The Disciple
Oscar Wilde on Narcissus and Relationships
Oscar Wilde offers us a clever retelling of the myth of Narcissus called “The Disciple”:
When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort. And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, `We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.'`But was Narcissus beautiful?' said the pool.`Who should know that better than you?' answered the Oreads. `Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.' And the pool answered, `But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.'
The story shifts our attention to the pool’s point of view, imagining what it would be like to be the object of Narcissus’s gaze. What is wild about the story—besides the personification of the pool—is that the whole crux of Narcissus’s perspective is that it is entirely self-focused. Narcissus doesn’t actually see the water, but himself in the water. What, then, could the pool mean when it says, “in the mirror of his eyes i saw ever my own beauty mirrored”? What does it mean to turn Narcissus himself into a mirror?
It is trendy for postmodern theorists to write of “the gaze” and “reversing the gaze.” But ironically, Wilde describes something more subtle—two gazes that look right into one another and past one another. It seems to be a deeply sad image, an unrequited love of two narcissists mirroring one another and at the same time feeling to see one another. On the other hand, could it be that the pool now feels more connected than ever to someone, since it finds self-awareness in what it sees in the micro-pools of Narcissus’s eyes?
Wilde’s short story seems to be a parable about Discipleship—the eros of looking up to someone, of finding a Master, but also the loneliness of it, as both Master and Disciple miss each other or simply use each other for the reflection.
The story seems at once to be a paradigmatic description of intersubjectivity and a particular example of recognition gone awry. Perhaps this is intentional, and, as the deconstructionists might say, all recognition hinges on its own failure. Is this not why we have language? Is this not why we try, again and again, to express ourselves?
The great joke of Wilde’s story, which has tinges of Kafka, is that the pool loves Narcissus the most, mourns Narcissus the most, and yet has no appreciation for Narcissuses’ beauty. For the pool misses not “Narcissus in himself,” but, as Hegel would put it, “Narcissus for himself.” The pool, which is the mirror, misses the mirror Narcissus provides. What does the pool actually see? Maybe just the infinite regress of mirroring.