He tells Psyche to stay away from them, but she starts whining and crying and threatening suicide (really!), until he reluctantly agrees to let her see them, knowing full well that their marriage is going to be in deep doodoo because of these chicks. Cupid, being of the divine persuasion, knows they’re on their way, and also has a strong hunch they’re bad news. Okay, so after a while of this, Psyche’s sisters set out to look for her.
But it amuses me to have the Latin text to look at next to the English.) So here’s the first big difference between Psyche and Beauty: Psyche never lays eyes on her husband (just hands), while Beauty won’t let him into her bed because she knows he’s ugly as sin. No, I can’t read the Latin myself I barely recognize some of the words. Kenney, of the University of Cambridge, from 1990. Come nightfall, IAMQUE ADERAT IGNOBILIS MARITUS ET TORUM INSCENDERAT ET UXOREM SIBI PSYCHEM FECERAT – oh, sorry, “there entered her unknown husband, mounted the bed and made her his wife” and then takes off again before daybreak (V.4.3). Psyche is a bit freaked out, but enjoys the luxuries of the palace, including some unseen musicians serenading her (hidden speakers in the walls is my guess – oh, wait, it’s a couple millennia too early for high-tech equipment). But Cupid has by now developed a heavy crush on Psyche, pretty as she is (no, pardon me, stunningly beautiful as she is), and he gets the wind god Zephyr to carry her off the mountain to a secret palace, staffed by invisible servants (!). Meanwhile, Psyche’s father is told that she needs to be sacrificed to the gods, exposed on a mountain peak, so that’s what they do. The goddess Venus gets ticked off at her – purely jealous spite on her part because humans are saying Psyche is Venus walking the earth – and sends her son Cupid out to kill the girl. C&P is the story of a king who has three daughters, the youngest of which, Psyche, is extremely beautiful (sound familiar already?). Now why am I even going into that whole thing? Because Cupid and Psyche, a story written by the second-century Latin writer Apuleius, is the earliest prototype of the “Beauty and the Beast” type of tale.
But then I’d just read Cupid and Psyche, which helps a lot. It’s been years since I’d read it, if not decades, and mostly what I remembered of it was that I found it kind of confusing. A couple of days ago, in the course of this study, I pulled out my copy of Till We Have Faces and started to reread it.
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