The Narcissus Flower

Ovid’s Narcissus and the Echo, The House of Cadmus, tells the myth of a boy named Narcissus, who eventually becomes overwhelmed with love melancholy and longing that he dies and, in his place, lies the narcissus flower. The beginning of the myth foreshadows the ending of Narcissus’ life with a blind seer who shares, “If he but fail to recognize himself, a long life he may have, beneath the sun” (Ovid, Book 3 339). Narcissus failed to recognize that his love was his own reflection, which led to his death, “Apparently, what has been less emphasized is the fact that the death of Narcissus is by self-neglect and that the myth, therefore, is as much concerned with the fate of destructive impulses as it is with libidinal impulses” (Spotnitz and Resnikoff 1). Narcissus grieves in a melancholic state, “It grieves me more that neither lands nor seas nor mountains, no, nor walls with closed gates deny our loves, but only a little water keeps us far asunder,” over the fact that he cannot be with the one he loves (Ovid, Book 3 339). He lies next to his own reflection, longing to be with it, until he ultimately dies of starvation, “And in his body’s place a sweet flower grew, golden and white, the white around the gold” (Ovid, Book 3 339). Ovid romanticizes the suicide of Narcissus with the image of a beautiful golden and white flower that symbolizes beauty and death.

The narcissus flower, most associated with the daffodil, has twenty to thirty species that grow all over Europe and Asia (Blaisdell 226). The flower is hearty and resilient and grows at the beginning of Spring, “almost out of the snow” (Blaisdell 227). There is a distinct fragrance that comes off the narcissus flower, which Blaisdell describes as: “at a distance is delightful, but close by is almost distasteful to most persons.” This is a similar description to how Narcissus is portrayed in Ovid’s Narcissus and the Echo. Narcissus is a beautiful, sought out for young man, yet he denies each suitor that longs for him. He is depicted as delightful and beautiful from his physical description, yet distasteful inside (much like the flower’s scent). From Greek Mythology, “The Fates wore wreaths of narcissus flowers, the scent of which was so painfully sweet as to cause madness, a reminder that narcissism, the symbol of egotism and conceit, will be punished in the end.” (Lehner 140). The Fates were goddesses assigned to deciding the fates of morals at birth (The Fates 40) and were associated with death and darkness. Narcissus was attracted to himself, so much so that he neglected to take care of himself and ended his own life due to the neglect. He became mad for the sweetness of love for himself and embodies the description that Lehner paints of the Narcissus flower. The flower is also depicted in other myths, such as, Hera and Dionysus, where Persephone is gathering narcissus flowers right before she “is seized and drawn into the underwood by Pluto” (Knoespel 3). In this myth along with in “Greek funerary”, the flower is used to symbolize death. The flower grows out of Narcissus’s death to symbolize death of his own will: suicide, “extreme self-love which Narcissus manifests, the very quality which is designated by the term narcissism” (Spotnitz and Resnikoff 1). The art of this melancholy that Narcissus embodies is that he himself, and the flower are beautiful physically, yet hide the inner darkness of suicide. They depict a beauty and artform of feeling such strong longing and emotions of love that turn into grieving and melancholy. The beauty is that he loved so deeply for himself that he went mad.