Cupid and Psyche
Encyclopedia
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
' novel, The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.
It has since been interpreted as a Märchen, an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
and a myth. Considered as a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
, it is either an allegory or a myth, but the folkloric tradition tends to blend these.
Legend
Envious and jealous of the beauty of a mortal girl named Psyche, VenusVenus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
asks her son Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
(known to the Greeks as Eros) to use his golden arrows while Psyche sleeps, so that when she awakens, Venus (Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
in the Greek tradition
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
) would place a vile creature for her to fall in love with. Cupid finally agrees to her commands after a long debate. As he flies to Psyche's room at night, he turns himself invisible so no one can see him fly in through her window. He takes pity on her, for she was born too beautiful for her own safety. As he slowly approaches, careful not to make a sound, he readies one of his golden arrows. He leans over Psyche while she is asleep and before he can scratch her shoulder with the arrow, she awakens, startling him, for she looks right into his eyes, despite his invisibility. This causes him to scratch himself with his arrow and fall deeply in love with her. He cannot continue his mission, for every passing second he finds her more appealing. He reports back to Venus shortly after and the news enrages her. Venus places a curse on Psyche that keeps her from meeting a suitable husband, or any husband at that. As she does this, it upsets Cupid greatly, and he decides as long as the curse stays on Psyche, he will no longer shoot arrows, which will cause the temple of Venus to fall.
After months of no one — man or animal — falling in love, marrying, or mating, the Earth starts to grow old, which causes concern to Venus, for nobody praises her for Cupid's actions. Finally, she agrees to listen to Cupid's demands, allowing him one thing to have his own way. Cupid desires Psyche. Venus, upset, agrees to his demands only if he begins work immediately. He accepts the offer and takes off, shooting his golden arrows as fast as he can, restoring everything to the way it should be. People again fall in love and marry, animals far and wide mate, and the Earth begins to look young once again.
When all continue to admire and praise Psyche's beauty, but none desire her as a wife, Psyche's parents consult an oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
, which tells them to leave Psyche on the nearest mountain, for her beauty is so great that she is not meant for a mortal man. Terrified, they have no choice but to follow the oracle's instructions. But then Zephyrus, the west wind
West wind
A west wind is a wind that blows from the west, in an eastward direction. In Western tradition, it has usually been considered the mildest and most favorable of the directional winds....
, carries Psyche away, to a fair valley and a magnificent palace where she is attended by invisible servants until nightfall, and in the darkness of night the promised bridegroom arrives and the marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
is consummated. Cupid visits her every night to sleep with her, but demands that she never light any lamps, since he does not want her to know who he is until the time is right.
Cupid allows Zephyrus to take Psyche back to her sisters and bring all three down to the palace during the day, but warns that Psyche should not listen to any argument that she should try to discover his true form. The two jealous sisters tell Psyche, then pregnant with Cupid's child, that rumour 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 is 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 one of his arrows, 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 shoulder and wakes him. She watches him fly 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 on the mountaintop. Psyche later meets her other sister and deceives her likewise. Each sister goes to the top of the peak and jumps 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 where everything is in slovenly disarray. As Psyche is sorting and clearing the mess, Ceres (Demeter
Demeter
In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...
to the Greeks) appears, but refuses any help beyond advising Psyche that she must call directly on Venus, who caused all the problems in the first place. Psyche next calls on Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
in her temple, but Juno gives her the same advice. So Psyche finds a temple to Venus and enters it. Venus then 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.
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Venus, furious 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
Greek underworld
The Greek underworld was made up of various realms believed to lie beneath the earth or at its farthest reaches.This includes:* The great pit of Tartarus, originally the exclusive prison of the old Titan gods, it later came to be the dungeon home of damned souls.* The land of the dead ruled by the...
and ask the queen of the Underworld, Proserpina
Proserpina
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...
(Persephone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....
to the Greeks), to place a bit of her beauty in a box that Venus had given 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 Psyche and tells her the route that will allow her to enter the Underworld alive and return again, as well as telling her how to get past Cerberus
Cerberus
Cerberus , or Kerberos, in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed hound which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping...
(by giving the three-headed dog a small cake); how to avoid other dangers on the way there and back; and most importantly, to eat nothing but coarse bread in the underworld, as eating anything else would trap her there forever. Psyche follows the orders precisely, rejecting all but bread while beneath the Earth.
However, once 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
Eros
Eros , in Greek mythology, was the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid . Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son of Aphrodite....
), 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 Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
(Zeus) to aid them. Jupiter calls a full and formal council of the gods and declares that it is his will that Cupid marry Psyche. Jupiter then has Psyche fetched to Mount Olympus, and gives her a drink made from ambrosia
Ambrosia
In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia is sometimes the food or drink of the Greek gods , often depicted as conferring ageless immortality upon whoever consumes it...
, granting her immortality. Begrudgingly, Venus and Psyche forgive each other.
Psyche and Cupid have a daughter, called Voluptas
Voluptas
In Roman mythology, Voluptas or Volupta is the beautiful daughter born from the union of Cupid and Psyche. She is often found in the company of the Charites, or Three Graces, and she is known as the goddess of "sensual pleasures" whose Latin name means "pleasure" or "bliss".Some Roman authors...
(Hedone
Hêdonê
Hēdonē is an English transliteration of a Greek word meaning pleasure, and is the root of the English word "hedonism". In the philosophy of Epicurus, hēdonē was the quest for pleasure that would have only good consequences...
in Greek mythology), the goddess of "sensual pleasures", whose Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
name means "pleasure" or "bliss".
Relations and origin
In Greek mythologyGreek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Psyche was the deification of the human soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
. She was portrayed in ancient mosaics as a goddess with butterfly
Butterfly
A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...
wings (because psyche is also the Greek word for 'butterfly'). The Greek word psyche literally means "spirit, breath, life or animating force".
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, and the most beautiful person on the island. Suitors flocked to ask for her hand. She eventually boasted that she was more beautiful than Aphrodite (Venus) herself, and Aphrodite sent Eros to transfix her with an arrow of desire, to 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, eventually marrying her and having her made a goddess by Zeus (Jupiter).
Though concerning gods and goddesses, Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche was generally relegated to the status of a "mere" folktale (in English a fairy tale). However, through Perrault
Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...
's Mother Goose Tales and with the popularity of other such collections in 17th century France, folk tales become recognized in Europe as a legitimate literary genre.
Later adaptations
William AdlingtonWilliam Adlington
William Adlington was one among the host of translators that made the Elizabethan era the "golden age of translations". His Englishing of Apuleius' 2nd century CE novel Metamorphoses, better known by its English title The Golden Ass was its first appearance in English and has been steadily...
translated the tale into English in 1566.
At the conclusion of Comus
Comus (John Milton)
Comus is a masque in honour of chastity, written by John Milton. It was first presented on Michaelmas, 1634, before John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater at Ludlow Castle in celebration of the Earl's new post as Lord President of Wales.Known colloquially as Comus, the mask's actual full title is A...
(1634), the poet John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
alluded
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to the story of Cupid and Psyche.
-
- "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
Shackerley Marmion
Shackerley Marmion , also Shakerley, Shakerly, Schackerley, Marmyon, Marmyun, or Mermion, was an early 17th-century dramatist, often classed among the Sons of Ben, the followers of Ben Jonson who continued his style of comedy...
wrote a verse version of the Apuleius story called Cupid and Psyche which was published in 1637.
Mary Tighe
Mary Tighe
Mary Tighe , was an Anglo-Irish poet.She was born in Dublin to Theodosia Tighe, a Methodist leader, and William Blachford , a Church of Ireland clergyman and librarian...
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
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
's Fairie Queene
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
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
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and also an early influence on John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, whose short Ode to Psyche
Ode to Psyche
"Ode to Psyche" is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". "Ode to Psyche" is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keats's attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes...
appeared in 1820.
William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
retold the story in verse in The Earthly Paradise (1868–70). Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...
wrote Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885; 1894). A full prose adaptation was included as part of Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
's novel Marius the Epicurean in 1885. Josephine Preston Peabody
Josephine Preston Peabody
Josephine Preston Peabody was an American poet and dramatist. She was born in New York and educated at the Girls' Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College....
wrote a version for children in her Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew (1897). Thomas Bulfinch
Thomas Bulfinch
Thomas Bulfinch was an American writer, born in Newton, Massachusetts. Bulfinch belonged to a well educated Bostonian merchant family of modest means. His father was Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the Massachusetts State House in Boston and parts of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C....
wrote a short adaptation for his Age of Fable which borrowed Tighe's account of Cupid's self-wounding. Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...
transferred the story to Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
England in her novel The True Heart (1929), though few readers made the connection till she pointed it out herself. C.S. Lewis retold the story in his 1956 book Till We Have Faces
Till We Have Faces
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a 1956 novel by C. S. Lewis. It is a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, which had haunted Lewis all his life, and which is itself based on a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius...
. Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
uses the story as the basis for much of her analysis of love and relationships in The Birth of Pleasure (Knopf, 2002).
Fairy tale variants
As Bruno BettelheimBruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.-Background:...
notes in The Uses of Enchantment
The Uses of Enchantment
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales is a 1976 work by Bruno Bettelheim in which the author analyses fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology....
, Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740...
is a variant of Cupid and Psyche.
External links
- Tales Similar to Beauty and the Beast (Texts of Cupid and Psyche and similar monster or beast as bridegroom tales, mostly of AT-425C form, with hyperlinked commentary).
- Robert Bridge's Eros and Psyche at archive.org: pdf or read online
- Mary Tighe, Psyche or, the Legend of Love (1820) HTML or PDF
- Voluptas
- Ode to Voluptas (Information about Voluptas, Daughter of Cupid & Psyche)
- Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, chapter 5 (1885)
- Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable (1913)
- D. L Ashliman: Folktexts: Cupid and Psyche
- Hermetic Philosophy: Cupid and Psyche (Illustrated with painting and sculpture.)
- Andrew Staniland
- Art
- Art Renewal Center: "Cupid & Psyche" by Sharrell E. Gibson (Examples and discussion of Cupid and Psyche in painting.)