First you must read the original myth of Cupid and Psyche (in Bulfinch or Hamilton, or if you really like, Lucius Apuleius). Then you must look at some of the beautiful sculpture and artwork inspired by the story, most notably the painting by Jacopo Zucchi [visited at the Borghese Gallery in Rome by your humble servant].
C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth from the point of view of one of Psyche’s sisters. Orual, the eldest daughter of the king of Glome, is ugly, strong, smart, and loves her youngest sister to destruction. If you want to read one of the most moving tales of love, anguish, and the cost of being mortal, read Orual’s story.
“I am old now and have not much fear from the anger of the gods,” Orual writes, the book her testimony and accusation against all that the gods have done against her and her family. She writes of her childhood with her two younger sisters, Redival and the beautiful Psyche, and of their education by their father’s Greek slave named the Fox, and of the disasters that lead up to Psyche’s tragedy, Orual’s griefs and successes, and the sisters’ love.
In one of the best retelling of mythology or folklore (the other perhaps being Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter) and in imaginative allegorical style, Lewis’s masterpiece is perhaps justly under-appreciated: its power is dangerously moving and is not to be read lightly. Every reader of Till We Have Faces must share in at least a little, if not a lot, of the tragedy, humiliation, and anguish of love – mortal and divine.
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