Pygmalion (mythology)

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(disambiguation).

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

Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though
Pygmalion [2]
is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name
Pumayyaton,[3]
he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses,
X, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had
carved.

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 (more accurately, they denied the divinity of Aphrodite and she thus
‘reduced’ them to prostitution), he was 'not interested in women',[4]
but his statue was so fair and realistic that he fell in love with it. In the
vertex, Venus (Aphrodite)'s
festival day came. For the festival, Pygmalion made offerings to Venus and made
a wish. "I sincerely wished the ivory sculpture will be changed to a real
woman." However, he couldn’t bring himself to express it. When he returned home,
Cupid sent by Venus kissed the ivory sculpture on the hand. At that time, it was
changed to a beautiful woman. A ring was put on her finger. It was Cupid’s ring
which made love achieved. Venus granted his wish.

Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Venus’
blessing. They had a son, “Paphos” which he took from his home.

a lovely boy was born;

Paphos his name, who grown to manhood, wall'd

The city Paphos, from the founder call'd.

—[5]

In some versions they also had a daughter, Metharme.[6]

Ovid's mention of Paphos suggests that he was drawing on a more
circumstantial account[7]
than the source for a passing mention of Pygmalion in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke, a Hellenic
mythography of the second-century AD.[8]
Perhaps he drew on the lost narrative by Philostephanus that was
paraphrased by Clement of
Alexandria.[9]
Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name
Pumayyaton and figures in the founding legend of Paphos in Cyprus.

Contents

1 Parallels in Greek
myth

2 Re-interpretations of
Pygmalion

2.1 Paintings

2.2 Literature

2.3 Opera, ballet and
music

2.4 Stage plays

2.5 Films

2.6 Television

2.7 Interactive
fiction

3 Notes

4 Further reading

5 See also

6 External links

[edit]
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 simulacrum 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.

[edit]
Re-interpretations of
Pygmalion

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(June 2010)

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; it is the puppet and not the woodcarver
(sculptor) who beseeches the miracle.

William Shakespeare,
in the final scene of The Winter's
Tale (c1611), presents what appears to be a tomb effigy of Hermione that is
revealed as Hermione herself, bringing the play to a conclusion of
reconciliations.

George Bernard Shaw
wrote a play titled "Pygmalion". In Shaw's
play, the girl is brought to life by two men in speech — the goal for their
masterpiece is for her to marry and become a duchess. It has an interesting spin
on the original story and has a subtle hint of feminism.

[edit]
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, François Boucher,
and Thomas Rowlandson,
among others. There have also been numerous sculptures of the "awakening".

[edit]
Literature

Ovid's Pygmalion has inspired several works of literature. Popularity for the
Pygmalion myth surged in the 1800s.

Poems

Friedrich
Schiller's poem "Ideals"

William Morris's poem
"Earthly Paradise" in which he includes the section "Pygmalion
and the Image"

Thomas Woolner's long
poem Pygmalion

Carol Ann Duffy's poem
"Pygmalion's Bride"

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)

John Dryden's poem "Pygmalion and the Statue"

Walid Bitar's poem "Pigmalion"

Robert
Buchanan's poem "Pygmalion
the Sculptor" in his work Undertones (1864)

John Marston's "Pigmalion", in "The Argument of the Poem" and "The Authour
in prayse of his precedent Poem."

Robert Browning's
My Last Duchess.

Thomas Lovell
Beddoes's Pygmalion,
or the Cyprian Statuary.

Frederick
Tennyson's "Pygmalion" from Daphne and
Other Poems (1891).

Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps' "Galatea" from Harper's
Weekly (1884).

Robert Graves' "Pygmalion to Galatea" (1926) and "Galatea and Pygmalion".

Squire's "Galatea Awakes".

R.M.
Montgomery's "Galatea to Pygmalion"

Genevieve Taggard's
"Galatea Again"

Andrew Lang's “The New Pygmalion or the Statue’s Choice” (1911)

William Bell
Scott's "Pygmalion" (1923)

Albert
G. Miller's "Pygmalion" (1945)

Claribel
Alegría's "Galatea Before the Mirror" (1993)

Melvin
H. Bernstein's "Mr. Pygmalion to Miss
Galatea: An Interior Monologue" (1970).

Katham
Pollitt's "Pygmalion" (1979)

Harry
C. Morris' "Pygmalion" (1956)

Edward Rowland
Sill's "The Lost Magic" (1900)

H.D.'s "Pygmalion"

Joseph Brodsky's "Galatea Encore" (1983)

Grace Greenwood's "Pygmalion"

Emily
Henrietta Hickey's A Sculptor
and Other Poems (1881)

John Hooley's "Pygmalion" (2000s)

David Kimel's "Pygmalion"

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. Hoffman's The Sandman.

Stanley
Grauman Weinbaum

Pygmalion's Spectacles

Novels and Plays

Mary Shelley's novel
Frankenstein

Isaac Asimov's novel "The Positronic Man"

William Hazlitt's
"Liber Amoris: or, the New Pygmalion" (1894).

Richard Powers's novel
Galatea 2.2

Amanda Filipacchi's
novel Vapor

Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth"

Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" (1880-81).

Laura by Vera
Caspary.

George MacDonald's Phantastes

The Phantom of
the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of
Dorian Gray.

George Bernard
Shaw's play Pygmalion

Tawfiq el-Hakim's play
Pygmalion

William Schwenck
Gilbert's play "Pygmalion and
Galatea"

Willy Russell's play
Educating Rita

Rousseau's play "Pygmalion, scéne lyrique"

Other

Pete
Wentz's comic series "Fall Out Toy Works"

Grant Morrison's Professor Pyg who
appears in Batman and
Robin

[edit]
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.

Molin
produced a ballet-pantomime version of Pygmalion in 1800.

The ballet Coppélia, about an
inventor who makes a life-sized dancing doll, has strong echoes of Pygmalion.

The great 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.

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 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."

[edit]
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). It was revived twice, in 1884 and in 1888.

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.

In 1883, the musical burlesque Galatea, or
Pygmalion Reversed was performed at the Gaiety Theatre
with a libretto by Henry Pottinger
Stephens and W.
Webster, and a score composed by Wilhelm Meyer
Lutz.

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 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.

[edit]
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, the Julia Roberts hit movie
Pretty Woman, 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 as does Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

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). For instance, Karl Freund's 1935 horror
film Mad Love
features an obsessive character named Doctor Gogol who keeps a wax figure of an
actress he is in love with in his apartment, referring to the figure as Galatea
as he speaks to it and plays music for it. In the climax, the actress is caught
hiding in Gogol's apartment and pretends to be the figure in an attempt to
conceal herself. When she finally screams, Gogol mistakenly and insanely
believes that his love has brought Galatea to life at last. 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.

Other notable film adaptations include The Red
Shoes and All About Eve.

[edit]
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.

[edit]
Interactive fiction

The IF Galatea is
based on the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

[edit]
Notes

^
The invention of the name Galatea is modern;
Falconet's title was Pygmalion aux pieds de sa statue qui s'anime,
"Pygmalion at the feet of his statue, which comes to life".

^
Ancient
Greek: Πυγμαλίων, gen.:
Πυγμαλίωνος

^
See Pygmalion of Tyre.

^
Morford, Mark (2007). "Classical Mythology" Oxford University Press pp. 184

^
Ovid,
Metamorphoses X.

^
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, iii.14.3.

^
The Greek sources of Ovid's tale are fully discussed at Galatea.

^
Bibliotheke, iii.14.3 simply mentions "Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion,
king of Cyprus."

^
Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks, 4: "So the well-known Pygmalion of
Cyprus fell in love with an ivory statue; it was of Aphrodite and was naked.
The man of Cyprus is captivated by its shapeliness and embraces the statue.
This is related by Philostephanus".

[edit]
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, New Jersey. (Catalogue for a group
exhibition March 20 - June 12, 2005)

Morford, Mark. (2007). "Classical Mythology Eighth Edition". Oxford
University Press

Hersey, George L (2009). "Falling in love with statues: artificial humans
from Pygmalion to the present", Chicago, 2009, ISBN
9780226327792

Law, Helen H. (1932). "The Name Galatea in the Pygmalion Myth", The
Classical Journal, Vol. 27 No. 5 (Feb. 1932), published by The Classical
Association of the Middle West and South, accessed via JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.usc.edu/stable/3290617

[edit]
See also

Agalmatophilia

Narcissus

Pinocchio

Prometheus

Uncanny valley

[edit]
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

[1]

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