Metamorphosis of Narcissus Metamorphosis of Narcissus Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. This painting is from Dalí's paranoiac-critical period. According to Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. Unable to embrace the watery image, he pined away, and the gods immortalized him as a flower. Dalí completed this painting in 1937 on his long-awaited return to Paris after having had great success in the United States. The painting shows Narcissus sitting in a pool, gazing down. Not far away there is a decaying stone figure which corresponds closely to
Falling in love arguments obscure the way sexual passion often leads not to secure attachment but to attachments thwarted, as well as the sheer frightening difficulties of all falling in love. Biologist Jeremy Griffith suggests that people fall in love in order to abandon themselves to the dream of an ideal state (being one free of the human condition). Stendhal charted the timing of falling in love in terms of what he called crystallization—a first period of crystallization (of some six weeks) which often involves obsessive brooding and the idealisation of the other via a coating of desire; a period of doubt; and