narcissus

noun

1. Any of several bulbous flowering plants, of the genus Narcissus, having white or yellow cup- or trumpet-shaped flowers, notably the daffodil

   “The Daughters of the Flood have ſearch'd the Mead / For Violets pale, and cropt the Poppy's Head: / The Short Narciſſus and fair Daffodil, / Pancies to pleaſe the Sight, and Caſſia ſvveet to ſmell: […]”

   “At Hortus Bulborum you will find heirloom narcissi that date back at least to the 15th century and famous old tulips like 'Duc van Tol' (1595) and its sports.”

2. A beautiful young man, like the mythological Greek Narcissus

name

1. (Greek)A youth who spurned the love of Echo and fell in love with his own reflection in a pool: in some versions of the myth, he drowned trying to reach it, while in others he sat fixated until a god took pity and transformed him into a flower.

   “At the beginning of his narrative, Ishmael mentions Narcissus, the legendary character who plunged into the water and was drowned in the attempt to grasp his own essence (p. 14). Narcissus was unwilling to understand the relationship between himself and “the ungraspable phantom of life” in gradualistic terms and sought to bring that relationship to immediate closure, thus annihilating himself.”

   “We may now affirm that Plato's cave is inhabited by Narcissus. He already knows, but the knowledge he possesses is still a bit confused, obscure (this knowledge is situated in the caves of the memory, a dark space much like Narcissus’s place).”

   “Narcissus, as the myth has it, died because, unlike Lacan's child, he did not recognize himself; nor did he perceive the mirror for what it was: a boundary between reality and fiction.¹⁵”