FOR NARCISSUS. TREATY ON THE IMPARTIAL LOVE
(Agata Golebiewska)
Narcissus, as the author declares at the beginning, is in this book a myth to be brought down. It is because, according to Daniel Milo, “nothing, absolutely nothing of what is being spread about” and generally believed about Narcissus (whose very name has become an insult) does match the character from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Milo’s method of approaching sources, which consists in refusing to read between the lines, allows to overthrow the dominating concepts about Narcissus that show him as someone interested in himself and incapable of love. What Ovid’s text says is that everybody loved the hero, and nothing there proves that he loved himself: he just spent his life hunting. It is only when he saw the image, which he didn’t know was his own reflection, that he fell in love and then he paid for it with his life. Not only was he capable of the greatest passion thus, but the one he loved was not his own person. It was a sublime being who, for that matter, inspired love in all the characters of the story.
In the figure which generally appears as the prototype of frigidity and auto-complacency, Milo discovers passion, integrity and the (satisfied) thirst of the absolute. In this light, the only “fault” of Narcissus, who, just like everybody else, loved perfection, is not to have accepted compromise, and to be firm in his commitment to the best. Therefore, it is for his idealism, and not for his self-love, that he died. This is what makes him different from us, simple mortals…
The injustice is that the widely accepted concept seeks to replace Narcissus with the narcissism - phenomenon that has nothing in common with the hero but the name. Sigmund Freud revealed to us that we were all “narcissistic” and loved ourselves. The unique moment, however, when we can, in all impunity, consider ourselves as being the centre of the universe, is our childhood. Then comes the Fall, which is the result both of social pressure, and above all, as Milo underlines, of our proper judgement awoken.
The libidinal energy, which, in the childhood, was concentrated on the actual “I”, does not stay attached to it for too long: the “narcissistic disillusionment” of the adolescence makes everyone aware that he/she is far from representing the ideal. At the same time, he/she is just as far from giving up the quest, which shows that love is an idealistic emotion. Satisfied, until the puberty, by the actual “I”, the libido is ready to go and seek elsewhere, when this “I” appears to be correct but no more, which, in its turn, proves that love is no less impartial than it is idealistic. This is why the teenagers are so often, and violently, dissatisfied with themselves. Just as Narcissus, they want the best, and they suffer from the consciousness of their own mediocrity.
The adolescence is the last moment when we can so freely exercise our most noble penchants: idealism and impartiality. It is in the youth which “above lifeless world lets us float” (Mickiewicz, Ode to the Youth) that we measure things by their own merits: we call the greatness “greatness” and the banal “banal”. Milo’s sympathy is clearly with this very vision – briefly, with the truth. He is perfectly aware, however, of the price that the collectors of objectivity have to pay: the statistics of morbidity are definitive, as well as those of psychosomatology. It is about the age of sixteen that the “Moloch of the idealism” is the most voracious.
Man needs to accept himself in order to exist. Thus, he abandons his adolescent idealism which, fatally, implies the impartial look at oneself. He seeks support in the psychology, he sounds out his soul, well then “the more he goes to the bottom of himself, the less he is alone”. The others, so unyielding before, now urge him: “Accept yourself as you are! Nobody’s perfect!” And all the dictionaries agree about the name of this lottery without losers: narcissism!
The peace of mind thus obtained is only disturbed by Narcissus, obstinate to rely on the sight, which means appearances. He is the only one who can allow himself to do it, for his greatness is “all of the surface”. We others, who don’t have such an impeccable face, are condemned to the auto-complacency of the depths. Let us, however, pay our tribute to Narcissus: survivor of the odium inflicted by an overwhelming psychologism.
How, for that matter, can three-dimensional beings whose life cannot be summarised in the 200 lines of the tale, imitate Narcissus? For Daniel Milo, there is no illusion: the justified self-love is only possible by intermittence. Thus, he creates the Ethical Narcissus: aware of not being able to escape his own psychology, but refusing to solidarise with it. By rejecting the crushing majority of his self, the Ethical Narcissus will only cultivate what, in himself, is lovable. It is only this tiny bit that he will call “I”.
To love oneself with an objective love, one has to make oneself an object. One has to simplify oneself, for how to fall in love with a supermarket? To simplify oneself means to become the other, for the other is, by definition, more simple than oneself. In order to be worthy of the word “love”, one has to make oneself beautiful. As beautiful as an image.
“Not to love painting, is to despise the truth” says Philostratus. The painting is, indeed, superior to the reflection. The reflection is a mirage, while the painting is an artefact. The reflection only reacts, while the painting acts. Because it is immutable and selective, it invites its very model to draw inspiration from it. WHO DOES NOT IMITATE, IMITATES ONESELF.
In order to become the other, simple and beautiful, we then have to engage art. “The man writes his own legend and runs after it”: this is what the treaty on the impartial love teaches us.