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The Legend of Pygmalion

There is a legend of Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor who abhorred all women for their lasciviousness, but fell in love with an ivory female statue that he carved. Eventually he pleaded to Aphrodite to animate his Galatea, – and gods did not refuse him his bit of happiness.

The Wikipedia article draws quite a full picture of various interpretations of this legend in the centuries that followed since Ovid had narrated the story in his Metamorphoses. An extract from Ovid is also published online. The legend was an inspiration for many painters and sculptors, as we can see from the images displayed.
For my part, I particularly like Paul Delvaux’s interpretation. Delvaux revisits the legend and broadens the context in which one can think of Pygmalion’s story. Sculpture has long stopped being a “masculine” type of art, hence it can be a woman who creates the statue of a man and falls for it.
The context can be broadened further: Galatea is Pygmalion’s ideal woman, but I often like to disregard any restrictions or conventions implied by gender. Therefore, I accept any gender combination, when rereading this legend, and, as a consequence, I allow for a possibility that love which Pygmalion expects his statue to share can never emanate from his creation.
In the poem below I wanted to entwine the theme of unrequited feeling with the legend of Pygmalion. Furthermore, since Galatea embodied a certain ideal, I suggest that a statue needs not to be seen as a piece of sculpture. “Statue” can be understood as something “static”, that which is immovable, either physically or emotionally; hence “stone” is not exactly the marble, but anything cold or distant which is unlikely to liven up. Like Pygmalion is not necessarily male, so Galatea can be drawn on canvas, or described in words, or exist merely as a dream. Whichever interpretation we may prefer, Galatea is the symbol of Beauty which Pygmalion doesn’t want to give up, but whose cold demeanor drives him to despair.

Когда владеешь тем, что бы отдал,
Впредь никогда об этом не жалея;
Или скорбишь о том, что потерял,
Едва ль по-настоящему имея, –
Все блекнет, если ты, Пигмалион,
Дни проводя перед твореньем милым,
Любви ответ найти желаешь в нем, –
Но жизнь вдохнуть и богу не по силам.
© Юлия Шувалова 2007
(PYGMALION
When you possess that which you would refuse
And never have the outcome bemoaned;
Or when you mourn the loss of what you used
To think was yours but hardly ever owned, –
All this is vain, if, like Pygmalion,
Your spending days with the adored creation,
You wait to see how love ignites the stone, –
But no god can liven your possession.
© Julia Shuvalova 2007)

Links and references:
Wikipedia entry on Pygmalion
An extract from Ovid’s Metamorphoses from The Internet Classics Archive

Images used (from top, from left to right):

Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Pygmalion et Galatée (1819) – courtesy of La Tribune de l’Art
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) – courtesy of Wikipedia
Etienne Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion et Galatée (1763) – as above
Paul Delvaux, Pygmalion (1939) – courtesy of CGFA
Jean-Michel Moreau, Pygmalion (1806) – courtesy of Pygmalion Design
Edward Byrne-Jones, Soul Attains from Pygmalion and the Image series (1878) – courtesy of Mark Harden’s Artchive

Histoire de Melody Nelson (Serge Gainsbourg)

As you might have noticed from the Links section in my side bar, as well as from my profile, I’m a fan of Serge Gainsbourg. The first time I heard him, I was just as innocent as France Gall (who reportedly didn’t have a clue about the sexual innuendos in the song ‘Les Sucettes‘ (The Lollipops)). In fact, I was younger than Gall because my discovery of Gainsbourg’s music started with the notorious ‘Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus‘, with me having no idea about the meaning of some specific sounds on the record.

For years, Gainsbourg has been hovering over the French music scene. His versatility at both music and lyrics, as well as his lifestyle, not only turned him into a monumental figure of European music, but in later years also inspired many *interpretations*. As someone noted on YouTube, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty look strangely similar to Birkin-Gainsbourg duet, except that Doherty’s influence on modern music is not as decisive, as was Gainsbourg’s. Then again, as Philip Sweeney remarked a year ago in The Independent, “Gainsbourg was an enthralled recycler of English and American trends, themes and phrases“, which may signal to somebody that Gainsbourg was not necessarily original.

This, however, is not the case, as Sweeney notes himself, because Gainsbourg’s songs are extremely difficult to translate into English and, in fact, into any other language. Consider this passage from his song ‘Variations sur Marilou‘:

Dans son regard absent
Et son iris absinthe
Tandis que Marilou s’amuse à faire des vol
Utes de sèches au menthol
Entre deux bulles de comic-strip
Tout en jouant avec le zip
De ses Levi’s
Je lis le vice
Et je pense à Caroll Lewis

It makes sense in English, if translated, but, as often happens, the difference in pronunciation takes away this lingering quality of original French lyrics. Furthermore, because of this difference the last three lines don’t produce the same effect. The emphasis on ‘-iss’ in the French text reminds one of a gentle murmur, of mussitation; the English version would never capture this effect.

So, on to Histoire de Melody Nelson. It was Gainsbourg’s 1972 conceptual album, which cover you may see on the right. Containing 7 songs, “Melody Nelson is a weirdly jewel-like micro-opera featuring a vintage Rolls-Royce, a male obsession for the eponymous 14-year-old garçonne, and demise via New Guinean cargo-cult, rendered by Gainsbourg’s voluptuous drawl and Birkin’s Lolita whisper, and a richly idiosyncratic instrumentation by Gainsbourg’s close collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier, owing as much to Abbey Road, George Martin and the film soundtracks of John Barry as to anything from Paris“. (Philip Sweeney, The Independent, 16 April 2006).

You can obviously find the album on Amazon.com, where the featured cover comes from. You can browse the links below, to read more about the album and/or Serge Gainsbourg. But on YouTube you can also find the videos to the songs. The videos, like the songs, are psychedelic, and feature the paintings of Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dali, Felix Labisse, René Magritte, Henri Rousseau, which makes Gainsbourg’s album even dearer to my heart because I’ve been a devouted student of French surrealism for years.

The video I’m putting up here is the 5th part of the album. It is called ‘L’hôtel particulier‘, and uses predominantly the works of Paul Delvaux, with a few glimpses of Felix Labisse’s images. If you want to read the lyrics to the song, follow the link to Alex Chabot’s translation.

Links:

Serge Gainsbourg’s site – in French. Very informative – be careful if you’re a serious Serge’s fan and didn’t know about this site: you may very well spend the entire night reading the story of a remarkable talent.

Alex Chabot’s translations of Gainsbourg’s texts.

Specifically L’hôtel particulier (from the above).

Philip Sweeney, Serge Gainsbourg: Filthy French (The Independent, 16 April 2006). Also: LookSmart’s FindArticles – Filthy French

Notes on Histoire de Melody Nelson – some interesting and somewhat sentimental facts about the making of this album from Movie Grooves.

Histoire de Melody Nelson on Amazon.com

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