The Kiss in Images

Abstract

The myth of Pygmalion is a fascinating one on many levels. Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, was a renowned sculptor. Disgusted by what he saw as the wicked women of his day, he sculpted an ivory statue of what he envisioned to be the ideal woman—beautiful, virtuous, kind, and intelligent. After sculpting it, he fell madly in love with his own creation. He wanted to make love to her. So, he implored the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, to turn his statue into a living human being. The goddess granted Pygmalion his wish, bringing her to life as Galatea. Pygmalion married Galatea and, together, they had a son named Paphos. This tale has intrigued many writers, from the Roman poet Ovid, who retold the story in his Metamorphoses,¹ to George Bernard Shaw, who rewrote it in the form of his play Pygmalion (1913), which tells how an English gentleman (a professor of phonetics) makes an elegant lady out of a poor ill-bred girl by teaching her to act and speak with proper grammar and pronunciation.² The musical comedy My Fair Lady (1956) was based on Shaw’s play. Was there kissing in the original Pygmalion story? Some versions of it seem to indicate that there was.

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)