Reading Notes, Week 4: Cupid & Psyche

For this week's reading I have decided to go with the story of "Cupid and Psyche"

The story starts with a man turned into a donkey.  He is now the pack animal for a group of robbers.  The robbers go out on a raid and come back with nothing but a kidnapped girl.  They tell her they mean her no harm, only to use her for ransom, but she is extremely distraught.  They tell an old woman to sit with her & calm her.

The girl tells the woman that she was kidnapped on her wedding day.  To make matters worse, she just dozed off on the old woman & had a horrible nightmare about being kidnapped on her wedding day & that her kidnappers had killed her husband-to-be.

The old woman goes on to tell the younger girl a fairy tale to calm her.  It goes like this:  A king & queen had 3 daughters.  The oldest 2 were lovely, but the youngest was a beauty that no words could describe.  People came from war & wide to gaze on her & wondered if she was a goddess herself.  People thought the girl was Venus herself & quit worshiping Venus at her shrines, but were worshiping the girl as they thought she was Venus.  Venus was so angered at all this that she summoned her son, Cupid, to curse the girl to be seized with passion for the most wretched man around.

(Psyche honored by people)

The girl didn't find any good from her beauty.  Everyone gazed at and honored her, but no man wanted to marry her.  Her other sisters found good royal matches, but Psyche was left alone & crying.  Her parents feared divine hostility & the gods anger.  Her father went to Apollo's oracle to ask for a man to marry the girl.  He gave him a grave prophesy about his daughter.  And so it was that her parents led their daughter to marriage, which was more like a funeral and family in mourning.  Psyche tells her parents that this is the punishment for them allowing her to be worshiped and called as Venus.  That this was when they should have mourned, not now.  Her parents took her to the assigned cliff & left her there to wait.

Psyche was carried away to a beautiful meadow & there she rested.  When she awoke, she saw a place fit for a god.  She is amazed at all the beauty & treasure inside.  She hears a voice telling her that all of it is hers & she is to go to bed & rest & bathe.  She may hear voices, but they are those of her servants and when she is ready, they will prepare a feast.  So she did as they said.  She never saw a servant, but only heard voices.  She sat at the feast prepared for her alone & was entertained by invisible people as well.

Psyche retires to her chamber after the feast & is visited by her invisible husband.  She is still cared for by invisible servants.  Her parents meanwhile are aging & mourning in her absence.  Psyche's invisible husband comes to her & tells her that she is in grave danger & he wishes to protect her.  He tells her that her sisters think her dead & will come to the cliff-top.  If she hears their voices, she must not go to them or it will bring him the greatest pain & her great ruin.  Psyche began to grieve, that she was in a prison, a beautiful one, but still a prison where she had no human contact and couldn't see her sisters or tell them she was alive.  Her husband tired of her grieving and told her to do as she wished, but his warning was still true.  So her husband told her to visit them & give them whatever gifts she wanted but not to listen to them if they gave her bad advice & told her to seek out his appearance.  Psyche was much happier & told him she didn't care what he looked like.

The sisters did come to the cliff & Psyche could hear them crying.  She told them to quit mourning, she was alive & sent the wind, Zephyr, to retrieve them & bring them to her.  She embraced them & invited them into her home.  Her sisters, in seeing her home were insanely jealous & asked her who her husband was.  She made up a story & gave them lots of gold & sent them home again on Zephyr.  The sisters decide they are very jealous & angry that she has so much & they don't.  They decide Psyche is arrogant & treats them like servants so the decide to hide from their parents that she is alive & come up with ways to punish her.

The sisters come up with a plan to harm & even murder Psyche.  Psyche's husband warns her that her sisters are plotting from afar, but if she isn't strong, they will bring the danger to her in person.  He warns her again to not listen to them & not seek out his appearance.  He tells her she will have a child & if she does as he says, the child will be divine, but if not the child will be mortal.  She is overjoyed to know that she is pregnant.  Her husband gives her another warning that her sisters are on their way to harm her.  She swears to him she won't listen to them & begs that she get to see her sisters again anyway so he relents.

Her sisters give her many lies & tell her they want to help care for her child that will be like a little god.  Psyche gives them more gifts & tells them a different story of her husband, forgetting the first story.  The sisters leave & decide that she must be married to a god & carrying a divine child.  So they go back the next day & make up a horrible story that she is married to a monster & she shouldn't trust him, but only her sisters.  They convinced her to reveal her husband's appearance & murder him so they could have all his treasure & carry her back to marry a mortal.  Psyche forgets all her husband's warnings & agrees to the terrible plan.

She couldn't kill her husband, but she did use the lamp to reveal that her husband was Cupid himself.  She accidentally pricked her finger with one of his arrows & fell more in love with Love himself.  She accidentally woke him & he took flight once he realized his identity was revealed, but Psyche clung to him.  He told her what Venus had told him to do & that he took pity on her & took her for his own wife.  He told her that he would punish her sisters for making her reveal his identity, but Psyche he would punish by leaving her.  

Psyche was devastated & tried to kill herself.  She was told by Pan to worship Cupid for his help.  She wandered into the town where one of her sister's was & told her a made up story.  The sister rushed to the cliff, yelling for Cupid to take a worthy wife & told Zephyr to take her to him.  Zephyr didn't catch her & she fell to her death.  The same happened to the second sister. 

Bibliography:  Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius.  Weblink.