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Not portraits, of course: I shall idealize you a little. I have come to the conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after all. MARTELLUS. What! Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just deposited with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion's dustbin, not cured you of this silly image-making! ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool?
PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of them is Jove. Another is Voltaire. ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about your human beings? ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them. They are not!
ARJILLAX. She meant to kill him. STREPHON. This is horrible. A general shriek of horror echoes his exclamation. He turns deadly pale, and supports himself against the end of the curved seat. Pygmalion falls dead. THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! Whats the matter? Why did he fall! What has happened to him? They look on anxiously as Martellus kneels down and examines the body of Pygmalion.
The Ancients release the Automata. Life is too heavy a burden. I am glad. I am afraid to live. THE NEWLY BORN. I think it would be nice to give the poor things a little music. ARJILLAX. Why? THE NEWLY BORN. I don't know. But it would. The Musicians play. The music stops. There is dead silence for a moment. THE NEWLY BORN. That was funny. STREPHON. It was. Even the Ancients are smiling.
I want to caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls. ACIS. I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your dolls. I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all the statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made. You prefer a statue to an automaton, and a rag doll to a statue. So do I; but I prefer a man to a rag doll. Give me friends, not dolls.
Is it not true? THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Martellus: you who have travelled the whole path. MARTELLUS. It is true. With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a million degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish in an instant into inoffensive dust. THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Arjillax: you who have advanced from imitating the lightly living child to the intensely living ancient.
THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water come out of my eyes again. I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you of the value of art, Arjillax! STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them. ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business of whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god in him. From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not make it to please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must.
That primitive savage must have been a great woman, to say a thing that still lives after three hundred centuries. I too will leave women and study mathematics, which I have neglected too long. Farewell, children, my old playmates. I almost wish I could feel sentimental about parting from you; but the cold truth is that you bore me. ARJILLAX. There goes a great spirit. What a sculptor he was!
Will you be talked out of your inspiration by Ecrasia and the fools who imagine she speaks with authority? Let us have them all set up beside mine in the theatre. I have opened the way for you; and you see I am none the worse. MARTELLUS. Impossible. ALL. Smashed! ARJILLAX. Who smashed them? MARTELLUS. I did. That is why I laughed at you just now. ARJILLAX. But why?
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