Retelling Mythology

"Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade."

I first became aware of C.S. Lewis in fourth grade in Mrs. Hendershot's class when we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. After that, Narnia became a big part of my life. That class was when I first began to identify myself as a writer.

I read Till We Have Faces a few years ago, and out of all of the works of Lewis' I've read (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy), this is one of my favorites and, I think, his best work.

Till We Have Faces tells the story of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual. Orual presents her case against the gods who have, in her eyes, taken away the only person she has ever loved. The story is split into two parts, the first Orual's case against the gods, and the second their response.

When I read this book the first time, I couldn't put it down. Orual's voice sucks you into the story, and the changes C.S. Lewis makes to the myth are brilliant. Everything was great until I got to the second half of the book, and Orual faces the gods.

See, I had read reviews of the book online, which praised Lewis for the way the title of the novel surfaces in the story, and the revelation the book makes. When I got to that part, I thought it was clever, but I wasn't impacted by it. It wasn't until a few weeks later, when I was in a Bible study, and explained the meaning of the title, that it finally hit me. As I spoke, I realized exactly what the second half of the book was saying, and was blown away. I had to explain it in order to understand it.

I reread this book because I am working on my Eros script, and it's definitely given me ideas for the script. Rereading it I caught a lot of tiny hints and nuances I missed the first time, and it made the conclusion a lot stronger. Till We Have Faces is filled with wisdom, witty metaphors and language, and love.

Orual says that when writing this story, she was with story as with child. I feel that C.S. Lewis is probably speaking about himself in that statement. This book feels like a child, beautiful and newborn and lovable.

Till We Have Faces was dedicated to C.S. Lewis' wife Joy Davidman.

Doing the research

Research fascinates me, but I'm usually too lazy to do it when it comes to my writing. In attempt to retool my script Eros, I've decided to study the source material of the Eros and Psyche story, rather than just trust summaries written online. Mythology is often presented in summaries, and this takes away the artistic side of these wonderful stories. Mythology is meant to inspire paintings and poetry.

So I read the poem Psyche; or, The Legend of Love by Mary Tighe. This poem was written in 1805. It's pretty difficult to get a print copy, and I found a few out of print copies for a significant chunk of change on Amazon.

Thankfully, I discovered Project Gutenberg, an online database of over 30,000 books. The idea behind Project Gutenberg is to preserve literature in a digital format so that it can be available to future generations. I was able to easily access Tighe's poem. Without Gutenberg, this would have been near impossible.

Tighe's poem starts off following the tradition Eros and Psyche story as laid out in The Golden Ass, but after Psyche is separated from Eros, Tighe goes in her own direction. Psyche embarks on an adventure, guarded by a knight in shinning armor who rides a lion. There are quite a few genuinely beautiful lines by Tighe, and the poem is very romantic. Of course the ending is just what we're hoping with (SLIGHT SPOILER HERE) the identity of the knight (SPOILER ENDS).

As far as research goes, this piece was helpful because Tighe uses Aphrodite as the antagonist, which is what my script does. Very pretty poem, though the rhyme structure breaks down in a couple of spots. With more time I'd like to examine those spots and see if there's any significance to those moments. Usually when a poet writes in such a strict structure, any so-called mistakes are on purpose and have an underlying meaning.