Pygmalion (mythology)

In book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory alabaster. Post-classical sources name her Galatea.

According to Ovid, when Pygmalion saw the Propoetides of Cyprus practicing prostitution, he began "detesting the faults beyond measure which nature has given to women".^[1] He determined to remain celibate and to occupy himself with sculpting. He made a sculpture of a woman that he found so perfect he fell in love with it. Pygmalion kissed and fondled the sculpture, brought it various gifts, and created a sumptuous bed for it.

In time, Aphrodite's festival day came and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite. There, too afraid to admit his desire, he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl". When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish.

Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture, which changed to a woman under Aphrodite's blessing. In Ovid's narrative, they had a daughter, Paphos, from whom is derived the name of the city.

In some versions, Paphos was a son, and they also had a daughter, Metharme.^[2]

Ovid's mention of Paphos suggests that he was drawing on a more circumstantial account^[3] than the source for a passing mention of Pygmalion in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke, a Hellenic mythography of the 2nd-century AD.^[4] Perhaps he drew on the lost narrative by Philostephanus that was paraphrased by Clement of Alexandria.^[5] In the story of Dido, Pygmalion is an evil king.

This article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture. (November 2017)

The basic Pygmalion story has been widely transmitted and represented 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.

A variant of this theme can also be seen in the story of Pinocchio, in which a wooden puppet is transformed into a "real boy", though in this case the puppet possesses sapience prior to its transformation; it is the puppet and not its creator, the woodcarver Geppetto, who beseeches the divine powers for the miracle.

In the final scene of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, a statue of Queen Hermione which comes to life is revealed as Hermione herself, so bringing the play to a conclusion of reconciliations.

In George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, a modern variant of the myth, the underclass flower-girl Eliza Doolittle is metaphorically "brought to life" by a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who teaches her to refine her accent and conversation and otherwise conduct herself with upper-class manners in social situations. This play in turn inspired a 1938 film adaptation, as well as the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film adaptation.

The 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl tells the story of a man who purchases a doll and treats her as a real person in order to reconnect with the rest of the world. Although she never comes to life, he believes she is real, and in doing so develops more connections to his community. When he no longer needs her, he lets her go. This is a reversal of the myth of Pygmalion.^[6]

Paintings

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

Literature

Ovid's Pygmalion has inspired many works of literature, some of which are listed below. The popularity of the Pygmalion myth surged in the 19th century.

Poems

England

John Gower's "Pygmaleon and his Statue" in Book 4 of the Confessio Amantis (1390)
John Marston's "Pigmalion", in "The Argument of the Poem" and "The Authour in prayse of his precedent Poem" (1598)^[7]
John Dryden's poem "Pygmalion and the Statue" (1697–1700)^[8]
Thomas Lovell Beddoes's "Pygmalion, or the Cyprian Statuary" (1823–25)^[9]
William Cox Bennett's poem "Pygmalion" from his work Queen Eleanor's Vengeance and Other Poems (1856)
Arthur Henry Hallam's poem "Lines Spoken in the Character of Pygmalion" from his work Remains in verse and prose of Arthur Henry Hallam: With a preface and memoir (1863)^[10]
Robert Buchanan's poem "Pygmalion the Sculptor" in his work Undertones (1864)^[11]
William Morris's poem "Earthly Paradise" in which he includes the section "Pygmalion and the Image" (1868)^[12]
William Bell Scott's "Pygmalion"^[13]
Thomas Woolner's long poem "Pygmalion" (1881)^[14]
Frederick Tennyson's "Pygmalion" from Daphne and Other Poems (1891)^[15]
Robert Graves's "Pygmalion to Galatea" (1926) and "Galatea and Pygmalion"^[16]

Scotland

Andrew Lang's "The New Pygmalion or the Statue's Choice" (1911)^[13]
Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Pygmalion's Bride" (1999)^[17]

Ireland

Emily Henrietta Hickey's A Sculptor and Other Poems (1881)^[18]
Patrick Kavanagh's "Pygmalion" (1938)
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's "Pygmalion's Image" (1991)

Germany

Friedrich Schiller's poem "The Ideals" (Die Ideale) (1795-6)^[19]

Romania

Nichita Stănescu's poem "Către Galateea" (Dreptul la timp) (1965)^[20]

United States

Sara Jane Lippincott (Grace Greenwood)'s "Pygmalion" (1851)^[21]
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Galatea" from Harper's Weekly (1884)^[22]
Edward Rowland Sill's "The Lost Magic" (1900)^[23]
H.D.'s "Pygmalion" (1913–17)^[24]
Genevieve Taggard's "Galatea Again" (1929)^[13]
Katha Pollitt's "Pygmalion" (1979)^[25]

Nicaragua

Claribel Alegría's "Galatea Before the Mirror" (1993)^[13]

Short stories

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark" and his similar novella, Rappaccini's Daughter.
H.P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West–Reanimator"
Tommaso Landolfi's "La moglie di Gogol" ('The Wife of Gogol')
John Updike's "Pygmalion"
E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman"
Jorge Luis Borges's "Las Ruinas Circulares" (Argentina)
Isaac Asimov's short story "Galatea", in his collection Azazel, is a parody of the story in which a female sculptor sculpts her idea of the ideal man
Madeline Miller's "Galatea: A Short Story" (2013) ^[26]

Novels and plays

William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris: or, the New Pygmalion (1823)
Lloyd C. Douglas's novel "Invitation To Live" (1940)
Richard Powers's novel Galatea 2.2
Amanda Filipacchi's novel Vapor
Edith Wharton's House of Mirth^[27]
Henry James' Portrait of a Lady (1880–81)^[27]
George MacDonald's Phantastes^[28]
George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion
Edgar Neville's play Prohibido en otoño.
Tawfiq el-Hakim's play Pygmalion
William Schwenck Gilbert's play Pygmalion and Galatea
Willy Russell's play Educating Rita
Rousseau's play Pygmalion, scène lyrique, the first full melodrama^[29]
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's novel Tomorrow's Eve
Jacinto Grau's play El Señor de Pigmalión (1921)
William Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale (1611)

Other

Pete Wentz's comic series Fall Out Toy Works
Grant Morrison's Professor Pyg, who appears in Batman and Robin

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 Georg Benda's 1779 monodrama, Pygmalion.
Ramler's poem Pygmalion was set to music as an aria by J.C.F.Bach in 1772, and as a cantata by Friedrich Benda in 1784.
Pygmalion was the subject of Gaetano Donizetti's first opera, Il Pigmalione.
Fromental Halévy wrote an opera Pygmalion in the 1820s, but it was not performed.
Franz von Suppé composed an operetta Die schöne Galathée, which is based on the characters of Pygmalion and Galatea.
The ballet Coppélia, about an inventor who makes a life-sized dancing doll, has strong echoes of Pygmalion.
The choreographer Marius Petipa and the composer Prince Nikita Trubetskoi created a four-act ballet on the subject called Pygmalion, ou La Statue de Chypre. The ballet was revived in 1895 with the great ballerina Pierina Legnani.

Stage plays

Though it is not based on the story of Pygmalion, Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure references Pygmalion in a line spoken by Lucio in Act 3, Scene 2: "What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutch'd?"^[30]

There have also been successful stage-plays based upon the work, such as W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea (1871). It was revived twice, in 1884 and in 1888. The play was parodied by the musical 1883 burlesque Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed, which was performed at the Gaiety Theatre with a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens and W. Webster, and a score composed by Wilhelm Meyer Lutz.

In January, 1872, Ganymede and Galatea opened at the Gaiety Theatre. This was a comic version of Franz von Suppé's Die schöne Galathee, coincidentally with Arthur Sullivan's brother, Fred Sullivan, in the cast.

In March 1872, William Brough's 1867 play Pygmalion; or, The Statue Fair was revived, and in May of that year, a visiting French company produced Victor Massé's Galathée.

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1912, staged 1913) 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), as well as numerous other adaptations.

P. L. Deshpande's play 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. Madhu Rye adapted Pygmalion in Gujarati as Santu Rangili (1976) which was successful.

Pygmalion (mythology)

In Ovid

Parallels in Greek myth

Cultural depictions