Arrows of love

The wonderful statue of Eve has been moved from the sculpture gallery at the V&A. It’s one of my favourites and will be sadly missed. I noticed it straight away as it’s been replaced by a rather wonderful statue of Psyche.

She was a beautiful mortal girl of whom the gods were jealous. In order to cause her some grief, Venus had her son, Cupid, shoot one of his magic arrows into her while she slept. The plan was to have her wake up and fall in love with a hideous beast. I’m thinking Shakespeare stole this idea and gave it to Titania and Puck.

Unlike The Midsummer Nights Dream, however, Cupid is not successful in piercing the sleeping Psyche. Although he’s invisible, she wakes up and looks straight into his eyes. This causes him to scratch himself and he falls hopelessly in love with her.

Cupid returns to Venus and tells her of the failure of his mission. She’s not best pleased and puts a curse on Psyche which dictates that she will never find a suitable husband. I kind of wonder why she didn’t do this in the first place.

Cupid, meanwhile, decides that for as long as his mother’s curse remains, he will no longer shoot any arrows. Being an important part of her arsenal, this is not good and the world stops falling in love.

This didn’t just concern people. Animals as well stopped mating and reproducing and very quickly, the earth started to slide into a severe population decline.

Everyone else was, to put it mildly, rather upset about the situation. After all, what good are gods if they have no subjects? And they tell Venus to sort it out with Cupid…which she does as long as he starts shooting his arrows straight away. He agrees as long as she lifts the curse and lets him have the beautiful Psyche.

At the same time, Psyche’s parents pay a visit to a nearby oracle to somehow work out why their daughter is being ignored by all men. The oracle tells them it is because she is far too beautiful for mere mortals and they should go and leave her on the top of a mountain for the gods to do whatever they want with her.

Her parents are not that keen on the idea but, nevertheless, they do it. Shortly afterwards, Zephyr the west wind, blows her off the mountain and takes her to a wonderful, hidden valley. In the valley is a magnificent palace, staffed by invisible servants who see to her every need.

Eventually Cupid joins her and their union is consummated. He tells her not to light any lamps because he doesn’t want her to know who he is until the time is right. Clearly she was enjoying herself so much that she agreed but, really, why on earth do gods do these stupid things? A lot of hassle would have been avoided if he’d just told her who he was.

By day, Zephyr blew her home to be with her sisters who were terribly jealous of her. They told her that she had been taken by a great serpent (surely she’d know!) which would devour her. She was also pregnant with Cupid’s child so she was obviously a bit concerned (and obviously a bit stupid).

The next time she is taken to the palace, she takes with her a knife and an oil lamp. In the middle of the night, after a bit of a full on session, she lights the lamp and realises that her lover is Cupid and, in her surprise, she accidentally scratches herself with one of his arrows.

She immediately falls deeply and irredeemably in love with Cupid but a drop of oil from the lamp falls on his shoulder and wakes him and he flies off, not in a particularly good mood. She is pretty annoyed and winds up avenging herself by tricking her sisters into jumping off a mountain.

She then sets out to find her beloved Cupid. She goes from temple to temple, asking the advice of each of the gods there but they all tell her she must make her peace with Venus before anything can happen.

Venus could be a bit nasty when she felt like it and she seriously felt like it with Psyche. When the beautiful girl asked Venus, she gave her a horrid task to perform. She had to separate a huge pile of mixed seeds into individual piles. That might not feel too big a task but Psyche had to finish it by the end of the day.

Fortunately for Psyche, a passing ant took pity on her and herded together a whole group of mates to help with the task. Ants? Seriously? Mind you, an elephant would have had a problem with the tiny seeds so I guess it makes sense…though not about ants communicating and working alongside humans.

Anyway, the task is completed in time, which totally pisses Venus off. She then gives Psyche harder and harder tasks which she manages to accomplish with the help of various sprites, gods and strange talking buildings.

Eventually she has to journey to the underworld with a box that Venus has given her. She must ask the queen of the underworld (Proserpina/Persephone) to put a bit of her beauty in the box, which she does. On the way back though, silly Psyche looks into the box and, rather than a bit of beauty, it contains nothing…or so she thinks. It actually contains some invisible sleep stuff which instantly puts Psyche in a sort of god-induced coma.

Of course, Cupid comes along and rescues her by wiping the killer sleep from her face and putting it back in the box.

Meanwhile the rest of the gods are getting a bit annoyed at the constant battles between Venus and Psyche and they have a special council meeting to sort it out. Like all councils, they tell Venus and Psyche to just chill out and get on with each other…which they do.

Psyche and Cupid finally get together and live happily ever after. Quite literally, because the gods made Psyche immortal.

Interestingly, this isn’t really a myth. It was an idea that Lucius Apuleius used in his novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century AD.

I have seen many depictions of the pair of them but the statue in the V&A is the first time I’ve seen one of just Psyche on her own. The statue was made by Frances Derwent Wood in about 1908-19. She is on loan from the Tate.

Psyche visits the V&A

Why did I post this? No idea. Apart from the rather tenuous link to the new statue, I guess I just love the rather convoluted story.