Lost in the Funhouse

ECHO

One does well to speak in the third person, the seer advises, in the manner of Theban Tiresias. A cure for self-absorption is saturation: telling the story over as though it were another’s until like a much-repeated word it loses sense. There’s a cathartic Tiresias himself employs in the interest of objectivity and to rid himself of others’ histories — Oedipus’s, Echo’s — which distract him fore and aft by reason of his entire knowledge.

Narcissus replies that the prescription is unpalatable, but he’s too weary of himself not to attempt it. Where to begin. The prophet’s cave seems a likely place, which he stumbles into one forenoon in flight from his admirers. What started as a stag-hunt has turned into yet another love-chase, led this time by a persisting nymph soon joined by her quarry’s companions. It wants all the Narcissan craft, resentfully perfected, yet again to mislead the lot.

An imperfectly dark passage. Outside his ardentest suitor calls, pederast Ameinius, spurned. The nymph soft-seconds his bugger woo. Chaste Narcissus shivers, draws farther in, loses bearings, daresn’t call, weeps. The life-long bother! Seized he gives shriek, is released. How come? What next? Hadn’t he as well have his blossom plucked? Who says so?

Tiresias the prophet. What’s he doing here? Conversing with Narcissus. How does he know — because he knows everything. Why isn’t he in Thebes? For the reason that, as during a prior and a posterior extravagance of his, Thebes is enjoying an interregnum, hard on prophets. First there was the sphinx, whose elementary riddle was none of his affair; he withdrew to the Thespian cave, there acted as adviser to the blue nymph Leirope, Narcissus’s mother. The current pass is sorer: Oedipus’s tragedy, too awful to rehearse. The third and last, couple hundred months hence, darker yet from Tiresias’s point of view.

Narcissus reflects that after years of elusion he’s at the seer’s mercy, rapewise. He wonders which is more ironic, seeking refuge for innocence where it mightn’t be preserved or falling into the first hands he’s ever seemed to leave cold. Thus rare Tiresiases.

Apostrophe.

Some are comelier than most, a few handsome; it’s Narcissus’s fate, through fault nor merit of his own, to be beautiful beyond enduring. The first catch eye, the second turn head; Narcissus like a fleshed theophany smites the whole sense. A philosopher argues that perceptible beauty is ipso facto less desirable than im — at glimpse of Narcissus he interrupts, forswears himself. A man doubtless of his virility admits what he’d sooner not: in one extraordinary case he’s felt the catamitic itch. A woman indifferent thitherto to the world’s including handsomer men than hers finds Narcissus so so she’s cross with her lover. Thus the mature, who see to it that sight of the wonder doesn’t linger or recur and so in most cases come to terms with memory: the philosophers resume their position, men manliness, women men — all chastened, one supposes, by an exception so exceptional it ruins their rules. Among the less disciplined and wise, astonishment yields to simple lust. Cynical, powerful, wanton, uncommitted, passionate, impulsive set out to have their will. Hosts of ordinary, too, strangers to emotion of extraordinary kind or force, are seized as by conversion. Snares are laid, gifts tendered, pitfalls dug. His very wetnurse, Leirope says, took liberties with her suckling, tutor tutee. Leirope herself — how was it? Undone by a meandering river-god she seeks the caved seer first. What counsel does he offer? Tiresias won’t repeat it; enough to say it’s of a kind with what he wishes he’d given Oedipus. The varieties of general good advice are few. Leirope suggests herself to Narcissus when he reaches young manhood and begs him to ignore her advice: take to the woods! Into the bimboed and bebuggered bush he flies, where ladies beckon every way and gentlemen crouch in ambuscado.

All this considered, one may wonder at Tiresias’s immunity, unless indeed he’s cat-and-mousing. Is he too ravished by his victim to recollect himself for rape? Floored for defloration? No no. Clairvoyance is anaphrodisiac. One recalls too: Tiresias has been without sex for a long time. What’s more he’s blind as a bat, otherwise he couldn’t see so in the cave.

Is Narcissus piqued or relieved? Both know. He presently inquires how one in his position might best fend the world’s importune. Why fend? Tiresias’s story is to the point. And Echo’s. Echo’s? A nymph possessed so early and entirely by Pan that her subsequent affairs seem redundant. Afflicted with immortality she turns from life and learns to tell stories with such art that the Olympians implore her to repeat them. Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening. With her tongue-tried tales she amuses others and preserves her reason; but Zeus employs her, unawares, to beguile his wife while he makes free with the mountain-nymphs. Again again, begs the queen of heaven; another mount’s climbed with each retelling. At fiction’s end the facts are clear; Zeus unpunishable, Echo pays. Though her voice remains her own, she can’t speak for herself thenceforth, only give back others’ delight regardless of hers.

Has this to do with fair Narcissus, wise Tiresias? Whose story is it? It’s a tale of shortcomings, lengthened to advantage. Echo never, as popularly held, repeats all, like gossip or mirror. She edits, heightens, mutes, turns others’ words to her end. One recalls her encounter with Narcissus — no other has nymphed him caveward. A coincidence of opposites. One should, if it’s worthwhile, repeat the tale.

I’ll repeat the tale. Though in fact many are bewildered, Narcissus conceives himself alone and becomes the first person to speak.

I can’t go on.

Go on.

Is there anyone to hear here?

Who are you?

You.

I?

Aye.

Then let me see me!

See?

A lass! Alas.

Et cetera et cetera. Overmuch presence appears to be the storyteller’s problem: Tiresias’s advice, in cases of excessive identity and coitus irrequitus, is to make of withdrawal a second nature. He sees the nymph efface herself until she becomes no more than her voice, still transfiguring senseless sound into plaints of love. Perhaps that’s the end of her story, perhaps the narrative proper may resume. Not quite, not quite: though even sharp-sight Tiresias can’t espy the unseeable, one may yet distinguish narrator from narrative, medium from message. One lesson remains to be learned; when Echo learns it none will be the wiser.

But Narcissus! What’s become of contemptible, untemptable Narcissus, the drug so many have turned on on, and sung themselves on pretext of hymning him? Was Tiresias about to counsel him in obscurity? No. Except to declare that his true love awaits him in the spring at Donacon; discovering who he is will prove as fatal for Narcissus as it’s proving for Oedipus. Queer advice! To see the truth is one thing, to speak it another.

Now where are we? That is to say, where are Tiresias and Narcissus. Somewhere near the Donaconan spring. Who’s telling the story, and to whom? The teller’s immaterial, Tiresias de clares; the tale’s the same, and for all one knows the speaker may be the only auditor. Considerable time has elapsed, it seems, since seer and seeker, prophet and lost, first met in the cave. But what’s time when past and future are equally clear and dark? The gift of suiscience is a painful present: Narcissus thirsts for love; Tiresias sees the end of his second sight. Both speak to themselves. Thebes is falling; unknown to the northbound refugees, en route to found a new city, their seer will perish on the instant the Argives take the old. He it is now, thrashing through the woods near Thespiae, who calls to his lost companions and follows to exhaustion a mock response. Halloo halloo! Falling at length beside a chuckling spring he dreams or dies. The voice presently in his ears is that hallooer’s; now it rehearses Narcissus’s end, seen from the outset:

Why did Tiresias not tell Narcissus what he once told Leirope, that her son would lead a long and happy life if he never came to know himself? Because the message then had become its own medium. Needless to say he sees and saw Narcissus beat about the bush for love, oblivious to pursuers in the joy of his own pursuit. As for that nymph whose honey voice still recalls his calls, he scorns her, and hears his maledictions balmed to music. Like the masturbatory adolescent, sooner or later he finds himself. He beholds and salutes his pretty alter ego in the pool; in the pool his ego, altered, prettily salutes: Behold! In vain he reaches to embrace his contrary image; he recognizes what Tiresias couldn’t warn him of. Has knowing himself turned him into a pansy? Not quite, not quite. He’s resolved to do away with himself, his beloved likewise. Together now. Adored-in-vain, farewell!

Well. One supposes that’s the end of the story. How is it this voice persists, whosever it is? Needless to say, Tiresias knows. It doesn’t sound nymphish; she must have lost hers. Echo says Tiresias is not to be trusted in this matter. A prophet blind or dead, a blossom, eyeless, a disengendered tale — none can tell teller from told. Narcissus would appear to be opposite from Echo: he perishes by denying all except himself; she persists by effacing herself absolutely. Yet they come to the same: it was never himself Narcissus craved, but his reflection, the Echo of his fancy; his death must be partial as his self-knowledge, the voice persists, persists.

Can it be believed? Tiresias has gone astray; a voice not impossibly his own has bewildered him. The story of Narcissus, Tiresias, Echo is being repeated. It’s alleged that Narcissus has wearied of himself and yearns to love another; on Tiresias’s advice he employs the third person to repeat his tale as the seer does, until it loses meaning. No use: his self objectified’s the more enthralling, like his blooming image in the spring. In vain Tiresias’s cautions that the nymph may be nothing altruistic, but the soul of guile and sleight-of-tongue. Who knows but what her love has changed to mock? What she gives back as another’s speech may be entire misrepresentation; especially ought one to beware what she chooses to repeat concerning herself. No use, no use: Narcissus grows fond; she speaks his language; Tiresias reflects that after all if one aspires to concern one’s fatal self with another, one had as well commence with the nearest and readiest. Perhaps he’ll do the same: be beguiled with Narcissus out of knowledge of himself; listen silent as his voice goes on.

Thus we linger forever on the autognostic verge — not you and I, but Narcissus, Tiresias, Echo. Are they still in the Thespian cave? Have they come together in the spring? Is Narcissus addressing Tiresias, Tiresias Narcissus? Have both expired?

There’s no future for prophets. Blind Oedipus will never see the place where three roads meet. Narcissus desired himself defunct before his own conception; he’s been rooted forever by the beloved he’ll never know. Dead Tiresias still stares wide-eyed at Wisdom’s nude entire. Our story’s finished before it starts.