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Re-imagining Irony
By: Dr. Bradley Olson
I have been thinking about the powerful healing to be found in irony. This is a concept that, for differing reasons, we are all too unfamiliar with in our culture. Now, I know what you’re thinking: that irony is everywhere, no one is serious about anything, and we can’t get a straight answer from any authority, and that irony is chiefly a way, and a very good one at that, to create distance between truth and experience. In a sense, that is literally the definition of irony. Irony means: 1.a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. David Letterman and George W. Bush, among others, seem to have mastered this literary and rhetorical trope. But there are deeper mysteries to the concept of irony than one might initially suppose. Melville suggested that Moby Dick should be read through the myth of Narcissus and Echo, and by so suggesting, is in my mind saying that his novel is ironic, and found within the irony is a truth so large and unsettling, that stating it directly would be violently unsettling.
The myth of Narcissus and Echo seems to me to drip with irony. Let me briefly recount the story:
Echo was cursed by Hera (Juno) for detaining her in conversation while Zeus was Dallying with some nymphs, long enough for them to run away…when Juno realized the truth she said, “the power of that tongue of yours, by which I have been tricked, will be limited; and most brief will be the use of your voice.” From that time on, Echo can only repeat the final phrases of the utterances she hears.
Narcissus was the son of a nymph (Lyrope) and a river god (Cephisus). He was a beautiful boy…Lyrope consulted Tiresisas to see if he would live to a ripe old age. The prophet said that he would, “if he will not have come to know himself.” Narcissus grew up and was desired by many youths and maidens, but he was also filled with a “firm pride” says Ovid, so that none dared to touch him.
Echo saw him strolling through the forest with some friends, and was immediately stricken with love for him. Ovid says she “burned with passion” for the boy. She followed him, stalked him really, but she couldn’t make a move because she couldn’t speak! So she waited for the right time when she could return his utterances with her own words.
As fate, or shall I say myth, should have it, he becomes separated from his friends and shouts, “is anyone there?” Echo replies “there!” Narcissus is dumbfounded and looks all around and shouts, “Come!” Of course, Echo calls back to him with the same word. He then says, “why do you run away from me?” She echoes his words exactly. This is the first reflection that beguiles him: echo’s persistent voice echoing his own…
Narcissus says, “come here and let us get together.” And echo, never with more willingness or desire, says, “Let us get together.” At this she runs from the woods and throws her arms around Narcissus and, I imagine, begins to kiss him all about. He eludes her grip and flees saying, “I would die before I let you posses me.” And in what I think is one of the most poignant scenes in all of mythology, Echo, standing there broken hearted, says, “Posses me.” And now, Echo becomes fixated, hiding in caves and pining away for the boy. She wastes away into thin air, only her voice remaining.
And so it happens that another (as it happens, a young lad), who was rejected by Narcissus, invokes a curse that he should fall in love and not be able to possess his beloved. So, while narcissus was leaning over a pond trying to quench his thirst, he became captivated by the reflection of beauty that he saw. Ovid says that he, “…fell in love with a hope insubstantial, believing that what was only an image to be real and corporeal.” He was transfixed by what he saw; such beauty and grace!
Finally, it slowly dawns on him, but the awareness is too late to save him: “I am you! I realize it; my reflection does not deceive me; I burn with love for myself. I am the one who fans the flame and bears the torture.” He too disappears, and Echo felt sorry for him, even though she had formerly been angry and resentful. “Each time the poor boy exclaimed ‘alas,’ she repeated in return an echoing “alas.”
Narcissus’ last words were “alas for the boy I cherished in vain.” Echo repeated these words as well, and when the boy said “farewell,” she repeated farewell too. As the Nyads were preparing his funeral pyre, they discovered that his corpse was nowhere to be seen. Instead they found a yellow flower with a circle of white petals in its center—the narcissus.
This myth is redolent of irony. Narcissus could only see himself, and didn’t realize it was himself!! It’s as though he experienced a profound depersonalization. It is profoundly ironic that in entering too much into self as subject, we lose ourselves: our consciousness, our ego, our sense of me-ness, and as James Hillman says, we lose too, “our sense of the world.” Even the death of Narcissus is ironic because instead of leaving a corpse, he leaves a beautiful flower we know as the Narcissus. Virtually everything Echo says is ironic, because she may never use her own words to express herself, thus the words she uses–the words that come to her from overhearing, she uses to mean something entirely different.
Echo used irony to bridge the emotional and psychic distance between herself and Narcissus, and this is one of the two enormous potentialities that irony offers: Irony may bring one closer to one’s truth, or it may move you father away from it depending on one’s particular psychology in a given moment. If the truth of the moment is too dangerous, irony will move you away. But…if you want to really move into the depths of oneself and discover the potential for regeneration, rejuvenation, and significance, then irony offers itself as a compelling vehicle of self exploration.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote:
“Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks eo ipso what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude. (The Concept of Irony, pt. 2, “Irony as a Mastered Moment. The Truth of Irony”).”
But the use of irony can feel psychologically threatening, dangerous, because it may lead us into the Underworld, and we carefully construct our lives to avoid having just such an underworld experience. How does Irony do this? Remember the Narcissus flower that grew up where Narcissus’ corpse should have been? In order to please Hades, Zeus “produced as a snare for the fair maiden a wonderful and radiant narcissus, an awesome sight to all, both immortal gods and mortal humans. From its stem a hundred blossoms sprouted forth, and their odor was most sweet…The girl was astounded and reached out with both hands together to pluck the beautiful delight (Homeric Hymn to Demeter).”
When Persephone plucks the flower, Hades himself, astride his awful chariot powered by his dark horses, emerges through the opening in the earth where the Narcissus flower had just been and abducts Persephone into the Underworld. In virtually all other myths, Persephone seems far from unhappy with her fate. She is always described as beautiful, powerful, and queenly. She has come into her own as the result of her underworld experience, she is the beautiful Queen of the Underworld, ruling alongside her husband. In fact, she, along with her mother and Dionysus, is the focus for the mystery religion at Eleusis.
Hillman, following the Keatsian notion that the world is a “vale of soul making,” asserts that soul is made in the depths; in the valleys, in the depressions, in the darkness, in the vales. It’s likely that Persephone, as the result of her initiatory experience, is also exposed to the hidden wealth of her own psyche through her abduction to the underworld. Besides, doesn’t it feel like an abduction when we find ourselves depressed, wounded, or in a sticky situation that isn’t likely to end well? There is, at the same time, a momentum which pushes our own psyche farther along towards individuation and wholeness. In fact, it is only the experience of something so overwhelming that it threatens to destroy us, which may put us in touch with the awareness of our wholeness. Rilke says this of art. Surely this can be said of the development of the soul as well: “Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further (Letter, 24 June 1907 to his wife, published in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne, 1952; tr. 1985).”
The irony is, that just when we think we can go no farther into our own depths, just when we think we can bear no more, is the exact moment when we can and we must.
Dr. Bradley Olson is a Jungian psychologist in private practice and co-owner of Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona. He is also a frequent lecturer and writer whose topics intersect with mythology, psychology, spirituality, and culture. To contact him about this article, e-mail Dr. Olson at mythopoesisme@aol.com or visit mwhealingarts.com.
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