As well as explaining the origins of the narcissus flower, the story of Narcissus perhaps served as a warning to Greek and Roman people that vanity and self-absorption were not characteristics that befitted members of their societies. Another, related suggestion is that the story owed much to the ancient Greek superstition that it was unlucky to look at one’s own reflection. In the modern era, Narcissus has provided a name for a psychological condition. A person who has an excessive degree of self-esteem or selfabsorption, and is thus unable to identify with the feelings of others, is often diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, or narcissism. The condition was first named by Sigmund Freud (1856—1939), Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who believed that many classical myths provided insights into human psychology.
The story of Narcissus’s demise has also served as inspiration for English poets Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342— 1400), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), John Milton (1608-1674), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), and John Keats (1795-1821). Among the numerous paintings that depict Narcissus are nearly 50 murals found on the walls of houses excavated in the Roman city of Pompeii— which was buried in ash after a volcanic eruption in 79 CE—and works by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665),
Elihu Vedder (1836-1923), John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), and Salvador Dali (1904-1989). As a trait in people, narcissism was satirized in the 18th century in a comic play entitled Narcissism, or The Self Admirer by Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).The story of Echo and Narcissus also inspired a poem by French writer Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), which in turn formed the basis for the ballet Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (The Young Man and Death) by French choreographer Roland Petit (b. 1924).
Deborah Thomas
Bibliography
Ovid, and A. D. Melville, trans. Metamorphoses. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Pausanias, and Peter Levi, trans. Guide to Greece. New York:Viking Press, 1984.
World History
