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[[File:Bouguereau first kiss.jpg|thumb|Cupid kissing Psyche, by [[William Bouguereau]]]] |
[[File:Bouguereau first kiss.jpg|thumb|Cupid kissing Psyche, by [[William Bouguereau]]]] |
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The tale of '''Cupid and Psyche''' (also known as ''Amour and Psyche'' or ''Eros and Psyche''), is a story told by an old woman in [[Apuleius|Lucius Apuleius]]'s novel, ''[[The Golden Ass]]'', written in the 2nd century AD. Apuleius presumably used an existing myth as the basis for his story, since sculptural depictions of Cupid and Psyche have been found dating back to the [[Hellenistic period]]. |
The tale of '''Cupid and Psyche''' (also known as ''Amour and Psyche'' or ''Eros and Psyche''), is a story told by an old woman in [[Apuleius|Lucius Apuleius]]'s novel, ''[[The Golden Ass]]'', written in the 2nd century AD. Apuleius presumably used an existing myth as the basis for his story, since sculptural depictions of [[Cupid]] and Psyche have been found dating back to the [[Hellenistic period]]. |
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[[Psyche]] ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|aɪ|k|iː}}, {{Lang-el|Ψυχή}}) was the ancient Greek word for [[soul]] or [[life]]. The soul was personified in ancient iconography as a goddess with [[butterfly]] wings (because psyche is also the Greek word for 'butterfly'). |
[[Psyche]] ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|aɪ|k|iː}}, {{Lang-el|Ψυχή}}) was the ancient Greek word for [[soul]] or [[life]]. The soul was personified in ancient iconography as a goddess with [[butterfly]] wings (because psyche is also the Greek word for 'butterfly'). |
Revision as of 12:33, 19 February 2013
The tale of Cupid and Psyche (also known as Amour and Psyche or Eros and Psyche), is a story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius's novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century AD. Apuleius presumably used an existing myth as the basis for his story, since sculptural depictions of Cupid and Psyche have been found dating back to the Hellenistic period.
Psyche (/ˈsaɪkiː/, Greek: Ψυχή) was the ancient Greek word for soul or life. The soul was personified in ancient iconography as a goddess with butterfly wings (because psyche is also the Greek word for 'butterfly').
The story of Cupid and Psyche has been interpreted as a Märchen, an allegory and a myth. Considered as a fairy tale, it is neither an allegory nor a myth, but the folkloric tradition tends to blend these.[1]
Story
The earliest recorded version of the story is the one told by Apuleius, which goes like this.
Psyche is a princess who is so beautiful that people begin to treat her like a goddess, making symbolic gestures and even sacrifices to her. The goddess Venus is jealous of this and decides as her revenge she will ask her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with some ugly mortal. Cupid reluctantly agrees, and flies to Psyche's bedside. But as he is about to shoot one of his fateful arrows, Psyche wakes up, startles him, and he scratches his own leg. He falls in love with her.
Meanwhile, Psyche's parents are concerned that Psyche has no suitors. She is so beautiful that no one dares to propose to her. They go to an oracle of Apollo, which instructs them to prepare her for marriage as one would be prepared for human sacrifice. The parents tearfully carry out this instruction, escorting her in procession to the top of a cliff. Psyche accepts her fate boldly, saying she is eager to meet her beautiful new husband.
The parents and their entourage leave Psyche to her fate. Psyche is then transported to a wood, where she finds a beautiful palace. She goes in, and begins to live there, served by invisible spirits. She even has an invisible lover. But he tells her she is not allowed to look at him directly, and he visits her only at night. She doesn't even know who he is.
But Psyche can hear the voices of her sisters calling to her from the mortal realm. She goes back to visit them. They hear her stories about her new life, and jealously they urge to look at her husband, raising doubts in her mind that he might be a monster. So that night she looks at him, using a lamp. She sees that he is a god. But she frightens him, and he jostles the lamp, spilling hot oil on himself, which injures him. He leaves her and goes back to the realm of the gods.
Psyche returns home and is miserable. She then goes to temples and makes sacrifices to all the gods to find out which one it was that had been her lover. The only god who will answer her is Venus. The god turns out to be none other than her son Cupid (i.e. Desire or Eros; Venus means sexual desire, and Psyche's name in turn means "soul"). Psyche begs Venus to help her find Cupid, and Venus then imposes a series of labors on Psyche - including a descent into Hades. Psyche is able to achieve these labors with help from divine assistants, including, for the last labor, Cupid himself.
Her successful completion of the labors means that Psyche is at last able to marry Cupid officially - she becomes immortal and they are united in eternity.
Then Psyche and Cupid have a baby, Voluptas (Pleasure) - who was, however, conceived before their official wedding.
Variants and adaptations
The first version in English was a translation of The Golden Ass by William Adlington in 1566, under the title The XI Bookes of the Golden Asse, Conteininge the Metamorphosie of Lucius Apuleius (London 1566).</ref>
The poet John Milton alludes to the story of Cupid and Psyche in the conclusion of his Comus (1634), attributing not one but two children to them: Youth and Joy.
Lully's Psyché is a Baroque French opera (or "tragédie lyrique") based on this story, from 1678. Matthew Locke's semi-opera Psyche is a loose reworking of Lully's opera.
Shackerley Marmion wrote a verse version of the story called Cupid and Psyche, published in 1637.
Bruno Bettelheim notes in The Uses of Enchantment, that the 18th-century fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is a variant of Cupid and Psyche.
Mary Tighe published the poem Psyche in 1805. She added some details to the story, such as the fact that there were 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 the bitter water on Psyche's lips. Tighe's Venus only asks one task of Psyche, to bring her the forbidden water, but in performing this task 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 was 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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner transferred the story to Victorian England in her novel The True Heart (1929), though few readers made the connection till she pointed it out herself.[2]
'Cupid and Psyche' was the title of a ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton with music by Lord Berners and decor by Sir Francis Rose, first performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet (now Royal Ballet) on 27 April 1939, with Frank Staff as Cupid, Julia Farron as Psyche, Michael Somes as Pan and June Brae as Venus.[3]
C.S. Lewis retold the story in his 1956 book Till We Have Faces.
James Hillman made the story the basis for his critique of scientific psychology, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology (1983).
Writer David Benullo was responsible for a low-budget movie, titled "Cupid", in which a perversion of the Cupid/Psyche myth was used to create a serial killer character (1997).
Carol Gilligan used the story as the basis for much of her analysis of love and relationships in The Birth of Pleasure (Knopf, 2002).
The Transformations of Lucius Otherwise Known as THE GOLDEN ASS, A New Translation by Robert Graves from Apuleius, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, Copyright 1951 by International Authors N.V.
References
- ^ Hendrik Wagenvoort, "Cupid and Psyche," reprinted in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), pp. 84–92 online.
- ^ J. Lawrence Mitchell, "Ray Garnett as Illustrator". Powys Review 10 (spring 1982), pp. 9–28.
- ^ Arnold Haskell (ed) 'Gala Performance' (Collins 1955) p213.
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.)
- Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 430 images of Cupid and Psyche)
- Tale of Cupid and Psyche engravings by Maestro del Dado and Agostino Veneziano from the De Verda collection