The Image of Narcissus in Literary Criticism

Abstract

A mythical image takes on new connotations in literary criticism. The image of the myth is used as an explanatory route from the context that maintains the explanation of the relationship between the text and the author/writer. Narcissism is analyzed from the perspective of the “mirror effect” paradigm by university professor Sanda-Maria Ardeleanu and the participants of the transdisciplinary project: Fiction-Psychiatry / Anthropology. The main objectives are: differential explanation of narcissism, depending on time; the approach of several scientific models; explaining the scientific consensus on the notion of narcissism; the investigation of narcissism in some Romanian writers from the 20th century. In this regard, the literary critic elaborates his vision in an explanatory stratification that contains certain landmarks, which the reader begins to notice the interpretive construct similar to a journey. The mythical image used in the study of literary criticism has an element that fascinates through its recognition and the detection of the transformations attributed to it by the researcher. Academician Eugen Simion, a graduate of the University of Bucharest, cataloged in “Fiction of the intimate diary” the relationships between the author and the diary from the perspective of Narcis’s fears/expectations. The problem of reflection involves the researcher to probe another fundamental element of the myth – the mirror. And this is not about the surface of the lake or the Venetian mirror. Any mirror is imperfect for the one who struggles with the goal of stopping time, of perpetuating himself in an eternal metamorphosis. Academician Mihai Cimpoi investigates the Eminesian creation through the monad Narcissus – Hyperion. Other correspondences persist with other mythical characters, such as: Neptune, Prometheus, Orpheus, Parce, etc. To explain the possible perspectives of knowledge in Eminesian creation, the researcher will be determined by two names from Greek mythology: Narcissus and Hyperion.