Till We Have Faces
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a 1956 parallel novel by C. S. Lewis. It is a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, which had haunted Lewis all his life, and which is itself based on a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual, and is constructed as a long-withheld accusation against the gods. Although the book is set in the fictional kingdom of Glome, Greece is often invoked to give the story a setting in time, as well as to allow for an interplay between the Hellenistic, rationalistic world-view and the powerful, 'irrational', and 'primitive' one.
Plot summary
The story is a re-telling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the point of view of Orual, Psyche's ugly sister (as she is seen in the usual telling). The first book begins as the complaint of an old woman who is bitter at the pain and injustice of the gods. Although Orual is indeed unattractive, she loves the beautiful Psyche obsessively, and when Psyche is sacrificed to the primitive god symbolizing the Greek Cupid, she feels as if the gods have stolen her sister from her. In an attempt to rescue her sister, she fails, except for a brief moment, to recognize the beautiful castle in which her sister lived, and brushes off what she saw by claiming she could have been mistaken. She proceeded to urge her sister to look at her husband for fear that her sister had married a monster, although Cupid had specifically forbidden Psyche to do so. After suffering for years with the consequences of her actions (during which she had become a just and victorious queen — though one clinging and ravenous for affection), she heard a recounting of the tale which depicted her as having deliberately ruined her sister's life out of envy. In justice, she is recounting her tale in hopes that it will be brought to Greece, where she has heard that men are willing to question even the gods.
Orual begins the second part of the book by declaring that her previous argument was false, that she has no time to revise it properly, but must amend the book before she dies. After at first finishing her book, she considered it time to end her miserable life. However, various mysterious events and occurrences happened to her, including dreams parallel to the tasks given to Psyche in the myth. In the end, she has a dream where she is entitled to present her complaint to the gods. Re-reading her work, she realizes that her love for Psyche was compounded of possessiveness, and that her actual motivation for urging Psyche to look at her husband was jealousy — not of Psyche, but of Cupid (referred to in the story only as 'the god of the mountain'), who had, in her eyes, stolen Psyche's love. This realization allows her to meet and reconcile with Psyche. The text ends in the middle of a sentence: "Long did I hate you. Long did I fear you. I might—", and is followed by a note from another character (Arnom, priest of Aphrodite), who describes that she had been found dead at her writing table, presumably mid-sentence as evidenced by way the word "might" looked on the page on which her head fell as she expired.
In popular culture
Steve Hackett named his 1984 album after the book. Hackett was influenced by Lewis's work.Template:Fact
The Band "Over the Rhine" named their first album, released in 1991, "Till We Have Faces," after the C. S. Lewis book.
