4 Cupid and Psyche (At 425A) and Beauty and the Beast (At 425C)

4 CUPID AND PSYCHE (AT 425A) AND BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (AT 425C) While Cinderella and Snow White have never yielded complete folktale versions from antiquity until now, Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche, on the other hand, is advanced even by its narrator in The Golden Ass as an anilis fabula, an ‘old wives’ tale’, as early as the mid-second century AD.1 There has been a long drawn-out controversy as to whether it really does have its origins in a popular fairytale, or whether instead it can be regarded as something completely different or supposedly so, such as a sacred tale or cult myth;2 or whether again it might be a literary confection from which a folktale has in the course of time been extrapolated. The presence of versions of Cinderella and Snow White in antiquity may change the climate and balance of probability to some extent, but the case for Cupid and Psyche as a popular fairytale has still to be made. Modern folktale versions of the story there undoubtedly are: Swahn was able to study an assemblage of well into four figures in the same manner as Rooth had studied versions of Cinderella.3 Something of the range of the tale as classified (AT Type 425A) can be seen from such examples as the following: A princess is shown her way home by a mysterious voice inside an iron stove; she is to return, release and marry him; after two false substitutes are offered he threatens to destroy her father’s kingdom if she is not sent. She comes, and finds a handsome prince inside the stove. She is not to speak more than three words to her father, or her prince will be carried off. She does, and has to search for the flying stove: crossing mountains and lakes, but helped by a family of frogs; she finds him about to marry a witch’s daughter, but jogs his memory just in time. All is disenchanted. (Grimm 1992:127, Der Eisenofen) The tale has a wide distribution over Europe, Western Asia and limited parts of Africa.4 It is generally assumed by classicists that no adequate ancient analogue has been found, other than Apuleius’ famous version itself. But this is not so. Swahn recognised that at least part of the myth of Zeus and Semele is also a variant of AT Type 425, a fact which only really becomes clear when we examine the full account in the very late version in the seventh book of Nonnos’ Dionysiaca: Harmonia has four daughters, the youngest of whom, Semele, is seen while bathing by Zeus. The latter appears as an eagle, becomes inflamed with passion, and visits her on the following night. He comes ‘with a horned head on human limbs, lowing with the voice of a bull’. Then he appears in ‘a shaggy lion’s form or he was a panther…A writhing serpent crawled over the limbs of the trembling bride and licked her rosy neck with gentle lips, then slipping into her bosom girdled the circuit of her firm breasts, hissing a wedding tune…’. Zeus tells her who he is, she becomes pregnant, and Dionysus dances in her womb when he hears the sound of pipes. Hera, who hears of the matter, disguises herself as a ‘honey-voiced old dame’, visits Semele and wants to know who has ‘ravished her maidenhood’: people will begin to talk ill of her if she gives birth to an ordinary bastard. But, she says, if everyone knows it is Zeus who visits her then no one will take exception. Semele should, therefore, ask Zeus to come in all his glory with thunder and lightning so that people can say ‘Hera and Semele both have thunders in waiting for the bedchamber’. Semele begs Zeus to do this and when he is finally persuaded she is killed by lightning. The child Dionysus is saved, however, when the womb ‘is withered by the mother-murdering flash’.5 (In other versions it is Copyright © 2000. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Semele’s sisters who bring misfortune on her.) EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/2/2016 11:31 AM via COUNCIL ROCK HIGH SCHOOL NORTH AN: 60882 ; Anderson, Graham.; Fairytale in the Ancient World 47 Account: s1837674 We could argue that this only represents the first half of the tale, since the death of Semele precludes the essential material of the action, namely the ‘search for the lost husband’, which is the point of the whole exercise. But it is worth noting that in the earliest Renaissance version of Cupid and Psyche, Basile’s story of Parmetella (Pentamerone 5.4), the girl’s forbidden bridegroom is actually called ‘thunder-and-lightning’, as clear an allusion as possible to the ‘facts’ of the Semele story. Swahn did not probe the full extent of mythographers’ variants, but from Pindar onwards it is accepted that total incineration was indeed not the end for Semele, and longer later accounts such as those of Diodorus and Apollodorus have her enjoying some manner of heavenly resurrection, the only female mortal in Greek mythology to enjoy such a privilege.6 In some accounts it is not until Dionysus can go down to Hades for her that she is rescued.7 But this is consistent with the variants of the story where the search for the husband does not entail actual tasks but rather a long wait (seven years is the favourite period). We should also note the bizarre variant in Hyginus 167: the heart of Dionysus/Zagreus, torn to pieces by the Titans, is ground down by (Zeus) and swallowed by Semele, who then becomes pregnant by Dionysus in the normal way. In this way Semele imbibes the cor, the heart of Dionysus, and so arguably his psyche in some sense. Once this story is recognised as a full-blown mythological variant of Cupid and Psyche, largely available from materials earlier than Apuleius, it becomes even more impossible to insist that the whole tale is the creation of the author of The Golden Ass, mediated to the medieval and modern worlds by the late mythographer Fulgentius.8 But the proof of the tale’s still more ancient ancestry has still to be established. We can present the Cupid and Psyche type, labelled by Aarne-Thompson as 425A, in the following terms, following the analysis of Swahn, based on some 1,100 variants collected up to 1955:9 I The supernatural husband II The marriage III The breaking of the taboo IV The search for the husband V The reunion VI Final motifs Most of our early comparative materials relate to the latter part of the tale. If we take the tale from the point when the taboo has just been broken, when Apuleius’ Cupid is actually awakened by the drop of oil, we find that he is annoyed with Psyche for breaking his command and seeing him, and that he flies away to heaven where he takes up residence in his mother’s quarters. As a result no legitimate and proper relationships and sexual activity are seen by people to be possible among mankind. The facts, including the god’s whereabouts, are reported to Venus by a tern.10 She sends for Psyche and forces the girl to sort a heap of grain, to fetch wool from sheep crazed by the sun, to bring waters (of life?) from the Styx, and finally to obtain a box of beauty ointment from the underworld.11 When all are applied to Cupid he supplicates Jupiter and obtains Psyche. At an assembly of the gods Jupiter declares that Cupid’s days of youthful impulse and mischief are over.12 From here we can turn to texts from an unexpected quarter: a series of Hittite texts relating to the anger of the god Telepinus from the second millennium BC.13 The god is annoyed at something (the first third of the tablet, which must have narrated the cause, is missing), and he wanders off in high dudgeon to a meadow. As a result no sexual activity is possible among mankind. A bee is commissioned to find him and bring him back to his mother, the mother-goddess herself. She commissions the healing goddess Kamrusepas to heal him by soothing him with wheat, with wool from the sheep of the sungod, and with olive oil, (a well-established folklore equivalent of the waters of life). His anger is then earthed in jars in the underworld. At an assembly the god Telepinus’ father declares that his anger is over and fertility returns.14 There are two differences between the Latin and Hittite versions, one major, one minor. Kamrusepas’ operations are quite clearly presented as rituals for the healing, or rather the exorcism, of Telepinus; Psyche’s tasks are prescribed by Venus pointlessly, or in the hope of punishing Psyche.15 The second discrepancy concerns the tasks themselves. The Hittite version of the fourth task is more satisfactory: instead of a rather pointless near-doublet of the third, we have a quite different interpretation of Cupid’s placing the deadly Copyright © 2000. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. contents in a box belonging to the underworld.16 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/2/2016 11:31 AM via COUNCIL ROCK HIGH SCHOOL NORTH AN: 60882 ; Anderson, Graham.; Fairytale in the Ancient World 48 Account: s1837674 It seems clear enough to this author that the Hittite myth covers enough of the material of Cupid and Psyche to amount to identity rather than similarity.

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