Pygmalion

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Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion et Galatée^[1] (1763)

Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton,^[2] he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, in which Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has made.

In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides prostituting themselves, he is 'not interested in women', but his statue is so realistic that he falls in love with it. He offers the statue gifts and eventually prays to Venus (Aphrodite). She takes pity on him and brings the statue to life. They marry and have a son, Paphos:

"...a lovely boy was born;
Paphos his name, who grown to manhood, wall'd
The city Paphos, from the founder call'd."^[3]

and in some versions also a daughter, Metharme.^[4]

Ovid's mention of Paphos suggests that he was drawing on a more circumstantial account^[5] than the source for a passing mention of Pygmalion in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke, a Hellenic mythography of the second-century AD.^[6] Perhaps he drew on the lost narrative by Philostephanus that was paraphrased by Clement of Alexandria.^[7] Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton and figures in the founding legend of Paphos in Cyprus.

Parallels in Greek myth

The story of the breath of life in a statue has parallels in the examples of Daedalus, who used quicksilver to install a voice in his statues; of Hephaestus, who created automata for his workshop; of Talos, an artificial man of bronze; and, according to Hesiod, Pandora, who was made from clay at the behest of Zeus.

The moral anecdote of the "Apega of Nabis", recounted by the historian Polybius, described a supposed mechanical simulacra of the tyrant's wife, that crushed victims in her embrace.

The discovery of the Antikythera mechanism suggests that such rumoured animated statues had some grounding in contemporary mechanical technology. The island of Rhodes was particularly known for its displays of mechanical engineering and automata - Pindar, one of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, said this of Rhodes in his seventh Olympic Ode:

"The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
move their marble feet."

The trope of a sculpture so lifelike it seemed about to move was a commonplace with writers on works of art in Antiquity that was inherited by writers on art after the Renaissance.

Re-interpretations of Pygmalion

The basic Pygmalion story has been widely transmitted and re-presented in the arts through the centuries. At an unknown date, later authors give as the name of the statue that of the sea-nymph Galatea or Galathea. Goethe calls her Elise, based upon the variants in the story of Dido/Elissa.

In the Middle Ages Pygmalion was held up as an example of the excesses of idolatry, probably spurred by Clement of Alexandria's suggestion that Pygmalion had carved an image of Aphrodite herself. However, by the 18th century it was a highly influential love-story, seen as such in Rousseau's musical play of the story. By the 19th century, the story often becomes one in which the awakened beloved rejects Pygmalion; although she comes alive, she is initially cold and unattainable.

A twist on this theme can also be seen in the story of Pinocchio where a wooden puppet is transformed into a real boy, though in this case the puppet possesses sentience prior to its transformation, and it is the puppet and not the woodcarver (sculptor) who beseeches the miracle.

William Shakespeare has a version of the legend in The Winter's Tale when Hermione is seen as a lifelike statue in the final scene.

Paintings

Pygmalion by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1786 musée national du château et des Trianons

The story has been the subject of notable paintings by Agnolo Bronzino, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Honoré Daumier, Edward Burne-Jones (four major works from 1868–1870, then again in larger versions from 1875-1878), Auguste Rodin, Ernest Normand, Paul Delvaux, Francisco Goya, Franz von Stuck, Francois Boucher, and Thomas Rowlandson, among others. There have also been numerous sculptures of the 'awakening'.

Literature

Ovid's Pygmalion has inspired several works of literature, including

• Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ideals"
• Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein
• Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark"
• William Morris's poem "Earthly Paradise"
• George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion
• Tawfiq el-Hakim's play Pygmalion
• H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Herbert West: Reanimator"
• Isaac Asimov's novel "The Positronic Man"
• Tommaso Landolfi's short story "La moglie di Gogol" ('The Wife of Gogol')
• Willy Russell's play Educating Rita
• Richard Powers's novel Galatea 2.2
• Amanda Filipacchi's novel Vapor
• Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Pygmalion's Bride"
• John Dryden's poem "Pygmalion and the Statue"
• Walid Bitar's poem "The Fourth Person"
• John Updike's short story Pygmalion

Opera, ballet and music

• The story of Pygmalion is the subject of Jean-Philippe Rameau's 1748 opera, Pigmalion. It was also the subject of Gaetano Donizetti's first opera, Il Pigmalione.
• The English progressive rock group Yes composed "Turn Of The Century" (1977); it tells the story of the sculptor Roan who, in the grief of his wife's death, "molds his passion into clay." The sculpture of his wife comes to life and they fall in love.
• The great choreographer Marius Petipa and the composer Prince Nikita Trubetskoi created a 4 act ballet on the subject called Pygmalion, ou La Statue de Chypre. The ballet was revived in 1895 with the great ballerina Pierina Legnani.
• The song "Trial By Fire" by darkwave/gothic band ThouShaltNot recreates the idea of a modern-day Pygmalion with lyrics such as "I sculpt your nature within, I am your Pygmalion" and "I dust away the plaster from off your breathing body...You'll never be the same."
• The ballet Coppélia, about an inventor who makes a life-sized dancing doll, has strong echoes of Pygmalion.

Stage plays

W. S. Gilbert's stage version, 1871

There have also been successful stage-plays based upon the work, such as W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1912, staged 1914) owes something to both the Greek Pygmalion and the legend of "King Cophetua and the beggar maid"; in which a King lacks interest in women, but one day falls in love with a young beggar-girl, later educating her to be his Queen. Shaw's comedy of manners in turn was the basis for the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (1956). P. L. Deshpande's "Ti Fulrani" (Queen of flowers) is also based on Shaw's Pygmalion. The play was a huge success in Marathi theater and has earned many accolades.

Films

Notable 20th century feature films are My Fair Lady (1964, based on the Broadway musical); Trading Places, Mighty Aphrodite by director Woody Allen; Weird Science directed by John Hughes; and the 1987 film Mannequin, a remake of the 1948 classic One Touch of Venus, "She's All That" with Freddie Prinze Jr., as well as S1m0ne (featuring a computer-generated artificial intelligence as the love object). Many films have dealt collaterally with this theme.: Vertigo, and more recently Lars and the Real Girl, depicting an introverted man who falls in love with a plastic sex doll. The play, 1946, and films, 1950 and 1993, "Born Yesterday" also carry the Pygmalion theme.

The popular horror genre in film has also had an interest in 'bringing to life' waxwork figures and show-room dummies (see: Waxworks: A Cultural Obsession by Michelle Bloom). Many horror films deviate considerably from the original story; for example, in The Stepford Wives (1975) the creators turn their living wives into inanimate (robotic, compliant) wives. Likewise, the legend serves as the inspiration for one of the Lineages, the Galatea, that appears in the White Wolf role-playing game Promethean: The Created.

Television

• The American TV series My Living Doll portrayed a female robot (Julie Newmar) whose creators attempted to transform her into a "perfect woman".
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 3rd season episode "The Galatea Affair" from 1966 is a spoof of My Fair Lady. A crude barroom entertainer (Joan Collins) is taught to behave like a lady. Noel Harrison, son of Rex Harrison, star of the My Fair Lady film, is the guest star.
• The Aerosmith music video for Hole in My Soul features a nerdy college student who tries to find the girl of his dreams by creating one in a lab, only to have her leave him.
• The Japanese anime series Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 includes a character named Galatea, an artificial life form designed to be the next evolution of the human race.
• In Justice League Unlimited, Emile Hamilton creates a clone of Supergirl, that he names Galatea.
• An episode of the Philippine TV series Love Spell features a teenage boy who falls in love with a mannequin who comes to life when lightning strikes it.
• In the music video for "This Time" by K-pop group Wonder Girls, a designer falls in love with his mannequin, and she comes to life. She runs away, leaving the designer to chase after her.
• In "Fagmalion" a three-part episode of Will and Grace, Will Truman falls in love with a man named Barry whom he sculpts into a more refined gay man following his coming out.

Notes

Further reading

• Essaka Joshua. (2001). Pygmalion and Galatea: The History of a Narrative in English Literature. Ashgate.
• Kenneth Gross. (1992). The Dream of the Moving Statue. Cornell University Press. (A wide-ranging survey of 'living statues' in literature and the arts).
• Jack Burnham. Beyond Modern Sculpture (1982). Allan Lane. (A history of 'living statues' and the fascination with automata - see the introductory chapter: "Sculpture and Automata").
• Ernst Buschor. Vom Sinn der griechischen Standbilder (1942). (Clear discussion of attitudes to sculptural images in classical times).
• John J. Ciofalo. "The Art of Sex and Violence - The Sex and Violence of Art." The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• John J. Ciofalo. "Unveiling Goya's Rape of Galatea." Art History (December 1995), pp. 477-98.
• Gail Marshall. (1998). Actresses on the Victorian Stage: Feminine Performance and the Galatea Myth. Cambridge University Press.
• Alexandra K. Wettlaufer. (2001). Pen Vs. Paintbrush: Girodet, Balzac, and the Myth of Pygmalion in Post-Revolutionary France. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Danahay, Martin A. (1994) "Mirrors of Masculine Desire: Narcissus and Pygmalion in Victorian Representation". Victorian Poetry, No. 32, 1994: pages 35-53.
• Edward A. Shanken. (2005) “Hot 2 Bot: Pygmalion’s Lust, the Maharal’s Fear, and the Cyborg Future of Art,” Technoetic Arts 3:1: 43-55.
• (2005). Almost Human: Puppets, Dolls and Robots in Contemporary Art, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ. (Catalogue for a group exhibition March 20 - June 12, 2005)

See also

• Agalmatophilia
• Narcissus
• Pinocchio

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pygmalion and Galatea

• English-translation text of Ovid's poem.
• Latin original, lines 243-297, at http://thelatinlibrary.com
• Shakespeare reference