CHAPTER VIII.
Pygmalion - Dryope -
Venus
and Adonis -
Apollo
and
Hyacinthus.
PYGMALION saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to
abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a
sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory,
so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it. It was
indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be
alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so
perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the
workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work, and at
last fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he
laid his hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were
living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only
ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents such as young girls
love,- bright shells and polished stones, little birds and
flowers of various hues, beads and amber. He put raiment on its
limbs, and jewels on its fingers, and a necklace about its neck.
To the ears he hung earrings, and strings of pearls upon the
breast. Her dress became her, and she looked not less charming
than when unattired. He laid her on a couch spread with cloths
of Tyrian dye, and called her his wife, and put her head upon a
pillow of the softest feathers, as if she could enjoy their
softness.
The festival of
Venus was at hand- a festival celebrated with
great pomp at Cyprus. Victims were offered, the altars smoked,
and the odour of incense filled the air. When Pygmalion had
performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar
and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I
pray you, for my wife"- he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but
said instead- "one like my ivory virgin." Venus, who was present
at the festival, heard him and knew the thought he would have
uttered; and as an omen of her favour, caused the flame on the
altar to shoot up thrice in a fiery point into the air. When he
returned home, he went to see his statue, and leaning over the
couch, gave a kiss to the mouth. It seemed to be warm. He
pressed its lips again, he laid his hand upon the limbs; the
ivory felt soft to his touch and yielded to his fingers like the
wax of Hymettus. While he stands astonished and glad, though
doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, again and again with a
lover's ardour he touches the object of his hopes. It was indeed
alive! The veins when pressed yielded to the finger and again
resumed their roundness. Then at last the votary of Venus found
words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips upon lips as
real as his own. The virgin felt the kisses and blushed, and
opening her timid eyes to the light, fixed them at the same
moment on her lover. Venus blessed the nuptials she had formed,
and from this union Paphos was born, from whom the city, sacred
to Venus, received its name.
Schiller, in his poem the "Ideals," applies this tale of
Pygmalion to the love of nature in a youthful heart. The
following translation is furnished by a friend:
"As once with prayers in passion flowing,
Pygmalion embraced the stone,
Till from the frozen marble glowing,
The light of feeling o'er him shone,
So did I clasp with young devotion.
Bright nature to a poet's heart;
Till breath and warmth and vital motion
Seemed through the statue form to dart.
"And then, in all my ardour sharing,
The silent form expression found;
Returned my kiss of youth daring,
And understood my heart's quick sound.
Then lived for me the bright creation,
The silver rill with song was rife;
The trees, the roses shared sensation,
An echo of my boundless life."- S. G. B.
Boris
Vallejo Driads.
DRYOPE.
Dryope and Iole were sisters. The former was the wife of
Andraemon, beloved by her husband, and happy in the birth of her
first child. One day the sisters strolled to the bank of a
stream that sloped gradually down to the water's edge, while the
upland was overgrown with myrtles. They were intending to gather
flowers for forming garlands for the altars of the nymphs, and
Dryope carried her child at her bosom, precious burden, and
nursed him as she walked. Near the water grew a lotus plant,
full of purple flowers. Dryope gathered some and offered them to
the baby, and Iole was about to do the same, when she perceived
blood dropping from the places where her sister had broken them
off the stem. The plant was no other than the nymph Lotis, who,
running from a base pursuer, had been changed into this form.
This they learned from the country people when it was too late.
Dryope, horror-struck when she perceived what she had done,
would gladly have hastened from the spot, but found her feet
rooted to the ground. She tried to pull them away, but moved
nothing but her upper limbs. The woodiness crept upward and by
degrees invested her body. In anguish she attempted to tear her
hair, but found her hands filled with leaves. The infant felt
his mother's bosom begin to harden, and the milk cease to flow.
Iole looked on at the sad fate of her sister, and could render
no assistance. She embraced the growing trunk, as if she would
hold back the advancing wood, and would gladly have been
enveloped in the same bark. At this moment Andraemon, the
husband of Dryope, with her father, approached; and when they
asked for Dryope, Iole pointed them to the new-formed lotus.
They embraced the trunk of the yet warm tree, and showered their
kisses on its leaves.
Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. Her tears
still flowed and fell on her leaves, and while she could she
spoke. "I am not guilty. I deserve not this fate. I have injured
no one. If I speak falsely, may my foliage perish with drought
and my trunk be cut down and burned. Take this infant and give
it to a nurse. Let it often be brought and nursed under my
branches, and play in my shade; and when he is old enough to
talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and to say with
sadness, 'My mother lies hid under this bark.' But bid him be
careful of river banks, and beware how he plucks flowers,
remembering that every bush he sees may be a goddess in
disguise. Farewell, dear husband, and sister, and father. If you
retain any love for me, let not the axe wound me, nor the flocks
bite and tear my branches. Since I cannot stoop to you, climb up
hither and kiss me; and while my lips continue to feel, lift up
my child that I may kiss him. I can speak no more, for already
the bark advances up my neck, and will soon shoot over me. You
need not close my eyes, the bark will close them without your
aid." Then the lips ceased to move, and life was extinct: but
the branches retained for some time longer the vital heat.
Keats, in "Endymion," alludes to Dryope thus:
"She took a lute from which there pulsing came
A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay
More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;" etc.
Frans
Floris Venus and Adonis.
Venus
and Adonis
Venus, playing one day with her boy
Cupid, wounded her bosom
with one of his arrows. She pushed him away, but the wound was
deeper than she thought. Before it healed she beheld Adonis, and
was captivated with him. She no longer took any interest in her favourite resorts- Paphos, and Cnidos, and Amathos, rich in
metals. She absented herself even from heaven, for Adonis was
dearer to her than heaven. Him she followed and bore him
company. She who used to love to recline in the shade, with no
care but to cultivate her charms, now rambles through the woods
and over the hills, dressed like the huntress Diana; and calls
her dogs, and chases hares and stags, or other game that it is
safe to hunt, but keeps clear of the wolves and bears, reeking
with the slaughter of the herd. She charged Adonis, too, to
beware of such dangerous animals. "Be brave towards the timid,"
said she; "courage against the courageous is not safe. Beware
how you expose yourself to danger and put my happiness to risk.
Attack not the beasts that Nature has armed with weapons. I do
not value your glory so high as to consent to purchase it by
such exposure. Your youth, and the beauty that charms Venus,
will not touch the hearts of lions and bristly boars. Think of
their terrible claws and prodigious strength! I hate the whole
race of them. Do you ask me why?" Then she told him the story of
Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were changed into lions for their
ingratitude to her.
Having given him this warning, she mounted her chariot drawn
by swans, and drove away through the air. But Adonis was too
noble to heed such counsels. The dogs had roused a wild boar
from his lair, and the youth threw his spear and wounded the
animal with sidelong stroke. The beast drew out the weapon with
his jaws, and rushed after Adonis, who turned and ran; but the
boar overtook him, and buried his tusks in his side, and
stretched him dying upon the plain.
Venus, in her swan-drawn chariot, had not yet reached Cyprus,
when she heard coming up through mid-air the groans of her
beloved, and turned her white-winged coursers back to earth. As
she drew near and saw from on high his lifeless body bathed in
blood, she alighted and, bending over it, beat her breast and
tore her hair. Reproaching the Fates, she said, "Yet theirs
shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my grief shall
endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my
lamentation shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be
changed into a flower; that consolation none can envy me." Thus
speaking, she sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they
mingled, bubbles rose as in a pool on which raindrops fall, and
in an hour's time there sprang up a flower of bloody hue like
that of the pomegranate. But it is short-lived. It is said the
wind blows the blossoms open, and afterwards blows the petals
away; so it is called Anemone, or Wind Flower, from the cause
which assists equally in its production and its decay.
Milton alludes to the story of Venus and Adonis in his "Comus":
"Beds of hyacinth and roses
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th' Assyrian queen;" etc.
Jean
Broc Death of Hyacinth.
Apollo
and
Hyacinthus.
Apollo was passionately fond of a youth named
Hyacinth. He.
accompanied him in his sports, carried the nets when he went
fishing, led the dogs when he went to hunt, followed him in his
excursions in the mountains, and neglected for him his lyre and
his arrows. One day they played a game of quoits together, and
Apollo, heaving aloft the discus, with strength mingled with
skill, sent it high and far. Hyacinthus watched it as it flew,
and excited with the sport ran forward to seize it, eager to
make his throw, when the quoit bounded from the earth and struck
him in the forehead. He fainted and fell. The god, as pale as
himself, raised him and tried all his art to stanch the wound
and retain the flitting life, but all in vain; the hurt was past
the power of medicine. As when one has broken the stem of a lily
in the garden it hangs its head and turns its flowers to the
earth, so the head of the dying boy, as if too heavy for his
neck, fell over on his shoulder. "Thou diest, Hyacinth," so
spoke Phoebus, "robbed of thy youth by me. Thine is the
suffering, mine the crime. Would that I could die for thee! But
since that may not be, thou shalt live with me in memory and in
song. My lyre shall celebrate thee, my song shall tell thy fate,
and thou shalt become a flower inscribed with my regrets." While
Apollo spoke, behold the blood which had flowed on the ground
and stained the herbage ceased to be blood; but a flower of hue
more beautiful than the Tyrian sprang up, resembling the lily,
if it were not that this is purple and that silvery white.* And
this was not enough for Phoebus; but to confer still greater
honour, he marked the petals with his sorrow, and inscribed "Ah!
ah!" upon them, as we see to this day. The flower bears the name
of Hyacinthus, and with every returning spring revives the
memory of his fate.
* It is evidently not our modern hyacinth that is here
described. It is perhaps some species of iris, or perhaps of
larkspur or pansy.
It was said that Zephyrus (the West wind), who was also fond
of
Hyacinth and jealous of his preference of Apollo, blew the
quoit out of its course to make it strike Hyacinthus. Keats
alludes to this in his "Endymion," where he describes the
lookers-on at the game of quoits:
"Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side, pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him; Zephyr penitent,
Who now ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain."
An allusion to Hyacinthus will also be recognized in Milton's
"Lycidas":
"Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe."
