A Myth Retold

Reading Till We Have Faces reminds me why I love C.S. Lewis as a writer. I've read Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, this one was a full on novel more for adults than children. Lewis retells the story of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual. Set in what feels like an ancient near eastern civilization called "Glome." One of the major themes of the book is beauty and ugliness paralleled with pure and profane love. According to myth Psyche as beauty that surpasses even the beauty of Venus (Cupid's mother). Though this was the main plotline in the original myth, it wasn't even addressed in the novel. Anyway, coming back to beauty and ugliness. Psyche is beautiful and Orual is ugly.

The novel follows Orual as she becomes queen of her own country, a queen that keeps her face veiled because of her ugliness, but by her actions and behavior legends arise telling of how she is veiled because she is so beautiful beyond what anyone can handle. So there is this struggle where Orual tries to reconcile herself to make up for her ugliness as well as her love for her sister Psyche.

I don't have a good segue to this next quote (granted English class is 4 years ago, but here is the title written into the story:

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"