We would like to pose the question to you, since your collective wisdom far exceeds ours. To start the Socratic dialogue, here are some thoughts garnered from wise friends over the years...

The question in regard to the directional flow and associated meaning of "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" by the Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dali finished in 1937 is a welcome and beautiful digression from the banal and overwhelming developments in the financial markets and faltering financial institutions with so many echoes of 1929 and the 1930s, which are now occurring near the speed of light!

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus is one of my favourite paintings for several reasons. I first saw this painting when I was a teenager. I am 40+ and still trying to figure out its mystery. Along the way I have made some mental and diarised notes. Clearly Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989) interprets the Greek myth in his Paranoiac-Critical style, in which he infuses this artwork with a paranoia that causes the human mind to connect things which are not otherwise rationally linked.

According to Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, refusing to eat or sleep, eventually ceasing to exist and was immortalised by the gods where he sat as the purple flower which bears his name. Dali obviously believed that psychology was instrumental to the creation of art, and filled his images with symbolism and meaning that can only be truly understood by exercising the subconscious mind.

Dali wrote the following poem as a textual counterpart of this painting from which some of the hints as to the meaning and state of the objects on this painting can be derived.

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali, 1937

Background

Dali was clearly inspired by a very late 16th Century painting called Narcissus attributed to Caravaggio. Caravaggio's painting provides a perfect mirror image of Narcissus reflected in the water with the shoreline demarcating the subject and his reflection. Notably, the point of rotation in Caravaggio's painting is the highlighted knee at the centre of his painting. It is this knee, in form, shape and angle that Dali transports into his own rendition of Narcissus and the adjacent hand.

The Composition

The first impression that one gets upon seeing this painting, from far away, is that Dali just painted the same imagery twice. From afar, it appears as if he simply cut the canvas down the middle and made one side brown and the other blue, but on closer inspection, one sees that the two sides, although very similar, are not alike at all!

At the exact centre of the painting is a group of figures highlighted from the rest of the painting’s subject-matter. The group of 8 people seem to be attracted by the bright Narcissus image before the transformation, almost all of the figures are either facing each other or the viewer of the painting, the atmosphere is bright and expresses social interaction. Described by Dali as a “heterosexual group” in attitudes of “preliminary expectation” they pose in reflective water, narcissistically. Yet on the right side we see a single statue turned away from the viewer of the painting, intuitively suggesting loneliness and individuality. This grouping clearly has links to groups portrayed in Renaissance paintings, perhaps influenced by Dali’s trips to Florence and Rome immediately prior to starting this painting, according to one of my knowledgable art friends based in Tuscany with connections to the Medici family and to the Uffizi.

On either side of the centre of the painting two contrasting images emerge. To the left of this group is Narcissus kneeling in, as well as looking down into, the pool of water that, ironically, is too dark to reflect his own image. The body is limp as he stares at the invisible reflection of himself in the water that he sinks in. The setting sun glistens off the back of his head, as he just wallows in grim depression and boredom. The canyons trap him in the barren wasteland as he sits motionless, without movement, struggle, or life. This mysterious figure looks so vacant that it might as well be dead. His face in particular, the cause of his vanity, self-absorption and self-reflection, is unseen. Instead the viewer sees only the top of his head and its distinctive hairline. The resting of Narcissus’s head on his knee obscures his view of his own image, and the fact that his face cannot be directly seen by the viewer, might suggest that Narcissus as vanity is a morbid legend has been quite dead for some time and is now manifest in a different form by the living flower of the same name. Nothing much is happening on the left side, so one’s attention is naturally directed to the right side.

To the right of Narcissus is the form of a hand mimicking Narcissus' body and holding an egg. The artistic connection via a mathematical transformation is that Narcissus has metamorphosed into the hand because it adopts exactly the same form and posture. Narcissus's form is reflected vertically in the water and horizontally by the hand. The hand represents the hand of the water, as to lift its own reflection, perhaps a symbol of human ego, holding an egg held by its thumb, middle and the index fingers. Interestingly, all limbs in Narcissus’s body become fingers in the hand, and Narcissus’s head transforms into a flower-bearing egg; the crack in the egg matching Narcissus’s hairline and very subtly echoes in the trees in the rocks in the upper left-hand and upper-right corners. Looking carefully: the knee becomes the thumb, the left arm becomes the index finger, the right shoulder becomes the middle finger, and so forth as seen on the picture. The image of the egg is repeated in several other Dali paintings.

Dali claimed the flower-bearing egg was inspired by the Catalan saying “he has a bulb in his head” which refers to someone who has a mental illness or complex.
Conspicuously, the life-bearing hand is deliberately placed outside of the life-giving water pool: the hand obviously not interested in its own vanity, but maybe also an ironic play on the traditional representation of water being associated with new life. Curiously, the narcissus flower itself is not a radiant example of the flower, but instead a shabby shadow of one upstaged by the erect stem breaking through the egg.

It is debatable whether Narcissus has metamorphosed into the hand or the hand has metamorphosed into Narcissus! It is more likely to be the former because:

1. The painting’s title implies that Narcissus himself is metamorphosed, not the hand or flower;
2. The hand is positioned in front of Narcissus implying its successive significance;
3. Narcissus is presented as an inanimate, lifeless object much like a dead chrysalis;
4. The hand has developed beyond Narcissus’s dead form into a hand that now holds new life in the form of a narcissus flower growing from an egg; and
5. Chronologically, the flower being named Narcissus follows the myth of Narcissus the person.

The intricate structure of Narcissus and the resembling egg-holding hand are very powerful images and obviously the major centre-points of the whole painting. The idea of transforming Narcissus in this way and the careful thought behind their construction, presentation, and positioning is very clever and typical of Dali. Even the crack in the hand to match the water-line where Narcissus meets the pool is used as a means of giving the hand a further surreal quality as a cracked, stone pedestal, rather than an actual hand. And there is more:

1. The background comprises rocks, similar to da Vinci’s use of background rocks in his paintings. They also resemble the rocks of Dali’s home region of Cadaques that feature in many of Dali’s other paintings;
2. The left side of the painting is significantly brighter, using yellow, red and bluish colours;
3. The right side, depicting the transformation of Narcissus is almost in the shade, painted using dark blue and grey colours;
4. To the right of the hand is a preening figure set on a pedestal placed in the middle of a chessboard-like floor that echoes the narcissistic vanity theme of the main subjects;
5. In the right foreground is a "Pavlovian" dog tearing at some meat, perhaps representing the death of something that was once deemed desirable or beautiful;
6. In the distance, over the snow-covered mountains is a snow-white version of Narcissus who is melting, repeating the theme of the death of Narcissus;
7. Ants climb the hand that again is a recurring theme in Dali’s paintings representing decay, decomposition and death. They cluster at the base of the hand and start to make their way towards the narcissus flower, threatening its existence. The ant imagery is utilised extensively in other Dali paintings.

According to some expert friends, the painting may have also been partly inspired by T S Eliot's poem "The Waste Land", the first world war (1914-1919), the Weimar Republic, the Spanish civil war, the stock market crash in 1929 and the subsequent depression of the 1930s:

1. The Waste Land was first published in 1922 and a key publication again made in 1936, the year before The Metamorphosis of Narcissus was completed;
2. The painting's subjects are set in a rocky waste land, just as the poem's are;
3. The poem's main theme is death and decay with/without re-birth;
4. T S Eliot accompanied his poem with detailed notes explaining parts of its meaning and signifying how important the work was to him; Dali accompanied his painting with an explanatory poem again explaining parts of its meaning and signifying how important the work was to him.
5. There is a chapter in the poem named Burial of the Dead that may relate to the suggestion that the painting presents the death of Narcissus/vanity;
6. There is another chapter in the poem named A Game of Chess that may relate to the chessboard-like floor that the pedestal is placed upon;
7. There is a further chapter in the poem named Death by Water that may relate to the "death of Narcissus / Vanity in the pool of water" argument;
8. There is a further chapter in the poem named What the Thunder Said that may relate to the storm-clouds gathering in the top right of the painting; and
9. The poem was in part inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses.

This painting uses a lot of iconic images to say what it means, for example, a person, a hand, water, a starving "Pavlovian" dog, a chess board, a canyon or cliff, and people. This is not to fill the canvas or distract the viewer from the suggested meaning or point, but to support the idea that hope and despair, failure and victory, and indeed life and death are all equal forces and reflections of one another in a dynamic duality; on opposite sides of a coin, spinning in mid-air, waiting to land and to fix or to destroy everything moment by moment. The equal forces are pulling one another in an eternal war to balance everything. It is all a cycle, and like all cycles, it repeats itself forever and ever, and there is no way of having one without the other.

Either way, this is a great painting in form, subject-matter, theme, meaning and execution and may also be ranked as one of the greatest works by one of the greatest of the surreal artists. To end, we would like to paraphrase Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, scene II: "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals — and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me — nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."

[ENDS]

We are grateful to all sources for the information presented. We welcome your thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.

With love and warm wishes to you and family


DK with family

DK Matai

The Philanthropia, mi2g.net

DK's online community participation includes:

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