Spark Your Creativity With Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Edition #40 - An interplay of love, same-sex desire and death
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Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) is Dali’s genius interpretation of the 2000-year-old Greek myth of Narcissus, recited by Ovid.
Here’s the story — Narcissus was a beautiful youth who loved himself. No, it wasn’t self-love.
It was self-obsession and absorption up to a limit where he fell in love with himself.
He dismissed love proposals. When a beautiful nymph Echo fell madly in love with him, he spurned her. But Echo’s love for Narcissus only grew.
Once while sitting near a lake, Narcissus was so consumed by his self-reflection that he tried to embrace himself.
Alas, he died of drowning!
Echo mourned over his body.
When Narcissus, looking one last time into the pool uttered, “Oh marvellous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell”, Echo too chorused, “Farewell.”
God immortalized Narcissus as the daffodil flower.
The story of Narcissus has elements of desire, rather same-sex desire, which intrigued Dali.
The golden brown figure seems to bow down his head on his knee. The figure’s reflection can be seen in the water. There is a sense of heartache in this form. Is this Narcissus?
The egg face portrayal of Narcissus is intentional. In fact, Dali’s rendering of Narcissus is gender neutral. The self-absorbed figure has this fiery golden glow, almost as if the figure is about to erupt.
Just beside Narcissus is another figure, having the same stance as Narcissus but with a completely different meaning. The figure looks stony and barren. The ants are floating around the fingers depicting death and decay, a recurring theme in Dali’s paintings.
When Dali sketched before getting this painting on canvas, he juxtaposed both figures.
Why these two figures, then?
This was Dali’s ‘critical paranoia technique,’ which he developed in the 1930s. It was carried out in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory.
Through this technique, Dali explored the multiple perceptions of the world.
The surrealist scholar Dawn Adès says, “It’s like a systematic misreading of the world around you according to an overriding obsessional idea.”
Just behind Narcissus, some of the same-sex people are dancing. Is it Dali’s portrayal of homosexuality and desirability?
Dali translated this visual art piece into a literary poem which goes like this —
Narcissus,
in his immobility,
absorbed by his reflection with the digestive slowness of carnivorous plants,
becomes invisible.
There remains of him only the hallucinatingly white oval of his head,
his head again more tender,
his head, chrysalis of hidden biological designs,
his head held up by the tips of the water’s fingers,
at the tips of the fingers
of the insensate hand,
of the terrible hand,
of the mortal hand
of his own reflection.When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
Gala — my Narcissus.
I had goosebumps when I re-read the highlighted lines.
Dali’s interpretation of Narcissus metamorphosed into a flower is predictable and relatable to the myth.
But Dali has compared the flower to his life partner and wife Gala, portraying a heterosexual relationship.
What’s left is a corpse (bottom right) and a dog feasting on it.
The painting is an excellent study of death, discomposure and loss.
A portrayal that even the most beautiful is lost and decomposed in the end. And out of it arises something more beautiful (a flower over the egg-shaped skull).
What does it mean to you? Let me know in the comments.