If vanity is the worst disease of the human soul, its most famous victim is Narcissus.
Being a hero did not spare him the ultimate cost of overweening self-love; his father being a river-god is among the ironies which tend to visit tragic figures.
His parents’ knowledge of the prophecy that he was never to behold his own reflection was no help to the handsome youth either – perhaps the proof that there are immutable fates.
A compendium of myths, Ovid’s Metamorphoses tell us that Narcissus cannot “know himself”. That’s the goal of the protagonist of this novella, a 21sth century Narcissus who lives at odds with those encircling him.
The clash between his innermost yearnings and the expectations of others often leaves him “inert as a statue” and he “burns in the fire he (himself) kindles”.
Harassed by a society where he counts no equals, he lacks an Ovid to inform him: “That which you seek exists not!”
Christianity all but dawned when the Metamorphoses came out. If the mythical Narcissus hearkens back to the Old Testament when he “tears up his vest from top to bottom”, in this novella he may depart from life more in the fashion of Jesus than of the legendary ephebe.
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