First Thoughts on "Cupid and Psyche"
Feb. 10th, 2011 06:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI'm pondering what looks like it will become a lengthy essay, not just on C&P but on close reading, moralizing, and myth-making.
The oldest version of the story appears in The Golden Ass, and it is nothing like Ashcroft-Nowicki describes it in Your Unseen Power. I'll do a complete breakdown later, probably this weekend, but one of the biggest points of departure is that A-N describes Psyche as "wandering the earth looking for her lost love" and "as she does, she meets and helps [various small creatures] along the way." These small creatures then help her in her trials later.
Nope. The only "helping" she does is to straighten a temple of Ceres -- which earns her the gratitudes of the goddess, but not the help. The various beings who help her later (ants, eagle, river, reeds) do so because she's beautiful and naive and they take pity on her.
She is passive, suicidal, and gives her trust to the wrong people. The only time she takes decisive action is to deliberately orchestrate the deaths of her sisters, who had persuaded her to try to kill her husband.
"Cupid and Psyche" is frequently referred to as an allegory for the purification of the soul through trials until it is ready to stand with the gods. I think they're pushing the story a bit to make this connection. Even at the end, Psyche is not deified because of her own merits but because Cupid is in love with her and he persuades Jove to do him a favor. Personally, I think it reads more like a romantic farce than a spiritual allegory.
I am going to continue studying and reflecting on the story and its variations and see where it takes me, and I still like the idea of the story as a personal meta-story. But it's definitely going to involve some myth-making of my own, not adopting the story as it is.
The oldest version of the story appears in The Golden Ass, and it is nothing like Ashcroft-Nowicki describes it in Your Unseen Power. I'll do a complete breakdown later, probably this weekend, but one of the biggest points of departure is that A-N describes Psyche as "wandering the earth looking for her lost love" and "as she does, she meets and helps [various small creatures] along the way." These small creatures then help her in her trials later.
Nope. The only "helping" she does is to straighten a temple of Ceres -- which earns her the gratitudes of the goddess, but not the help. The various beings who help her later (ants, eagle, river, reeds) do so because she's beautiful and naive and they take pity on her.
She is passive, suicidal, and gives her trust to the wrong people. The only time she takes decisive action is to deliberately orchestrate the deaths of her sisters, who had persuaded her to try to kill her husband.
"Cupid and Psyche" is frequently referred to as an allegory for the purification of the soul through trials until it is ready to stand with the gods. I think they're pushing the story a bit to make this connection. Even at the end, Psyche is not deified because of her own merits but because Cupid is in love with her and he persuades Jove to do him a favor. Personally, I think it reads more like a romantic farce than a spiritual allegory.
I am going to continue studying and reflecting on the story and its variations and see where it takes me, and I still like the idea of the story as a personal meta-story. But it's definitely going to involve some myth-making of my own, not adopting the story as it is.
