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Womanufacture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

A. R. Sharrock
A. R. Sharrock
Affiliation:
University of Keele
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Extract

Women are ‘perceived’. We speak often not just of ‘women’, but of ‘images’, ‘representations’, ‘reflections’ of women. Woman perceived is woman as art-object; and paradigmatic of this phenomenon is the myth of Pygmalion.

This article will consider Ovid's version of the myth, the story of the artist who loved his own creation. I shall suggest that the story reflects on the eroto-artistic relationship between the poet and his puella explored in Latin love elegy. The Metamorphoses myth of the art-object which becomes a love-object mirrors the elegiac myth of love-object as art-object. The elegists represent the puella as both art and flesh. Pygmalion deconstructs the erotic realism of elegy and by its frankness about the power of the male artist discloses elegy's operations. It tells us how to read the puella — as a work of art; and the lover — as an artist obsessed with his own creation. Pygmalion reflects and exposes the self-absorption of elegy, the heroization of the lover, and the painted nature of the woman presented in eroto-elegiac texts, that is, the way in which she is to be seen as an art-object.

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Articles
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The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 81 , November 1991 , pp. 36 - 49
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Copyright ©A. R. Sharrrock 1991. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 A draft of this article was presented to the Cambridge University Classics Faculty literary seminar in February 1989, as part of a series on Art as Text. I am grateful to many members of the seminar for their comments and suggestions, and particularly to Maria Wyke for her organization of the series. Duncan Kennedy, John Henderson, Maria Wyke and Gerry Nussbaum read drafts and made many helpful comments. I am grateful also to the Editorial Committee for their suggestions.

2 Met. X. 243–97. On this story generally see Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen: Kommentar Buch X–XI (1980)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Fränkel, H., Ovid: a Poet between Two Worlds (1945), 35, 93–7Google Scholar; Otis, B., Ovid as an Epic Poet (1966), esp. 189–93Google Scholar; Dörrie, H., Pygmalion: Ein Intpuls Ovids und seine Wirkungen bis in die Gegenwart (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Due, O. S., Changing Forms. Studies in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (1974), 134ff.Google Scholar; A. H. F. Griffin, G&R 24 (1977), 57–70, at 65–8; Knox, P. E., Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Tradition of Elegy, PCPhS Suppl. II (1986), 52–4Google Scholar; Rosati, G., Narciso e Pigmalione: illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (1983), esp. 51–93Google Scholar; Ahl, F. M., Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and other Classical Poets (1985), 247–60Google Scholar; Miller, J. M., ‘Some versions of Pygmalion’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), Ovid Renewed (1988), 205–14Google Scholar; Solodow, J. B., The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1988), 215–19Google Scholar.

3 I use the term Pygmalion, in italics, as a shorthand for ‘the story of Pygmalion told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses’.

4 Duncan Kennedy points out that the elegiac connection also allows elegy to reflect on Pygmalion. In the absence of a developed psychological discourse, Ovid uses the established language of elegy to explain the erotoartistic behaviour of Pygmalion. This two-way reflection with elegy occurs also in the Narcissus story in Met. III. 339–510, on which see Knox, op. cit. (n. 2), 19–23, Hardie, P., Materiali e Discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 20–1 (1988), 71–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Philip Hardie for giving me an advance copy of his article. Knox also notes some of the elegiac elements in Pygmalion, but does not develop them. The connection between the Narcissus and the Pygmalion stories has been well documented, notably by Rosati, op. cit. (n. 2).

5 See Knox, op. cit. (n. 2); S. E. Hinds, The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-conscious Muse (1987).

6 See, for example, Segal, C., Helios 12.1 (1985), 49–63Google Scholar; Leach, E. W., Ramus 3 (1974), 102–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wise, V. M., Remus 6 (1977), 44–59Google Scholar; Lateiner, D., Ramus 13 (1984), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 On the interrelations of different media, including those of the ancient world, see generally Hagstrum, J. H., The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (1958)Google Scholar. Leach, E. W., The Rhetoric of Space: Literary and Artistic Representations of Landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome (1988), 3–24Google Scholar, reminds us that the phrase ut pictura poesis implies no simple identity between visual and poetic art but a complex interrelationship.

8 D. F. Bauer, TAPhA 93, (1962), 1–21, thinks the story is the most important in the whole poem.

9 Translations in this paper are my own. They aim to be helpful rather than poetic. On occasion where an ambiguity is important to my argument I have spelt it out in the translation.

10 Ov., Am. III.9.3–4.

11 On crimen and vitium see , Pichon's entries in Index Verborum Amatoriorum (1902)Google Scholar.

12 See Hagstrum, op. cit. (n. 7), 15; Kris, E. and Kurz, O., Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment (1979), 43Google Scholar (on the ‘two views of art’ mentioned above), 82. They say, for example, that Quintilian maintained that the fourth-century Athenian portraitist Demetrius ‘preferred beauty to likeness’. They also report two different explanations for the anecdote about Zeuxis, who ‘is said to have raised the question why the birds pecked away at the picture of the grapes which a boy was carrying and why the picture of the boy did not frighten them away.’ The first explanation, found in Pliny NH XXXV.64, is that ‘the boy was “not so well” painted as the grapes’. The second explanation, by contrast, is that ‘this very incident showed that as an idealized portrait the painting of the boy was superior to that of the grapes’ (Sen., Contr. X.5.27) (Kris and Kurz, 82). This point is not unconnected with the neo-Platonic belief that the artist directly ‘imitates’ the Ideal Form. See also Pollitt, J. J., The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History and Terminology (1974), 37–41, 52ff.Google Scholar His division of ancient art-criticism into ‘intellectual’ and ‘popular’ (by implication, inferior) traditions is opposed by Gordon, who is concerned to expose the simultaneous Greek beliefs about religious statues as ‘gods’ and ‘carved stones’: see Gordon, R. L., Art History 2 (1979), 5–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Pliny, NH XXXV.64.

14 See Miller, op. cit. (n. 2), 212–13. She is discussing in particular William Morris' Earthly Paradise, where, she says, the primary value is given to humanity and mortality/changeability rather than immortality through frozen perfection.

15 I am indebted here to Andrew Wallace-Hadrill.

16 On 1.2 see Curran, L. C., Ramus 4 (1975), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wyke, M., The Elegiac Woman and her Male Creators: Propertius and the Written Cynthia, Ph.D.diss. Cambridge (1984), 67–70Google Scholar. Both scholars discuss the complexities of the art/nature pseudo-opposition and the paradox of ‘as natural as a painting’, albeit for different ends. Curran argues that ‘artifice itself becomes the central theme of the poem as its value is radically reinterpreted’ (p. 2). Wyke's thesis is that ‘Cynthia’ should be read as a construct of the text.

17 Philostratus says at the outset that he will not recount the names of the artists, as he is providing ekphrasis, not biography. It is, of course, not impossible that there is no ‘original’ of Philostratus' description, but presumably the subject would be a recognizable type in visual art.

18 See Pliny, NH XXXV.97. Curran, op. cit. (n. 16), 8f., also notes the reference to Apelles' varnish, and points to the many terms of luminosity in the exempla and in the description of Cynthia as corroborative evidence.

19 Wyke, op. cit. (n. 16), 69, asks the same question.

20 Curran, op. cit. (n. 16), 7, on the illustrations: ‘a catalogue of mythological exempla is itself literary artifice in the extreme’.21

21 Wiseman, T. P., Clio's Cosmetics (1979), 3–8Google Scholar, has shown how cosmetic metaphors are used for rhetoric. Wyke, op. cit. (n. 16), 68, argues that many terms used of Cynthia in 1.2 are also suited to rhetoric.

22 As often happens in Ovid, the implied comma could be moved: ‘it is a useful thing if art lies hidden.’

23 What is the gender of a statue of a woman? Bömer, op. cit. (n. 2), on 266, hints, although he does not make it explicit, that the change there from the neuters opus, corpus and ebur (work, body, ivory) to refer to the statue to the feminine adjective nuda (naked) is part of the metamorphosis.

24 op. cit. (n. 12), particularly 69ff.

25 Kris and Kurz also report other stories of agalmatophilia (op. cit. (n. 12), 72).

26 See Plato, Meno 97D.

27 For discussion of this poem see Wyke, op. cit. (n. 16), 71ff.; L. C. Curran, YCS 19 (1966), 189–207; R. O. A. M. Lyne, PCPhS 16 (1970), 60–78; D. P. Harmon, TAPhA 104 (1974), 151–65; Baker, R. J., ‘Beauty and the Beast in Propertius 1.3’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History vol. 2, Coll. Latomus 168 (1980), 245–58Google Scholar.

28 cf. Hor., Ep. II. I. 258f; Ars 222; Prop. 11.3.19; Stat., Theb. XII.816.

29 cf. Prop. 11.34.73; Tib. 1.2.17, 1.3.73; Ov., Ars 1.273, 365, 389, 394.

30 Fedeli, P., Sesto Properzio: ll primo libra delle Elegie (1980)Google Scholar, ad loc., mentions the connection with visual artworks. He is unconvinced by the connection with the Vatican Ariadne. The fullest treatment of the connection between Prop. 1.3 and visual art is that of A. Wlosok, Hermes 95 (1967), 330–52. See also Hubbard, M., Propertius (1974), 164Google Scholar; Lyne, op. cit. (n. 27), 66. For a wide-ranging discussion of sleepers in ancient art, see S. McNally, Class. Ant. 4 (1985), 152–92, who posits changes over time in thinking about sleep, reflected in representation of sleepers. She identifies three main functions of sleep represented. Firstly, the sleep that ‘reduces the sleeper to an object’, subject to the desires of another (p. 191). Early Ariadne is a prime example of this type, which is clearly the most applicable to my argument. The other two types are the sleep of exhaustion (for example, the child Eros) and the sleep of transformation, a relatively late type which McNally associates with mystery religions.

31 See for example the painting in the Boscotrecase Villa, reproduced in Leach, op. cit. (n. 7), pls 34–6.

32 Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 30), 164, refers to a painting in the Naples Museum of a Maenad sleeping on the grassy bank of a stream. Again, this or others like it could be Propertius' model.

33 mihi is, for a second, dative of advantage: cf. Tib. 1.8.65, ‘dum mihi venturam fingo’ (while I imagine she is about to come to me), Ov. Ars 11.11, ‘non satis est venisse tibi … puellam’ (it is not enough for the girl to have come to you).

34 There is another reference to this topos at Aeneid VI.847: ‘excudent alii spirantia mollius aera’. The Greek statues referred to here stand in the tradition of the artcritical topos of the statue which seemed to breathe. See Curran, op. cit. (n. 27), 195 n. 8. Austin, R. G., P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Sextus (1977)Google Scholar. on Aen. VI. 847, gives other examples of spirantia signa.

35 I shall call the statue ‘Eburna’, partly for the sake of simplicity and partly to emphasize the relationship with ‘Cynthia’, a signifier which, likewise, is an adjective used as a proper noun and one which reflects the artistic material of the creator. The name ‘Galatea’ which is sometimes ascribed to Pygmalion's statue in later manifestations of the myth has no ancient justification. See M. Reinhold, CJ 66 (1971), 316–19.

36 Most readings of this poem make a stark contrast between the romantic fantasy of the sleeping Cynthia and the bitter reality of the waking woman. Since, as Wyke points out, op. cit. (n. 16), 73–4, the speaking Cynthia's words are still under the poet's control, a simple opposition between the good-fantasy Cynthia and the bad-real Cynthia is inadequate.

37 Pygmalion's fear of bruising the statue may perhaps reflect Ovid's injunction in Ars I. To paraphrase his advice: rape is sometimes a useful approach; although she may complain, she wants it really — but be careful not to hurt her lips (1. 667). Cf. also Ov., Am. 1.7.41–2, where the repentant lover wishes that, rather than hurting his girl through anger, he had bruised her through passion: ‘aptius inpressis fuerat livere labellis / et collum blandi dentis habere notam’ (it would have been more appropriate for her neck to be bruised with the press of lips and to show the mark of a loving tooth). Bomer, op. cit. (n. 2), on Met. X.258, collects more examples.

38 Conchae could also mean pearls. Either could be used as adornment.

39 One might usefully compare Lucr. V.963–5: ‘conciliabat enim vel mutua quamque cupido / Vel violenta Viris vis atque inpensa libido / vel pretium glandes atque arbuta vel pira lecta’ (for they were united by mutual desire, or by the violent force and great lust of the man, or by the payment-gift of acorns and picked strawberries and pears).

40 See Bömer, op. cit. (n. 2), ad loc., for more examples.

41 See Ahl, op. cit. (n. 2), 264ff.

42 For example as Anacreon 358 (Campbell), where Eros throws a ball at the poet to make him fall in love. Bömer, op. cit. (n. 2),onl. 262, gives more examples, not all of them erotic.

43 He confuses this dichotomy, however, by saying (III.13.34) that the girls' kisses are empta by this means.

44 Fruit and flowers are found in Prop. 1.3, flowers and birds in Pygmalion.

45 Amber is not mentioned in elegy. It is the subject of a diatribe against useless luxury by Pliny (NHXXXVII.30ff.), who comments disparagingly that it is very popular with women. I suspect that a major reason for their inclusion here is as a link with the Myrrha story (X.298–502) which follows Pygmalion. There the drops of myrrh from the Myrrha-tree echo the tree-drops given as gifts to her inanimate great-grandmother.

46 cf. III.13.6, IV.5.22.

47 cf. e.g. Prop. 11.1.13, 2.15 passim; Ov., Am. 1.5.24.

48 cf. e.g. Ov., Am. 1.3.14.

49 cf. Rhet. Her. IV. 69, ‘nuda atque inornata inventio’ (naked and unadorned invention); Cic., de orat. 1.218; Brut. 262; Quint., Inst. I.pr.24; VIII.6.41. See Wiseman, op. cit. (n. 21).

50 See OLD socia (b).

51 Pont. 11.8.29.

52 mea is juxtaposed, within the speech, to eburnae and distanced from its noun, coniunx.

53 See Kris and Kurz, op. cit. (n. 12), 72, on the topos from the biographies of artists, in which a man falls in love with a woman on seeing an image of her, although the beloved herself is unknown to him. They discuss this motif in connection with the belief in image-magic and in the identity of the depiction and the depicted.

54 See Warden, J., Fallax opus: Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius (1980), 16ff.Google Scholar, on this scene: Cynthia's ‘feelings’ are the projections of the poetic ‘I’.

55 Prop. 1.3.15–16.

56 Met. X.281–2.

57 Or ‘Ego’, to borrow a term from Veyne, P., Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry and the West, trans. Pellauer, D. (1988)Google Scholar.

58 cf. Ov., Her. XI.26; Hor., Carm. 1.4.20.

59 See Pichon, op. cit. (n. n), on rigor, and cf. Ov., Am. II.4.15; Ars II.664; Her. IV.73; Rem. 762.

60 Cedere not uncommonly (particularly in Ovid) signifies the acceptance of love. Cf. Verg., Ecl. X.69; Prop. 1.9.31; Ov., Am. 1.2.9 and 10; Her. XIX.170, XX.39.

61 Ahl's suggestion, op. cit. (n. 2), 250ff., that we see Greek ϰέϱας in the Latin cera must be right here, helping to strengthen the links between simile and illustrandum.

62 There is a bizarre comment by Fränkel, op. cit. (n. 2), 95, on the phrase fit utilis usu. ‘Whoever happens to be in love with an ivory woman (sic — not ‘statue’) may take these words to heart and try out Ovid's directions’. Fränkel seems to have exactly the difficulty in distinguishing a woman from a statue which lies at the heart of the Pygmalion story. He goes on: ‘the warm sunshine of his affection and the deft touch of his hands melted down frigidity, and, while he was acting upon her as if she would respond, she did finally respond.’ For Fränkel, as for Pygmalion, women are objects to be worked on by artistic men.

63 cf. OLD retracto 5 and 6. See Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes II (1978)Google Scholar, on Hor., Carm. 11.1.38.64

64 See Miller, op. cit. (n. 2), 212ff.

65 cf. Ov., Her. XX. 138–41: the rival ‘suo temptat salientem pollice venam, / Candida per causam bracchia saepe tenet, / contrectatquc sinus, et forsitan oscula iungit’ (he feels her pulse with his thumb, often holds her shining arms, making the pulse-taking an excuse, and touches her breast and perhaps kisses her).

66 Salio and vena both have sexual overtones, but applied to the male. See Adams, J. N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (1982), 35 and 206Google Scholar. Since this is the story of Pygmalion's self-centred sexuality, perhaps the terminology hints that arousing her arouses him.

67 When this paper was first read, Alan Griffiths conjectured that the name ‘Paphos’ might be suitable for a child whose father kept on ‘touching’ her mother, by analogy with Epaphos, the son of Io. Io was made pregnant by the touch of Zeus. (See Aesch., Supp. 45f.) The etymology is from ἐπαΦᾶν, to touch on the surface, stroke. The connection of names between father and daughter is emphasized by the epithet ‘Paphius’ anachronistically applied to Pygmalion at 1. 290.

68 I intend in a later essay to explore more generally the love of creation and the construction of woman in Pygmalion and in the story which follows it, Myrrha.

69 The judgement of Quintilian on Ovid (Inst. Or. X.I.88).