Reposted from April 2013
Cupid and Psyche
Blake had read Taylors' translation of Apuleius' Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. (Blake could not have read Bullfinch's version, but that may be easier for us to begin on.)
In her discussion of Blake's use of Cupid and Psyche Raine refers us to a passage in Night II of The Four Zoas:
Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 27, (E 317)
"And I commanded the Great deep to hide her in his hand
Till she became a little weeping Infant a span long
I carried her in my bosom as a man carries a lamb
I loved her I gave her all my soul & my delight
I hid her in soft gardens & in secret bowers of Summer
Weaving mazes of delight along the sunny Paradise
Inextricable labyrinths, She bore me sons & daughters
And they have taken her away & hid her from my sight"
This is a "paradise
of shadows" as Raine indicated. Blake described here the coming of an eternal
soul into generation, which in Blake's myth is always a misfortune.
(However in this (long!) poem Blake provided a creative rational for 'generation' (the descent of the soul).In this passage Luvah has (more or less) created Vala, and then (for an unknown reason here) found himself shut off from her and she from him.
Cupid provides a magnificent house for Psyche, and Luvah does the same thing for Vala, just as Solomon had done (your house is traditionally a symbol of your body). Cupid, Luvah, Solomon build houses for Psyche, Vala, and the Shulamite respectively. They made a house for them, just as God makes a house for each of us.
Psyche's House
From Apuleius
- "And when she had refreshed her selfe sufficiently with
sleepe, she rose with a more quiet and pacified minde, and fortuned to
espy a pleasant wood invironed with great and mighty trees. Shee espied
likewise a running river as cleare as crystall : in the midst of the
wood well nigh at the fall of the river was a princely Edifice, wrought
and builded not by the art or hand of man, but by the mighty power of
God : and you would judge at the first entry therin, that it were some
pleasant and worthy mansion for the powers of heaven. For the embowings
above were of Citron and Ivory, propped and undermined with pillars of
gold, the walls covered and seeled with silver, divers sorts of beasts
were graven and carved, that seemed to encounter with such as entered
in. All things were so curiously and finely wrought, that it seemed
either to be the worke of some Demy god, or of God himselfe. The
pavement was all of pretious stones, divided and cut one from another,
whereon was carved divers kindes of pictures, in such sort that blessed
and thrice blessed were they that might goe upon such a pavement : Every
part and angle of the house was so well adorned, that by reason of the
pretious stones and inestimable treasure there, it glittered and shone
in such sort, that the chambers, porches, and doores gave light as it
had beene the Sunne."
- Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 128, (E 397)
- "My Luvah here hath placd me in a Sweet & pleasant Land
And given me fruits & pleasant waters & warm hills & cool valleys
Here will I build myself a house & here Ill call on his name
Here Ill return when I am weary & take my pleasant rest
So spoke the Sinless Soul and laid her head on the downy fleece
Of a curld Ram who stretchd himself in sleep beside his mistress
And soft sleep fell upon her eyelids in the silent noon of day
Then Luvah passed by & saw the sinless Soul
And said Let a pleasant house arise to be the dwelling place
Of this immortal Spirit growing in lower Paradise
He spoke & pillars were builded & walls as white as ivory
The grass she slept upon was pavd with pavement as of pearl.
- Beneath her rose a downy bed & a cieling coverd all"
The pleasant house has the symbolic meaning of the Beloved's (that's us!) body. In the Song of Solomon we have this duet:
- Solomon: If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar.
Shulamite: I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment. Song of Solomon 8:9-10
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| Yale Center for British Art Jerusalem Plate 2,Copy E |
With a rhapsodic verse from Solomon re his "beloved" in Blake and Tradition (but not Blake and Antiquity) Raine makes for us an extremely significant revelation:
Song of Solomon 6
[4] Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
As you read The Four Zoas it becomes more and more apparent that Tirzah is the type of Vala fallen. Jerusalem represents Vala redeemed.
(The Four Zoas is a notebook; Jerusalem is a magnificent (and very long!) poem.)
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