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Updated: May 13, 2025
The statue of Pygmalion moves; a joyous shudder comes over the astonished artist in the consciousness of his own immortality, and, as the eagle bore Ganymede, a divine hope bears him on its mighty pinion up to Olympus. Is it then really and truly so, what I have so often quietly wished for and have never dared to express?
At length Pygmalion himself approached the altar and made his prayer. "Goddess," he said, "who hast vouchsafed to me this gift of beauty, give me a perfect love, likewise, and let me have for bride, one like my ivory maiden." And Venus heard. Home to his house of dreams went the sculptor, loath to be parted for a day from his statue, Galatea.
As Pygmalion before Galatea, it was for them a lover in marble, and they waited for the breath of life to animate that breast, for blood to color those veins. There remained then the present, the spirit of the time, angel of the dawn which is neither night nor day; they found him seated on a lime-sack filled with bones, clad in the mantle of egoism, and shivering in terrible cold.
"I have a vision of this honest hand and of a great sword but, there, it is not worth while, too small a matter. Leave us, mother. It shall be returned, my word on it. Yes, gold ring and all. And now, young friend, let us talk. You have the philtre? Well, I can promise you that it is a good one, it would almost bring Galatea from her marble. Pygmalion must have known that secret.
The play, it is true, enjoyed some five-and-twenty years of life; but it certainly cannot claim an enduring place either in literature or on the stage. It is still open to the philosophic dramatist to write a logical Pygmalion and Galatea. It has been often and authoritatively laid down that a dramatist must on no account keep a secret from his audience.
'What you are going to see now is the Descent from the Cross; it is after Rubens, one of the greatest masters that ever lived, if you ever heard of such a person, he added, in a grumbling voice, and then turning to Sidonia, he said, 'This crucifixion is the only thing which these savages seem at all to understand; but I should like you, sir, as you are an artist, to see the children in some Greek or Roman story: Pygmalion, or the Death of Agrippina.
Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, came into the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sichæus, had been king of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of Africa.
When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife" he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead "one like my ivory virgin."
"The arms adhere rigidly to the sides, the feet form one block; and even in the face, the divine ideal seems struggling hard to enter the reluctant form. But thanks to Pygmalion of Cyprus, we now have the visible impress of every passion carved in stone. The spirit of beauty now flows freely into the harmonious proportions, even as the oracle is filled by the inspiration of the god.
The artist divines by inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards. You are not an artist. ACIS. Shut your heads, both of you. Let us have the artificial men. Trot them out, Pygmalion. PYGMALION. It is a man and a woman. But I really must explain first. PYGMALION. Yes: I ACIS. We want results, not explanations.
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