The Element of Water: Narcissus in Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

A rare jewel of a text that psychoanalyses and interprets water through poetry and literature is Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical essay Water and Dreams. Bachelard muses that ‘the human being shares the destiny of flowing water’, which made me think about the myth of Narcissus, his conception and death.

Narcissus’ mother, Liriope was a naiad, a ‘sea-green’ nymph who lives near bodies of water such as lakes and rivers. She is thus an embodiment of water, an elemental being. One day, she becomes caught in the ‘folds of [a] sinuous stream’ of the river god, Cephisus. He rapes Liriope in the form of water. Consequently, Narcissus is born, a child of two water deities carrying the soul of water itself.

When Narcissus arrives at a ‘clear, unmuddied pool of silvery, shimmering water’, the magic is sparked. Many lines are dedicated to describing such an unspoiled, undisturbed, almost undiscovered, secret pool. Neither man, beast nor bird has made contact, or so much as cast a shadow onto the water. There is a sense that the pool’s existence is only intended for Narcissus, in the same way that one’s grave is chosen. He suddenly drinks from the pool and becomes infatuated by his own reflection and beauty—he cannot leave it and is assumed to have drowned in his own image. Bachelard writes ‘one dives into water in order be reborn’, suggesting how Narcissus has closed the loop of his existence. I believe that Narcissus’s was always destined to find his water, as if pulled by a magnet or a piece of string.

Unlike his godly parents, Narcissus was mortal. Though how can he really be mortal, if he shares the same soul as water?

Ovid, Metamorphoses (London: Penguin, 2004)

Bachelard, Gaston, Water and Dreams: An essay on the Imagination of Matter (Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture (1994)