Pygmalion Revisited: A Strange Case of Reanimation?
Many of the most powerful Greek and Roman myths involve boundaries, and the consequences which ensue when those boundaries are crossed. The myth about the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion is a prime example: it concerns the boundary between the inanimate and the animate, as well as the scope and limits of art. This myth has generated many fascinating retellings in its postclassical reception. My presentation will focus on just one of these retellings. I propose to look at Henri Murger’s novel entitled Scènes de la vie de Bohème (1851). At one point in his narrative, Murger explicitly invokes the Pygmalion myth in relation to the apparent, momentary reanimation of the corpse of a just-deceased young woman called Francine, through an “artistic” action by her grieving lover, the sculptor Jacques: he takes a plaster mould of Francine’s head, in the hope of preserving her likeness for ever. Francine and Jacques are one of the two models, though with many interesting differences, for two of Puccini’s main characters in the opera La Bohème, namely the poet Rodolfo and his lover Mimi; the other model is provided by another pair of “Bohemians” in Murger’s story, namely Rodolphe and Mimi. Ovid’s hugely influential telling of the myth of Pygmalion in his Metamorphoses demonstrates the porosity of the boundary between the inanimate and the animate. Murger’s allusion does the same, but differently. Whereas in Ovid Pygmalion’s nameless female stone statue metamorphoses into flesh, Jacques’ dead lover seems fleetingly to take on the warmth, colour and movement of a living woman. But is this brief ‘resuscitation’ merely an illusion, caused by the intervention of the artist Jacques in using warm plaster for the mould, or is it something real, perhaps even a deliberately chosen act on the part of the soul of Francine? In any case, almost immediately Francine becomes once more, definitively and tragically, inanimate, while Jacques dies soon afterwards of a broken heart. Murger’s intriguing allusion to the Pygmalion myth deserves to be remembered. And I believe that that act of remembering will fit neatly within the framework of Tartalo’s exploration of the relationship between myth and the arts―in this case, the arts of sculpture, literature and opera.
Gako-hitzak: Pygmalion · reanimation · Murger · La Bohème · opera
Ohar biografikoa
Richard Buxton is Emeritus Professor of Greek Language and Literature in the University of Bristol. His principal research interests are in Greek mythology and Greek literature. Among his many books are Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology (translated into 5 languages, including Spanish), The Complete World of Greek Mythology (translated into 12 languages, including Spanish), Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis, and most recently The Greek Myths that Shape the Way we Think. He has also edited From Myth to Reason Studies in the Development of Greek Thought and Oxford Readings in Greek Religion, as well as co-authoring, with Mercedes Aguirre, Cyclops: The Myth and its Cultural History. Richard is committed to transmitting his enthusiasm for Greek mythology to the widest possible audience, and has appeared many times on radio and television.