A Heart... and a Stone — From the Legends of the Greeks

From the legends of the Greeks

Pygmalion was an artist of fertile imagination and marvelous execution. He gave himself over to sculpture, and began to bring forth from the inert stone living statues, before which the lovers of art stood spellbound, and at which the gods gazed as though they saw in their maker a rival to themselves in creation. For some reason or other he detested woman: he drew his inspiration for his works from her, and shrank from her at the same time; he would carve his masterpiece in her likeness, and stop his ears against the verses of her love for him. He raised the stone to life, but he turned his own living heart back into stone. It was as though he mocked Aphrodite, refusing the grace she lavished upon him, giving his care to the beauty of her handiwork without ever enjoying that beauty.

Pygmalion, inwardly, laughed at Aphrodite. And Aphrodite, she too and in her turn, laughed at him — awaiting the first opportunity.

And the opportunity came...

Pygmalion was bent over the making of his greatest masterpiece, a statue of the ideal woman. He spent many days and nights over the work, with no care but his carving, and no companion or comforter but this new human being he was bringing to life. And it was as if he began to feel that this woman was unique, that there was in her what was not in the women he saw around him and from whom he borrowed his art. He began to see in her a new image of a new creature, beside whom woman, if compared, held no allure and no beauty. And the two of them, Pygmalion and his growing statue, with no third beside them, lived a long while together; he communed with his statue every morning and evening, addressing it as though it were alive and reasoning. And the nearer the statue drew to perfection, the more Pygmalion felt his love increase; and every time the chisel moved, the statue stirred before him, pulsing with life, and his heart stirred, beating with something he had never known before.

The statue was finished. Pygmalion flung the chisel from his hand and stood contemplating it. What was this he saw before him? This sweet form, dripping dew — how had it come into his room? Could this be what he himself had made? Was such a thing conceivable? When had his hands and the chisel ever been so exalted as to make the like of this, or anything near it? This was not stone, as it seemed to him, nor had it been created from stone... It was no human handiwork... There was in it a breath of the breaths of Olympus... All the gods together had shared in its making... He gazed at it long, and in a moment he found himself prostrate before it, looking up at it, awe and trembling mingling with his wonder. Was this a goddess come to visit him in his house? Was this a woman set apart from among all women, sent to him as an offering from the gods in honor of his art? But when was woman ever as sweet as this one at whose feet he bowed? Was this a living person? It must be so. He rose, and brought his fingertips near it — and he was thunderstruck. It was his statue, and nothing but his statue: a statue his own hand had made from cold, soulless stone... It was as rigid as the wall of the room, or as the chisel he had thrown down moments before. And it was as though his art and his creative power, which he had held wholly sacred, had never seemed so paltry in his eyes as they seemed then. Would that he had never known art; would that this sacred spring had never burst forth from his fingers... and would that this body standing erect before him were the body of a living woman — a woman, a woman...

...And Pygmalion found himself upon the threshold of Aphrodite's temple, worshipping there for the first time. Aphrodite looked down upon him from on high — for she had been awaiting his coming — and on her lips was a smile that held every meaning of victory, mockery, and gloating. And she listened as he addressed her statue, panting:

— O goddess of love and beauty, mistress of mankind and subduer of the gods, hear my petition. Long did I deny you and the graces you bestow; long did I strive to belittle you, and so I counterfeited the secret you enfold within your creatures. Yet the more my endeavor succeeded, the more I felt something within me draw back, and felt your hand closing upon my neck. Long did I mock you; but here I am, returning to the fold... So have pity on me, O fairest of the fair, O daughter of the waves, O you who strew the earth beneath the tread of your feet with lilies and jasmine... Have pity on me, this once, and grant my petition...

He drew still nearer the statue, and continued his supplication in a wounded voice: You know this woman whom we joined together to make. I did my part, and brought her forth as best I could, in a form I had never dreamed of; but you withheld the completion of your aid, and denied her the most important thing in her, and the thing I most ardently longed to breathe into her: that she be a woman who lives and loves... She is beautiful as a dream; yet when I touch her, instead of the warmth coursing through her body I feel a bitter, grievous frost. Breathe into her, then, of your flame... Bid her rosy lips move, and her golden hair ripple... Send the soul into her, and turn her into a woman...

So he spoke; and he poured the incense upon the altar, and washed the feet of the statue with perfumes. And Aphrodite smiled from her heights, for she had won her victory. She drew up the incense and perfumes he had poured out into three ascending columns; Pygmalion understood them to be the sign of favor, and prostrated himself anew, praying and giving thanks.

And Aphrodite hastened, like a drowsy breeze, to the cold statue in Pygmalion's room. She touched it with her fingers of light, and said:

— O beautiful creature, whom your maker fashioned after my own likeness, yet wished not to remain as you are, preferring a living beauty that withers to a rigid beauty that never fades: let your artistic beauty be changed into living beauty... Let the golden locks of your hair turn to a gold that with the days will turn to gray... Let your silent lips forsake their everlasting beauty for a beauty that lives out its span and then passes... Let your hard arms grow soft, and let the blood run in them before they grow cold once more, and forever... And let your heart — the woman's heart within you — wake from the slumber of peace in which it lies, to the struggle of life, to love and gladness, and to pain...

And when Pygmalion entered his room, a sweet hope amid the tremors of anxiety within him, he looked at his statue and found a smile upon its lips. But he stood without moving, wiping his brow as though to wipe away the tangled visions of a dream.

— Pygmalion!

He turned to see the source of the sweet voice that had broken loose in the bitter stillness of the room, but he saw no human being. And the voice came again:

— Pygmalion... It is I... Will you not come near me, O partner of my new life?

It was the statue... his statue speaking... the work of his hands conversing with him... Aphrodite had listened to his prayer, and the miracle had come to pass, and the statue had become a woman! He threw himself upon the statue, touching it, hardly believing, passing his hand over the body, here and there — and behold, he felt the warmth gathered within its limbs; and behold, he believed, and cried out:

— Galatea, my wife!

...And Aphrodite blessed their marriage.