And so the gentle bachelor flees and is caught and is lived upon happily ever after⸺
. . . .
To see a statue come to life must be a terrifying spectacle. Ovid’s tale of Pygmalion and Galatea is only for those who get their ideas about artists from magazines to the vacuity of whose contents the face of the girl on the cover may well serve as an index.
I am quite certain that when Pygmalion saw his perfect marble (perfect to him anyway) turn to imperfect flesh and blood, the completed result of months of hard work obliterated—undone—as if it had never been—and in its place “just a girl,” very sweet and lovely and all that—but compared to his statue—oh no!
And that is looking at it from its brightest “angle” (as the motion-picture intellectuals say). As a matter of fact, judging from the agonizing sensation of the human leg (or arm) when rudely awakened from dreamless slumber, the process of transmutation from senseless stone to pulsating flesh must be a very painful one indeed. However pleasing the countenance of the living Galatea might be under normal conditions its expression of mingled bewilderment, rage and physical anguish must have been disconcerting, not to say terrifying, to the sensitive soul of the sculptor, and anything but consoling for the loss of his hard-won and cherished handiwork.
I can picture Pygmalion fleeing madly from his studio, not even waiting for the elevator and vowing by all the gods, then administrating human affairs, never again to make a wish without touching wood or at least crossing his fingers.
