Cupid and Psyche: A Journey to the Underworld PDF

**Cupid and Psyche** ** The charming tale of Cupid and Psyche (as it's usually called) was a late Greek myth or folk tale. It is best known today from its retelling in an ancient novel written in Latin---the word "novel" meaning a sustained storytelling work written in prose, not poetry---from abou...

**Cupid and Psyche** ** The charming tale of Cupid and Psyche (as it's usually called) was a late Greek myth or folk tale. It is best known today from its retelling in an ancient novel written in Latin---the word "novel" meaning a sustained storytelling work written in prose, not poetry---from about 160 A.D., during the Roman Empire. The novel's author did not make up the Psyche tale but included it, as a preexisting legend, within his longer story.** **The author was a rich Roman citizen in North Africa named Lucius Apuleius; he wrote other works that survive today but is remembered mainly for his fascinating novel. Although the novel's formal title is *Metamorphoses* ("the Changes"), it is in English traditionally called *The Golden Ass* \["ass" meaning "donkey"\].** **Early in the novel, the protagonist, Lucius, is unhappily---and hilariously---transformed into a donkey when a frivolous experiment in black magic goes really, really wrong.** ***The Golden Ass* is the only ancient Roman novel that survives complete. Also it happens to be delightful reading: highly recommended for anyone interested in ancient Greco-Roman religion or Roman provincial life during the Empire. Get the translation by either Robert Graves or P.G. Walsh.** ***The Golden Ass* is set in Greece. The myth of Cupid and Psyche comes in when one character narrates the myth to a group of listeners. The myth is the novel's "centrepiece": falling exactly in the middle of the main story. The myth's long treatment and central placement are meant to clue-in the reader that this myth is important to Apuleius' bigger message.** **Also significant is the name of the young Greek woman who is the myth's "hero": Psyche (Greek: *psuchē*), meaning "soul". In real-life ancient Greece, this could be a girl's normal name. But in Apuleius' treatment, Psyche probably symbolizes two things at once: (1) your soul while alive, and (2) your soul or ghost after death. Both levels show some kind of progress or attainment.** ***The Golden Ass* overall is a bawdy tale. However, within the novel, the Psyche myth is not bawdy: It deals sweetly with a girl's romance and marriage and other challenges. Psyche is imagined as perhaps 18 years old, with a conventionally "feminine" personality---unlike (for example) Atalanta or Medea. Her adventures probably symbolize (1) the maturing and ennobling effect of romantic love on a young person and (2) the soul-in-death's attainment of a happy afterlife in Elysium, thanks to special knowledge and worship in the Greco-Roman religious "Mysteries". For background on the Mysteries or *Mustēria*, see our Oct. 22 lecture slideshow: Slides 5--18; also Buxton pp. 212--213 and 52, also page 30.** **Our textbook does not include the Psyche story, but there's some "deep background" at pp. 212--213, describing the lore of the ancient Mystery religion known as Orphism. The textbook quotes an Orphic document that predicts that the soul-in-death will face crucial choices and bad temptations on arriving in the Underworld: In overview, this picture somewhat resembles the [challenges that face Psyche] in the Underworld (as you'll read below).** **Apuleius' Psyche-in-the-Underworld seems to be in part an allegory for the "successful" journey after death of the soul of someone who has been initiated and educated in Orphism or another Mystery religion.** **Significantly, in Apuleius' [main] plotline, the character Lucius joins the Mysteries of the Egyptian goddess Isis after the goddess has personally helped him regain human form.** ** The entire Cupid and Psyche tale is much longer than the excerpt below. The tale's (here-omitted) beginning-section resembles the Beauty and the Beast fairytale---and that's because the 1740 original French *Beauty and the Beast* novel copied (partly) the ancient Psyche myth.** **In Apuleius' narrative in Latin, the gods have their Roman names: so "Venus" instead of "Aphrodite", "Proserpina" instead of "Persephone", etc. The winged teenaged Cupid is the Roman equivalent of the Greek minor god Eros (meaning "sexual love," "desire").** **Our textbook mentions Eros occasionally: for example on page 78 and at the bottom of the page 69 chart.** **The Cupid and Psyche tale involves an odd marriage between the human Psyche and the god Cupid (who in this version is Venus' son). At the start, Psyche is a girl living with her parents. She happens to be the most beautiful girl on Earth. Up in heaven, the arrogant Venus is jealous. Venus instructs her son to fly down and make Psyche fall in love with some ugly old man, so as to marry her off. Instead, unknown to Venus, Cupid falls in love with Psyche himself and marries her in complete secrecy.** **What follows is the episode that would be copied (and toned down) in *Beauty and the Beast*. Cupid and Psyche are officially married by some authority, yet Psyche never sees her husband or is told his identity. She is brought somehow to a luxurious mansion where invisible servants wait on her. At night she is visited by her husband, who seems to be a young man, yet she never sees him in the darkness. Nightly they converse, make love, and sleep together; by morning he is gone. He instructs her never to try to learn who he is.** **Eventually she disobeys him, in a famous scene, beloved by early modern painters: In the dead of night, Psyche lights an oil-lamp and brings it to the bed, to see who her husband is. (For the storytelling's sake, he evidently isn't invisible.) By the flickering lamplight she sees the sleeping god, with his slim musculature, luminous skin, feathery wings---but unluckily, in her outstretched hand, the lamp spills a drop of scalding-hot oil onto his skin. He wakes up. *Regarding the ancient technology of lamps fuelled by olive oil, see our Sept. 17 lecture slideshow, Slides 19--22.*** **Appalled at having been disobeyed by her, Cupid flies out the window and leaves the marriage.** **By the light of a bronze lamp, the newlywed Psyche discovers that her husband is none other than the god Cupid, in this 1768 painting by Louis Jean Lagené.**  **...And similar from Italian artist Giuseppe Naria Crespi, 1707.** **The next episode imitates the Labours of Heracles. Like Heracles but on much smaller scale, Psyche has sinned and must now do atonement. Psyche now becomes the slave or servant of her tyrannical mother-in-law, Venus. Supposedly if Psyche can successfully complete four Labours, then Venus will help reunite her with Cupid. As in the myths of Perseus, Bellerophon, or Jason, the assignments are meant to be impossible (but in Psyche's case not necessarily fatal): Venus [wants] her to fail. Yet Psyche always succeeds, partly due to mysterious divine help, not from Venus.** **By the last Labour, Venus apparently [does] want to kill Psyche: She wants to trap her in the Underworld forever.** **Psyche's living journey to the Underworld puts her in the tradition of Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus. Psyche's is the fifth great Greek myth of *katabasis­*---and a charming change-of-pace from the manly exertions of Heracles or Theseus.** **Here is Psyche's journey to the Underworld:** **---from *The Golden Ass* by Lucius Apuleius, Book VI. T**ranslated by A. S. Kline © 2013 Menacing Psyche with even more terrible threats, the goddess Venus \[= Aphrodite\] glared at her: "Seeing how readily you've performed those impossible tasks of mine, I'm certain you must be some kind of high and mighty witch. But there's one more little service you must perform, my dear. Take this empty jar and plunge from the light of day to the Underworld, to the dismal abode of Pluto \[= Hades\] himself. Hand the jar to Proserpine \[= Persephone\] and say, 'Venus asks that you send her a little of your beauty, enough for one brief day. She has used and exhausted all she had while caring for her son who's ill.' And don't be slow to return, since I need to apply it before I attend a gathering of the gods."