A Heart... and a Stone

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