Narcissus, the archetypical male figure of self-absorption, figures prominently in both “Personal Helicon”, by Seamus Heaney, and “The Disciple”, by Oscar Wilde. Heaney’s poem is a deeply personal reminiscence of his childhood habit of peering into wells, comparing his stare to that of Narcissus’. His habit is replaced in adulthood by a more mature form of self-reflection: poetry. Wilde appends the Narcissus myth by recounting a mournful conversation, after Narcissus’ death, between a group of Oreads and the pool into which Narcissus longingly gazed. In an ironic twist, the mourning pool reveals that it mourned not for Narcissus, but the loss of its own reflection in Narcissus’ eyes. In both poems, art is portrayed as a form of meditative narcissism – the egotism being conducive to the production of meaningful works. The speaker of Heaney’s poem writes that his poetry is a form of that artistic egotism, like his well gazing as a child. His inspiration comes from introspection. For Heaney, art comes from within. However, Wilde uses the conceit (poetic and otherwise) of the pool to argue that the artist’s work is only a realization of the beauty of the subject – the pool itself. For Wilde, art comes from without.
Narcissism is the excessive preoccupation with oneself, coined for Narcissus, the mythical man who was excessively preoccupied with himself to the point of death. Directed properly, narcissism can become a great tool for artists, particularly in terms of honing their craft. Heaney’s “Personal Helicon” subtly reveals how the speaker’s conversations with himself, with the aid of various wells, evolved into the more refined art of poetry. The speaker of Heaney’s poem is inexorably drawn to wells; “they could not keep [him] from wells” (Heaney, 1). Not only does he look into them to see the “white face [hovering] over the bottom” (Heaney, 12), but he also converses with that other boy to see if the well would “[give] back [his] own call” (Heaney, 13). In what appears to be a lonesome existence, Heaney’s speaker found company in his own reflection and echo, facilitated by the well. This practice culminates into poetry in adulthood. As the speaker states in lines 19 and 20, “I rhyme/ To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” His narcissistic energies were converted and redirected into a meaningful medium: poetry.
In Wilde’s “The Disciple”, narcissism is not a means of inspiration for art, but a catalyst for something that was already there. Narcissism awakens the hidden potential of a subject. It was through the eyes of Narcissus and his doting gaze that the pool realized its own beauty. By painting a poolside scene in prose, Wilde allegorically personifies the relationship between the artist and his work as the relationship that Narcissus and the pool had. An artist, deep in the artistic process, could very well be calculating his self worth by the piece of art he is producing. As he stares at his work, the artist most resembles Narcissus by the pool. Wilde subverts the artists’ Ivory Tower mystique of being a creator. Instead he relegates the artist to being merely the person who reflects the beauty of the subject into realization: “in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored” (Wilde, p. 5). The personified pool came to appreciate its own beauty in the time Narcissus spent gazing upon his image. In the artist’s self-reflection, the beauty of the subject blossomed. Thus, in Wilde’s eyes, the artist is not the creator. He is merely the person that nurtures that beauty in his mind into fruition. By playing on the double meaning of reflection, Heaney and Wilde allude to Narcissus not merely as a selfish dandy, but also as an artistic mind.
Art is but a reflection, from mundane objects to highly ornate chapel ceilings, of something an inspired artist ‘sees’. The light that enters his eyes is transformed within the mind through self-reflection; his expert hands echo the new image into tangible form. To emphasize this idea, the poets use a pun on the word reflection to mean both the reflected image and the practice of introspection. Both poems place heavy importance upon both definitions of reflection using various allusions, tropes and schemes. Heaney’s speaker, in “Personal Helicon”, believes that his intimate knowledge of himself, fueled by the self-reflective nature of narcissism, is what inspires him to write. In using wells to illustrate this idea, Heaney captures all the nuances of the word reflection. There is an epistrophe of the word reflection at the end of the second and fourth quatrains. While they literally refer to his reflections at the bottom of the wells, Heaney’s speaker turns each well remembered into a metaphor for self-reflection. Each well has a certain depth, corresponding to the emotional or spiritual depth to which his contemplations delved. Within those wells the speaker also discovered “long roots” (Heaney, 11) – an additional metaphor for his past. Heaney also emphasizes the idea of echoes (Heaney, 13; 20), alluding to the other myth associated to Narcissus: the myth of Echo. Echo was a talkative Oread cursed to repeat only the phrase she last heard. She fell in love with “big-eyed Narcissus” (Heaney, 18) and like all other suitors to do so, Echo was turned away rather brusquely. In her despair, Echo pined away into nothingness, leaving behind only her voice: a voice that can still be heard today in caverns and wells. Well, what are echoes but reflections of sound? The echoes that Heaney’s speaker referred to came back “[with] a clean new music in it” (Heaney, 14). Reflection has remade the initial call new and musical; it has transformed his voice, bringing order out of chaos. All reflections, visual or aural, must have a source. Through reflection, musing and mulling, something better is born. For Heaney’s speaker that source is himself – he is his own personal Helicon: mountain of the Muses.
“The Disciple” is a prose poem that stresses both reflections using a liberal amount of complex and calculated repetition schemes. From “the pool of his pleasure” (Wilde, p. 1) to the first words of the Oreads as they “came weeping through the woodland” (Wilde, p.1): “We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner” (Wilde, p. 2) – alliteration runs wild in Wilde’s poem. Perhaps most clever is the ploce “a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears” that is the refrain in the first two paragraphs. The “cup” is the anaphora that balances the two metaphorically flavoured liquids. As an additional layer of complexity, Wilde also adds mirrored sibilance and consonance to this phrase. “Sweet waters” is bookended by [s]s while [w] and [t] are also repeated. “Salt tears” is given similar treatment as the [s], [t] combination in “salt” is reversed to [t], [s] in “tears”. Repetition appears not only schematically in the narrative, but also in the dialogue itself. The pool, highly reflective, repeats the words of the Oreads by asking, “was Narcissus beautiful?” (Wilde, p. 3). This was an allusion to the myth of Echo. For every question posited to the pool it was repeated back, but reworked by the immense ego of the pool. In response to the pool’s question, the Oreads replied, “Who should know that better than you? […] [In] the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty” (Wilde, p. 4). Dripping with irony, “the pool answered, ‘But I loved Narcissus because […] in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.’” (Wilde, p. 5). The pool was even more narcissistic than Narcissus himself! Not to be forgotten is that the Oreads were also mildly narcissistic themselves: “[us] did he ever pass by” (Wilde, p. 4). In saying that, the Oreads assumed they were beautiful on a level worthy of Narcissus’ attention (this phrase may have also been reflective of Wilde’s own narcissism for as a homosexual dandy, he probably relished the fact that women were attracted to him to no avail). Even the narcissism trait was reflected into the surrounding characters. Every facet of this prose poem has been masterfully inundated with the reflection theme. They are not merely straightforward reflections either. They are complex manipulations of sounds, letters and meanings. Heaney and Wilde both impress upon their readers the importance of reflection in art, be it internal, or external, reflection. Without the ‘digestion’ process that occurs within the mind of the artist, the ‘art’ created would be meaningless, like using tracing paper.
Art is one of the few things in life that strive to find meaning. Meaning cannot be found by merely staring at an object for an extended period of time. Seamus Heaney’s speaker found meaning to his childhood by allegorizing it as a personal relationship with someone much like himself – his reflection at the bottom of the well – but, at the same time, completely different. Through his mental reflections and musings he inspired poetry to search his soul. The wells, in his mind, became a “Personal Helicon,” a window into himself. Oscar Wilde entertained similar notions, in that meaningful art required reflection. With its dandiacal irony, the pool of Narcissus’ pleasure, “The Disciple,” exemplified Wilde’s subversive idea that the artist merely reveals the true beauty of his subject. Like Heaney, Wilde’s idea requires a reflection that goes deeper than merely parroting back what it began with. Only then can art be considered meaningful. Artists can identify easily with Narcissus and not only because of the misunderstood tragedy of his death. He was, after all, only searching for the most beautiful thing he could find, and tried to capture it. Is that not what art is all about?
