Too often, love starts to lose its meaning:
A literary Analysis of Echo and Narcissus
“Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never
have it?”
― James Patterson, The Angel Experiment
Love is love, it’s one of the greatest things there is, but where do we set our
boundaries? What are the limits when it comes to love? How much further can it go? How
far can "we" go? These are the ideas circling around “Echo and Narcissus” a myth from
Ovid's book of poetry, Metamorphoses. The main characters of this myth are Echo, she was
a nymph who was doomed to repeat only other people's last sounds and phrases. She came
across Narcissus one day and fell in love with him. Through the woods, she followed him,
but she was unable to communicate without repeating his words. Narcissus was the most
attractive young man in the woodland. Everyone who saw Narcissus fell in love with him
right away. But because he was so arrogant, he did not converse with anyone. Echo fell in
love with Narcissus and he did not reciprocate that feeling. Echo continues to weep about
Narcissus until her voice is all that is left when her body withers. When Narcissus notices
his reflection in the swimming pool, he falls hopelessly in love but with himself. Love is
love, isn’t it? One of the greatest things there is, and because we don’t know how to react to
it once we come face to face with such, we often give too much that we forget about
ourselves or do things without thinking, to get caught up in a feeling that we end up losing
ourselves.
How it came to be. Where it all started. Echo used to be a talkative woman with a
reputation for cutting off other people's conversations. She made the mistake of aiding
Zeus in keeping his infidelity a secret from his wife Hera. Echo would tell long stories to
Hera to keep her distracted whenever she was about to catch Zeus with someone else,
allowing Zeus to escape, of which Hera soon exposed. Hera cursed Echo to never be able to
voice her mind aloud again as soon as she recognized what she was doing and instead
would be restricted to merely repeating the previous speaker's words.
“’And how do you really feel?’
‘Like I’ll never recover. Like I’ll never draw another breath without half of it being a wish for
him.’”
― Jane Seville, Zero at the Bone
Echo and Narcissus aside, even Hera found herself being caught up in the webs of
the unrequited. Even though she and Zeus are married, ‘love’ between two doesn’t seem to
exist. Zeus’ loyalty is nowhere but Hera on the other hand seems to let things slip because
she does love Zeus. It just seems funny how the goddess of marriage can’t seem to do
anything with her cheating husband. How unfair it is to love but to be turned back against.
And instead of punishing her husband, she punishes those that associate with him of which
Echo became one of the unforgiven.
To meet someone that can never be yours. To show your affection but unable. To let
your chances slip. To not be able to do anything but burrow in agony. When Echo was
cursed, she casted herself for she no longer has the ability to have anyone engage with; her
pride and joy being gone, her voice being nothing but a repetition of everybody else’s. As
Echo wandered the woods, she saw Narcissus and was immediately tranced by his looks.
She followed him, more and more, furtherly falling deeper in love. She wanted to tell him
what she felt but was unable to, for the curse kept her from trying. Soon after, Narcissus
has found out about Echo following him. On impulse, Echo tried to embrace him but
Narcissus felt otherwise. The pain of rejection. With tears in her eyes, Echo hurried into the
woods. The rejection was too harsh and overwhelming to handle. Since of how deeply and
obsessively she loved Narcissus, Echo made the decision to live alone in the forest because
she could not accept how he had treated her. No matter how hard she tried to forget, the
memory of her rejection kept coming back. In the end, her emotions were so strong that
her body eventually withered away, leaving just her bones and voice. Echo's voice
continued to exist in the woods, and it is among the hills that she is still heard
“I’d rather die than have you love me!”,
“Love me… love me.”
-
Narcissus, Echo
. How is it that we end up obsessing over someone? How is it that we’d let ourselves
suffer over something that wasn’t? Was it the rejection? Was it the ‘what could’ve been?’?
How so? Echo loved so much that she forgot to leave some for herself. This is a love
equivalent to hypocrisy. Was it love, if you only fell in love with looks? To let yourself
succumb to obsession that caused you to perish. Is it something to be considered love or
are you just blinded with the idea of it. One cannot completely say that one has lived
without sharing love with others. But what about love for yourself?
The agony of unrequited love. How does it feel for someone who, all their lives, has only
received love but has never felt love themselves. Narcissus meets himself. Narcissus started
observing the calm waters as he drank from the spring. He could see his face more clearly
than ever in the natural mirror. He stared at his own reflection more and more as he drank
more water. The initial shock developed into awe, awe into love, and love into an obsession.
Narcissus couldn't move. He was raging with need for the person he saw in the spring
water until his picture completely subdued him. He attempted to embrace the reflection,
just to realize it was his own reflection in the still lake. He starts to worry that love would
be permanently beyond his grasp since if he went, he would lose sight of his one and only
love. Narcissus gradually came to the agonizing realization of his fatal fate as he started to
realize he was beyond his reach. Narcissus was terrified that his image would vanish if
even the slightest wave in the water disrupted the water mirror. Narcissus lost all will to
live when he realized his efforts were futile and perished beside his one true love - himself.
“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The
longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never
was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction
with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful
landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa
Once you’ve known the fear of losing something is when you understand how
terrifying it is to fall without anything that could catch you. The desperate attempts that
kept you sinking in quicksand. To drown in the deep waters yet trying to hold your breath.
He has finally figured out the other side of the story, to be the main character of an
unrequited love.
What really is love? For me love is the purest that ever exist, only does it become
tainted when everything else tries to coexist with it. How can something so pure be the
cause of the sinful. To cause pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. As to how
far can you go for the sake of it right? To have it. What are you willing to stake for it. Won't
it be just considered as hypocrisy perse? Obsession and martyrdom. Do we love for power,
for looks, or to someone’s soul. People, Gods even in this myth too often, forget what love is
supposed to be. It’s a shame when the great let loose, a shame to let ourselves be lost in the
trance of the ideology of ‘love’. Hera turned a blind eye from her husband and punished any
other who dares to associate with, I’m still stumped whether this is loyalty or fear of Zeus’
power. Echo formed an unhealthy obsession towards Narcissus that she tried to smother
him with her ‘love’ once confronted, in consideration that she wasn’t able to speak, how
questionable it is to smother someone you have barely know with ‘love’ that existed
because of how tranced you are with their looks and let yourself perish when rejected. You
can’t completely blame Narcissus himself, looks is a gift, him rejecting who tries to show
him love is part arrogance and part keeping himself from people who only sees him as an
object of desire. How sad it is that even he himself have been caught in the cycle when he
saw himself – in his eyes, his self is his object of desire that created the obsession as
everybody else’s. To love something that cannot love you back and to understand the
loneliness that comes therewith.
We, as the human beings that we are, cannot survive without love, whether this be
love for others, things, or ourselves. We must not forget that we must restrict ourselves as
to how far we must go for it, we must not reach that level of obsession. Not everything is
worth reaching for, even if you have a reason to, or else you'll end up choking, either the
person or yourself. When love becomes a heavy burden, it’s time to let go; maybe then,
you’ll find something more; yourself.
“A mighty pain to love it is,
And ‘t is a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.”
― Abraham Cowley, The Poems of Abraham Cowley