scheherazade through the looking glass: cupid, psyche & the other woman

by Parisa Aryán

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is a breathtaking sculpture representing Cupid and Psyche. The myth of these two eternal lovers has been represented and referred to by many artists and writers throughout time; the tale of their passionate, never-ending love used as an allegory of love and the human soul.

Psyche was a princess so incredibly beautiful that men traveled to her father’s kingdom from everywhere in the world, just to admire her and sing her praises. However, none of them dared to request her hand in marriage — yes, the old “she’s too beautiful, she will surely reject me” was true in those times as well. As a result, Psyche’s two sisters got married and settled down while she remained alone, waiting for a man to be brave enough to love her. The goddess Venus, on the other hand, became so jealous of this mere mortal’s beauty that she decided to take revenge, sending her son Cupid to use his arrows to make her fall in love with the most horrendous being in the world. However, Cupid was so mesmerized by Psyche’s beauty that he ended up hurting himself with one of his arrows and falling in love with her instead. When Psyche’s parents consulted the Oracle and were advised to marry Psyche off to a “hideous monster” living up on a mountain, they didn’t know that this monster was really Cupid in disguise. He married Psyche and only spent time with her at night, in the dark, always forbidding her to see him: “If you saw me, perhaps you would fear me, perhaps adore me, but all I ask of you is to love me. I would rather you would love me as an equal than adore me as a god.”

After a while, however, Psyche’s curiosity, along with some evil encouragement from her jealous sisters, made her break her initial promise to her husband. One night, after her lover fell asleep, she lit an oil lamp to take a look at the allegedly horrible creature that was sleeping next to her. Stunned by the handsome face, the gorgeous body and the stunning white wings of Cupid, she forgot that she was holding the oil lamp in her hand and it tilted, dropping some of the oil on the sleeping god’s shoulder. He awoke, and hurt by his lover’s broken promise, flew off, abandoning her: “Love cannot dwell with suspicion,” he said.

Tormented by guilt, remorse and lost love, Psyche set out to search for her husband, being forced to undertake a series of impossible tasks set deliberately by Venus in order to defeat her. She managed to perform them all with the help of various compassionate gods, including Cupid himself, whose love for her was much greater than his anger and pain. When Venus sent Psyche on a trip to hell, to obtain a box filled with the beauty of Proserpine and bring it back to her, Psyche’s curiosity won the battle again. Although she had been warned by the helping gods not to open the box she was carrying, she couldn’t help peeking inside to find not beauty, but a terrible sleep that immediately took hold of her, making her fall lifelessly to the ground. Cupid, seeing this, flew to her, took the sleep back and put it in the box, embraced her and flew off with her to heaven, where he finally managed to get Venus’ consent to be eternally united to his love. In this way, Psyche (Greek for “soul”) became immortal in her union with Cupid, (or “love”).

In fact, there is so much to Cupid and Psyche that goes beyond this beautiful allegory. When I first saw the sculpture at the Met, I took a photo of it and showed it to my friend Mercedes, who I was staying with in New York. We were both so taken with the sheer clarity of the love between these two creatures that we couldn’t stop talking about it for the rest of my trip. One look at the sculpture says it all: it is a unique love. Evidently, for Cupid, Psyche is the one, even with her mistakes, her flaws and her mortality, which is really what love should always be like. As Mercedes and I kept saying back in New York: “If it’s not Cupid and Psyche, it’s just not worth it”.

During the incessant soul searching I have been doing in the past few months, I have looked back and reviewed my life, my decisions, my actions, my attitudes and thoughts, trying to refrain from judging myself — unfortunately, not always succeeding — and hoping to be constructive enough to learn from things that didn’t go exactly the way I would have hoped. Curiously — and to be honest, somewhat scarily — I realized one day that I have been following a very specific pattern in my sentimental life: I have always been, in some way or another, “the other woman.” Now, I don’t necessarily mean that literally. I’m just saying that, looking back, I’ve realized that I’ve never actually been the one and only for anyone. In some way or another, there has always been another woman, whether in my exes’ lives, their thoughts or their hearts. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but my point is that realizing this made me suddenly open my eyes.

So, I thought about my past, I thought about what I want for my future and I thought about Cupid and Psyche. I looked at my photo of the sculpture and I reread the myth. And nowhere in either of them did I see Cupid thinking about any other woman except Psyche. Nowhere did I see him flying off in pursuit of somebody else as soon as Psyche made her first mistake. Nowhere did I see him doubting his own feelings. And that’s when I made my decision. I decided that I am never going to be “the other woman” again. I decided to hold out for the real thing, for the unique, selfless, amazing, fly-off-to-Heaven-with-you-in-my-arms, love.

So now all of you cynics out there can laugh this article off and say that I’m a naïve dreamer, but I know I’m not. It’s all out there somewhere: the love and the gods and the wings and the immortality –and the oil lamps and the broken promises, too. And I want them all.

If it’s not Cupid and Psyche, it’s just not worth it.

tagged under:advice, art, nyc