P26 Robert Graves, ‘Pygmalion to Galatea', 1925, and

‘Galatea and Pygmalion’, 1938

Robert Graves, 1895-1985, English poet, novelist, critic, and translator, resident for much of his life on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Graves is a major twentieth-century poet, whose work is largely based on a personal mythology and theory of poetry expounded in The White Goddess (1948); he also wrote novels on historical and mythological themes (I, Claudius; King Jesus; Hercules, My Shipmate), translated several Latin authors, and compiled a readable though eccentric summary of The Greek Myths (1955). These two poems present sharply opposed views of the Pygmalion myth.

from (a) Poems (1914-26). London: Heinemann, 1927, pp. 201-2; (b) Collected Poems, London: Cassell, 1938, p. 109. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

(a) Pygmalion to Galatea

Pygmalion spoke and sang to Galatea

Who keeping to her pedestal in doubt

Of these new qualities, blood, bones and breath,

Nor yet relaxing her accustomed poise,

Her Parian(marble) rigour though alive and burning,

Heard out his melody:

‘As you are woman, so be lovely:

Fine hair afloat and eyes irradiate,

Long crafty fingers, fearless carriage(the way in which you hold your body when standing or moving around),

And body lissom(attractively thin and able to move quickly and smoothly), neither small nor tall;

So be lovely!

‘As you are lovely, so be merciful:

Yet must your mercy abstain from pity:

Prize your self-honour, leaving me with mine:

Love if you will: or stay stone-frozen.

So be merciful!

‘As you are merciful, so be constant:

I ask not you should mask your comeliness,

Yet keep our love aloof and strange,

Keep it from gluttonous eyes, from stairway gossip.

So be constant!

‘As you are constant, so be various:

Love comes to sloth without variety.

Within the limits of our fair-paved garden

Let fancy like a Proteus range and change.

So be various!

‘As you are various, so be woman:

Graceful in going as well armed(with defensive coverings for the body worn when fighting)  in doing.

Be witty, kind, enduring, unsubjected:

Without you I keep heavy house.

So be woman!

‘As you are woman, so be lovely:

As you are lovely, so be various,

Merciful as constant, constant as various.

So be mine, as I yours for ever.’

Then as the singing ceased and the lyre ceased,

Down stepped proud Galatea with a sigh.

‘Pygmalion, as you woke me from the stone,

So shall I you from bonds of sullen(obstinate, refractory; stubborn, unyielding) flesh.

Lovely I am, merciful I shall prove:

Woman I am, constant as various,

Not marble-hearted but your own true love.

Give me an equal kiss, as I kiss you.’

(b) Galatea and Pygmalion

Galatea, whom his furious chisel

From Parian stone had by greed enchanted,

Fulfilled, so they say, Pygmalion’s longings:

Stepped from the pedestal on which she stood,

Bare in his bed laid her down, lubricious(lubricous, slippery, smooth,wanton)

With low responses to his drunken raptures,

Enroyalled his body with her demon blood.

Alas, Pygmalion had so well plotted

The art-perfection of his woman monster

That schools of eager connoisseurs beset

Her famous person with perennial suit;

Whom she (a judgement on the jealous artist)

Admitted rankly to a comprehension

Of themes that crowned her own, not his repute. 

 The editor(Geoffrey Miles)'s interpretation of the poem in his introduction

Perhaps the twentieth-century writer who best captures the ambiguities ofthe Pygmalion story is Robert Graves, in a mirrored pair of poems. ‘Galatea and Pygmalion’ (P26b) seems at first glance to embody the misogynistic view of the story, painting Galatea as a sexually demonic ‘woman monster' who betrays her creator by fornication with others. A closer reading suggests an ironic sympathy for Galatea’s rebellion against her ‘greedy’ and ‘lubricious’ creator, and a hint that the poem is not so much about sex as about art: the way the successful work of art inevitably escapes the control of the ‘jealous artist' who tries to control and limit its meanings. ‘Pygmalion to Galatea' (P26a), by contrast, is clearly a poem of successful love. Graves takes the traditional motif of Pygmalion listing the qualities of his ideal woman, but restores the balance of power by making Pygmalion’s list a series of requests, to which Galatea graciously consents, sealing the bargain with ‘an equal kiss'. In its implication that Pygmalion and Galatea can have a free and equal loving relationship, this is perhaps the one unequivocally positive modern version of the love story.

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