Cupid and Psyche
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The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (also referred to as The Tale of Amor and Psyche and
The Tale of Eros and Psyche) first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old
woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.
Apuleius probably used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the
thematic needs of his novel. Read on its own, it is for the most part a straightforward
folktale.[citation needed]
The Abduction of Psyche by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau
Story summary
Envious and jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche, Venus asks her son
Cupid to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the vilest creature on
earth. Cupid agrees but then falls in love with Psyche on his own, when he leans over
from a distance to view her, causing one of his own arrows to fall forward piercing him.
When all continue to admire and praise Psyche's beauty but none desire her as a wife,
Psyche's parents consult an oracle, which tells them to leave Psyche on the nearest
mountain, for her beauty is so great that she is not meant for man. Terrified, they have no
choice but to follow the oracle's instructions. But then Zephyrus, the west wind, carries
Psyche away to a fair valley and a magnificent palace where she is attended by invisible
servants until night falls and in the darkness of night the promised bridegroom arrives and
the marriage is consummated. Cupid visits her every night to make love to her, but
demands that she never light any lamps, since he does not want her to know who he is.
Cupid even allows Zephyrus to take Psyche back to her sisters and bring all three down to
the palace during the day, but warning that Psyche should not listen to any argument that
she should not try to discover his true form. The two jealous sisters tell Psyche, then
pregnant with Cupid's child, that rumor is that she had married a great and terrible serpent
who would devour her and her unborn child when the time came for it to be fed. They
urge Psyche to conceal a knife and oil lamp in the bedchamber, to wait till her husband
was asleep, and then to light the lamp and slay him at once if it is as they said. Psyche
sadly follows their advice. In the light of the lamp Psyche recognizes the fair form on the
bed as the god Cupid himself. However, she accidentally pricks herself with an arrow,
and is consumed with desire for her husband. She begins to kiss him, but as she does, a
drop of oil falls from her lamp onto Cupid's chest and wakes him. He flies away, and she
falls from the window to the ground, sick at heart.
Psyche then finds herself in the city where one of her jealous elder sisters lives. She tells
her what had happened, then tricks her sister into believing that Cupid has chosen her as a
wife instead. She later meets her other sister and deceives her likewise. Each returns to
the top of the peak and jumped down eagerly, but Zephyrus does not bear them and they
fall to their deaths at the base of the mountain.
Psyche searches far and wide for her lover, finally stumbling into a temple to where all is
in slovenly disarray. As Psyche is sorting and clearing, Ceres appears, but refuses any
help but advice, saying Psyche must call directly on Venus, the jealous shrew that caused
all the problems in the first place. Psyche next calls on in her temple, but Juno, superior
as always, says the same. So Psyche finds a temple to Venus and enters it. Venus orders
Psyche to separate all the grains in a large basket of mixed kinds before nightfall. An ant
takes pity on Psyche and with its ant companions separates the grains for her.
Venus is outraged at her success and tells her to go to a field where golden sheep graze
and get some golden wool. A river-god tells Psyche that the sheep are vicious and strong
and will kill her, but if she waits until noontime, the sheep will go to the shade on the
other side of the field and sleep; she can pick the wool that sticks to the branches and
bark of the trees. Venus next asks for water from the flowing from a cleft that is
impossible for a mortal to attain and is also guarded by great serpents. This time an eagle
performs the task for Psyche. Venus, outraged at Psyche's survival, claims that the stress
of caring for her son, made depressed and ill as a result of Psyche's lack of faith, has
caused her to lose some of her beauty. Psyche is to go to the Underworld and ask the
queen of the Underworld, for a bit of her beauty in a box that Venus gave to Psyche.
Psyche decides that the quickest way to the Underworld is to throw herself off some high
place and die and so she climbs to the top of a tower. But the tower itself speaks to her
and tells her the route through that will allow her to enter the Underworld alive and return
again, as well as telling her how to get by throwing him a cracker and by paying him a
golden coin, how to avoid other dangers on the way there and back, and most importantly
to eat of no food whatsoever; for otherwise she will dwell forever in the Underworld.
Psyche follows the orders explicitly and eats nothing while beneath the earth.
However when Psyche has left the Underworld, she decides to open the box and take a
little bit of the beauty for herself. Inside, she can see no beauty; instead an infernal sleep
arises from the box and overcomes her. Cupid (Eros), who had forgiven Psyche, flies to
her, wipes the sleep from her face, puts it back in the box, and sends her back on her way.
Then Cupid flies to Mount Olympus and begs [, to aid them. Jupiter (Zeus) calls a full
and formal council of the gods and declares that it is his will that Cupid might marry
Psyche. Jupiter then has Psyche fetched to Mount Olympus, and gives her a drink made
from Ambrosia, granting her immortality. Begrudgingly, Venus and Psyche forgive each
other.
Psyche and Cupid's daughter was Voluptas, the goddess of "sensual pleasures," whose
Latin name means "pleasure" or "bliss".
Relations and origin
In Greek and Roman mythology, Psyche was the personification of the passion of
love.[citation needed] She was the youngest daughter of the king and queen of Sicily. She was
the most beautiful person on the island and suitors flocked to ask for her hand. In the end
she boasted that she was more beautiful than Aphrodite (Venus) herself, and Aphrodite
sent Eros to transfix her with an arrow of desire and make her fall in love with the nearest
person or thing available. But even Eros (Cupid) fell in love with her and took her to a
secret place and eventually married her and had her made a goddess by Zeus (Jupiter).
The Greek word "PSYCHE" literally means "SPIRIT" or "SOUL".[citation needed]
Though concerning gods and goddesses, Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche was generally
relegated to the status of a "mere" folktale, or in English a fairy tale or in German
Märchen. Though a common Perrault's Mother Goose Tales and following popularity of
other such collections in 17th century did folk tales become recognized in Europe as a
legitimate literary genre.
As Platonic allegory
Apuleius's narrative of Cupid and Psyche has frequently been analyzed as an allegory of
Platonism:
“
The tripartite division of the soul, the desire of the soul to be united with the
divine, the fall of the winged soul to the earth because of its evil burden, and
the distinction between the heavenly and the vulgar types of love are Platonic
ideas, which, according to some scholars, resemble specific events in the tale
of Psyche; thus Psyche's name, the portrayal of her character in relation to her
two sisters, her futile attempt to seize Cupid and fly with him to the sky, and
the ambiguous role the goddess Venus and her son Cupid play in the heroine's
life are themes that seem to transform Apuleius' literary fairytale into a
philosophical allegory.[1]
”
Later adaptations
William Adlington's English translation of 1566 is excellent reading and for some is still
the definitive English translation.
At the conclusion of Comus (1634), the poet John Milton alluded to the story of Cupid
and Psyche.
Psyche, by William Adolphe Bouguereau
"Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced,
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride;
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn."
The poet T. K. Harvey wrote:
"They wove bright fables in the days of old,
When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings;
When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold,
And told in song its high and mystic things!
And such the sweet and solemn tale of her
The pilgrim heart, to whom a dream was given,
That led her through the world,– Love's worshipper,–
To seek on earth for him whose home was heaven!
"In the full city,– by the haunted fount,–
Through the dim grotto's tracery of spars,–
'Mid the pine temples, on the moonlit mount,
Where silence sits to listen to the stars;
In the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove,
The painted valley, and the scented air,
She heard far echoes of the voice of Love,
And found his footsteps' traces everywhere.
"But nevermore they met! since doubts and fears,
Those phantom shapes that haunt and blight the earth,
Had come 'twixt her, a child of sin and tears,
And that bright spirit of immortal birth;
Until her pining soul and weeping eyes
Had learned to seek him only in the skies;
Till wings unto the weary heart were given,
And she became Love's angel bride in heaven!"
Shackerley Marmion wrote a verse version of the Apuleius story called Cupid and
Psyche which was published in 1637.
Psyche et L'Amour, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Mary Tighe in her poem Cupid and Psyche first published in 1805 explains the origin of
Cupid's love for Psyche. She adds two springs in Venus' garden, one with sweet water
and one with bitter. When Cupid starts to obey his mother's command, he brings some of
both to a sleeping Psyche but places only some of the bitter water on Psyche's lips and
prepares also to pierce her with an arrow:
Nor yet content, he from his quiver drew,
Sharpened with skill divine, a shining dart:
No need had he for bow, since thus too true
His hand might wound her all-exposed heart;
Yet her fair side he touched with gentlest art,
And half relenting on her beauties gazed;
Just then awaking with a sudden start
Her opening eye in humid lustre blazed,
Unseen he still remained, enchanted and amazed.
The dart which in his hand now trembling stood,
As o'er the couch he bent with ravished eye,
Drew with its daring point celestial blood
From his smooth neck's unblemished ivory:
Heedless of this, but with a pitying sigh
The evil done now anxious to repair,
He shed in haste the balmy drops of joy
O'er all the silky ringlets of her hair;
Then stretched his plumes divine, and breathed celestial air.
In the later part of her tale, Tighe's Venus only asks one task of Psyche, to bring her the
forbidden water, but in performing this task Tighe's Psyche wanders into a country
bordering on Spenser's Fairie Queene as Psyche is aided by a mysterious visored knight
and his squire Constance and must escape various traps set by Vanity, Flattery, Ambition,
Credulity, Disfida (who lives in a "Gothic castle"), Varia and Geloso. Spenser's Blatant
Beast also makes an appearance.
Tighe's work was appreciated by William Wordsworth and also an early influence on
John Keats whose short Ode to Psyche appeared in 1820.
William Morris retold the story in verse in The Earthly Paradise (1868–70). Robert
Bridges wrote Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885; 1894). A
full prose adaptation was included as part of Walter Pater's novel Marius the Epicurean
in 1885. Josephine Preston Peabody wrote a version for children in her Old Greek Folk
Stories Told Anew (1897). Thomas Bulfinch wrote a short adaptation for his Age of Fable
which borrowed Tighe's account of Cupid's self-wounding.
The English scholar and novelist C. S. Lewis wrote a fantasy novel based on the story of
Cupid and Psyche called Till We Have Faces (1954), notably telling the story from the
point-of-view of one of Psyche's sisters.
Beginning in 2000 Cupid and Psyche a musical adaptation by Sean Hartley with music
by Jihwan Kim has appeared in various productions in various theaters.
The Beauty Of Psyche is a retelling of the folktale by the English poet and novelist
Andrew Staniland. His novel uses paintings and sculptures, and has all the characters
played by actors, to evoke the imaginary world of the story and the final emergence of
Psyche as a goddess of the psyche.
In art Psyche is sometimes portrayed as a beautiful woman with the wings of a butterfly,
especially by William Adolphe Bouguereau.