Guillaume de Lorris' Rose or the Mourning Beat of Narcissism

Guillaume de Lorris' Rose or the Mourning Beat of Narcissism Claire Nouvet AN ALLEGORY OF LOVE, Guillaume de Lorris' Romance of the Rose performs a provocative gesture when it decides to graft the pool of Narcissus at the very center of its own oneiric space. The Ovidian pool is indeed the site of a death which the text does not ignore since it inserts the pool within a marble stone that bears the following inscription: "Here died Narcissus." This inscription immediately precedes a plot summary of the story of Narcissus as it is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses. As it recalls the Ovidian death, the text at the same time strips the pool of all negative connotations . The site of a deadly self-reflexion in Ovid, it is now turned into a source of life. The water of Narcissus' pool propagates itself in the numerous fountains disseminated throughout the narrative space. These pools, "clear and lively," both cite and amplify the "fons" (the source) that Narcissus' pool was in the Ovidian text while at the same time rewriting this source in positive terms: they give life to the "thick and short" grass that surrounds them [1389-96]' as the pool of Narcissus gives life to the "thick and close" grass that borders it [1531-32].2 While the text tries to control the impact that the Ovidian citation may exert on the lyric context by rewriting it in positive terms as a source of life and fertility,' the Ovidian matter cannot be so easily contained. As the water of the pool irrigates the entire dream, so does the Ovidian citation inform the entire text. It in effect spreads over the lyric world the ghostly shadow of Narcissus. And it is the return of this shadow that I will trace in the grass and flowers that the water of the pool is made to generate. The flowers that blossom and the grass that "verdoie" metaphorize in lyric poetry the birth, growth and blossoming of love,4 which is thus assimilated to a natural "growth." The text cites this lyric metaphor while at the same time using it to prepare the appearance of the red rose, the allegorical figure of the erotic object. A figure for the birth of love and for the loved object, the lyric flowers are, however, diverted from their intended meaning by their association with the Ovidian pool. As it flows throughout the dream, the water of Narcissus' pool generates its luxuriant vegetation, its tender grass and its beautiful flowers. By having these lyric tropes grow out of the Ovidian pool, the text suggests, in spite of itself, that the figures of lyric love may grow out of the narcissistic water, of the narcissistic matter. It diverts them from their intended meaning, a diversion Vol. XL, No. 1 3 L'Esprit Créateur that is first indicated in the apparently anodyne wordplay that Charles Mela points out and that assimilates the birth of flowers to the birth of the self: nule flor en esté ne nest Qui n'i fust, ties flor de jenest (887-88) [No flower bom in the summertime was missing from it, not even the flower of the broom (p. 42)] In the "summertime," that is, in the season of love, "I" must give birth to itself in a flower. This anagram implicitly defines all the flowers (and by extension all the natural vegetation) of the lyric garden as tropes for the self while at the same time evoking Narcissus' final metamorphosis into a flower, a metamorphosis that the text erases from its own summary. The narcissistic suggestion of this anagram is confirmed in the scene which, ironically enough, seems to present us with the very picture of happy and uncomplicated heterosexual pleasure. As he explores the garden, the protagonist discovers a group of allegorical characters who perform a beautiful "carole." The joy of the dance is abruptly interrupted when they disappear into the propitious shadow of the trees in order to "donoier" with their "amies," a verb that means "to court," "to speak of love," and even "to copulate."6 There, in the shadow of the trees, the dancers lay their ladies, their...