Ovid’s Metamorphoses #022/111: “Echo and Narcissus”

What this project is about.  

This one is from Book 3.

Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid‘s Metamorphoses, a Roman mythological epic from the Augustan Age. The introduction of the mountain nymph, Echo, into the story of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who rejected Echo and fell in love with his own reflection, appears to have been Ovid’s invention. Ovid’s version influenced the presentation of the myth in later Western art and literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_and_Narcissus

How long it took to read this (aloud): 12 mins 36 seconds

What it’s “about”: Echo’s pretty sad and clingy. Narcissus is a good boy a little too in love with himself and it all goes horribly horribly wrong “in nature”, away from the things that might bring him back ‘to earth’/into the fold. Oh well.

Words I didn’t know: xx

Quotable quotes: xx 

Deep in the forest

Was a pool, well-deep and silver-clear, where

Never a shepherd came, nor goats, nor cattle;

Nor leaf, nor beast, nor bird fell to its surface.

Nourished by water, grass grew thick around it,

And over it dark trees had kept the sun

From ever shedding warmth upon the place.

Here spent Narcissus, weary of the hunt

And sick with heat, fell to the grass, charmed by

The bright well and its greenery. He bent 

To drink, to dissipate his thirst, yet as he

Drank another thirst rose up…

Again, again,, his arms embraced the silver

Elusive waters where his image shone;

And he burned for it while the gliding error

Betrayed his eyes.

How it lands to my eco-sensibility: xx

Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx

What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx

To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx

Further research questions: xx

Anything else: xx