According to classical Greek mythology, Narcissus was a young man of extraordinary beauty who, because of a curse caused by unrequited love, fell in love with his own image reflected in a lake and tried to seduce her without realizing that it was itself. Frustrated at not being reciprocated, he committed suicide with his sword and from his body was born a beautiful flower, the narcissus (Narcissus poeticus).
In this work, Salvador Dalí plays once more with the double image, on the one hand, we see Narcissus afflicted by the side of the lake before dying and, on the other, a hand holding an egg from which the narcissus flower is born. A clear example of the Dalinian paranoiac-critical method that the painter would complete with one of his most outstanding literary works, the poem of the same name in which he explains the meaning of the painting.
