The tale of Love and Soul, part IV

Part IV


After this tragic turn of events, Psyche heads for the nearest rambling stream and throws herself headfirst into the water. But the water leaves her softly on the nearest bank, perhaps out of fear of Eros. By good fortune Pan and Echo are sitting nearby on the riverbank, and see her plight. Pan, recognizing one who is suffering from Love, and hoping to help her advises that she seek to win Eros with her charm and “tender attentions”. Without a word she turns and walks away, wandering for days. Eventually she comes to the kingdom that she recognizes; it is of her sister’s husband. She sends word that she has arrived and is taken before her sibling. After an embrace and a greeting Psyche relates her misfortune. She reveals how she had done as her sisters instructed, with a blade, and how Eros, burned by the oil of the lamp arose in anger. She describes how Eros divorced her from his bed, proclaiming that he would marry her sister instead. He had even ordered Zephyr to carry her softly to the enchanted palace upon her very orders. So treachery is caught falling into the trap of greater treachery, and Psyche’s first unnamed sister rushes off before the words Zephyr and carry leave Psyche’s mouth. She tells her husband that her parents have died, and leaves immediately by ship. When she arrives on the winds of lust and envy she climbs to the bluff and feels the breeze flowing towards her. Take me Eros, a worthy wife! But an end result of her own deception she finds, and Lucius, true to the romantic and flowery style of the sophist, does not spare any details in the violent manner of her end.
And Psyche, wouldn’t you know, has enjoyed this taste of vengeance and is off on her feet to the next kingdom where another of her sisters lives. And soon enough another hopeful bride of Eros joins the gathering birds at the bottom of the cliff. And finally, after taking her fill of death and retribution Psyche continues to wander the earth in search of her Love.
Meanwhile, this entire time Eros has been in hiding- recuperating his courage and health in “his mother’s bedchamber, moaning and groaning”……….


Will we see in the next episode that Freud wasn’t the only one to discover an Oedipal complex, as Eros, son of the goddess of passion and beauty, might find... ?