eros, logos: Galatea

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Galatea

He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore,
And still the more he knows it, loves the more:
The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,
Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.
Fir'd with this thought, at once he strain'd the breast,
And on the lips a burning kiss impress'd.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X

Pygmalion falls in love with his statue. He comes to worship her, he brings her gifts and adorns her, he makes her a bed to lie upon and slides a pillow under her head, 'as though it had sense in it' says Ovid. Sometimes he caresses her, kisses her, and worries that he has held her so tightly that her pale marble will bruise.
And Aphrodite takes pity on him, and so one day he wildly thinks he does feel her breast give slightly under his hand, and imagines her lips do redden under his kiss. So like his earlier fevered imaginings, yet now when he takes her wrist in his hand he finally feels her pulse leap and beat, throbbing under his thumb.

The artist's creation moves, breathes, speaks his name, looks at him and sees him. The stories don't say what she felt, or if she did, and Ovid does not even name her. She is not named by the sculptor either, but only 'my ivory maid', a name being one of the features that I suppose appeared inessential to him, although he took infinite pains over her face and body.

It is so important to you that I should look at you and see you clearly. The mirror needs to reflect back a true and faithful image of you for you to value it, and we prize mirrors for their accuracy in this task. Yet this reflected image is one which serves to enlarge you in every sense. There is something about this particular 'I' which you value; this seeing 'I' is important in some way in which other eyes are not. I want to see the back of the mirror though. I want to see the other side of the fairy tales.

Did Galatea think? Or were her thoughts only those wished for her by Pygmalion? Perhaps he forgot them as inessential, in the same way he neglected to give her a name. Did she think and feel, and keep those things inside, hidden?

I imagine she opened her mouth and her legs compliantly always, gracefully arranged those ivory pale limbs in whatever manner requested. How could she fail to be other than graceful, when he had invented her? And how fail to be compliant, when once those marble limbs became pliant ivory and bruisable flesh? This was after all the purpose for which she was created, and Pygmalion had started to bring her to bed long before Aphrodite granted him his wish and made her warm to his touch.

Perhaps she thought and kept silent. Perhaps she had only those thoughts Pygmalion had wished for her, and so was a wholly invented and owned creature, even there in the private palace of invention. And perhaps she had no thoughts or feelings or desires of her own, and was only the living statue, the empty vessel, the reflective surface. Ovid doesn't say; he tells us only that she opens her eyes, sees her lover and the sky above, and blushes.

But what I want to know is what was behind her eyes, and why neither Ovid nor Pygmalion seem to ask.

Labels: metamorphoses

posted by O @ 06:49


2 Comments:
At 13 September, 2006, Sam said… Amazingly thought provoking and intelligent post! I don't know how I got here, but I'm glad I did! At 14 September, 2006, Bud said… Wow, that is intense. I love the mirror and getting behind it and how you brought that together in the end.
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