Cupid and Psyche Notes - (4.23 - 4.35)



4.23    a single, solitary maiden   Charite; she will not be named until well after the story is over (7.12) when the name of her fiancé and rescuer Tlepolemus is also revealed.
    your mother and your father   Like Psyche's parents, they will never be named.

4.24    the old woman    The narrator of Cupid and Psyche; she too is never named. We learned earlier that she is the robbers' slave, their cook and housekeeper; they refer to her as a lazy drunk and glutton (4.7), though she is loyal to them (4.25). Nothing has prepared us for her literary skill as a teller of tales.
    victim that I am!   Charite has none of the patience that Psyche displays when she must be separated from her parents, when she is to be sacrificed and not married (4.34). This is the first of a pattern of telling parallels and contrasts between the story of the audience and the story of Cupid and Psyche itself.
    stockade of stone   Compare Psyche, who complains at 5.5 that she is shut up as it were in a prison. Cupid too is under house arrest in Venus' palace (6.11), escaping at 6.21. Themes of imprisonment and liberation inform most of the tale.

4.25    a suicide leap   Like heroines in romances, Charite readily imagines suicide in moments of crisis. Psyche will have similar impulses; cf. 5.25, 6.12, 6.17.

4.26    tragic theater   Although dramatic metaphors are common throughout The Golden Ass, they are not to be found within Cupid and Psyche, although another such metaphor will appear in the framing of Cupid and Psyche immediately after its completion at 6.27. Myth is the stuff of drama but does not take place in a world in which drama is performed.
    a young man   Tlepolemus, who will infiltrate the robber band, get himself elected as its leader, and then rescue his fiancée (7.5–12).
    in the same bed    Charite and Tlepolemus, like Cupid and Psyche, share a room and a bed prior to the marriage that will legitimate the arrangement. The old woman must be listening carefully here and crafting her tale accordingly.
    they abducted me   Lucius the ass was similarly abducted by robbers immediately after his transformation into an ass (3.27–29). His disappearance prevented the witch's serving girl from providing the antidote (roses) in a timely manner. Lucius must be listening carefully here, appreciating the parallels between himself and Charite, parallels made more pronounced after Cupid and Psyche is over (6.25–30; see below).
    Attis . . . Protesilaus   Charite believes that these tragic marriages parallel her own; they are not quite parallel, but they do prepare us for Psyche's doomed marriage. The old woman will then seem to be tailoring her tale to Charite's situation. Attis castrated himself in a frenzy on the day of his wedding. Protesilaus did marry Laodamia but left for Troy the day after and was the first Greek to be killed there.

4.27    nightmare   Prophetic dreams are also the stock-in-trade of the romances. Although the old woman dismisses Charite's fears, and the details are mostly wrong, Tlepolemus will be killed by a friend who schemes to win Charite for himself (8.5). When Charite is freed, we think that the dream was folly and the old woman was right; only later do we realize what a bad omen it was. Abduction, followed by separation and ultimately by reunion, is the essential plot of the romance. Compare Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, in which Chaereas thinks that he has killed his pregnant wife, buries her in a seaside tomb, and soon discovers that she has been abducted by pirates who were looking for treasure but found the living girl and took her as well. Husband and wife will be reunited in Chariton, after the husband goes looking for her and in the process matures into an adult man. Charite's dream has the awful conclusion that the husband is killed in his attempt to rescue her. This nightmare is an antiromance. Charite's own suicide will come as a surprise at 8.14. It is from this passage that Gollnick 1999 is inspired to read all of Cupid and Psyche as a dream, though for him it is meaningful as Lucius' dream.
    the passion of Venus   To the extent that Cupid and Psyche is an erotic tale, these dismissive words have an ominous sense: the story that the old woman spins for Charite is in fact a precursor to her own very real disaster.
    elegant storytelling   The adjective harks back to the beginning of The Golden Ass and its promise of a collection of stories in the Milesian manner: "Let me whisper them ever so elegantly in your ears" (1.1). When Cupid and Psyche is over, Lucius will refer to what he has just heard as "a beguiling fiction" (bellam fabellam, 6.25).

4.28    a king and a queen   In this fairy-tale world, names are either meaningful or unnecessary. This anonymous couple frustrates the allegorists: Martianus Capella (Appendix II) will call them Sol and Endelechia; Fulgentius (Appendix III) will identify them as God and Matter.
    daughters, three in number   Grouping women in threes is common in Greek and Roman mythology; the three Graces are particularly relevant, as Charite's (as yet unrevealed) name is the singular of Grace. Only Psyche is named. Fulgentius calls the older two Flesh and Freedom of the Will. They are not stepsisters but they are certainly wicked.
    herds of her fellow citizens   In romances, crowds react similarly to the heroine, confusing her with a goddess and leading the reader to expect that only the most handsome of men will be found worthy to be her husband. True to romance conventions, this is a bad sign and signals the beginning of complications for a love whose course will not run smooth.
    the neighboring cities   The locale of the story is never specified, and travel from point to point is rapid and vague. The sisters will travel back and forth by boat with ease between Psyche's crag, their own palaces, and their parents' palace.
    the earth and not the sea   To the philosophical reader thinking of Earthly and Heavenly Aphrodite, this raises a good question: If Psyche is like Venus, just what sort of Venus is she like?

4.29    Paphos . . . Cnidos . . . Cythera   Important cult centers for the worship of Venus.
    flowers   As the antidote for Lucius' transformation is the eating of roses, one may imagine his reaction to this detail: Would he like to be in Psyche's place?

4.30    mother of the nature of the universe   Venus describes her cosmic powers in language borrowed from the proem to Lucretius' epic On the Nature of the Universe.  But Jupiter will claim similar powers at 6.22 (to Cupid: "You have shot at me again and again and pierced the heart within my breast which would arrange the balance of the four elements and the risings and the settings of the stars"); and in the final book, they will be assigned to Isis, the sum total of divinity (11.5: "At my nod, I set in place the lights and heights of heaven, the salubrious sea-breezes, the silences of the despairs of Hell").
    the shepherd Paris   A reference to the "Judgment of Paris," the story staged at the end of Book 10 (10.30–34), which excites the anger of the narrator because of the bribery that bought the outcome and brought the Trojan War. Venus does not make a good case for her august nature with this reference.
    torches   Cupid has no torches in this story (cf. 5.22, end), though Venus refers to them as his proverbial attributes. Psyche will prove to have a torch of sorts when she burns Cupid with the oil lamp (5.23).
    Psyche   The name is delayed both out of Apuleian habit and for a particular effect. The reader is surprised to learn that Psyche is the name of the girl in a fairy-tale setting, for she is the subject of much philosophical speculation; this then is a tease, because her lover must be Cupid, and readers will have to wait a long time for Psyche to find out what is obvious to them from the start.

4.31    some man who is lowest of the low   Venus' plans are never effected, but later, when the sisters are trying to separate Psyche from her invisible lover, they intend to marry her off to someone they find suitable (5.20: "we . . . will join you, in the marriage we have prayed for, to a human husband as a human bride"). Given their envy and their own miserable husbands, they would surely try to do what Venus intends here.
    osculation   Venus is known for her French kissing; cf. 6.8; Index, s.v. kisses. The suggestion of incestuous relations between mother and son is presented as a comic detail.
    then leaves for the nearest shore   We next find her in the depths of Ocean at 5.28. Venus is often shown making a speech and then leaving; her absences are necessary for the plot, as things have to happen behind her back (cf. 5.31, 6.7, 6.10).
    an orchestration of oceanic obedience   The minor divinities of the sea serve two functions here. First, they create a beautiful visual scene; second, they associate Venus with mythical trivia. This is a comedown from her cosmic self-description and part of an ongoing comic presentation of the world of mythology.

4.32    as if at an image   Clearly, Psyche must grow up in the course of the story and will move symbolically from lifeless statue to a loved and loving mother. But this suggests the image of a goddess, a cult statue; she looks like a goddess, which suggests that she does not look alive at all.
    she hates that beauty of hers   Another cliché of the heroine of the romance.
    Apollo at Miletus   Apollo's oracle at Didyma is near Miletus in Ionia. But Miletus is also the home of the notorious Milesian tales, erotic, comic, and scandalous. Apuleius, in breaking the narrative fiction of the old woman's story, asks the reader to view Cupid and Psyche as a Milesian tale, that is, not to take it too seriously. Of course, what is Milesian is Greek, but the oracle that follows is written not only in Latin but in elegiac couplets. Apollo's verse oracles are traditionally given in Greek epic hexameters. The poem is supposed to be arresting, suggesting that the story itself is like an elegy.

4.33    fit for a wedding with Death   Psyche on the crag is likened to Andromeda, the maiden chained to the rock who is rescued by Perseus. Further, as Venus' powers are patterned on her description at the beginning of Lucretius (above, 4.30), we should compare Psyche to Iphigeneia, whose sacrifice is portrayed immediately afterward in Lucretius (1.82–101) as a marriage to death and which demonstrates the horrors inspired by traditional Olympian religion. From the woman's point of view, marriage is like death. The point will be reinforced at 5.4, when the invisible attendants in Cupid's palace take care of Psyche after the rape: "the waiting voices . . . attend to the new bride for the virgin life just taken."
    snake-like beast   Two things are remarkable here. First, the oracle does not represent Venus' wishes, and Cupid must be thought responsible, if an explanation is required, for talking to Apollo and winning him over to his side in the plot that he is hatching. Pan too, when he appears at 5.25–26, is described as "somehow or other, not unaware of her catastrophe." See Kenney 1990a. Second, Cupid wants to present himself both as a phallic monster and as a thing with wings. To the reader who knows that any story about Psyche is about Cupid and Psyche, this is confusion of details, regardless of how appropriate they may seem in a story about the maiden who becomes a wife.
    Styx   The river of the dead by which the gods take their oaths. Psyche fetches water from the Styx at 6.15, where Jupiter's fear is again mentioned. Jupiter's fear of Cupid, the source of his embarrassing love affairs and animal transformations, is the comic substance of his dialogue with Cupid at the end of the story (6.22).
    the whole city shared in the sorrow   Incredibly, Psyche's sisters are not in the procession, for they have to find out later (5.4, 5.7) just where Psyche's crag is. This presumably gives some comfort to Charite; the whole town will turn out rejoicing when she returns at 7.13.

4.34    living corpse   In stressing the paradox that this is death, not marriage, the narrator should be seen as commenting directly on Charite's situation, where abduction and a dream of death have replaced a wedding. She stokes Charite's fears before attempting to alleviate them. As for Psyche's story, she goes from living corpse here to "sleeping corpse" at 6.21, just before Cupid revives her and arranges for their marriage.
    daughter urges them on   There is a strength and courage in Psyche at this point in the story that will be promptly lost when she is in Cupid's palace and is known as "simple Psyche" or when she constantly contemplates suicide when faced with her wanderings and her tasks. There is a loss of personality involved in the marriage and, to a certain extent, a recovery of it.
    Envy   A key term, it is the motive of Venus, the sisters (5.8, 5.9), and the lamp (5.23). This helps to create Psyche's passive character, the object of the feelings of those around her.
    born to destroy   Psyche overstates the case: the oracle has the beast fighting the whole world, but not destroying it. It is never made clear that the actual words of the oracle were shared with Psyche. The king shares them with the queen at 4.33.

4.35    shadowy recesses of the palace   This stands in contrast to the palace of Cupid, an abode of perpetual light—that is, until the bedroom is characterized by the darkness that Cupid hides in.
    The delicate breath of Zephyr   The tone of the story changes in this paragraph, where all is soft and gentle. Psyche's loss of control comes with a sense of wonderment: she now does not know what to expect. Zephyr is a crucial part of the story, not just a magical conveyance but a functioning boundary between the real world and never-never land.

 



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