Shelby Soule: October 2011

First appearing in Apuleius' The Golden Ass, Cupid and Psyche is a frame story, actually told as a digression. Lucius - who at this point is trapped in the guise of an ass - is holed up in a bandit's cave next to a young maiden who has been abducted on her wedding day and is being held randsom. At the ceaseless and uncontrollable crying of the maiden, the "drunken and half-demented" old crone in league with the bandits and who tends to the cave, tells a fairytale to lighten her spirits.

According to Bullfinch's Mythology:

"The fable of Cupid and Psyche is usually considered allegorical. The Greek name for a butterfly is Psyche, and the same word means the soul. There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull, grovelling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness."

Clearly, it is all too fitting that Nabokov was published in the entomological journal 'Psyche'.

Also, I stumbled upon an essay on Nabokov's lepidoptery titled "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts: The Lepidoptery of Vladimir Nabokov" by Steven Jay Gould - a contemporary (and antagonist) of E.O. Wilson - included in his book I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History. The title mimics Nabokov's quote: “There is no science without fancy and no art without fact”. In the essay, Gould explores Nabokov's legacy as an author-scientist and the translation of his genius between the two seemingly distant fields of literature and lepidoptery.

The essay is partially available for preview on google books (and the MSU library has copies of I Have Landed), but I think this dissection of Gould's argument in this article is a good read instead (the essay itself repeats much of the summary and quotes we've read in Nabokov's Blues): Nabokov was right - so is Steven Jay Gould wrong? (link)

As William Irwin Thompson posits in Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science, “Rapunzel” is the story of sexuality. It is occupied with the central problem of how the “one becomes the two”, which encompasses not only the evolution of sexuality (biologically and mythically), but also the ultimate achievement of the stable couple.

As I mentioned, the plant Rampion Bellflower (or Campanula rapunculus) achieves the “one becoming the two” during the process of fertilization. A stem or column rises up in an attempt to attract insects to bring pollen from other plants. If no pollination occurs, the stem splits in two. The halves then curl, bringing the female stigmatic tissue in contact with the male pollen on the exterior. Each separate column has ‘collecting hairs’ to aid in the pollen collection.

It is her own “collecting hairs” by which Rapunzel draws in the male fertility that will allow her to duplicate herself. She also uses them to draw up Frau Gothel, but it is in a manner that enables the “selfing” or perpetuation of sameness, rather than diversifying through external (male) elements.

*At this point, an important distinction to make is that the “old crone” in this story is distinguished as a sorceress, not an evil witch. While the latter may be dismissed for her evil intentions, the sorceress is the embodiment of ancient feminine knowledge. She is an element of the “Triple Goddess” as Robert Graves termed it, consisting of the maiden, the mother (or pregnant woman), and the crone. As Thompson points out, this pattern mimics the triangular shape of sprouting, flowering, and withering of plants.

In the face of this powerful character, both men in “Rapunzel” cower and recede. The husband figure immediately gives in to the demands of the Sorceress in return for the Rampion desired by his pregnant wife. Acting as an intermediary between the mother and the crone, the subservient persona of the husband acknowledges the powerful connection inherent in the relationship of the “Triple Goddess”, which he makes no attempt to interfere with. At this stage we see the most stable relationship existing between the mother and the crone, rather than between husband and wife; the mother gives birth to a girl, therefore the process of “selfing” is preserved.

As the stability of the mother-crone or maiden-crone is depicted in the beginning of this story, so it is inextricably linked to the most eternal mother-maiden/daughter couple in the mythological realm: Demeter and Persephone. It is only when Hades abducts Persephone and carries her to the underworld that this stability is broken.

In contrast with the husband and wife couple, the fairytale presents the Prince and Rapunzel, who do manage to overcome the ancient order and reproduce rather than clone. In a Hades-esque manner, the Prince climbs up the braided ladder of hair to “pollinate” Rapunzel—disrupting the stable environment Rapunzel inhabited, and assuming the role of male interloper.

At the point of disruption, however, the stability has not yet fully shifted from the female-female to male-female coupling. Once Frau Gothel learns of Rapunzel’s activities with the Prince, she rends the braids from her head and casts her out, then lures the Prince up the tower with the severed braids. Upon sight of the menacing Sorceress, the Prince jumps in desperation from the tower, landing in a patch of thorns that prick his eyes and cause blindness. It is only after years of wandering and foraging for roots and berries in the wilderness that the Prince stumbles upon the wasteland to which Rapunzel, and the twins she birthed, were exiled. As her tears moisten his blinded eyes, sight (and order) is restored.

The significance of this ending is that the stable couple is only achieved when the two fluids are mixed: the higher female fluid of tears & the lower male generative fluid. In prehistoric physiology, semen and cerebral fluid were thought to be communicated through the spinal column; so one would carry one’s seed in their head (Mind babies??). This circulation of fluids occurring up and down the spinal column signals a correspondence between the higher and lower; between “male” and “female” processes. It was also believed that body fluid was full of magical powers.

In this story, we see that the male fluid of the Princes reproductive organs is able to make Rapunzel pregnant, while the female fluid produced from the eyes is able to cure male blindness. Darkness is brought to light by the illuminating tears, which are the product of a “higher knowledge” as the maiden has transformed into the mother, “one has become two”, and a figure of the “Sophia” archetype emerges. Here, we see the story progress from a weak patrilocal society, on the fringes of the Neolithic garden and ancient knowledge of women, to a stable patriarchal structure.

Last Tuesday, I alluded to the Axis Mundi in connection with the stem of the Rampion, Rapunzel’s tower, and the spine through which the male/female fluids are communicated. This connection between higher and lower realms, of heaven and earth, can be imagined as both feminine and masculine terms. It may also take the form of a natural object (tree-tree of life-, stalk (as of corn), a vine) or as a manmade construction (tower, ladder, spiral). Clearly, both are represented in “Rapunzel”.

The achievement of reproduction through sexuality, of “one becoming two”, resolves the contradiction inherent in sexuality. The central point is not that Rapunzel simply reproduces, but that she produces a girl and a boy, therefore overcoming the mother-daughter cloning that occurs in the triangle of the “Triple Goddess”. When a female can produce a male, the contradiction is resolved. In Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, the elements of Anima and Animus (which I am only positing, as I have no expertise on the subject) mirror this reproduction on another level: “As the anima tended to appear as a relatively singular female personality, the animus may consist of a conjunction of multiple male personalities—in this way the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective rather than a personal element” (Wiki). So as the development of the Anima within the male is relatively stable and singular, the development of the male Animus within the female is a conjunction of multiples.

On the biological level, when we consider the nature of sexuality, we must consider that from which out entire world evolved: cyanobacteria. As we are all aware, sex is a process by which evolution and diversification occurs, which is the product of an environment that requires diversification to survive and adapt to unstable conditions. If the environment were stable and unchanging, the need for diversification would never surface, and organisms would survive simply through asexuality. As Thompson writes:

“In the evolution of sexuality the critical event is that of the emergence of the cell with a nucleus, the eukaryotic cell. Hitherto, nature had worked through an asexual division, ad infinitum of mother-daughter cells in which each generation was exactly like the preceding one. The cell without a nucleus, the prokaryotic cell, was a stable, unchanging, and enduring system, but the cell with a nucleus introduces the radically destabilizing element of the individual” (24).

We see the appearance of sexuality is a disruption of the stable and enduring system of mother-daughter replication. The anger of the Sorceress when she finds that this order has been undermined—“I thought I had cut you off from the world, but you have betrayed me!”—is a regression to the anger of the “elementals” from whom the world was usurped by higher, sexual beings:

“The jealousy of the dwarves and “the little people” is as essential part of the animistic religion of the fairy faith, and when one realizes that these “little people” are mythopoetic perceptions of what we prefer to call bacteria, then one realizes that these “elementals” are indeed the “firstborn” creatures on this planet, and that we eukaryotic creatures of individuality, of love and death, have displaced them” (26).

So the Sorceress demands the child of the husband/wife as retribution for the ancient displacement of asexual beings; the child belongs to the sorceress, in body and in her body of knowledge, and she is repossessing that which the male has usurped.

This recalls in Norse mythology the concept of “changelings”, in which a mystical creature such as a fairy, goblin, or troll leaves an offspring of their own in place of human child. James discussed this myth during the Master Builder presentation, in which he inferred the meddling of trolls in the death of Solness’ twin boys.

Perhaps also, this retribution of the “elementals” is what Ibsen is so fearful of. They represent a regression in development, the most base function or personality of a person, which is potentially ugly and unpleasant, even deformed. They are a power that lies beneath the surface of the human world, and in Solness’ case, the human mind.

Thompson makes another connection to the regressive tendencies of the feminine unconscious to elemental wisdom: the mother-to-be gazes back through the window to the neat rows of the walled garden containing the Rampion, and the photosynthetic membrane of cyanobacteria appears like a photograph of a walled garden with rows. The Neolithic garden is the source of the archetypal “higher knowledge” of women. This was made homage to in the rituals of the Elusianian Mysteries—the cult of Demeter and Persephone—which centered on the ancient relationship/knowledge between women and plants. During the secret initiation, something was done, shown, and said. What was “done” was the reenactment of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, and the thing that was seen was a stalk of corn (the ears of which, do not forget, have elongated stigmas that look like tufts of yellow hair).

Clearly the regularity with which this phenomenon of mother-daughter asexuality as it occurs in plants is significant. As Ashley discovered, the Parthenocissus plant literally translated into “Virgin lily” is also of this variety. It is a remnant of a past that exists now in the obscurity of plant reproduction, and in ourselves only as unconscious intuitions and cravings. This is the power (importance) of fairytale and myth, to connect us to that which we have forgotten.

What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?

Works Cited/Consulted

"Anima and animus." Wikipedia, 2011. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus>.

Thompson, William illiam Irwin. Imaginary Landscape, Making Worlds Of Myth And Science. Palgrave Macmillan, 1989. Print.