PSYCHE

From Giovanni Pascoli’s Convivial Poems with translation and commentary by Ugo Schacherl

Introduction

Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) was a professor of humanities (and chair of Italian literature) at the university of Bologna. Pascoli had a preoccupation with death that probably derived from his life experience. He lost both his parents and three of his siblings at an early age. While his early treatment of the subject was sentimental, the Convivial Poems, published in 1904, represent a later, mature approach. Here death is dealt with in a more universal way, transcending the autobiographical.

“Psyche” is one of the poems in this collection, a poem derived from a story within a story contained in a Roman book from the late Imperial period, the Asinus Aureus by Apuleius. The theme is one to be found later in medieval fairy tales, the story of various ordeals to be endured in order to achieve a certain goal, symbolic of the ordeals of life in general.

This poem is only one of several in this collection that consider death from different perspectives. Pascoli’s exploration of death transcends his times.

The original story tells how Cupid, the winged god of Love, son of Venus, the goddess of love in Roman mythology, falls in love with a mortal, Psyche, the soul. Venus opposes the match, but finally consents, on one condition: Psyche is never to know who her husband is. They can meet only in darkness and she is to believe that she is married to a monster. If she ever finds out the truth, they are to be separated. Her curiosity gets the best of her, and she lights a lamp. As she catches a glimpse of her beautiful bridegroom, he vanishes. She is instructed by mysterious voices of the ordeals she has to endure in order to find him again. And the story has a happy ending with a reunion of the two lovers.

Pascoli’s story has a different ending, as he uses it to present one of the various perceptions of death brought forward in other poems in the collection of the Convivial Poems. The translation has been written in iambic pentameter, the English equivalent of the Italian hendecasyllable. An attempt has been made to preserve the Italian rhythm.

Psyche, more tenuous than the tenuous smoke
that rises from the house (and when it ceases
people say it is empty), you are lighter
than the shadow the smoke casts on the ground.
You’re a prisoner, Psyche, inside your lovely
house made of clay; you’re busy inside, so quiet,
that none can hear you, yet you’re there inside
the well built home, for the celestial breath
rises to heaven. And you’re busy inside
and you sigh, and you’re lonely because
as sole companions you have naked voices,
but you’re their echo; and you watch in wonder,
suddenly startled, as they surge from you.
They’re secret voices; you’re their servant, Psyche.

Around your house, oh prisoner, the flocks
are led to pasture by a savage being1,
hairy, with horns, and on his goat-like feet,
always erect as in mid-jump. And you
fear him, for out there he is always scolding,
crossly howling, and running without pause,
and often splashing in the deepest river
with sound like rain, at times shaking the forest,
just like the wind. There never is a moment
that you don’t hear or you don’t see him, Psyche,
the many shaped Pan. And yet sometimes
he blows so sweetly in the pond amongst
the reeds, and then you want to listen, Psyche,
and you listen and weep. You weep, it’s true,
but it’s sweet weeping for your tears were bitter
once, but they lost their bitterness in passing
through your eyes the first time. And you think back
how you were wed, a virgin, to an unknown
beast, an unknown and cruel monster. Always
with him in the darkness, shivering you lay
docile, until one day awake you bided
watching over his deep and savage sleep.
And then you lit your little lamp and gazed
on the slumbering beast: and he was Love.

And only then you knew the winged Love,
when he was gone. And now you sigh and love him.
And in the well built house of clay, where you
are kept slave by the voices without bodies,
you always wait for him, for his return,
for him to come and sleep with you; you weep
when Pan at night so sweetly makes the reeds
whistle; you weep for love, oh lonely Psyche,
within your house where you don’t take more room
than a shadow, and where you make less noise
than a breath, where you hear the voices who
suddenly make a tear spill from your eyes,
a tear which would not come, which would not fall.

For the voices are mostly stern and sudden,
but one the most, that always nags and when
you yearn for winged freedom screams: “Forbidden!”
That one dislikes you, so you think; there is
another though who loves you and takes you aside
and comforts you and weeps with you and speaks
so softly that you think sometimes it’s too,
the unfortunate, a prisoner like you.

And you must from the tallest pile of seeds
make many piles and separate the grains
of rye, the millet seeds, the rounded vetch,
off from the slender seeds of oat. And like
the finest iron dust, throughout the pile
of seeds scattered lie the poppy seeds.
And you, Psyche, wail fearful and you waver;
then with your fingers made of air you try,
the forgetfulness seeds you sort and sort,
and in one day you gathered as many
as will rattle inside a single dried
flower. And then you melt in tears and lo
of the nurturing Earth the daughters come,
eager and ready they come from the forest
of pines, where they were busy amongst the needles
tilling the humus for the savage Pan.
Who knows who told the black workers of Pan
of this matter. But suddenly there’s swarming
on the floor of the fragrant bush; the ants
spring from their hills in flocks, while in the shade,
Pan is lulled to sleep by the cicadas.
And they climb to the house, wave after wave,
a long unending line of ants, to help you;
but first the grains of barley, heavy ones,
and then the slender seeds of oat they carry,
two of them for each kernel; then the vetch
they sort out from the golden millet; then
they pile the millet and depart. And all
that’s left are only the powdery seeds
from whose nothingness comes a long stemm’d flower,
the mellow flower which dispenses sleep.

And now you invoke the mellow sleep, oh Psyche,
because one of those voices , the one voice,
who dislikes you and nags you sternly, said:
“Oh lowly wench, you take this pitcher, go
and fetch the water from the spring of darkness;
the spring that feeds the black dead nether river.
Go, hasten and return.” So that unwilling,
oh little slave, you went, the crystal pitcher
down to the spring you took; and there you saw
over the cave, the dragon, sleepless beast,
who never shuts his eyes, but you shut yours.
All ashiver you stopp’d. And lo! Some person
whom you saw not, the ewer took from you
and swiftly put it in your hand again,
full of water, and vanished; and you
faintly returned home and with a sigh
open’d your eyes, and in the sparkling crystal
the dark water of death beheld within it.
You saw the swirling nothingness and trembled.
At that moment blew Pan a soothing song
into the water reeds and made you cry;
and at the thought of death you shed the same
tears you had cried for desire of love:
the very same, the tears so sweet, oh Psyche!

And yet you fear, oh Psyche, still, and sadly,
invoke the sleep that it may shield you from
that other, bigger sleep you don’t desire:
But now, one of the voices who enslave you,
the one that loves you, and takes you aside, and soothes you,
suddenly speaks and comforts you and says:
“Oh my poor Psyche, I know where Love is. He
waits for you beyond death. He waits beyond,
and if you cross the dark underground river
there you will find him, Psyche, there is Love.
Do you tremble? There is an old man2, old
as time. He takes all in his boat, and does
no harm to Psyche. And there is a hound3
beyond the river, who devours whatever
is not needed and does no harm to Psyche!
Oh wan Psyche, between your lips that seem
like a withered rose, place a small coin,
like this, so the old man can slide it off
without you knowing; close your eyes and sleep.
And also take a loaf with honey and mild
poppy and hold it, like this, so that the hound
unnoticed may take it; close your eyes
and sleep and when you wake, there will be Love.”

You take a loaf with honey, and your lips,
colorless, grasp the coin, and who knows what
transparent breath of air whisks you away.
Where you pass there’s a shadow, no more than
what the wings of a butterfly may cast.
And yet you’re not asleep; and very lightly
the old man slides the coin out of your lips,
but you feel it, and also hear the rasping
breath of the ancient rower, as though someone
were sawing wood, or pounding on the sod;
and you hear the hound howling, and you tremble,
so that your hand lets go; alas the loaf
makes a splash in the dead waves of the river.
And you too fall, you fall into the swirling
nothingness……

But Pan is there at the edge of the dead river,
grazing his flock. Why, could you not hear there
the sound of life? Tremulous bleating, deep
lowing, the lilting song of birds amid
green leaves, and under heavy herds, the widespread
rustling of dried up leaves. And in the ancient
boat you were lulled by a distant song,
more and more distant, vanishing at last
in the forgotten childhood. Pan! It’s Pan!
And he holds out a hand, a hairy hand,
and lifts you up all frozen, icy, oh Psyche,
without memory; and you so naked, so
weightless, he lays within the wooly growth
of his vast breast and hides you there from all.

What shrill cries from the world, what sad laments
around your empty house, oh Psyche. For
now no longer does rise the tenuous smoke
from the house made of clay, your empty house.
Vanish’d is the celestial breath to heaven.
They look for you, oh runaway, oh Psyche!
Oh Psyche! Where are you, the people ask?
And the old man, who ferries all beyond,
scans the dead river. From the other bank
sniffs eagerly the hound who will devour
what is not needed. They all look for nought.
Psyche, oh Psyche where are you? You’re maybe
within the reeds. Who knows? Amid the flock?
Or in the passing wind, or in the growing
forest. In the cocoon maybe of a worm,
or perhaps you are burning with the sun.

For Pan the eternal took you back, oh Psyche.

1 Pan, the goat-like, Greco-Roman god of nature.

2 The boatman is Charon, who in the Greek myth ferries the dead across the river Styx into Hades, the underworld, or kingdom of the dead.

3 This dog is the mythical Cerberus, the multi-headed dog, the guardian of Hades.

More about this work and translation:

The Convivial Poems has, to the best of the translators' knowledge, only been published in translation once in 1981 by the Lake Erie College Press in Painsville, Ohio. The translation of “Psyche” in that publication (now out of print) is quite different from the one presented here. There is no attempt in the earlier translation to preserve the original meter.