Citations in brackets refer to endnotes.
The Metamorphoses
of Lucius Apuleius, called the Golden Ass (Asinus aureus) since
Augustine’s time, is an extraordinary book simply as the only ancient Roman
prose fiction to survive entire [1]. In
it are what seem to be the clearest hints we moderns are likely ever to have of
the ancient mystery cults, and the central theme of the book as a whole is the
story of its hero’s path to enlightenment,
though he visits as well a few scatological and erotic sidepaths on his route. Perhaps the closest analogue in the later
European tradition is Langland’s Piers Plowman which similarly uses allegorical
figures in realistic, often humorous, settings to detail the soul’s ascent to
salvation. In this spiritual goal and in
the book’s comedy the Golden Ass is also reminiscent of Wu Cheng'en’s
marvelous Journey to the West, but, while even the indulgent Buddhism of
the Monkey King’s story must frown upon attachments, including sexual desire,
the Latin author, like Li Yu, the putative author of the Rouputuan, or Prayer
Mat of Flesh [2], regards sexuality as an avenue to the divine.
Rather like Odysseus who remains loyal to his wife through a series of encounters with females, both mortal and immortal, and finds repose only after rejoining her, the hero of the Golden Ass must pursue his picaresque path until he finds a liberation more profound than his return to human form in his initiation into the mysteries of Isis. The most beautiful and profound of the earlier forms of what a Jungian might call his anima is Psyche, but others appear all along the way, most of which are either malevolent witches or simply selfish women.
Of the many stories woven into this composite, episodic work, the centerpiece is clearly Cupid and Psyche. Far longer than any of the other stories, it is also raised to a higher register of significance by its focus on the doings of deities. The love of Cupid and Psyche encounters a number of obstacles: her father’s attempt to kill her through exposure, the meddling sisters plot to kill the lover, and the tasks imposed by Venus. After succeeding in these trials, Psyche becomes herself immortal, and she gives birth to the couple’s child, Pleasure.
Hermeneutic critics have assigned specific meaning to
each incident. For Martianus Capella in On the Marriage of
Philology and Mercury (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii) in the
fifth century Psyche is a soul held captive by sensual indulgence; his Mercury
makes a match instead with learning, detailing the seven liberal arts in a work
that set the school curriculum for a millennium. Boccaccio,
in his fourteenth century On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles (Genealogia
deorum gentilium) refers to both Apuleius and Martianus and sets forth a
neo-Platonic Christian interpretation [3], while C. S. Lewis feels he must
revise the myth to make it Christian in Till We Have Faces. The story is a favorite of Jungians for whom
it is about individuation and coming to terms with the anima [4].
The difficulties encountered by Cupid and Psyche are familiar from folk tales: "Beauty and the Beast," "Blackbeard," "Vasilisa the Beautiful," and Pandora are among those which include similar motifs. The specifics of these challenges are, not mechanically decodable; they are merely difficulties in the way of happiness told in an entertaining manner and paralleled in many narrations on other themes. In the context of the Golden Ass the story is the mythic form of a transformative love ending in initiation in mysteries, salvation, and apotheosis, a spiritual process to which the love story of Cupid and Psyche offers an analogue. The unfaithful wives, witches, and other indifferent or malevolent females in, in the many attached tales are dead ends, delusions, false loves that bring frustration, suffering, and disaster. Toward the end Philebus, the priest of Sabadius, appears as a false deity, leading to a perversion of love rather than to its fulfillment.
The interplay
between mythic and realistic realms is pervasive in the narration occurring on
every page. Thus divine and human
actions are synchronized. The characters
are compared to goddesses (Venus most commonly) and their lovers or rivals,
immortal or mortal. To cite only a few examples, chosen at random,
the witches in Aristomenes’ story select Socrates just as Diana chose Endymion;
Byrrhaena’s house includes a sculpture of Diana with hounds; Photis resembles
Venus rising from the sea while Lucius “a slave of the Queen Proserpina” and their
sex is “bacchic”; Thelyphron resembles
Orpheus while Lucius compares himself to Hercules or Cupid, and this pattern
continues throughout the Golden Ass.
The correspondence of mythic and human is recurrent and consistent; each
illuminates the other.
In mystical
literature in general the ineffable is expressed perforce by figures of
speech. As erotic love is the most
powerful form of human desire, sex is often used to represent the soul’s
identification with Ultimate Reality.
Among the most prominent examples of this universal trend are the poems
of the Song of Songs, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Rumi, St. John of the
Cross, Mirabai, and the Bauls of Bengal.
Lucius Apuleius in his captivating story with time-tested narrative
turns, humor, and considerable realism, rare in antiquity, brings his
protagonist to an enlightenment no less sublime for the seasoning of
impropriety he admits prior to the lofty conclusion.
The divine in the
Golden Ass is Isis whose initiations were indeed conducted in Rome. Like Thessaly, the site of the novel’s
action, Egypt was thought by the Romans to be a place where magic
flourished. Earlier mystery religions,
notably the Eleusinian cult but including those centered on Orpheus, Cybele,
Dionysos, and Jesus Christ, had attracted Romans whose religious sensibilities
were unsatisfied by the conventional observances honoring Jupiter and the
Olympians [5]. Mysteries offered
individuals a participatory and emotional experience as well as the opportunity
to be initiated and thus to guarantee a felicitous afterlife.
For a male
writer, enlightenment is signified by his union with the female, his other half
according to Aristophanes’ fable in the Symposium. The physical joining of the sexes, called maithuna
in Hinduism and Buddhism, refers to the abolition of duality, but need not
be symbolic only. For Lucius Apuleius as
for Plato and the poets of courtly love, physical desire and corporeal lovemaking
constitute a spiritual discipline that has the potential to lead the soul
toward the sublime. In the Golden Ass
the supernal jouissance of sexuality points toward the rituals of a
mystery cult, the latest outgrowth of the myriad fertility and earth goddesses who
had dominated neolithic religious practice for millennia before the coming of
metalworking. His story is no less
uplifting than it is amusing, a precious combination of qualities offering the
reader enlightenment and amusement at once.
A note on
translations
There can be no doubt that Lucius Apuleius presents
unusual problems to translators. The
combination of Second Sophistic rhetorical display with colloquialisms and
out-of-the-way usages makes a considerable challenge. Some readers will prefer the William
Adlington version (1566), the book that Shakespeare knew, which is not as
faithful as the modern translations, but possesses a captivating style of its
own. Robert Graves’ (1951) edition is
extremely readable and remains the choice of many common readers today. Sarah Ruden’s version (2011) is probably most
accurate with close attention to sound and wordplay. Though not all her solutions work equally
well, hers is the most ambitious rendering.
Other translators include Thomas Taylor (1822), Jack Lindsay (1960) P.
G. Walsh (1996), and E. J. Kenny (1998)
1. The Satyricon
is extant only in fragments. The
History of Apollonius King of Tyre is thought to be a translation from
Greek.
2. Also known as Huiquanbao
and Juehouchan, and in translation as The Carnal Prayer Mat
or The Before Midnight Scholar, is a 17th-century Chinese erotic novel
published under a pseudonym but usually attributed to Li Yu.
3. V, 22.
4. The classic
treatment is Erich Neumann’s Amor and Psyche. For a more recent Jungian reading, see Marie-Louise von Franz, The Golden Ass of
Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man (2001).
5. A parallel is
suggested by the current popularity of emotional Pentecostal churches among
long-time Roman Catholics in Latin America.
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