Jump to content

Till We Have Faces: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
Undid revision 564621606 by Widr (talk) Reverting per explanation on my talk page.
I expanded on the idea that "the story had haunted Lewis all his life". I felt the need of explaining why he was "haunted" (although "bothered" would be a better word) and how this affected his re-writing of the story.
Line 22: Line 22:
| isbn = 978-0-15-690436-0
| isbn = 978-0-15-690436-0
}}
}}
'''''Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold''''' is a [[1956 in literature|1956]] novel by [[C. S. Lewis]]. It is a retelling of the [[Greek mythology|Greek myth]] of [[Cupid and Psyche]], which had haunted Lewis all his life,<ref name="Literary Encyclopedia">Schakel, Peter. (2003) [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12321 Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold]. Retrieved on August 5, 2008.</ref> and which is itself based on a chapter of ''[[The Golden Ass]]'' of [[Apuleius]].
'''''Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold''''' is a [[1956 in literature|1956]] novel by [[C. S. Lewis]]. It is a retelling of the [[Greek mythology|Greek myth]] of [[Cupid and Psyche]], based on its telling in a chapter of ''[[The Golden Ass]]'' of [[Apuleius]]. This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical<ref name="Literary Encyclopedia">Schakel, Peter. (2003) [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12321 Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold]. Retrieved on August 5, 2008.</ref>. As a consequence, his re-telling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions.


The first part of the book is written from the perspective of [[Psyche (mythology)|Psyche]]'s older sister Orual, [Pronounced ''Or'w'ahl'']<ref>[http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/book/c-s-lewis/till-we-have-faces/10004000/ Orual: [Or'wu'ahl<nowiki>]</nowiki>: Sample, from Blackstone Audio, AudioBook]</ref> as an accusation against the gods. The book is set in the fictional kingdom of Glome.
The first part of the book is written from the perspective of [[Psyche (mythology)|Psyche]]'s older sister Orual, [Pronounced ''Or'w'ahl'']<ref>[http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/book/c-s-lewis/till-we-have-faces/10004000/ Orual: [Or'wu'ahl<nowiki>]</nowiki>: Sample, from Blackstone Audio, AudioBook]</ref> as an accusation against the gods. The book is set in the fictional kingdom of Glome.

Revision as of 18:45, 25 July 2013

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
1st edition cover
AuthorC. S. Lewis
Cover artistLiz Demeter
LanguageEnglish
GenreMythological novel
PublisherGeoffrey Bles
Publication date
1956
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN978-0-15-690436-0

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a 1956 novel by C. S. Lewis. It is a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, based on its telling in a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical[1]. As a consequence, his re-telling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions.

The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual, [Pronounced Or'w'ahl][2] as an accusation against the gods. The book is set in the fictional kingdom of Glome.

The people of the primitive city-state of Glome have occasional contact with civilized Hellenistic Greece.

This was his last novel; and, he considered it his most mature, written in conjunction with his wife, Joy Davidman.

Plot summary

Part One:

The story tells the Ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister.

It begins as the complaint of Orual as an old woman, who is bitter at the injustice of the gods. Born ugly, she covers herself with a veil throughout the narrative. Orual loves her beautiful half-sister Psyche. When Psyche is sent as a human sacrifice to the unseen "God of the Mountain" at the command of Ungit his mother, the devout Orual feels wounded and betrayed.

Orual tries to rescue Psyche, who says she does not need to be rescued. Rather, Psyche relates that she lives in a beautiful castle that Orual cannot see. At one point in the narrative, Orual begins to discern something, but then it vanishes like a mist. Orual urges Psyche to do the one thing that she has been commanded not to do: to look upon the God of the Mountain when he comes to their marriage bed. Orual argues that the God must be a monster, or he would not hide his face. She brings Psyche a means to see him, and threatens and cajoles her. Ultimately, reluctantly, Psyche agrees out of pity and love for her sister.

When Psyche obeys Orual, the story relates that the God has no choice but to banish Psyche. Orual suffers with the knowledge that she destroyed her sister's happiness and marriage, through misapplied love and jealousy.

Eventually, Orual becomes a Queen, and a warrior, diplomat, architect, reformer, politician, legislator, and judge, though all the while remaining alone. She drives herself, through work, to forget her grief and the love she has lost. Psyche is gone; her other sister has married and moved away; her father and her beloved tutor, "the Fox", have died. Her old infatuations have been castrated, or become bloated or ridiculous. To her, the gods remain, as ever, silent and unseen.

When she is invited to witness a new cult ritual as Queen, Orual hears a version of Psyche's myth, which shows her as deliberately ruining her sister's life out of envy. In response, she writes out her own story, as set forth in the book, to set the record straight. Her hope is that it will be brought to Greece, where she has heard that men are willing to question even the gods.

Part Two:

Orual begins the second part of the book stating that her previous argument was wrong, but she doesn't have time to revise it before she dies. After finishing her book, she thought the gods would end her lonely, exhausted life.

Instead, she writes that dreams and visions have been given from which she sees herself in the midst of the tasks given to her sister Psyche, in the myths, as penitence.

Orual dreams of presenting her complaint to the gods, herself. When among them, her sister Psyche comes to meet her. Orual weeps, "Long did I hate you. Long did I fear you. I might—". Finally, Psyche helps her sister to see what was hidden from her, and it is the form that she caught glimpses of along the way, on the long road to meet Psyche again.

Conception

The idea of retelling the myth of Cupid and Psyche, with the palace invisible, had been in C. S. Lewis's mind ever since he was an undergraduate; the retelling, as he imagined it, involved writing through the mouth of the elder sister. He argued that this made the sister not simply envious and spiteful, but ignorant (as any mortal might be of the divine) and jealous (as anyone could be in their love).

He tried it in different verse-forms when he considered himself primarily a poet, so that one could say that he'd been "at work on Orual for 35 years," even though the version told in the book "was very quickly written." In his pre-Christian days, Lewis would imagine the story with Orual "in the right and the gods in the wrong."[3][full citation needed]

Origin and evolution of the title

Lewis originally titled his working manuscripts "Bareface", with the interplay of multiple meanings: Orual's facial deformity, which she hides with a mask; Psyche's mortal beauty; and the invisible gods Cupid and Aphrodite, who are supposedly the most beautiful of all in mythology. There is also the "barefaced lie" of the gods; and the "plain truth" of her argument, as Orual sees it in the beginning. The word "face" also refers to the original myth, in which Psyche was not allowed to see Cupid's face, so her intimate encounters with him would be veiled in darkness. The working title "Bareface" also suggests the anonymity of the dark and of "Everyman" looking to see the face of god.

The editor (Gibb) rejected the title "Bareface" on the ground that readers would mistake it for a Western. In response, Lewis said he failed to see why people would be deterred from buying the book if they thought it was a Western, and that the working title was cryptic enough to be intriguing.[4][full citation needed] Nevertheless, Lewis started considering an alternative title on February 29, 1956, and chose "Till We Have Faces", which refers to a line from the book where Orual says, "How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?"[5][full citation needed] He defended his choice in a letter to his long-time correspondent, Dorothea Conybeare, explaining the idea that a human "must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask."[6][full citation needed]

References

  1. ^ Schakel, Peter. (2003) Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. Retrieved on August 5, 2008.
  2. ^ Orual: [Or'wu'ahl]: Sample, from Blackstone Audio, AudioBook
  3. ^ Lewis' letter to Christian Hardie, 31 July 1955, cited at Hooper, Companion (see IX) 251
  4. ^ Hooper, Companion (see IX) 252 16 February 1956
  5. ^ Hooper, Companion (see IX) 252
  6. ^ Constance Babington Smith, Letters to a Sister from Rose Macaulay, 1964, 261; also at Hooper, Companion (see IX) 252

Further reading

  • Till We Have Faces, ISBN 978-0-15-690436-0[full citation needed]
  • Schakel, Peter. (1984). Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
  • Hooper, Walter (1996). C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide. Fount.[full citation needed]
  • Myers, Doris T. (2004). Bareface: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s Last Novel, Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
  • Myers, Doris T. (2002). "Browsing the Glome Library," SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, 19(2).[full citation needed] Discusses the many classical references that Lewis used that may now be obscure to readers.
  • Donaldson, Mara E. (1988). Holy Places are Dark Places: C. S. Lewis and Paul Ricoeur on Narrative Transformation. Boston: University of America Press.
  • Bettelheim, Bruno (1977). The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, pp. 291–95 and 303–10.[full citation needed] ISBN 978-0-394-49771-6 (The connection between "Cupid and Psyche" and "Beauty and the Beast" is found on these pages.)

See also