Pygmalion

“ The art to such an extent, lies hidden it's own art.
Pygmalion wonders at her and drinks in passionate fires of the replicate body.
Often he moved his hands trying the work, whether it
is a body or whether it is ivory, nor does he admit that it is ivory to this point.
He gives it kisses and he thinks kisses are returned. ”

“ Venus watched over everything that was beautiful on earth. That is why she was sorry that Pygmalion, the King of Greece, was so hardhearted. Pygmalion was a sculptor as well as a king, and so skilled with clay and marble that he was able to mould likenesses of the beings of Mount Olympus, even. But he closed his heart to men and he felt that there was no woman living who was worthy to share his kingdom. ”

“ Mythology tells us that Pygmalion became the lover of a statue of his own creation. Not so! Pygmalion, Praxiteles, Michael Angelo, Benvenuto, and Canova created nothing but statues. The force that can construct the living body of man and woman is more sublime.
"But this force is immaterial, invisible, intangible, imponderable, like the attraction which lulls the worlds in the universal melody; and the body, however material it may seem to us, is in itself only a harmonious grouping, formed by the attraction of this interior force. ”

“ Thus it comes that Pygmalion’s feeling upon first noting the aspect of the living statue is not rapture but wonder, a sort of religious awe, the exaltation of a lofty and intellectual paternity. It is the gradual passage from this feeling to that of love which constitutes the life and, I may add, the beauty of this scene. You can guess what is the first question of Galatea, “Who am I?”—“A woman.” “And you, are you also a woman?”—“No, I am a man.” “What, then, is a man?” ”

“ ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool? If Pygmalion had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him. Not that I should have modelled them any better. I have always said that no one can beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned. But this job required brains. That is where I should have come in.
MARTELLUS. Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand. There are two of Pygmalion's pupils at the laboratory who helped him to manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it. They can turn out a couple of new automatons ”

“ Galatea learns the right which another woman possesses to Pygmalion, the thousand shackles by which men are content to limit their slender liberty and to diminish their fugitive enjoyments. The evening comes, and with it sleep. She thinks she is turning again to stone, then she dreams, and then she sees the light once more. But is life the dream or is the dream life? She asks Myrine, Pygmalion’s sister, for an explanation of all these things. ”

“ Pygmalion, a square-fingered youth with his face laid out in horizontal blocks, and a perpetual smile of eager benevolent interest in everything, and expectation of equal interest from everybody else, comes from the temple to the centre of the group, who regard him for the most part with dismay, as dreading that he will bore them. Ecrasia is openly contemptuous. ”

“ Love for Pygmalion, a blighting sin;
His love a shame that he must hide away; [Pg 101]
Sleep, stone-like senseless sleep, our natural state;
And life a passing vision born thereof!
How the bright promises fade one by one!
Myr. Why there are many men whom thou may’st love;
But not Pygmalion—he has a wife.
Gal. Does no one love him? ”

“ They interpret nothing with the understanding, but their instinct makes them feel quite at home with themselves and leads them to assert their own natures. They are no longer a reflection which man moulds into an empty form; they are not like Galatea, who became a living woman through Pygmalion’s kiss; they were women before they knew Pygmalion,—such thorough women that Pygmalion is often no Pygmalion to them at all, but a stupid lout instead.
It is a fearful disappointment, and causes a woman—and many a womanly woman too—to shrink from man and scan him critically. ”

“ No sudden effort of man's will, such as that by which Pygmalion was believed to have animated the work of his chisel, nor any industrious current of electricity, passed for uninterrupted weeks through the purest gum, and stimulated by the enthusiasm of a Cross, can transform the worm to a breathing being, or reach the human climax by slow steps, even if the first one be in the humble form of a louse. ”

“ In the second, 'The Hand Refrains,' the days of long labor are ended, and the artist's ideal, the cold, pure figure of the yet soulless image stands finished on the still rough pedestal, surrounded by flakes and chips of marble and implements of the sculptor's craft, while Pygmalion, chisel and mallet in hand, stays gazing in awe at the marvel his hand has achieved, his eyes content, but his soul still hungering. ”

“ Pygmalion [6] doth a passion feel For Venus chisel'd by his art. All men, as far as in them lies, Create realities of dreams. To truth our nature proves but ice; To falsehood, fire it seems. [6] Pygmalion.--The poet here takes an erroneous view of the story of Pygmalion. That sculptor fell in love with his statue of the nymph Galatea, to which Venus gave life at his request. See Ovid, Metam. Book X.
VII.--THE MOUSE METAMORPHOSED INTO A MAID. [7] A mouse once from an owl's beak fell; I'd not have pick'd it up, I wis; A Brahmin did it: very well; Each country has its prejudice. ”

“ Gilbert’s Pygmalion is married to a woman whom he loves, and who sits to him as a model. He is not in love with the statue at the outset. He is jealous, however,—and in this conception the author is more Greek than the Greeks themselves,—of the gods, in that they alone have the power of giving life. He is capable only of producing this inanimate figure. As for death, any common murderer can achieve that better than he. It is not Venus who gives life to Galatea to satisfy mere lust ”

“ Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable. ”

“ Proclaim that this is not Pygmalion’s wife,
Who laughs and frowns, but knows no meed between.
I am no longer as that statue is! (Closes curtains.)
Pyg. Why here’s ingratitude, to slander Time,
Who in his hurried course has passed thee by!
Or is it that Cynisca won’t allow
That Time could pass her by, and never pause
To print a kiss upon so fair a face? Enter Myrine.
Myr. Pygmalion; I have news.
Pyg.My sister, speak.
Myr. (bashfully) . Send Mimos hence.
Pyg. (signs to Mimos) .Now we are quite alone.
Myr. Leucippe—
Cyn.Well! ”

“ The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion is going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and nothing else. Take warning by them.
THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us?
PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I confess I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus declares they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: I am a man of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living organism. I cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction.
MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. ”

“ And, indeed, if any could be pardoned for beholding in all things one image, it would be, no doubt, the lover. In the old myth, love guided the hand of art; but Pygmalion was a sculptor, not a landscape painter.
The portrayal of the human form is one of the painter’s triumphs, as it is the sole province of plastic art. Poetry, for the most part, evades a description of personal beauty, and is content with a suggestion. Yet there are two or three etchings in the “Palace of Art” which seem to us not unworthy of a place in that gallery of Philostratus which a poet’s hand repeopled ”

“ A second edition of the Scourge, containing an additional satire (the tenth) , appeared in 1599.
Pygmalion is written in the same metre as Venus and Adonis (from which poem Marston drew his inspiration) —a metre which Lodge had handled with considerable success. A poet who would approach the subject of Pygmalion and his image ought to be gifted with tact and delicacy. In our own day Mr. Morris (in The Earthly Paradise) has told the old Greek story in choice and fluent narrative verse; no poet could have treated it more gracefully. ”

“ Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move;
But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love.”
Keats.
Pygmalion and Galatea.
Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, was a very celebrated sculptor. All his leisure moments were spent in the faithful portrayal of the [Pg 121] gods and goddesses. One day his practiced hand fashioned an image of Galatea. It was so beautiful that even before it was entirely finished its author loved it. When completed, Pygmalion admired it still more, deemed it too beautiful to remain inanimate, and besought Venus to give it life, stating that he wished a wife just like it. ”

“ Pygmalion, king of Tyre, was the son of Margenus, or Mechres, whom he succeeded, and lived 56 years, wherof he reigned 47. Dido, his sister, was to have governed with him, but it was pretended the subjects thought it not convenient. She married Sichaeus, who was the king's uncle, and very rich; wherefore he put him to death; and Dido soon after departed the kingdom. Poets say, Pygmalion was punished for the hatred he bore to women with the love he had to a statue. ”

“ Pygmalion formed an ivory maid, and longed for an informing soul. She, on the contrary, combined all the qualities of a hero’s mind, and fate presented a statue in which she might enshrine them. ”

“ PREFACE TO PYGMALION.
A Professor of Phonetics.
As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. ”

“ He was also a famous sculptor, and spent all his leisure hours carving wonderful things out of marble and ivory. Though he would not deign to admire any living woman, he had lofty ideals of feminine beauty, and loved to carve statues whose perfection of form and exquisite grace surpassed any charms that could be claimed for a flesh-and-blood maiden. Once Pygmalion made a beautiful ivory statue that was such a marvel of loveliness that even the sculptor himself became enamored of it, and105 lavished upon it a devotion that was hardly consistent with his supposed indifference to love. ”

“ Malcolm Bell, also, writing of the art of Burne-Jones and of its critics, expresses a like opinion, and his analysis of the paintings composing the Pygmalion Series is not only interesting in itself, but is especially so as showing the extent to which the man of letters can read his own interpretation into the work of a painter. ”

“ I tell her that thou hast a cheated wife,
She only says, “I love Pygmalion,
I and my life are his, and his alone!”
Who is this shameless woman, sir? Confess!
Pyg. Myrine, I will tell thee all. The gods,
To punish my expressed impiety,
Have worked a miracle, and brought to life
My statue Galatea!
Myr. (incredulously) . Marvelous,
If it be true!
Pyg.It’s absolutely true. (Myrine opens the curtains and sees the pedestal empty.)
Myr. The statue’s gone! (Galatea appears at door.) [Pg 99]
Pyg.The statue’s at the door! ”

“ Pygma′lion. A famous sculptor who had resolved to remain unmarried, but he made such a beautiful statue of a goddess that he begged Venus to give [Pg 93] it life. His request being granted, Pygmalion married the animated statue.
“Few, like Pygmalion, doat on lifeless charms,
Or care to clasp a statue in their arms.”
Py′lades.
“His wine
Was better, Pylades, than thine.
... If you please
To chuse me for your Pylades.” F. Lewis.
Pylo′tis. A Greek name of Minerva.
Pyr′acmon, one of the chiefs of the Cyclopes.
Py′rois (luminous) . One of the four chariot horses of Sol. ”

“ The three bodies are carried out as directed, Pygmalion into the temple by his bare arms and legs, and the two Figures through the grove by their clothes. Martellus superintends the removal of the Figures, Acis that of Pygmalion. Ecrasia, Arjillax, Strephon, and the Newly Born sit down as before, but on contrary benches; so that Strephon and the Newly Born now face the grove, and Ecrasia and Arjillax the temple. The Ancients remain standing at the altar. ”

“ And the reason is, that my secretary cannot transcribe Sweet, having been perforce taught in the schools of Pitman. Therefore, Sweet railed at Pitman as vainly as Thersites railed at Ajax: his raillery, however it may have eased his soul, gave no popular vogue to Current Shorthand. Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches of Sweet in the play. With Higgins's physique and temperament Sweet might have set the Thames on fire. ”

“ To her “reverend Pastor Master Edward Calamy”—the famous puritan minister, Edmund Calamy—she leaves “6 angels as a token of my respect.”
[7] Pygmalion’s Image was republished, without the satires, in 1613 and 1628, in a volume containing the anonymous poem Alcilia and S. P.’s [Samuel Page’s?] Amos and Laura.
[8] In the epigram he refers to the nom de plume “Kinsayder” which Marston had adopted, and we learn that it was derived from the “kinsing” (cutting the tails?) of dogs. It is to be noticed that the name “Kinsayder” does not occur in the Pygmalion volume. ”