“The False Cupid”

“The False Cupid”1. The title is evocative. Cupid has been banalized by the devotees of St. Valentine and has descended in a whirl of sappy romantic cards reducing Cupid into a plump blind-folded baby cherub joyfully and mischievously shooting his arrows of desire into his bewildered happy victims. But not so the image of Cupid in Spenser’s Faerie Queen and other similar works where the character of Cupid is marked by cruelty.

Blindfold he was, and his cruel fist
A mortall bow and arrows keen did hold,
With which he shot at random, when him list,
Some headed with sad lead, some with pure gold.
(Faerie Queen III, xi, 48)

The blindfold is part of Cupid’s game for he would willingly remove it to rejoice in gazing on the pain he caused.

Next after her the winged God himselfe
Came riding on a lion ravenous,
Thought to obey the ménage of that Elfe,
That man and beast with powre imperious
Subdeweth to his kingdom tyrannous;
His blindfold eyes he bad a while unbind,
That his proud spoyle of that same dolorous
Faire Dame he might behold in perfect kind;
Which seene, he much rejoiced in his cruell mind.
(III, xii, 22-3)

It is not just that Cupid is cruel and malevolent, his arrows more often than not are arrows of illicit desire. C. S. Lewis remarks “The conception of such an enmity between Cupid—one kind of Cupid—and True Love is also found in Sidney’s Arcadia, where Cupid is banished from (of all places) the marriage bed . . .

But thou foule Cupid syre to lawless lust,
Be thou farre hence with thy empoyson’d darte,
Which though of glittering golde, shall here take rust
Where simple love, which chastnesse doth imparte,
Avoydes thy hurtfule arte.

The arrows of desire that the False Cupid shoots are not the arrows of chaste True Love, but the arrows of illicit desire that can only end in cathexis and not in the intimacy of marriage which is marked by “simple love, which chastnesse doth imparte”.

In cathexis there is a temporary letting down of boundaries, and an often obsessive pursuit of sexual activity, but that is not to be confused with the mutual self-giving and receiving that is characteristic of True Love and intimacy. The arrows of Cupid can plunge his victims into cathexis without commitment, and with the most unsuitable of partners; and when the act of sexual cathexis is over the boundaries can snap back just as quickly leaving a tangle of repugnance and remorse. Another very old fashioned name for the pursuit of cathexis is lust.

In clear contrast the temple of Venus in the Faerie Queen bases True Love on a faithful personal relationship and there is in Venus a union of male and female that is not hermaphroditic as some think, but rather reflects the relationship of husband and wife in the biblical theology of marriage where the two become one flesh. C. S. Lewis in support of this view quotes Leone Ebreo who wrote that “in God the lover, the beloved, and their love are all one and the same, and although we count them to be three and say that the lover is formed by the beloved and that love derives from them both (as from the father and mother), yet the whole is one simple unity and essence…”2

That is not what tickles Cupid’s fancy. No far from it. Cupid seeks to shoot his arrows of illicit desire, then take off his blindfold and enjoy watching the misery he has created.

While I was reading the rough draft of this article to my wife Diana, who by the way is my Beatrice3 , she started singing a classic from the 1950’s. The song, originally sung by Connie Francis, struck a chord with her fans and climbed to the top of the charts.

Stupid Cupid
My fine feathered friend with your cute little pranks,
I would like to express my thanks,
I trusted you implicitly,
but what a double-crosser you turned out to be.

Stupid Cupid you're a real mean guy,
I'd like to clip your wings so you can't fly,
I'm in love and it's a crying shame,
and I know that you're the one to blame.
Hey hey, set me free.
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me.

I can't do my homework and I can't think straight,
I meet her every morning 'bout half past eight,
I'm acting like a lovesick fool,
you've even got me carrying your books to school.
Hey hey, set me free.
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me.

You messed me up for good right from the very start,
hey now, go play Robin Hood with somebody else's heart.

You got me jumping like a crazy clown,
and I don't feature what you're putting down,
well since I kissed her loving lips of wine,
the thing that bothers me is that I like it fine.
Hey hey, set me free.
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me.4

While the song is eminently cheerful it expresses the feelings of a great many of Cupid’s victims. They recognize that Stupid Cupid is a real mean guy, but at the same time they feel the draw of cathexis, “since I kissed her loving lips of wine, the thing that bothers me is that I like it fine.” The risks are clear, an old proverb asks, “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? (Proverbs 6:27 KJV). St. Benedict would warn us that “death lies close by the gate of pleasure” (RB Ch. 7, On Humility), which raises the issue, whose side is Cupid on? Certainly not yours!

The unity of lover and beloved in True Love in the Temple of Venus flows from the Unity of the Trinity, who is love and the source of love as expressed in this poem by Christina Rossetti where we find Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, and All is Love.

1. C. S. Lewis, Spenser’s Images of Life, ed. Alastair Fowler, (Cambridge: University Press), 1967, p. 18 (1593, III; ed. Feuillereat, ii, 64)
2. Lewis, p. 42
3. Rosa Mystica: “When all is said and done Beatrice is still and always the laughing Florentine girl. This understanding reveals that this Love is Incarnate Love in very human form. It is Romantic Love enfleshed” (Charles Williams).
4. Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka