Narciso La Passione dello Sguardo by Sonia Macrì

Narciso La Passione dello Sguardo by Sonia Macrì

reports, thanks to the words of writers and poets like Ovid, Filostrato, La Fontaine, Val[ry, Rilke, Williams, Garcìa Lorca, Borges, Ritsos,Pasolini, Walcott, one of the most felt and intense myths of the antichity: the one of Narciso. The story was this one: Narciso once in a river looked at the imagine reflected in the water, falling in love for it and after that, dying because of it. One day, in fact while looking at the reflection of his face on the river fell in the water and lost his existence.

Paradoxically in the antichity a lot of people described  "impossible" love, represented, when the object of desire not close to them with statues, paintings, writings in grade to keep alive the memory of the lost person for the most diversified reasons. I remember that I read in London by Peter Ackroyd of a person who lost both his wives keeping their bodies, I guess and hope, embalmed, in his house.

An eccentric way for not losing our dear loved ones.

There are, in these stories a constant: all these people love other ones; not themselves. They are projected emotionally outside, although for a reason or another they can't have close to them the loved one and so they recreate "virtually" (we discover that virtuality after all is pretty old) the girlfriend of their dreams.

The myth of Narciso under many ways is completely different, because in this case there is not love for another human being; all the opposite. There is a big, immense love for himself or, where not recognized that the imagine reflected represents the same self, for what seen in the surface of a river or in a mirror, ignoring that the face the same one of the person who is looking in the surface of the river. An impossible, dangerous love.

Mirror...Umberto Eco wrote once that he could have looked per hours in the mirror, but if he would have sent that mirror as a gift to someone else for let them see himself, the mirror would have reflected just the receiver of the gift.

Mirrors are seen like doors and reflections of what has been or will be. 

Spells are possible for seeing imagines in a mirror. 

Do you remember in Harry Potter the mirror where Harry could see reflected the old imagines of his parents, becoming bewitched by that old imagines? They were his parents, he didn't know them and at the same time he loved them so badly.

He would have risked of losing his mind if Doumbledor wouldn't have removed the mirror somewhere else.

Good: mirrors can also be doors for discovering the end of a person or his most remote past. 

A mirror is magical, but some people repeat that if you look too much at yourself in a mirror, you can risk to lose your own identity not knowing anymore who you are.

Back to Narciso...There are several stories of the unlucky, after all, guy.

The first one the most known; Narciso falls in love for his imagine, a reflection of a beautiful wonderful person he searches compulsively and then one day he falls into the river, dying. He didn't know how to swim. Unlucky boy.

There is a second one where a girl falls in love for Narciso, but Narciso loves just himself, presenting to that girl a knife, with which she will lose the existence killing herself. Now, this new element, pretty intriguing will devastate Narciso, because, after all, he didn't want that the girl would have dead because of him. The end is the same one.

In other writings it is reported that also in the other world, Narciso continued to look at his face in the river; a river this time with horrible, dirty waters; but, maybe because the character after all was not so negative, but made a certain tenderness, he returned to the Earth under the shapes of narcissus, a beloved spring flower. 

What "complicate" the story of Narciso is his behavior: he is in love with himself and so he won't never love another person. His desire is not to see another person reflected in the water, but just his imagine and thanks to that one he falls in love for himself. Can a person love and desire just himself? Of course no. It would be a sick element; the character of a dual person bring at severe psychiatric illnesses.

In our times a Narciso is commonly defined as someone all taken by himself and not taking in consideration other people. He is just the most wonderful person on Earth and all the rest of people can't be taken in consideration but must be ignored by someone stunning as he is.

Enjoy this book! It's wonderful, fresh and absolutely interesting!

The final part is dedicated to the various writers and poets, mentioned before.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori