22 pages • 44-minute read
Ode to Psyche
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Background
Historical Context: The Mythological Story of Psyche
The story of Psyche is known only from The Golden Ass, a novel published in the 2nd century A.D. by Roman author Lucius Apuleius. Also known as The Metamorphoses, it was written in Latin. An English translation by William Adlington was published in 1566. As Apuleius tells it, Psyche was a beautiful young woman, the daughter of a king. She became so famous for her beauty that fewer people were worshipping at the shrines of the goddess Venus. Angry, Venus told her son Cupid (known as Eros in Greek tradition) to make Psyche fall in love with someone who was worthless. The plan did not work, however. One night in a castle, Psyche was visited by Cupid. It was dark and she could not see him, but he told her that he was her husband. He visited her for several nights but did not disclose his identity, and he also made her promise never to look upon his face.
When Psyche told her sisters about her lover, they were jealous and convinced her that she had married a serpent and must kill him while he slept. Following their instructions, Psyche held a lamp over the bed and saw the beautiful Cupid for the first time. She felt great love for him. Unfortunately, a drop of hot oil from the lamp fell on Cupid’s shoulder, burning him, and he flew away, leaving Psyche heartbroken and full of remorse.
Venus was angry that Cupid had failed to carry out her instructions. She made Psyche carry out a series of almost impossible tasks, such as sorting a roomful of different types of grains, extracting wool from a flock of man-killing sheep, and bringing a jarful of water from the River Styx, an underworld river, at the point where it emerged from the side of a mountain precipice. With help from ants, a talking reed, and the god Jupiter’s eagle, respectively, Psyche accomplished all these tasks.
Not to be deflected from her goal, Venus ordered Psyche to bring back from Hades a supply of Proserpina’s beauty ointment, Proserpina being the goddess of the underworld. Seeing no way of accomplishing this, Psyche was filled with despair. She climbed a tower, planning to jump off the top of it, but the tower spoke to her, telling her how to accomplish the required task.
Psyche followed the instructions to the letter. She entered the doorway to the Underworld and gave Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx, a coin to take her across the river in his boat. Ignoring various tricks that Venus used in attempts to derail her, Psyche threw a honeycake to the three-headed watchdog Cerberus so he would allow her to enter Proserpina’s palace. As directed by the tower, she refused the elaborate meal that Proserpina offered and accepted only bread. Proserpina willingly gave her the ointment in a box.
On Psyche’s return to the upper world, she forgot what the tower told her and opened the box. As a result, she fell into a deep, deathlike sleep, but Cupid came to her rescue and awakened her. (This moment is depicted in “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss,” a 1795 sculpture by Antonio Canova.) Cupid then flew off to Jupiter, asking the god to approve his marriage to Psyche, and Jupiter agreed to do so. Making Psyche immortal, Jupiter married her to Cupid. They eventually had a daughter named Volupta (Pleasure).
Authorial Context
For some years before writing “Ode to Psyche,” Keats had been interested in the Psyche myth. In an earlier poem, “I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,” which was published in his first book of poems in 1817, he zooms in on some of the vital elements in Psyche’s story. He tells how the first poet who told Psyche’s story expounded on how Psyche went
On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;
What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips
First touch’d; what amorous and fondling nips
They gave each other’s cheeks; with all their sighs,
And how they kist each other’s tremulous eyes:
The silver lamp, - the ravishment, - the wonder -
The darkness, - loneliness, - the fearful thunder;
Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown,
To bow for gratitude before Jove’s throne (Keats, John. “I stood tip-toe upon a little hill.” 1817. john-keats.com. Lines 141-50).
Keats also mentions Psyche in another of the odes he wrote in the spring of 1819. This is the “Ode on Melancholy” in which Psyche is symbolized by the “death-moth” and presented as “mournful Psyche” (Keats, John. “Ode on Melancholy.” poetryfoundation.org. Lines 6, 7).
In ancient Greece, moths were associated with the soul and the afterlife. In “Ode on Melancholy,” this image occurs in the first stanza, which is set in the underworld. It is very different from “Ode to Psyche,” in which the goddess is presented as a winged figure—she is often seen in mythology with butterfly wings—and described as “O happy, happy dove” (Line 22).
A clear echo of Psyche’s story can also be found in Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes,” which he wrote in January and February 1819, just a couple of months before “Ode to Psyche.” The heroine Madeline and her lover Porphyro are described in terms that resemble the Cupid and Psyche myth. Madeline is a Christian version of Psyche. She awakens at night in her chamber to see Porphyro standing before her. As S. R. Swaminathan comments: “Both Psyche and Madeline are symbols of the soul in its longing for divine love, its vision, its sorrow of separation from and its ultimate reunion with the beloved” (Swaminathan, S. R. The Still Image in Keats’s Poetry. Salzburg Studies in English Literature. 1981. p. 211-12).
Swaminathan also notes that Porphyro is “a mysterious supernatural lover appearing to Madeline in the dark in a prophetic vision,” and he adds that other symbols in the poem, such as “the castle, the casement, the feast, music, sleep and dream [are] adopted from the same myth” (p. 280).
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