youngest, however, was of incomparable beauty.[1] She was admired like the beautiful Venus, the Goddess of love.[2] Psyche finds, however, only admirers but no husband and her sorrowing father receives the following answer from the oracle:
Place the maiden high on the rocky crag of the mountain,
Adorned in the sorrowful garb of marital woe.
Do not hope for a son-in-law of mortal birth
A terrible one will arise from the dragon's tribe
Then flying through the air he pursues them all
And brings them all woe with fire and sword,
Job trembles before him, all the gods fear him,
The sea shudders before him: even the Stygian night.[3]
Instead of to her wedding, Psyche was conducted, in obedience to the Oracle, up the mountain in her bridal attire.
In characteristic manner she herself (like other fairy-tale princesses in similar sagas) is less troubled than those about her and urges herself to the fulfillment of the Oracle's command. (One is tempted to say: She just knows that nothing evil will befall her!)
Above, the anxious, trembling Psyche was seized by the soft zephyrs and wafted to a valley and placed on a bed of flowers.[4]
On awaking she found herself in a fairy grove and sees before her a house built by godly skill (a magic castle) from the
- ↑ The number three has, as usual in fairy tales, the object to make fittingly prominent the heroine, even as the fairy tale, often awkwardly so, creates a contrast figure to the hero, who spoils everything and comes to a bad end.
- ↑ Here Venus, the later mother-in-law, the rôle of persecutor just as in other fairy tales a witch, a giantess, or stepmother.
- ↑ This verse reminds one of the fairy tale in which the insatiable dragon demands the virgin sacrifice. Also the following funeral procession (= wedding procession) to the mountain corresponds to it and speaks for the correct interpretation of the dragon figure in the fairy tale.
- ↑ Here Psyche enters the magic sphere. This instant corresponds to the appearance of the magic mist, in the Icelandic fairy tales, the going astray in the forest in the German, etc. Zephyr corresponds at the same time to what is frequently demonstrated in the fairy tales, the magic cloak or other similar wish means of translation through the air. It is unfortunate that we to-day with our imperfect balloons are not so far advanced.
Here begins the production of a wish structure which improves upon the preceding and rather unpleasant position of Psyche. Why does it resemble so strikingly a dream and the wish phantasies of the psychotic?
