Cupid and Psyche

Author: Lucius Apuleius

Time Period: 1 CE–500 CE

Country or Culture: Greco-Roman

Genre: Myth

Overview

The figure of Cupid (and to a lesser extent Psyche) has remained widely recognizable in Western civilization, transforming and evolving through centuries of art. At the core of this fascination is the myth of “Cupid and Psyche,” most famously told by Lucius Apuleius in his proto-novel The Golden Ass from the second century CE. Apuleius tells a long story of a man on a quest for religious and spiritual knowledge who unwittingly finds himself turned into a donkey, only to eventually reach redemption through the cult of Isis. Throughout this long and comical story, readers are also given a number of side-stories, the most famous of which is “Cupid and Psyche.” Paralleling the main narrative, “Cupid and Psyche” is likewise a tale of the quest for divine knowledge and the failings of the human spirit. For its narrative action and thematic concerns, however, it has found a life separate from The Golden Ass, being retold by poets and scholars into the twenty-first century.

Cupid, beholding her as she lay in the dust, stopped his flight for an instant and said, “Oh foolish Psyche, is it thus you repay my love? After having disobeyed my mother’s commands and made you my wife, will you think me a monster and cut off my head?”

“Cupid and Psyche,” The Golden Ass?

The main character of “Cupid and Psyche” is Psyche herself, a princess whose beauty attracts the ire of Venus, a powerful goddess of beauty and military conquest. Venus sends her son Cupid, the god of erotic love, to curse Psyche. However, Cupid falls in love with her instead, setting off a long series of misfortunes for the two lovers. While the narrative of love lost and love regained is engaging, Apuleius also constructs a complex philosophical allegory. Psyche, whose name represents the soul, strives for a union with Cupid, who represents the world of the divine through erotic love. That search is not simply about love, but about her desire for mysticism and something greater than humanity. The quest, then, becomes a process of maturation, Psyche learning the proper pursuit of knowledge and Cupid learning to come into his own as a god. With the quest complete (and lessons learned through their failures), the two finally come together again.

A number of interesting and complementary critical approaches have been applied to understand “Cupid and Psyche” over the years, and scholars have mined Apuleius in their exploration of human psychology, cultural archetypes, Platonic philosophy, and a wide range of related fields. While these varying approaches are all interesting in their own regard, it is the core story of the search for redemption, spiritual knowledge, and love that has continued to catapult the romance between Cupid and Psyche into the future. Many of the most famous poets and artists in the Western tradition have turned the attention to the title characters, and variations of the myth are seen in everything from modern novels to the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. In the end, “Cupid and Psyche” endures as testament to the constant failings that remain a necessary component of our search for love and truth.

Summary

In the mortal world, a king and queen give birth to three royal daughters, the youngest, Psyche, being a rare and striking beauty. She is so fair, in fact, that she attracts attention rivaling that given to >Venus, the goddess of beauty and love herself. The temples to Venus nearly abandoned, the goddess becomes enraged, unwilling to accept that a mortal woman could outshine her. The young girl is an affront not only to Venus’s own beauty, but to the order of the immortal world itself.

Venus calls up on her son Cupid, the god of erotic love, and tells him about Psyche. Like his mother, Cupid is a god who often finds pleasure in causing trouble for others, and he is quick to want to punish Psyche. Going into the garden of Venus, Cupid gathers water from both a sweet and a bitter fountain. The pierce of his arrow causes someone to fall in love with the first person he or she sees, and with the water from these fountains, he plans to ensure that Psyche falls in love with someone who is ugly and cruel. However, as he flies, invisible, into her room in the evening and drops some of the bitter water on her face, Psyche wakes up; Cupid is so startled that he pricks himself with his own arrow. Suddenly in love with the young woman, Cupid sprinkles some of the sweet water over her face and flies away.

Unaware of these conspiracies against her, Psyche continues searching for someone to marry, still unwed long after her sisters have found their princes. Her parents began to suspect that they might have upset the gods (indeed, without the blessing of Venus, Psyche would never be able to find love), and they consult an oracle. The oracle declares that Psyche will never find mortal love but will instead marry a monster that lives atop a mountain. While her parents are distraught at the news, Psyche herself accepts it and decides she would rather meet her destiny than hide from it. The family forms a procession and takes her to mountain, and once they have left her there, the gentle wind of Zephyr carries the crying princess away.

When Psyche awakens, she is in a beautiful grove and a large palace that is obviously the home of a god. Here, she wanders, finding her new home filled with gorgeous objects and fine foods. Out of nowhere, a voice addresses her, saying that anything she desires will be brought before her. Soon, Psyche settles into a routine in the palace, relaxing and enjoying the music of invisible musicians. Her husband, however, only ever comes in the evening and insists that she does not look at him. He tells her that he loves her truly and that she can have anything she desires, just so long as she never looks upon his face. To see him, he insists, would not aid their love, but would rather cast it into doubt.

While Psyche is at first satisfied with her new life, she over time comes to miss her family and eventually has her husband send for her sisters. When they arrive, they inquire about her husband immediately, and Psyche lies to say that he is a beautiful youth who is off hunting. The sisters, however, do not believe this, and they eventually get Psyche to admit the truth. They remind her of the prophecy their parents had heard and insist that Psyche must find out who her husband truly is. They convince her to sneak into her husband’s bedroom in the evening with a lamp and a knife, and tell her that if he is a monster she must immediately kill him.

When Psyche enters the bedroom, she does not see a monster, but instead the beautiful sleeping face of Cupid, who wakes when a drop of hot oil from her lamp falls on his shoulder. Realizing he has been discovered, Cupid flees out the window, and Psyche tries to follow, falling to the ground. As she lies there, Cupid declares that he is leaving her. Psyche watches as the palace disappears and she is instead returned to the home of her sisters. When they hear the news, they wickedly hope that Cupid will take one of them as his wife instead and jump off the mountain to be carried away by the wind, only to fall and die on the rocks below.

Psyche immediately begins searching for Cupid, unwilling to give up on their love. She stumbles across a temple to Ceres—the goddess of agriculture—that has been left in disrepair. When Psyche puts the temple back in order, Ceres takes pity on her and tells her that the only hope is to submit fully to Venus. Psyche goes to Venus and begs for forgiveness, but Venus declares that it is only through hard work that she would ever prove herself to be worthy of Cupid’s affection. Venus puts Psyche to a test, insisting that she sort gigantic piles of beans and grains, and leaves the princess to the impossible job. Psyche cannot even move she is so taken by the difficulty of the job, but Cupid uses his powers to command a group of ants to sort the food for her.

When Venus sees that Psyche has succeeded, she insists that it cannot be so and sets up another set of tests. First, Psyche must collect wool from a large number of violent and unruly sheep, a task that again Cupid magically helps her to accomplish. The next night, Venus sends Psyche with a box down to the underworld in order to fetch some of Prosperine’s beauty so that Venus might wear it to a gathering of the gods. Psyche believes the only way for her to reach the underworld is to die, and so she accepts her failure and prepares to jump to her death. However, a voice comes at the last moment and tells her how to pass safely into the underworld, stressing that once she receives the box with Prosperine’s beauty she must never open it.

Psyche follows the instructions carefully and receives the box. However, when she is almost home, she reasons that she herself carries a beauty similar to that of the gods and that she therefore has a right to gaze on Prosperine’s beauty and take some for herself. When she opens it, however, a devious sleep creeps out instead, and she faints on the path as though she were dead. Cupid, however, takes pity on her once again and wakes her gently with his touch. He gives Psyche the box and sends her on her way to Venus, then flies to the god Jupiter. There, Cupid convinces Jupiter that he and Psyche should be together, and Jupiter goes to Venus, arguing earnestly on behalf of the love of Cupid and Psyche. Venus eventually relents, and Jupiter offers Psyche a cup of ambrosia. Psyche drinks the liquid and instantly becomes a goddess herself, and she and Cupid go on to give birth to their own child, the goddess Pleasure.

Bibliography

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