鏡が映すもの

Abstract

There is no world without mirrors. The oldest mirror is supposed to be the one excavated in an old city in Mesopotamia, dated from B.C. 2500 to 2000. Since then, the mirror has served as a tool to reflect our faces, as a decoration and as a precious thing, magical or sacred. Modern science would have been impossible without mirrors. Apart from man-made mirrors, nature has provided us with water-mirrors, showing another image of ourselves, teaching us what we are. In this report, three scenes regarding water-mirrors are discussed. 1. Narcissus peering into his own reflection. 2. Eve, just after being created by God and awakened, looking at her image in the water. 3. The monster in the novel Frankenstein whose first view of his own face shocked and brought him to despair and hatred toward mankind. Although the ways the mirror reflects us are many and varied, it surely reveals to us what we are and what is hidden within us.