Hell and its Afterlife

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Margaret Toscano, Isabel Moreira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317122708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

The notion of an infernal place of punishment for 'undesired' elements in human culture and human nature has a long history both as religious idea and as cultural metaphor. This book brings together a wide array of scholars who examine hell as an idea within the Christian tradition and its 'afterlife' in historical and contemporary imagination. Leading scholars grapple with the construction and meaning of hell in the past and investigate its modern utility as a means to describe what is perceived as horrific or undesirable in modern culture. While the idea of an infernal region of punishment was largely developed in the context of early Jewish and Christian religious culture, it remains a central belief for some Christians in the modern world. Hell's reception (its 'afterlife') in the modern world has extended hell's meaning beyond the religious realm; hell has become a pervasive image and metaphor in political rhetoric, in popular culture, and in the media. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields to contribute to a wider understanding of this fascinating and important cultural idea, this book will appeal to readers from historical, religious, literary and cultural perspectives.

PART I
The Tradition of Hell in the Old World

Chapter 1
Love is Hell: Torment, Sex, and Redemption in the Cupid and Psyche Myth

Margaret Toscano

“Hell is other people.” This famous quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit is usually taken out of the original context where it captures the French philosopher’s definition of existential “sin” as the distorted images of reality we accept from other people. However, the popularity of the statement no doubt reflects a common belief that other people are the major source of suffering for most of us. It is not just that other people put us through hell emotionally, but also that hell is losing the people we love to sickness and death. The journey to the underworld to rescue a loved one or family member from the clutches of death and hell (which, if not synonymous, are at least connected) is a common thread weaving throughout the religious and mythological texts of many different cultures. Perhaps the most famous example in the mythology of the West is the story of Orpheus, who beseeches the powers of the underworld for the return of his bride, Eurydice, only to lose her a second time. But the pattern is also evident in the writings of medieval Christian mystics, like Birgitta of Sweden and Mechthild of Magdeburg, who descend in vision to plead for the souls of their friends and loved ones.¹ The religious motif can also be found in Chinese Buddhist literature, with its many layers of hell, as well as in Native American traditions, where almost nothing is said about afterlife punishment.² Still, there are many Amerindian stories about the arduous journey to the spirit world to rescue a departed spouse.

This essay concentrates on a unique aspect of this religious theme in the ancient Greek and Roman cultures: the highly eroticized and sexual nature of their rescue stories. Whereas adultery and other types of sexual misconduct are primary reasons a soul may end up in hell, according to Christian doctrine and tradition, in contrast, the ancient pagans saw sexuality as an essential part of the human response to mortality and eternal loss. For them, sexual tension and union was a primary metaphor for overcoming the powers of death and decay. This is surprising to modern inheritors of a long tradition that connects images of hell with images of sexuality, whether it is the lovers Francesa and Paolo embracing in Dante’s Inferno, or writhing, naked bodies depicted in Hans Memling’s painting of the Last Judgment from the high Middle Ages, or the seamy hell scene in Woody Allen’s satirical film Deconstructing Harry.

The love story of Cupid and Psyche is the focus of this essay because it is an important link between the ancient and modern worlds with their often contrasting views about sex, punishment, and redemption. The descent of Psyche to the underworld is seldom highlighted in discussions about famous katabatic journeys or in examinations of ancient beliefs about the afterlife.³ Orpheus, Herakles, Theseus, Odysseus, and Aeneas are the classic heroes who risk their lives to descend into Hades, whether to bring back a loved one or acquire knowledge, and who then ascend victorious. And of course there is the goddess Persephone who descends and ascends yearly, giving hope for a pleasant afterlife to the initiates of the Eleusinian mystery cult. I want to suggest that while Psyche is an overlooked katabatic heroine, she nonetheless is crucial for understanding the role of both sexuality and suffering in the mythic underworld rescue mission. I use both written and visual images of Psyche’s descent: the single ancient literary version of the story, told by the second century C.E. Roman writer Apuleius, and one important monument, the Endymion Sarcophagus, dating to the beginning of the next century—200–220 C.E. Together, these representations of the Cupid and Psyche story illustrate the importance of erotic passion and intimate relationship for overcoming the power of Hades in the ancient world, especially when that passion involved the union between a mortal and a god. I argue that the Cupid and Psyche story is particularly appealing toward the end of the ancient world because of its narrative and metaphoric fluidity that allowed the myth to be used in pagan, Christian, and philosophical contexts with equal power. However, as a heroine in the descent pattern, Psyche resists complete incorporation into the patriarchal Neo-Platonism that represents the major interpretive approach to this myth.

The full story of Cupid and Psyche is told only in a Latin version by Apuleius (hailing from North Africa) as a tale within a tale in one of the few Roman novels to survive from antiquity: The Metamorphses or Golden Ass. Though Apuleius’ telling of Cupid and Psyche is a prototype of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, we have no evidence about its dissemination in the ancient world, “whether it really does have its origins in a popular fairytale,” as Graham Anderson notes. However, as he also points out, in the frame story that introduces the Cupid and Psyche tale in Apuleius’ novel, the old woman narrator compares it to “anilibus fabulis,” “old wives’ tales.”⁴ The frame story is critical for my examination because it sets the story up as a “consolatio,” a story of mourning and consolation for impending death, whereby the old woman narrator tries to comfort the young woman Charite, who has been taken to a cave by a band of robbers hoping to exchange her for a ransom from her rich parents. Charite calls the cave a “rocky prison” (“saxeo carcere”) where she is tortured with fear, a clear underworld image.⁵ Because Charite believes there is no rescue for her and that her beloved fiancé from whom she has been separated is likely dead, the old woman tells her the story of Cupid and Psyche to cheer her up, a story that has obvious parallels with Charite’s own story, though Psyche ends up happily united with her lover, while Charite and her beloved both die tragically. The listener Charite frames the Cupid and Psyche story not simply as entertainment but as concern about death, love, and possible redemption from eternal loss.

Psyche’s story culminates in her descent to the underworld to visit the goddess Proserpina, at the request of her cruel mother-in-law Venus, in order to obtain a jar containing beauty. While this is the most obvious katabasis motif in the story, filled as it is with the typical elements one would expect in such an arduous journey, the longer tale actually contains four descent/ascent patterns.⁶ Both Cupid and Psyche sleep twice as though dead, and both are awakened twice in a chiastic reversal: Psyche first sleeps, then awakens; next Cupid sleeps like one dead, but his awakening leads to his near death; then Psyche’s sleep leads to Cupid’s awakening so that he can in turn awaken her into immortality from the deep sleep into which she has fallen when she returns from the underworld.

Psyche’s first “death” is precipitated by the effect of this mortal girl’s “divine” beauty. Though she is as beautiful as Venus herself, no earthly suitor asks for Psyche’s hand, any more than a mortal man would seek to wed the goddess of love herself. So Psyche is left as a “virgin widow” (“virgo vidua”) who sits at home mourning her loneliness. Her king father, saddened by her state, consults the god Apollo to find out what he can do to help his daughter. Psyche’s parents are told by the oracle that they must marry her to death (“funerei thalami”) by joining her with a demonic and savage serpent whom even the Stygian shades fear (“saevum atque ferum vipereumque malum … horrescunt et Stygiae tenebrae”).⁷ Psyche accepts her fate willingly, though she wipes her tears with her bridal veil as she is led by the lamenting populace like a “living corpse” (“vivum funus”) to the rocky crag where she is to be offered to the monster bridegroom. The abandoned Psyche finally dies symbolically as she descends from the cliff down to the valley below on the wings of the gentle breeze Zephyr. After a sweet sleep, she awakens to find herself in a paradise-like garden before a magnificent palace where her every need is provided by invisible servants. At night an unseen bridegroom makes passionate love to her, but he departs each morning before daylight can reveal his identity.

The husband is of course the god of love himself, Cupid, who was sent by his mother Venus to punish the girl Psyche since people everywhere had begun to give homage to the mortal girl who rivals the goddess in beauty. Though Cupid has been ordered by his mother to make the girl fall in love with some lowly beast, instead he takes her for his own since he is madly in love with the girl. The idyllic happiness of Psyche and her unknown husband-lover is broken when her jealous sisters urge her to find out the true identity of the man she is sleeping with, who, they argue, may indeed turn out to be a monster, as the oracle foretold. They make her question whether she has arrived in hell rather than her seeming heaven. Therefore, one night Psyche takes a knife, in case her unseen lover proves hostile, and lights a lamp over her sleeping husband. When she sees the handsome Cupid, a virile young god with outspread wings and manly weapons, she falls instantly in love as she pricks her finger on one of his arrows she has stooped to examine. The scene is sensuously slow and erotically charged. Unable to resist such beauty, Psyche bends over her new-found Love; as she covers him with her fervent kisses, hot oil drops from her lamp onto his right shoulder. Immediately Eros wakes from the “deep sleep into which he had descended” (“altum in soporem descenderat”) and takes flight on his wings like a bird, scolding her for her imprudence. This is Cupid’s first sleep and awakening.

The wounded Cupid retires to his mother’s house, where he lies sick unto death from the burn inflicted by Psyche, making him a helpless prisoner of his mother’s wrath. The now pregnant Psyche mournfully wanders the earth searching for her lost husband, but finally realizes she can only find him by facing her cruel mother-in-law since the goddesses Ceres and Juno will neither one give her aid. For this reason, Psyche goes to Venus’s palace and submits to whatever ordeals the goddess wishes to impose on her. After having her beaten and tortured, Venus makes Psyche undergo three trials: sorting a large stack of seeds, garnering golden wool from fierce sheep, and fetching water from the underworld river Cocytus that is guarded by a serpent. When Psyche fulfills each with the help of various creatures, Venus then sends her to the underworld to ask Proserpina, the Roman wife of Hades, to fill a jar (“pyxis”) with divine beauty. On her return trip, Psyche’s curiosity and desire for more beauty get the better of her. Holding the jar at the gates of hell, Psyche hesitates but then opens the bottle, hoping to get a tiny drop of beauty for herself (“tantillum”). Instead, deathlike, Stygian sleep emerges and envelops her, leading to Psyche’s second death, as she lies there like a “sleeping cadaver” (“dormiens cadaver”).

Though Apuleius does not directly say there is a relationship between Psyche’s emergence from the underworld and Cupid’s recovery from his wound, the two events are juxtaposed in the story, implying a causal link, especially since the completion of Psyche’s trials raises Cupid from his deathbed, freeing him from his mother’s power and his second death. Once released from her palace, Cupid flies to Psyche’s rescue, awakening her once again. Then with a quick and happy fairytale ending, Cupid appeals to the power of Jupiter, who makes Psyche immortal, appeases Venus, and throws a grand wedding feast for the young couple on Mt. Olympus, who soon become the parents of a daughter, Pleasure—Voluptas.

The dominant death and rebirth images in Apuleius’ telling of the Cupid and Psyche story are important for seeing and expanding the relationship between the literary version of the tale and the recurring use of the Cupid and Psyche figures on ancient Roman sarchophagi and other funerary monuments. Carl C. Schlam documents at least 105 such monuments that portray Cupid and Psyche together in various ways.⁸ The wide-spread use of Cupid and Psyche images on burial objects during the Roman Empire from the early second through the fourth centuries of the common era argues for wide-spread recognition of the story of the two lovers. This is not to say that viewers would have connected the funerary images of Cupid and Psyche with Apuleius’ version of the story, but merely that the visual representation of the two lovers was symbolically recognizable and significant for mourners. Though such mythic motifs became part of a stock repertoire used by monument carvers who did not necessarily understand the importance of the symbols they were manipulating, nevertheless, the extant monuments create metaphorically rich arrangements of the stock images that evoke Apuleius’ story, along with the multiple religious i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Holding Ajar the Gates of Hell
• Part I The Tradition of Hell in the Old World
• Part II The Reception of Hell in Modern Times and Contemporary Dialogue
• Bibliography
• Index