The Odes by John Keats

ODE TO PSYCHE

Psyche was never really a Greek goddess, but a literary invention of the second century AD. This would not have bothered Keats, who regarded the Greek gods as creations of the imagination anyway, but he does look back longingly to the “happy pieties” of a time when these imaginative creations were believed in as real. This was never a possibility for Psyche who was “born too late” for genuine worship. In the original story, told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass , Psyche was a lovely mortal beloved by Cupid, “the winged boy,” son of Venus. After various tribulations, imposed by Venus, who was jealous of Psyche’s beauty, the girl was wedded to Cupid and translated to heaven as an immortal. The story is an obvious allegory. Psyche is the human soul ( psukhe meaning ‘soul’ or ‘mind’ in Greek). Cupid is Divine Love. After a struggle, the human soul and Divine Love are united and the human soul becomes immortal. Keats creates a variant on this allegory in his poem.

Ode to Psyche is unusual among the Odes in that it is less of a soliloquy and more of an apostrophe made to Psyche herself, who is addressed at the start of the poem. However, almost immediately, Keats starts talking about Psyche rather than to her. He has seen her with Cupid in a terrestrial paradise. The two are rapt, embracing, their lips slightly parted, caught in a moment of sublime transcendent love prior to physical fulfilment. The moment is compared to “slumber” before dawn: it represents the union of the soul/mind with love – the ultimate human delight. Keats’ vision prompts a celebration of Psyche, who though the “latest born” of the Olympians is, in fact, the “loveliest vision far.” Psyche’s pre-eminence presumably depends upon the idea that all the other Greek gods and goddesses have their true source in the human mind or soul: they are, in a sense, Psyche’s creations. Thus, she is “brightest!” even though she was born “too late for antique vows.” Keats decides to set right the fact that she received no historical worship by building a temple for her in his mind and becoming her priest and witness, or, to use his own words, her “pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.” The priest/prophet of a religion is an intermediary figure between the divine and human worlds. Keats, here, is developing an allegory of his own in which he, the poet, performs that role of mediator, but in a most unusual way. Rather than interpreting the will of a divinity, Keats implies in this poem that as poet-priest he can raise Psyche (the human soul or mind) into the world of eternal imagination. His worship of her is creative of her divinity, or, at least, strongly reinforces it.