Narcissus

I just got back into my copy of "Tales From Ovid," and I found "Echo and Narcissus" much more interesting than I expected. One of the reasons I bought this book was because I felt like I didn't know as much about mythology as I wanted to know, and thouguht this would be a good way to increase my basic knowledge while enjoying the poetry of it all as well. But I didn't expect to like "Echo and Narcissus" because, let's be real here, who DOESN'T know that story? However, I thought that the way parts of it were worded was very moving.

Take, for example, Echo's reaction to Narcissus's rejection:


From that day
Like a hurt lynx, for her
Any cave was a good home.
But love was fixed in her body
Like a barbed arrow. There it festered
With his rejection. Sleeplessly
She brooded over the pain,
Wasting away as she suffered ...


I think this touches on how, in some ways, rejected love is much more powerful than love fulfilled. When Cupid shoots you with one of his arrows, that wound heals quickly, and the pain is welcome. Over time, in fact, that type of love itself can wane. But a wound infected by an arrow of rejection has the power to strip you of everything - even your body.

It is interesting that Echo finds "The petal of her beauty / Fading and shrivelling, falling from her -" whereas when Narcissus dies, all he leaves behind is "a tall flower ... a ruff of white petals / Round a dainty bugle centre / Yellow as egg yolk." Are their souls somehow joined in the aftermath anyway? Did Echo love Narcissus so much that she willed her own flower onto his soul, so that he could be rooted in something and not cursed with her own disembodied fate?