Abstract
This chapter treats narcissism and selfhood in the Lay of Narcissus (c. 1160). Analyzing the prophecy given to Narcissus (that he will live to old age provided he does not see himself), the chapter examines the link between seeing a reflection and the truth that such a reflection is the “self.” Dané, in love with Narcissus, provides an exploration of desire’s visual properties as inside (personalized longing) and outside (a force that overtakes) the human subject. An analysis of Narcissus’s encounter with his reflection provides a discussion of his exclamation “je me plaing” (I lament myself), marking his selfhood as wounded by unfulfillable desires. The chapter concludes by examining how vision cannot lead to truth and how love is an undeniable imperative for human subjects.
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Notes
- 1.
Martine Thiry-Stassin and Madeleine Tyssens outline the connections scholars have made between the lay and Ovid’s myth in their introduction to Narcisse: conte ovidien français du XII e siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), 56. For more on the lay and troubadour poetry, see Penny Eley ’s introduction to Narcise et Dané (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2015), 23–27.
- 2.
Narcisse: Conte ovidien français du XII e siècle, ed. Martine Thiry-Stassin and Madeleine Tyssens (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), vv. 9–15, 81. Quotations from the lay are cited by verse and page numbers. English translations are my own.
- 3.
Ibid., vv. 33–40, 82.
- 4.
Scholars have argued that Dané embodies Echo along with other female mythological characters. See: Helen C.R.Laurie ’s article “Narcisus” in Medieum Aevum 35 (1966), 111–16 and Albert Gier , “L’Amour, les monologues: le Lai de Narcisse” in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly (Amsterdam: Rodopoi, 1994), 129–37.
- 5.
Ovid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 1–5, ed. William S. Anderson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), v. 3.348, 97; Narcisse, v. 52, 82.
- 6.
Narcisse, vv. 41–42 and 45, 82.
- 7.
Ibid., vv. 52–53, 82.
- 8.
As Stephen G. Nichols posits, the almost perfect similarity between voir and veoir reinforces the link between vision and truth. See: “Parler, penser, voir: le Roman de la Rose et l’étrange” in Littérature 130 (2003), n. 31, 114.
- 9.
Narcisse, v. 48, 82.
- 10.
I refer to Narcissus as an infant throughout this study. Although he is not developmentally an infant when he has his encounter at the fountain, he still holds the traits of his infancy, for he “recouvre et occulte une enfance, une non-parole, qui persiste et endure au sein de la parole” [covers over and hides an infancy, a non-speech, persisting and enduring at the heart of speech]. Claire Nouvet , Enfances narcisse, 60, my translation.
- 11.
For this in an Ovidian context, see:Nouvet, Enfances, 27–28.
- 12.
Narcisse, vv. 64–65 and 68–70, 83.
- 13.
Ibid., vv. 62–63, 83.
- 14.
Ibid., vv. 72 and 75–76, 83.
- 15.
Ibid., vv. 98–105, 84.
- 16.
I draw upon Frederick Ahl who reads the red blush as “the flowing of life, the inner FLUMEN.” See: Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 245–46.
- 17.
Narcisse, vv. 155–156, 86, emphasis mine.
- 18.
Ibid., vv. 25–28, 81.
- 19.
Ibid., vv. 231–32 and 235–39, 88–89.
- 20.
See Agamben’s discussion of the phantasmatic process in Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. Ronald L. Martinez (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993), 73–89.
- 21.
Narcisse, v. 239, 89.
- 22.
R. Howard Bloch discusses “remembrer,” related to “membrer/menbrer” in Old French, which implies “a reassembling of that which has been scattered, a recuperation of that which has been fragmented and lost […] to heal the wound of dismemberment and loss.” See: The Anonymous Marie de France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 40–41.
- 23.
Milena Mikhaïlova-Makarius relates Dané’s scene of innamoramento to the typical male lover of fin’amor, remarking that she becomes a female version of the courtly lover, undergoing the same visual adventure that proves Narcissus’s undoing. See: Amour au miroir: les fables du fantasme ou la voie lyrique du roman médiéval (Geneva: Droz, 2016), 33–34.
- 24.
For these ideas in an Ovidian context, see: Nouvet , Enfances, 13–19.
- 25.
References to hawking and falconry serve as popular motifs for love in medieval culture. See: Michael Camille , The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 94–119.
- 26.
Baudouin van den Abeele documents this usage of vair to describe a hawk’s eyes in Old French literature in La fauconnerie, 160–61, 299–300.
- 27.
Narcisse, v. 119, 85.
- 28.
Ibid., v. 468, 97.
- 29.
Ibid., vv. 644–46, 103, emphasis mine.
- 30.
Simon Gaunt , Love and Death in Medieval French and Occitan Courtly Literature: Martyrs to Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 31.
- 31.
Ibid., 31.
- 32.
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 105.
- 33.
Ibid., 106.
- 34.
Gaunt, Love, 32.
- 35.
Narcisse, v. 666, 104, emphasis mine.
- 36.
Ibid., vv. 851–52 and 854–55, 111.
- 37.
Ibid., vv. 861–63 and 907–08, 111, 113.
- 38.
This process of division through apprehension is identical to the “captation” (related to capere) that Lacan outlines in his “Mirror Stage,” where he states the experience before the image involves a “captation spatiale” [spatial capture]. As Lorenzo Chiesa explains, captation signifies capture and captivation. See: Jacques Lacan, “Le State du miroir” in Ecrits (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1966), 86; Lorenzo Chiesa, Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), 15.
- 39.
Narcisse, vv. 911–16 and 920–22, 113, emphasis mine.
- 40.
Gaunt, Love, 175.
- 41.
Narcisse, vv. 921, 113.
- 42.
Ibid., v. 920, 113.
- 43.
L. O. Aranye Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 157.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Narcisse, v. 987, 116, my emphasis.
- 46.
Ibid., vv. 1001–02, 117.
- 47.
Nouvet , Enfances, 151–52. My translation of: “La mort de Narcisse prouve effectivement la vérité contenue dans la voix de Tirésias, mais une vérité que Tirésias ne peut se permettre de connaître. La vérité qui parle dans la voix de Tirésias est une vérité qu’aucun sujet ne peut comprendre ou parler. Tout récit qui prétend ‘comprendre’ cette vérité mortelle ne peut que la manquer. Toute tentative de raconter l’histoire de Narcisse […] est condamnée à se couper de la connaissance de soi qu’elle inscrit, une connaissance qui exige que ‘je’ prononce cette phrase impossible car liquéfiante: ‘Je suis mort, mort-né.’ Le savoir de cette naissance mortelle est un savoir que l’on ne peut qu’oublier alors même que l’on tente de s’en souvenir. ‘Je’ l’efface alors même que ‘je’ l’inscris.”
References
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Ealy, N. (2019). Narcissus and Selfhood: The Lay of Narcissus . In: Narcissism and Selfhood in Medieval French Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27916-5_2
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