Echo And
Narcissus
According to "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton
There was once a beautiful
lad, whose name was Narcissus. His beauty was so great, all the girls
who saw him longed to be his, but he would have none of them. He would
pass the loveliest carelessly by, no matter how much she tried to make him
look at her. Heartbroken maidens were nothing to him. Even the
sad case of the fairest of the nymphs, Echo, did not move him. She
was a favorite of Artemis, the goddess of woods and wild creatures, but she
came under the displeasure of a still mightier goddess, Hera herself, who
was at her usual occupation of trying to discover what Zeus was about. She
suspected that he was in love with one of the nymphs and she went to look
them over to try to discover which. However, she was immediately diverted
from her investigation by Echo's gay chatter. As she listened amused,
the others silently stole away and Hera could come to no conclusion as to
where Zeus's wandering fancy had alighted. With her usual injustice,
she turned against Echo. That nymph became yet another unhappy girl
that Hera punished. The goddess condemned her never to use her tongue
again, except to repeat what was said to her. "You will always have
the last word," Hera said, "but no power to speak first."
This was very hard, but hardest of all when Echo,
too, with all the other lovelorn maidens, loved Narcissus. She could
follow him, but she could not speak to him. How then could she make
a youth who never looked at a girl pay attention to her? One day, however,
it seemed her chance had come. He was calling his companions, "Is anyone
here?" and she called back in rapture, "Here - Here." She was still
hidden by the trees so that he did not see her, and he shouted, "Come!" -
just what she longed to say to him. She answered joyfully, "Come!"
and stepped forth from the woods with her arms outstretched. But he
turned away in angry disgust. "Not so," he said; "I will die
before I give you power over me." All she could say was, humbly,
entreatingly, "I give you power over me," but he was gone. She hid
her blushes and her shame in a lonely cave, and never could be comforted.
Still she lived in places like that, and they say that she has so wasted
away with longing that only her voice now is left to her.
So Narcissus went on his cruel way, a scorner
of love. But at last one of those he had wounded prayed a prayer and
it was answered by the gods: "May he who loves not others love himself."
The great goddess Nemesis, which means righteous anger, undertook to
bring this about. As Narcissus bent over a clear pool for a drink and
saw there his own reflection, on the moment he fell in love with it. "Now
I know," he cried, "what others have suffered from me, for I burn with love
of my own self - and yet how can I reach that loveliness I see mirrored in
the water? But I cannot leave it. Only death can set me free."
And so it happened. He pined away, leaning perpetually over the
pool, fixed in one long gaze. Echo was near him, but she could do nothing;
only when, dying, he called to his image, "Farewell - farewell," she
could repeat the words as a last goodbye to him.
They say that when his spirit crossed the river
that encircles the world of the dead, it leaned over the boat to catch a
final glimpse of itself in the water.
The nymphs he had scorned were kind to him in
death and sought his body to give it burial, but they could not find it.
Where it had lain there was blooming a new and lovely flower, and they
called it by his name, Narcissus.