Psyche

by Louis Couperus

  “There she comes! There she comes!” exclaimed the nymphs with joy.

  The branches cracked, the leaves whirled about, the tender sprays recoiled from the noisy merry-makers, who were advancing.

  Nearer they came with the sound of pipe and cymbal. Drunken Bacchantes danced before them, waving the thyrsus, hand in hand with fauns and satyrs; they encircled a triumphal chariot, drawn by spotted lynxes.

  High on the chariot sat a youth, beardless, with a wreath of vine-leaves round his forehead, full of laughter and animal spirits, with blue eyes that showed his love of pleasure. Naked were his godlike limbs, chubbily formed like the tender flesh of a boy, and his legs were long and slender, his arms rounded like those of a woman. He was the prince of the wood, of divine origin: Prince Bacchus was his name.

  And next to him on the triumphal chariot, sat little Psyche enthroned. She too was naked, with nothing on but her veil, and her wings were so strikingly beautiful, crimson and soft yellow and with four peacock’s-feather eyes. Round the chariot, close together as a bunch of grapes, sported madly a number of wine-gods, tumbling over one another, grape-drunken children.

  In triumph the procession rushed on through the golden wood. The Bacchantes and satyrs sang and danced; two satyrs drove the lynxes, which, spiteful as cats, spat at them; the wine-gods entwined the vine and bore great heavy bunches of grapes.

  High up, like a butterfly, which was a goddess, sat Psyche, and laughed with glistening eyes and glowing cheeks, waving to the nymphs.

  “Live! long live Psyche—Psyche with the splendid wings!” shouted the nymphs.

  The wind blew, the leaves whirled about; the procession swept past as though hurried along by the gale. A little wine-god had fallen and lay in the yellow leaves, playing with his chubby legs, purple-red from the juice of grapes; he was crying because he had been left behind; then he succeeded in getting on to his feet, and tottered after the procession …

  The nymphs laughed loudly at the little wine-god; they dived under and beneath the rocks.

  The wind blew, the yellow leaves whirled about.

  And the wood became still and lonely.

  XVIII

  “PSYCHE, STAY!” said Bacchus entreatingly.

  “No, no let me alone!”

  “With you goes all joy from the feast; Psyche, stay!”

  “I will not always sing, dance, drink. No, no, let me alone!”

  She pushed him away from her; she pushed the satyrs away from her; she broke the round dance of the Bacchantes, who, drunken, shouted with drunken eyes and wide-open screaming mouths.

  “Psyche! Psyche!” screamed all.

  She laughed loudly and coquettishly, like a spoilt child.

  “I will come back tomorrow, when you are sober!” she said with a mocking laugh. “Your voices are hoarse, your song is out of tune, your last grapes were sour. I will only have the sweet of your feast, and the bitter I will leave to you. Spread out your panther skins; go and sleep off your drunkenness. If your feast has to last till winter, you need rest—rest for your hoarse throats, rest for your drunken legs, rest for your heads, muddled with wine … I will come back tomorrow, when you are sober!”

  She gave a loud, mocking laugh, and rushed into the wood. It was a moonlit night; in the pale moonbeams she left the wild feast behind. The jealous Bacchantes danced round Bacchus, and embraced him.

  Psyche hastened on. Her temples throbbed, her heart beat, and her bosom heaved. When she was far enough away, she stopped, pressed both her hands to her bosom, and gave a deep sigh. More slowly she went on to the stream. Fresh was the autumn night, but burning were her naked limbs!

  The wood was still, save that in the top-most branches the wind moaned. Like a silvery ship the moon sailed forth from the luminous, ethereal sea, and the rushing mountain-stream foamed like snow on the rocks. With a longing desire for coolness and water, Psyche stepped down to the flags on the bank; with her hands she put aside the irises, and made her way through the ferns and plunged her foot into the water.

  Then the nymphs dived up.

  “Psyche! Psyche!” cried they joyously, “Psyche with the splendid wings!”

  Psyche smiled. She threw herself into the water, and the snow-white foam dashed up.

  “Let me be with you a moment,” entreated Psyche. “Let me cool myself in your stream.”

  The nymphs pressed round her and carried her on their arms. She lay down at full length.

  “Cool my forehead, cool my cheeks, cool my heart!” she cried imploringly. “Dear nymphs, oh, cool my soul! Everything burns on me and in me; fire scorches my lips, fire scorches my brain … O dear nymphs, cool me!”

  The nymphs sprinkled water on her; Psyche put her arm round the neck of one of them.

  “Your water-drops hiss on my forehead as on burning metal. Your flakes of foam evaporate on the fire in my breast. And on my soul, O dear nymphs, you cannot sprinkle your coolness!”

  The nymphs filled their stream-urns and poured them over Psyche.

  “Pour them all out! Put them all out!” cried Psyche entreatingly. “But although my hair is dripping, and my wings and my limbs too, my lips are scorched, my poor forehead burns, and within me, O nymphs, within me, my soul is consumed as in hell-fire! …”

  The nymphs took her gently in their arms; they dived with her below, they came up again; they kept diving up and down.

  “Oh, bathe me, bathe me!” cried Psyche imploringly. “Benevolent nymphs, bathe me! Some coolness still hangs about my body … but my soul, oh, my soul you can never cool!” She wept, and the nymphs caught up her tears in mother-of-pearl shells.

  “Are you collecting my tears? Oh, no, they are not worth it. Once I wept a brook full; once they were drunk, drunk by Love; once they were pearls, and Love crowned me with them! Now, now they are like drops of wine, drops of fire, and though they should congeal and become rubies or topazes, they may never crown me more. Henceforth my tears, I shall always shed … for Emeralda!”

  In the shells the nymphs saw glistening pearls, and they understood not … But all their urns they poured out upon Psyche’s eyes.

  “My eyes are getting cool, O beloved nymphs; many tears I shall never shed again; never again shall I weep a brook full … But cool my soul, extinguish deep within me the burning flames!”

  “We cannot, Psyche …”

  “No, no, you cannot, O nymphs! Let me lie still then, still in your arms. Let me rock quietly to and fro on your white-foaming water, then let me sleep quietly … But in my sleep my soul keeps burning; in my dreams I see it flame up, high up as out of a hole in hell … Oh!”

  She uttered a cry, as of pain … The nymphs rocked her in their entwined arms, as in a cradle of lilies, and softly sang a song …

  “Nymphs, nymphs! … This is the fire that nothing can extinguish—no, never … This is remorse …”

  The nymphs understood her not; they rocked her and sang in a low, soft voice.

  XIX

  THAT MORNING she wandered about in the rosy autumn dawn—a mist between the trees stripped of leaves. Along the path she trod; on a skin she found a satyr and a Bacchante lying in a drunken sleep, tight in each other’s arms; a cup lay on the ground, a broken thyrsus, pressed-out grapes. She hastened on and sought the most lonely spots. The foliage became scantier, the trees grew farther apart, the wood ended in a plain and, misty violet, a perspective of very low hills.

  Psyche walked on over the plain and climbed the hills.

  The autumn wind blew and howled between shrubs and bushes, and sang the approach of winter. But Psyche felt not the cold, for her naked limbs glowed: her soul was all on fire.

  On the highest hill-top she looked out, her hand above her eyes, gazing into the violet mist. Unconscious to herself, she hoped for something vague and impossible: that she might see Eros, that he would come to her, that she would fall at his feet, that he would forgive her tenderly, and take her away with him. Impossible. “What was impossible? Could not everything
be possible? Had he not followed the track of her tears? Had he not found her in the arms of the Sphinx?” Oh, she hoped, she hoped, she hoped more definitely. Her remorse-burned soul longed for the balsam of his love in the palace of crystal, for the sounds of his lyre, for the tender words in the garden of the Present.

  She hoped, she gazed …

  In the pale glow of the morning sun, the violet mist cleared up, and parted like violet curtains …

  She gazed: there was the Present …

  There Eros would be, mourning for his naughty Psyche!

  There he would presently forgive her …

  Oh, how she hoped, how she longed! … She longed; she stretched out her arms and dared cry in a plaintive voice:

  “Eros!”

  The wind blew through bush and shrub and sang the approach of winter. The violet curtains of mist were drawn aside. The sad autumn morning appeared. There, now visible, lay the Present …

  And Psyche gazed, screening her eyes with her hand …

  There she saw her happiness of days gone by, destroyed. In a dead, withered garden, a ruin: crystal pillars crumbling to pieces. And between the pillars, spiders’ webs; all over the garden spiders’ webs, web upon web, and in them spiders with bloated bodies and lazy-moving feet …

  Then she saw that Emeralda was reigning!

  Then she felt that Eros was dead!

  She had murdered him!

  Oh, how her limbs glowed, how her soul burned! Oh, the burning pain within her, deep within—a pain which no grape-juice could allay, which no mad dance could deaden and the nymphs could not cool, though they poured over her all their urns! Oh, that hell in her soul, for the irretrievable desolation, for the murdered one, past recall! Oh, that suffering, not for herself, but for him—for another! that repentance, that burning remorse! …

  She fell to the ground and sobbed.

  The pale sunbeams faded away, thick grey clouds came sweeping along, a shower of hail rattled down, flinging handfuls of icy-cold stones …

  She felt a touch on her shoulder. She looked up.

  It was the Satyr who had allured her with his pipe, there, on that very spot.

  “Psyche!” said he, “what are you doing here, so far away from all of us? Winter is coming, Psyche; listen to the whistling winds, feel the rattling hail; the last leaves are being blown away. We are going to the South, and Prince Bacchus is searching for you … What are you doing here, and why are you crouching down and weeping?

  “We are having a feast and are fleeing the winter; come!”

  “I feel no cold; I am burning Let me stay here, and weep, and die …”

  “Why should you die, O Psyche, Psyche, so pretty and so gay—Psyche, the prettiest and gayest, who can dance the maddest, who can dance out all the Bacchantes? Come! …”

  She laughed through her tears, a laugh like a piercing shriek.

  “But Psyche, do you know what it is?” said the Satyr, whispering confidentially. “Do you know what it is that prevents you from being happy, and why you are not like all of us? I told you before, Psyche: it is because of your wings. Your wings prevent you from butting a beast’s skin round you, and entwining your hair with vine. The nymphs find your wings pretty, but what do you want with things that are pretty, yet of no use whatever? If you could only fly with those wings!”

  “If I could only fly with those wings!” said Psyche, sighing. “No, I have never been able to fly with them, my poor, weak wings!”

  “The nymphs think your wings pretty, but the nymphs are sentimental. The Bacchantes think them ugly, and laugh at you in secret. Prince Bacchus does not like wings either; he cannot embrace you well with those things on your back. Psyche, dear Psyche, listen: shall I tell you something? … You must let me cut off those wings with a pair of grape-scissors. For when you have got rid of your wings, then you can throw a panther’s skin round you, and put a vine-wreath round your hair, and you will be altogether one of us …”

  The wind blew, the hail rattled down: winter was coming on.

  “Eros is dead!” murmured Psyche, “Spring is past, the Kingdom of the Present is withered, Emeralda reigns …“What are you doing with things that are pretty, and have no use at all? …

  “If I cannot possibly get cool, if I keep burning deep within me … it is better, perhaps, to renounce my princess’s rights, to go naked no longer, to have no wings …”

  “Tell me, Psyche, may I cut them off?”

  “Yes, clip them! Cut them right off, my wings, which are only pretty!” she cried fiercely. “Cut them off!”

  His eyes glowed jet and gold, his breath came quickly from joy. He produced his sharp scissors …

  And whilst she knelt, he cut off both her wings.

  They fell on the ground and shrivelled up.

  “Oh, that hurts, that hurts! … Oh, that hurts!” cried Psyche.

  “It is a little wound, it will soon heal,” said the Satyr soothingly, but grinning with pleasure.

  Then he threw a panther’s skin round her, put a wreath of vine-leaves on her head, and she was like a fair Bacchante still very young and tender, with her white skin, with her tender eyes of soulful innocence, in which, deep down, dejection reigned.

  “Psyche!” cried he delighted, “Psyche! How pretty you are!”

  She uttered her shrill laugh, her laugh of bitter irony. He led her away down the hills. She looked about: yonder lay the Kingdom of the Present, reduced to dust and spider-webs. She looked about: in the wind, which was blowing, her wings whirled away, shrivelled up, whirled away like dry leaves.

  She laughed and put her arm round his neck, and they hastened back to the wood.

  The wind blew; the first snowflakes fell.

  XX

  SLOWLY FOLLOWED THE SEASONS—winter, spring, summer, autumn …

  Winter, spring, summer, autumn, were the Present for a moment, and sank into the Past.

  And again it was spring …

  On the grassy plains, the shepherds drove out their flocks, and sang because the sky was blue, the world trilled with hope, in the new and tempered sunshine.

  What did the shepherds know of Emeralda? They had never seen her. They sang, they sang; they filled the air with their song. As a reed, their song remained quivering and hanging in the air. In the wood and in the air, Echo sang with them their song. They sang because the sky was blue …

  Emeralda they did not know …

  Blue, blue … blue was the air! Hope quivered in the sunshine, and love in their hearts …

  Into the grassy plains the shepherds drove their flocks, and they sang because the sky was blue.

  On the border of the wood, where endless plains extended, there lived in a grotto between rocks, a holy hermit who was a hundred years old.

  How many seasons had he seen sink into the pits of the Past! …

  How many times had he heard the Lenten song of the shepherds! Wrapped in contemplation, he heard them singing. They sang because the world trilled with hope … They sang because fleecy lambs were sporting again in the meadows. They sang because they were young and loved the shepherdesses. They sang of blue sky, of hope, of lambs, and love …

  The hermit continued deep in thought …

  Every spring it was the same song, and he had never sung with them. Never had he known the Present, the spring Present of the shepherds.

  The hermit continued deep in thought; he dreamed that Satan was tempting him, but his pious mind resisted. He dreamed that he had died in prayer, and his soul, purified, ascended into heaven.

  Far off in the grassy plains was heard the bleating of the lambs, the voices of the shepherds.

  The hermit heard a step. He looked up.

  He saw a little form, as of a naked girl with no covering but her hair. And he thought it was really Satan, and he muttered an exorcism; he knit his brow, he crossed his arms.

  The little form approached and knelt down.

  “Holy father!” said she, in a low, trembling voice, “don’t
drive me away. I am poor and unhappy. I am a sinner, and come to you for help. I am not shameless, holy father, and I am ashamed that I appear before you naked. I asked the shepherdesses for something to cover me, but they laughed at me, drove me away and threw stones at me. Father, O father, men are merciless, they all drive me away … I come from the wood, and wild beasts are not so cruel as men. In the wood the beasts spared me. A lion licked the wounds on my feet, and a tigress let me rest in the lair of her whelps. Holy father, the wild beasts had pity!”

  “Then why don’t you remain in the wood, devil, she-devil?”

  “Because I must fulfil a duty among men.

  “In my dream, soft voices have spoken to me, the voice of my father, and of him whom I loved, and they said: ‘Go among men, do penance …’ But naked I cannot go among men, for they throw stones at me. And therefore, O father, I come to you, and entreat you: give me something to cover me! I have only my hair to hide me, and under my hair I am naked. O father, give me something to cover me! O father, give me your oldest mantle for my penance garb!”

  The hermit looked up at her, as she knelt in her fair hair, and he saw that she was weeping. Her tears were blood-red rubies.

  “He who weeps rubies has committed great sin; he who weeps rubies has a soul crimson with sin!”

  The penitent sobbed and bowed her head to the ground.

  “Here,” said the hermit sternly, but compassionately. “Here is a mantle. Here is a cord for your loins. And here is a mat to sleep on. And here is bread, here is the water-pitcher. Eat, drink, cover yourself, and rest.”

  “Thanks, holy father. But I am not tired, I am not hungry and thirsty. I am only naked, and I thank you for your mantle and your cord.”