| Summary: | For those who are interested in garden, water is often considered as a principle of life, while it holds an intrinsic death-dealing value, which can be identified in cosmogonies and literary works from Greek Antiquity until our time. This article aims to analyse this assimilation, and to point out that this ambivalence is present in gardens as source of inspiration and as component of landscape work. More precisely, the article aims to understand this duality in the water values through an analysis of the Narcissus myth and the arts quarrel in which painting, eloquence and arts of garden face against each other. It will be proved that by leaving the representation for landscape composition, the water works as a trap for meteors and persons and remains, with its grievous power, a malicious genius of the gardens.
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