According to Meyer Reinhold, the name "Galatea" was first given wide circulation in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's scène lyrique of 1762, Pygmalion. Greek: A sculptor and king of Cyprus; According to Greek legend, Pygmalion carved a statue of a beautiful woman from ivory and adored it so much he named her Galatea and prayed for a wife like her. The meaning of the name is “she who is white like milk.” Countless are the nights and days he spends staring at her. What does pygmalion mean? Yet investigation shows that the name Galatea does not appear … [9] She was the wife of Cinyras, and the mother of Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, although Myrrha, daughter of Cinyras, is more commonly named as the mother of Adonis. Oooh, this is a juicy one. Originally the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion, and his statue brought to life by the gods. The transformation complete, Pygmalion and his statue stared at each other, robbed of words. He would stand under the great pines and gaze across the sapphire-blue sea, and dream strange dreams of a marble woman who walked across the waves with arms outstretched, with smiling lips, and who became a woman of warm flesh and blood when her bare feet touched the yellow sand, and the bright sun of Cyprus touched her marble hair and turned it into hair of living gold. He had one passion, a passion for his art, and that sufficed him. This novella remained the classical telling until the end of the seventeenth century. Pygmalion and the Statue. Shaw wrote Pygmalion in 1912, but he took its name from something way, way older: an Ancient Greek myth. In answer to his prayers, the goddess Aphrodite brought it to life and united the couple in marriage. Slowly, gradually, the woman came. He, the hater of women, loved a woman—a woman of chilly marble. And then did Galatea, with warm and rosy cheeks, widely open her eyes, like pools in a dark mountain stream on which the sun is shining, and gaze with timid gladness into his own. It also seems axiomatic, apart from miraculous intervention, that the living representative of a cult image could be none but the chief priestess. Name "Galatea" Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, its use in connection with Pygmalion originated with a post-classical writer. PYGMALION (Pugmaliôn), a king of Cyprus and father of Metharme. TRADITIONAL FOLKTALES, GHOST STORIES, FAIRY TALES & FABLES. In the end, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, fulfills his wish and makes the statue real. Again, reverently as he had laid his offerings that day on the altar of Venus, Pygmalion kissed her lips. Like the myth, the play concerned with the theme of creation and the creator's fall in love with the creature. So beautiful is she that he finds her more desirable than any real woman could be, and in answer to his prayer, the sculpture is … Or use our resource section to assist you with your research. He felt one of the little hands, and no more did it remain heavy and cold and stiff in his touch, but lay in his own hand, soft and living and warm. According to the earliest version of the story, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus. So many times he had done it before, and always it was as though the icy lips that could never live sent their chill right through his heart, but now it surely seemed to him that the lips were cold no longer. At an unknown date, later authors give as the name of the statue that of the sea-nymph Galatea or Galathea. In the language of our own day, we should call him “wedded to his art.”. It was commonly rumored in Roman times that Praxiteles's cult image of Aphrodite of Knidos, in Aphrodite's temple, was so beautiful that at least one admirer arranged to be shut in with it overnight. The name Pygmalion is a boy's name. Editor of WorldFolklore.net and AmericanFolklore.net, S.E. A graduate of both Houghton College and the Institute of Children's Literature, Sandy received her MLS from Rutgers University while working as a full-time music teacher and a freelance author. The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is one of the most popular classical myths ever told. Galatea is a name popularly applied to the statue carved of ivory by Pygmalion of Cyprus, which then came to life in Greek mythology. He is said to have fallen in love with the ivory image of a maiden which he himself had made, and therefore to have prayed to Aphrodite to breathe life into it. In this depiction, the author describes all the events of Pygmalion’s story with the statue. Then he married Galatea. As the leader of his people, Pygmalion faithfully and perfectly performed all his part in the solemnities and at last he was left beside the altar to pray alone. Folklore Citation: Lang, Jean. [6], The daemon of Pygmalion's goddess, animating her cult image, bore him a daughter Paphus—the eponym of the city of Paphos—and Metharme. The name Galatea, however, does not come from Ancient Greece. Then he prayed Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It was brought to life, in response to his prayer, by Aphrodite. He then creates a woman’s statue that is perfect of all the women and falls in love with her. In woman he only saw the bane of man. While man walked alone, he walked free—he had given no “hostages to fortune.” Alone, man could live for his art, could combat every danger that beset him, could escape, unhampered, from every pitfall in life. Cinyras, perhaps the son of Paphus,[8] or perhaps the successful suitor of Metharme, founded the city of Paphos on Cyprus, under the patronage of Aphrodite, and built the great temple to the goddess there. Origin. Met.x. With wondrous art, he creates a beautiful statue more perfect than any living woman. Schlosser is the author of the Spooky Series by Globe Pequot Press. Physical description. [10], The myth indicates that a cult image of Aphrodite was instrumental in some way in the founding myth of Paphos. Definition of pygmalion in the Definitions.net dictionary. There are no after tales of Pygmalion and Galatea. 1. (Ov. Of "this ecstatic relationship," Meyer Reinhold has remarked, "there may be lurking a survival of the ancient cult of the Great Goddess and her consort."[7]. He also put the statue to bed at night beside him. To his divinity he gave a name—“Galatea”; and always on still nights the myriad silver stars would seem to breathe to him “Galatea” … and on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in longing, hopeless and unutterable—“Galatea!… Galatea!…” For her he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he laid the beautiful head of the marble woman that he loved. The women he had scorned were avenged. Never before had his words faltered as he laid his petitions before the gods, but on this day he spoke not as a sculptor-king, but as a child who was half afraid of what he asked. The main source of the play is a myth of Pygmalion in ancient Greece. “Give me my Galatea,” he dared not say; but Aphrodite knew well the words he would fain have uttered, and smiled to think how Pygmalion at last was on his knees. The name of the play Pygmalion is from the Ovid’s poem, Metamorphoses. Plan an Explanatory Paragraph. Pygmalion kissed his statue's lips, hands, and of course, they remained unresponsive. Because of this love that he holds, he begs Aphrodite the goddess of love to turn her into a human, and so she does. iii. They grew idle. NY: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1914. Bibliotheke, the Hellenistic compendium of myth long attributed to Apollodorus, mentions a daughter of Pygmalion named Metharme. This mythological story is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses : Book X. Pygmalion created a statue and adored it a lot. Ovid was very influential on Western art and literature. Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton: see Pygmalion of Tyre.
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