto and
the Eumenides, for what bore of itself
no fruit, but past and was forgotten, like
the way of a ship in the sea was consecrated
of old to the infernal Deities. But a fearful
example we have of the danger of self-love
in the fall of the Angels; who intermitting
the beatific vision by reflecting upon themselves,
and admiring their own excellence, forgot
their dependence upon their creator.
Sigmund Freud, from On
Narcissism
>> note 8
Freud explains that the psychoanalytic
term "narcissism," used to describe
the ego's fascination with itself, is
derived from "the Greek legend of the
youth Narcissus, who was in love with his
own reflection." Freud then goes on
to explain the role of narcissism in human
sexuality.
We say that a human being has originally
two sexual objects — himself and the
woman who nurses him — and in doing
so we are postulating a primary narcissism
in everyone, which may in some cases manifest
itself in a dominating fashion in his object-choice.
* * * With the onset of puberty the maturing
of the female sexual organs, which up till
then have been in a condition of latency,
seems to bring about an intensification of
the original narcissism, and this is unfavorable
to the development of a true object-choice,
with its accompanying sexual overvaluation.
Women, especially if they grow up with good
looks, develop a certain self-contentment
which compensates them for the social restrictions
that are imposed upon them in their choice
of object. Strictly speaking, it is only
themselves that such women love with an intensity
comparable to that of the man's love
for them. Nor does their need lie in the
direction of loving, but of being loved,
and the man who fulfills this condition is
the one who finds favor with them. The importance
of this type of woman for the erotic life
of mankind is to be rated very high.
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