Echo and Narcissus
Classical Stories · No. 40 — A voice that could only repeat, a boy who could only stare.
- Classical Stories
- 37 min
- Ages 8–13
- 8 chapters
About this audiobook
Echo, a talkative nymph, is punished so that she can only ever repeat the last words spoken to her. She falls in love with Narcissus, a beautiful youth who scorns everyone who loves him — and because she can only echo his words, she cannot tell him how she feels, and he turns her away. Narcissus's coldness at last catches up with him: he leans over a clear pool, sees his own reflection, and falls hopelessly in love with a face that can never love him back or even be touched. He wastes away by the water, unable to leave, while Echo's voice fades to nothing but a sound among the hills.
Why it's worth a listen
Two of the strangest curses in myth meet in one story: a nymph who can only repeat the last words she hears, and a boy so beautiful and so cold that he falls in love with his own face in a pool and cannot look away. It is where the words 'echo' and 'narcissist' come from — and it is quietly one of the saddest tales the Greeks told.
A question to keep
What happens to someone who can only love their own reflection — and to those who love them?
Chapters
- Introduction
- The Girl Who Owned Every Word
- The Boy of Sun and Stone
- A Conversation of Shadows
- The Voice in the Stone
- The Silver Pool
- The Long Goodbye
- A Question to Keep