Reading Notes, Week 3, The Oracle of Apollo, Part A.

 

The Oracle of Apollo:

• Prophecies, oracles or any type of information that will predict the future can be used to advance the plot of a story. In this case, Greek mythology heavily relies upon the Oracle of Delphi/Apollo's oracles for furtherance of plots in various myths.
• Likewise, it either has a supernatural element or a pseudo-one; still, it adds another layer of opportunities for future interactions and/or future stories entirely.
• The father, suspecting divine hostility, goes seeking an oracle, and leaves with the information that his daughter is going to be placed in a fatal marriage.
• A dramatic and suspenseful progression of the myth. 
• Focus on the misfortune of Psyche; after being heralded as a mortal version of Venus, she is constantly praised, yet is unable to seek marriage because no one asks for her hand. She has divine beauty, is worshiped, but this results in her, metaphorically, being raised onto a pedestal that no one wants to touch.
• Compare this to her sisters, they are beautiful, but not divinely, and they are married.
• "Psyche, for all her conspicuous beauty, reaped no profit from her charms. Gazed at by all, praised by all, no one, neither prince nor commoner, wishing to marry her, sought her hand. They admired her divine beauty of course, but as we admire a perfectly finished statue. Her two elder sisters, whose plainer looks had never been trumpeted through the world, were soon engaged to royal suitors and so made excellent marriages, but Psyche was left at home, a virgin, single, weeping in lonely solitude, ill in body and sore at heart, hating that beauty of form the world found so pleasing."
• By comparing the sisters in the first place, this naturally can lead, and did lead to tensions later in the story. Thus, the usage of tension-inducing characteristics adds dramatic elements to a story/myth.
• The mood in this chapter is one of mourning; the daughter is going to be sacrificed.
• "They moaned, they wept, they wailed for many a day." Shows the devastation that the parents felt at this revelation; truly encompasses the scope of their love of their daughter, and their heartbreak of her eventual departure.
• This whole quote is amazing in setting a mourning tone. The devastation at the soon-to-be loss of a daughter, neighbor, friend, etc. The kind-of archaic, dark language makes these types of scenes stand out more:
• "But the dire and fatal hour soon approached. The scene was set for the poor girl’s dark wedding. The flames of the wedding torches grew dim with black smoky ash; the tune of Hymen’s flute sounded in plaintive Lydian mode, and the marriage-hymn’s cheerful song fell to a mournful wail. The bride-to-be wiped tears away with her flame-red bridal veil; the whole city grieved at the cruel fate that had struck the afflicted house and public business was interrupted as a fitting show of mourning."
• Devastation and loss followed up by a cliff hanger that insinuates a possible happy ending!
• "Meanwhile Psyche, on the topmost summit, frightened, trembling, and in tears, was lifted by a gentle breeze, a softly whispering Zephyr, stirring her dress around her and causing it to billow, its tranquil breath carrying her slowly down the high cliff slopes to the valley below, where it laid her tenderly on a bed of flowering turf."

Cupid and Psyche by John Hoppner.