Echo and Narcissus

Sometimes things get stuck in my head. I spent months thinking about Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc, particularly these lines: "Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, / A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame" (30-31). I was firmly convinced that the sound was one of mourning, because of the similarity of scene depicted in the surrounding lines with images from Thomas Gray, and Milton before him. My point of origin at that time was Milton's Lycidas. Tonight, I traced it even further back, and the connection and reason for its resonance with me (why on earth would I obsesses over such a thing?) became clear.

Here's the deal. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy [shepherds and sheep as a metaphoric device, poem to help console after death, elegy is not eulogy, for the non-English majors] written for a friend that Milton probably didn't even like all that much. The first real image of sadness is:

Now thou art gon, and never must return!
Thee shepherd, thee the woods, and desert Caves,
With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown,
With all their echoes mourn.

What got to me was that this same cluster of caves, woods, and sound produced a certain dark downturn in Shelley's poem— so that's why I connected it with Milton's elegy.

Now, I think that Milton may have meant the image, powerful as it is, almost tongue in cheek. There is strong reason to suspect that he stole the scene from Ovid. He even used it three years before in Comus. It comes from the story of Echo and Narcissus, a story that I didn't know until tonight.

You see, Echo used to like to talk. When she heard the words of others, she could not keep silent, yet she could not be the first to speak. As most everyone knows, the gods liked to fool around a lot. Juno was worried that Echo would tell on him, so he cursed her to only repeat the concluding sounds of what someone else had said. Of course, there was this really handsome dude by the name of Narcissus who she decided she had a thing for. What transpired is nicely translated by Alan Mandelbaum:

            One day, by chance, the boy—
now separated from his faithful friends—
cried out: "Is anybody nearby?" "Nearby,"
was Echo's answering cry. And stupified,
he looks around and shouts:"Come! Come!" — and she
calls out, "Come! Come!" to him who called. Then he
turns round and, seeing no one, calls again:
"Why do you flee from me?" And the reply
repeats the final sounds of his outcry.
The answer snares him; he persists, calls out:
"Let's meet." And with the happiest reply
that was ever to leave her lips, she cries:
"Let's meet."; then, seconding her words, she rushed
out of the woods, that she might fling her arms
around the neck she longed to clasp. But he
retreats and, fleeing shouts: "Do not touch me!
Don't cling to me! I'd sooner die than say
I'm yours!" and Echo answered him: "I'm yours."
So, scorned and spurned, she hides within the woods;
there she, among the trees, conceals her face,
her shame; since then she lives in lonely caves.
But, though repulsed, her love persists; it grows
on grief. She cannot sleep; she wastes away.
The sap has fled her wrinkled wretched flesh.

Her voice and bones are all that's left; and then
her voice alone: her bones, they say, were turned
to stone. So she is hidden in the woods
and never can be seen on mountain slopes,
though everywhere she can be heard; the power
of sound still lives in her.

Most people know the rest of the story; Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection and all that. From a modern standpoint, at least, the mourning of Echo would be just a bit undeserved, now wouldn't it? That's the irony of the image. I never realized this before.

Man, I love this stuff. Sorry if it doesn't qualify as most people's idea of blogging, but this was a big revelation to me and I just had to spit it out. If I talked a bit more about myself, you'd see a strong connection between what happened to Echo and what happened to me not long ago. But I've quit wasting away, in fact if anything I'm a bit swollen. But that persistent feeling that if I shut up, there won't be anything left of me just won't go away. So, I continue to talk too much. Even if I don't have much of anything new to say.