Latin III Reads Pygmalion

With just a few days remaining before the end of the year the Latin III class at Cardin elected to get a taste of ancient Epic poetry, as a prelude to next year’s study of Vergil’s Aeneid. The students, with a little coaxing from their teacher, decided to go with two selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the stories of Pygmalion and Daedalus. We began with the tale of Pygmalion, the mythical sculptor who falls in love with his own creation, later brought to life by the goddess Venus after the artist's many prayers. This story holds particular interest to this class since it was the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion and thus the Lerner and Lowe musical My Fair Lady, this year’s theatrical performance. With little time to focus on the intricacies of style and language, we are looking at the broader theme of an artist relationship to his work and the way in which a poet can reflect on the process of writing while telling such a story. In other words we are taking a metapoetic look at Ovid’s Pygmalion. The students recognize the worry with which Pygmalion retouches his statue, fearing that a “bruise/blemish” might appear similar to the results a writer might experience from over editing. They appreciate Pygmalion’s dressing and decorating of the statue, as one might embellish a piece of writing, while he also sees that his work is no less beautiful bare, exemplary of the concise and straight forward narrative. In the end the creation, whether it be a sculpture, painting, essay, or poem, is no less alive to the artist, than Pygmalion’s statue come to life. It is something that its creator must accept and cherish, regardless of any perceived flaws, as representation and part of him/herself. And just as Pygmalion spends the rest of his days with his statue turned wife, so to an artist must live with his work.

~Maureen Beabout
Latin Instructor