Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses Part B, Sections 1 and 2

• Story: Echo
• Bacchus/Dionysus - "twice born"

• First taken from his mother Semele
• Then from Zeus' thigh - placed there for safe keeping

• Jupiter and Juno debate who enjoys love-making more
• Men v. women
• Jupiter "expansive with wine" - drunk talk
• "you gain more than we do from the pleasure of love"
• Juno
• Denies it
• Decided to ask Tiresias for his opinion
• "had known Venus in both ways"
• Changed  to a woman after disturbing mating snakes - lived that way 7 years
• "confirmed Jupiter's words"
• Saturnia did not like the judgment and made him go blind
• "No god has the right to void what another god has done"
• Jupiter gave him foresight in exchange for his lost sight
• Narcissus 
• Attractive young man
• Born to the river god Cephisus and a nymph
• Mother consulted Tiresias to see if he would live to an old age
• Seer says "if he does not discover himself"
• Discovered by the nymph Echo when he was 16
• Echo
• Nymph
• "who cannot be silent when others have spoken, nor learn how to speak first herself."
• "still had a body then and was not merely a voice"
• Punishment of Saturnia
• "only repeats the last of what is spoken and returns the words she hears."
• Saw Narcissus wandering through the fields and was "inflamed"
• Narcissus calls "is anyone here" - she answers until they meet
• Narcissus is a rejects her and says "away with these encircling hands! May I die before what's mine is your."
• Echo returns "whats mine is yours"
• She is rejected - hides in cave - vanishes all but her voice
• Story: Narcissus
• Words "narcissist" from his names
• Prophecy when he was born "Being consulted as to whether the child would live a long life, to a ripe old age, the seer with prophetic vision replied ‘If he does not discover himself."
• Sees himself and falls in love
• Sees his reflection in a fountain
• "while he desires to quench his thirst, a different thirst is created"
• "Astonished by himself and hangs there motionless"
• Flat on the ground, he contemplates two stars, his eyes, and his hair, fit for Bacchus, fit for Apollo, his youthful cheeks and ivory neck, the beauty of his face, the rose-flush mingled in the whiteness of snow, admiring everything for which he is himself admired. Unknowingly he desires himself, and the one who praises is himself praised, and, while he courts, is courted, so that, equally, he inflamed and burns."
• Tries to catch his own reflection - doesn't understand why it doesn’t work
• "I am burning with love for myself"
• Turned into a flower
• Even though he rejected her Echo mourns for Narcissus and cries out when he does - yearning for his reflection 

Storytelling Notes:

I am thinking about gender-flipping the story of Echo and Narcissus. I also want to update the story and perhaps move it to a more modern setting. I think changing the time period would be an interesting choice and would make the story fresh and new again. 

Bibliography:  Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000).

(Modernized Echo and Narcissus by David REVOY)