Reflections on a ‘Happy Ending’: The Case of Cupid and Psyche

Abstract

The yo-yo problem: first Psyche is mortal and exposed as though for death (DOWN); then she is rescued and cohabits with Cupid (UP); then she falls from Cupid (DOWN); then she searches and with help almost succeeds in her trials (UP); then she fails and lies in a sleep like death (DOWN); then she is rescued by and married to Cupid (UP).Ken Dowden, ‘Psyche on the Rock’ (1982)Well I've been down so goddam' long, that it looks like up to me.Jim Morrison, ‘Been Down So Long’ (1971)Bella fabella (‘beautiful little story’) exclaims the ass at the conclusion of the unnamed old woman's narration of the tale that we have come to know as ‘Cupid and Psyche’, a tale that occupies 63 chapters of books 4, 5 and 6 of Apuleius' Metamorphoses. The beauty of the tale is enhanced by the contrast with its setting: a bandits' cave whose inhabitants' heroicisation of violence and thuggery is very much in the spirit of Homer's Cyclops or Little Alex in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and an audience that comprises two individuals wrenched from their homes and families by these bandits' depredations—Charite, the kidnapped girl, and Lucius, lashed into assisting in the ransacking of his host Milo's house in Hypata. The tale transports us into a world of romance and fairy tale far removed from the difficulties and dangers of what is portrayed as the real world in Metamorphoses 1-10.