Contemplating Beauty: Narcisus’s Case
(um essay que não é um ensaio, este textinho carinhoso foi escrito pra uma matéria de literatura no IBEU em 1998 ou 99)
Willa Cather, in Paul’s Case, tells us the story of a young man who has difficulties in living in the real world. He despises his schoolteachers, his neighbors and his family; everything that surrounds him seems ugly and colorless. Paul is an outsider because he does not fit in the world he lives in. He seeks beauty, so he needs to escape. This search for something unnamed is a characteristic of the tragic hero, the one that abandons his family and his native land to find himself, to find “the truth”. Paul can be seen through that point of view: he is also a hero, because he also makes a journey towards himself [1]. To escape from that ugly town, he travels to New York. This is one of the most important rites that a hero has to go through: to leave his home, to become a stranger, a knockabout in a foreign land. But the first image of a hero that comes to our mind is that of a handsome brave man, like Ulysses, guided by the gods, fighting monsters and storms, the kind that Hegel called the “epic hero”.
It is very peculiar for a hero to be passive, contemplative. In general, the hero is the one that makes heroic deeds, or the one who sacrifices his life for a noble cause. That is not the case with Paul: he is a different type of hero. He is a passive fighter, and that is what makes him so special.
In the very beginning of the story, he is described as a peculiar young man, with a “hysterically defiant manner”. The description of his appearance reveals certain fragility, as if he was almost feminine. There are hints of homosexuality throughout the story: the constant presence of flowers – a feminine symbol –, the hysterical brilliance in his eyes (“peculiarly offensive in a boy”), the night Paul spent with a boy in New York, the dark side of his personality which he dreads to look at. Of course his homosexuality, even if repressed, makes him an outsider, but his choice for solitude is what really isolates him.
In Geek mythology, homosexualism is a symbol of not recognizing the other, of being imprisioned within one’s own body, and it is considered a journey towards the self, a way of becoming an individual. One example of this is the myth of Narcisus, a young man who falls in love with his own image (and that is a way of interpreting homossexuality). There are certain details in Paul’s Case that reminds the myth of Narcisus. The flower, for example, is the most direct image in common with the two stories: Narcisus dies and becomes a flower; Paul’s dream come true in New York and his flight towards death is compared with the blossoming and fading of a flower. Moreover, Paul’s concern with his appearance and the way he looks at the mirror makes us think of him as a “narcissist”. But the most important characteristic of both Narcisus and Paul is their passive attitude towards life, due to their vital need to contemplate beauty.
According to André Gide, “books may not be necessary; a few myths would be enough: we can find a whole religion in them.”[2] Greek myths are always present in western literature: Aphrodite, Oedipus, Odysseus... but it is not common to find rewritings on Narcisus, probably because the most common association we make is with a vain young man spending a lifetime admiring himself in the mirror of a running river. But perhaps we should reread this story. That is what Gide has done in the year of 1890. In The Narcisus’s Treatise (Theory of Symbol), Gide gives a very peculiar interpretation of the young man who falls in love with himself. To contemplate, according to Gide, is the only way of finding “the truth”. It represents the serenity of self-love. Gide shows us the beauty in Narcisus’s passive action of contemplating, and this is exactly what I intend to bring out in Paul’s Case. But first, it is necessary to remember the myth in order to make a clearer association.
Narcisus, son of a river and a nymph, was a handsome boy with a tragic destiny: he was so handsome he had to be punished. In ancient Greek culture, it was a flaw to be almost as beautiful as the immortal gods. The boy would have a long life, if he did not see himself. All the young girls and nymphs fell in love with him, but he did not care for any of them. One day, Narcisus met one of his admirers in the woods, Echo, who was profoundly in love with him. He rejected her so violently that she became a rock. Nemesis, the goddess of Justice, took revenge on him, and condemned him to love an impossible love. One day, when he was wandering in the forest, he stopped at a fountain to drink some water and saw the image of his own face. At this very moment, he was infatuated by that image. He has never seen such beauty. He couldn’t leave, he couldn’t move: if he went away, that face would vanish, if he tried to touch it, it would disappear. And so he stayed there, bent over the fountain, until the day he died. After a while, a flower appeared in that same spot where his body was lying.
Narcisus’s choice is very similar to Paul’s. Paul is happy to work as an usher in the theatre and to be among artists, but he does not want to be an actor or a musician. Music is just a vehicle to his dream world. He does not have a need to be active. His world is in his mind, in his fantasies. Narcisus also lives in this passive attitude of contemplation. They both give up everything else in the world for the sake of living among beauty, even if for a short period of time. Paul kills himself, and Narcisus starves to death: their lives are short as the life of a flower.
What Gide says about Narcisus “homossexuality” is that his attitude of gazing upon his own image is a way to pursue a lost, primitive, heavenly form of mankind. And in “mankind”, the figure of the woman is what represents the lost of unity. In the Garden of Eden, says Gide, everything was perfect, Adam knew he was the only human creature and that every form had been created for him to contemplate. At a given moment, such harmony began to irritate him and he wanted to experience a little dissonance. So the woman was created and, with her, the constant feeling of something missing.What I see in Paul’s Case is a more symbolic approach of homosexuality . He needs harmony, perfume and beauty, and these are characteristics associated with the feminine universe. But his passive, contemplative attitude is evidence that he is not seeking anything outside himself. On the contrary, his journey is towards his own self, his own first, primitive, heavenly form, like Gide’s image of Adam in the Garden of Eden, before women were created, before anguish was brought into men’s heart.
Willa Cather, in Paul’s Case, tells us the story of a young man who has difficulties in living in the real world. He despises his schoolteachers, his neighbors and his family; everything that surrounds him seems ugly and colorless. Paul is an outsider because he does not fit in the world he lives in. He seeks beauty, so he needs to escape. This search for something unnamed is a characteristic of the tragic hero, the one that abandons his family and his native land to find himself, to find “the truth”. Paul can be seen through that point of view: he is also a hero, because he also makes a journey towards himself [1]. To escape from that ugly town, he travels to New York. This is one of the most important rites that a hero has to go through: to leave his home, to become a stranger, a knockabout in a foreign land. But the first image of a hero that comes to our mind is that of a handsome brave man, like Ulysses, guided by the gods, fighting monsters and storms, the kind that Hegel called the “epic hero”.
It is very peculiar for a hero to be passive, contemplative. In general, the hero is the one that makes heroic deeds, or the one who sacrifices his life for a noble cause. That is not the case with Paul: he is a different type of hero. He is a passive fighter, and that is what makes him so special.
In the very beginning of the story, he is described as a peculiar young man, with a “hysterically defiant manner”. The description of his appearance reveals certain fragility, as if he was almost feminine. There are hints of homosexuality throughout the story: the constant presence of flowers – a feminine symbol –, the hysterical brilliance in his eyes (“peculiarly offensive in a boy”), the night Paul spent with a boy in New York, the dark side of his personality which he dreads to look at. Of course his homosexuality, even if repressed, makes him an outsider, but his choice for solitude is what really isolates him.
In Geek mythology, homosexualism is a symbol of not recognizing the other, of being imprisioned within one’s own body, and it is considered a journey towards the self, a way of becoming an individual. One example of this is the myth of Narcisus, a young man who falls in love with his own image (and that is a way of interpreting homossexuality). There are certain details in Paul’s Case that reminds the myth of Narcisus. The flower, for example, is the most direct image in common with the two stories: Narcisus dies and becomes a flower; Paul’s dream come true in New York and his flight towards death is compared with the blossoming and fading of a flower. Moreover, Paul’s concern with his appearance and the way he looks at the mirror makes us think of him as a “narcissist”. But the most important characteristic of both Narcisus and Paul is their passive attitude towards life, due to their vital need to contemplate beauty.
According to André Gide, “books may not be necessary; a few myths would be enough: we can find a whole religion in them.”[2] Greek myths are always present in western literature: Aphrodite, Oedipus, Odysseus... but it is not common to find rewritings on Narcisus, probably because the most common association we make is with a vain young man spending a lifetime admiring himself in the mirror of a running river. But perhaps we should reread this story. That is what Gide has done in the year of 1890. In The Narcisus’s Treatise (Theory of Symbol), Gide gives a very peculiar interpretation of the young man who falls in love with himself. To contemplate, according to Gide, is the only way of finding “the truth”. It represents the serenity of self-love. Gide shows us the beauty in Narcisus’s passive action of contemplating, and this is exactly what I intend to bring out in Paul’s Case. But first, it is necessary to remember the myth in order to make a clearer association.
Narcisus, son of a river and a nymph, was a handsome boy with a tragic destiny: he was so handsome he had to be punished. In ancient Greek culture, it was a flaw to be almost as beautiful as the immortal gods. The boy would have a long life, if he did not see himself. All the young girls and nymphs fell in love with him, but he did not care for any of them. One day, Narcisus met one of his admirers in the woods, Echo, who was profoundly in love with him. He rejected her so violently that she became a rock. Nemesis, the goddess of Justice, took revenge on him, and condemned him to love an impossible love. One day, when he was wandering in the forest, he stopped at a fountain to drink some water and saw the image of his own face. At this very moment, he was infatuated by that image. He has never seen such beauty. He couldn’t leave, he couldn’t move: if he went away, that face would vanish, if he tried to touch it, it would disappear. And so he stayed there, bent over the fountain, until the day he died. After a while, a flower appeared in that same spot where his body was lying.
Narcisus’s choice is very similar to Paul’s. Paul is happy to work as an usher in the theatre and to be among artists, but he does not want to be an actor or a musician. Music is just a vehicle to his dream world. He does not have a need to be active. His world is in his mind, in his fantasies. Narcisus also lives in this passive attitude of contemplation. They both give up everything else in the world for the sake of living among beauty, even if for a short period of time. Paul kills himself, and Narcisus starves to death: their lives are short as the life of a flower.
What Gide says about Narcisus “homossexuality” is that his attitude of gazing upon his own image is a way to pursue a lost, primitive, heavenly form of mankind. And in “mankind”, the figure of the woman is what represents the lost of unity. In the Garden of Eden, says Gide, everything was perfect, Adam knew he was the only human creature and that every form had been created for him to contemplate. At a given moment, such harmony began to irritate him and he wanted to experience a little dissonance. So the woman was created and, with her, the constant feeling of something missing.What I see in Paul’s Case is a more symbolic approach of homosexuality . He needs harmony, perfume and beauty, and these are characteristics associated with the feminine universe. But his passive, contemplative attitude is evidence that he is not seeking anything outside himself. On the contrary, his journey is towards his own self, his own first, primitive, heavenly form, like Gide’s image of Adam in the Garden of Eden, before women were created, before anguish was brought into men’s heart.
[1] “It is impossible to give a precise definition of the hero, since the process of identification depends on the attitude of the audience towards the character: the hero is the one we say he is.” (my translation)
PAVIS, Patrice. Dicionário de Teatro. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1999
[2] GIDE, André. O Tratado de Narciso (Teoria do Símbolo). São Paulo: Éditions Notre Bas de Laine, 1983
posted by Daniele Avila at 11:52 AM
1 Comments:
“hysterically defiant manner”
gostei disso :)
sr. cahê
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