Beside the pleasant pool Narcissus lay
And bending over, quenched his thirst, to find
Within his heart a thirst of different kind...
Narcissus was an exceptionally beautiful sixteen-year-old Greek boy, hard and disdainful, who scorned everyone, including the nymph Echo who had fallen madly in love with him. But Echo got her revenge: one day Narcissus lay down beside a pool and, seeing his own reflection, was so smitten by his beauty that he fell in love with himself.
Narcissus never discovered that he was only looking at a reflection. He tried to clasp and kiss it, but naturally was unable to do so. Frustrated and tormented by not being able to possess the object of his desire, he grieved and grieved. When mourners came for him, even his body had disappeared. All that was left of him was a flower next to the pool.
This is the first recorded reaction to seeing one's own reflection - a pretty depressing story, to say the least.
But now let's fast forward a few millennia and shift our attention away from the cradle of western civilization to a distant outpost of the late l9th Century British Empire. For it was in Australia that a historic man-mirror encounter of quite a different sort was taking place.
How did it compare with Narcissus' sad tale?
Frederick Matthias Alexander was an exceptionally talented young man from Tasmania who spent a great deal of time looking at himself in a mirror. He was systematically seeking a way out of a voice problem that threatened his career and he was spending a lot of time looking at his reflection trying to figure out precisely what he was doing to himself that was causing his problem.
One can easily imagine his friends and colleagues becoming concerned about this odd behavior: "Fred just stands there in front of that damned mirror for hours on end. Can't even get him to come down to the pub for a beer anymore." "I know. Yesterday, when I stopped by his rooms, he was having an intimate talk with his reflection. That voice problem of his has gone to his head."
After achieving a considerable measure of success in his project, and in helping others with difficulties of their own, Alexander left his mirrors and his homeland and moved to England. No doubt some he encountered there also thought him a bit strange - in a harmless sort of way of course. Others saw genius in the man and attached great value to his discoveries. They read his books, gazed intently into their own mirrors, and gladly paid good money for lessons in his Technique. A few of them devoted their lives to furthering his work. This pattern continues today, forty years after Alexander's death.
