Ode to Psyche Notes

Psyche and Eros Myth

• The poem "Ode to Psyche" is based on the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros.
• Psyche is the Greek word for soul.
• The story revolves around Psyche, a woman so beautiful that Love (Eros) fell in love with her.

The Story of Psyche

• Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful daughter of a king.
• Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was jealous of Psyche's beauty.
• Aphrodite sent Eros, her son, to punish Psyche.
• However, Eros pricked himself with his own arrow and fell in love with Psyche.
• Eros summoned Psyche to his palace but remained invisible to her.
• Psyche later lit a lamp to see Eros, angering him and causing him to leave.
• Psyche then had to complete difficult tasks to appease Aphrodite and win back Eros.

Historical Context and Keats' Inspiration

• The myth of Psyche was first recorded in the second century AD, making it more recent than most myths.
• Psyche was never worshiped as a real goddess, this compels Keats' speaker to dedicate himself to becoming her temple, her priest, and her prophet.
• The poem was inspired by Lucius Apuleius' "The Golden Ass," where the Cupid and Psyche story is referred to as the "latest born of the myths."
• Keats noted that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before Apuleius, who lived after the Augustan age.
• Classical antiquity had no knowledge of Psyche before Apuleius invented her.

Keats' Shrine to Psyche

• Keats builds a shrine to Psyche in his imagination, something classical antiquity had not done.
• He leaves one window open for love to enter, referencing how Cupid (Eros) entered Psyche's room every night in Apuleius' story.
• In Keats' version, Psyche is initially punished by Aphrodite (Venus) and Zeus (Jupiter).
• Psyche was eventually pardoned by Zeus but wasn't awarded the status of goddess due to her late arrival on Mount Olympus but could share in the immortality of Eros.
• Keats treats her like a goddess, worships her, and consecrates her essential action, loving as well as her achievement of happiness and fulfillment.
• Through extreme passion and profound suffering, she reaches joyful immortality, which becomes an extended metaphor for the making and the career of the poet.

Interpretations of the Poem

• Robert Graves suggests that Keats' main interest was the poet's relationship with poetry, using sexual imagery.
• The poem has been interpreted: extended metaphor about poetry. Allegory for the soul psyche.
• Keats may be suggesting there is something godlike about the human soul.

Soul-Making

• The poem appears after Keats' discussion of "soul making" in a letter to George and Georgiana.
• Keats contrasts the Christian view of earthly existence as a "veil of tears" with the idea of "soul making."
• "Soul making" involves pains and troubles to school an intelligence and make it a soul.
• Keats felt the soul has sparks of divinity and can possess a place peculiar to each one's individual existence.
• The psyche of the poem can be seen as keeps his soul as he wishes it to be, and contemplating selfhood offered him a serene joy.

Summary of the Poem

• The speaker finds two fair creatures, Eros and Psyche, lying side by side in the grass in a forest.
• The speaker recognizes Eros but asks who Psyche is.
• The speaker describes Psyche as the youngest and most beautiful of all Olympian gods and goddesses.
• Psyche's youth is the reason she lacks worship.
• The speaker wants to pay homage to Psyche, becoming her choir, music, and oracle.
• The speaker declares he will become Psyche's priest and build her a temple in his mind.
• This temple will be in an untouched region of his mind, surrounded by natural beauty and tended by imagination.
• He promises Psyche soft delight and leaves the window of her abode open for Eros to enter.