Apollo, disguised as the servant of an anonymous patron, has brought Pygmalion away to a sculpting studio in the hills.
….Late in the afternoon, the travelers arrived at their
destination. The forest thinned out before them until it gave way onto a hilltop
meadow. The new studio was revealed, a wide, flat, rectangular construction
of gray clay bricks covering the peak of the hill. It was everything the artist
could have ever asked for, spacious and simple. The living quarters were more
than adequate for his needs, but the workshop stirred him deeply upon entering.
It spread out for yards in every direction, under a high ceiling, encircled
by workbenches and tool cabinets. The workshop contained a veritable arsenal
of precise, well-tempered sculpting tools, all sizes of punches and chisels,
various trimming hammers, and bouchardes, even some tools of which Pygmalion
did not know the name, though he immediately recognized their usefulness. One
workbench rolled freely on mounted wheels amongst the scattered stools and stepladders.
The convenience of it all might have felt decadent, were it not for the promise
of productivity that sparkled around everything he saw through the tearful filters
he was hiding from the servant. At the center of it all was a man-sized block
of solid marble, roughly hewn into a rectangular shape that just visibly curved,
slightly inclining the face of one side towards the floor. As Apollo finished
pointing out the various facilities, Pygmalion interrupted. “Is that the
material for the statue I have been commissioned?” After his eyes locked
on the stone block that the Olympian was leaning against, Pygmalion ceased any
effort to conceal his tears.
“It is,” Phoebus replied. Pygmalion circled the rock pensively.
It was of the finest, flawless texture he had ever seen. Phoebus continued,
“There will be a basket of food for you, on the table beside your door,
in the morning.” The god chuckled to himself at the sight of mortal rapture.
“I can see you are anxious to begin work so, if you need anything just
leave a note in the basket and my lord’s slave will deliver it.”
Pygmalion seemed not to hear him.
~Phoebus returned to mount Olympus, leaving Pygmalion to examine the rock, searching
out the shape hidden within it, until his travels caught up with him and he
was so overcome by urgent drowsiness that he lay right down on the floor of
his workshop, and slept at the foot of the marble block. That night, he dreamed
of Nereus’ daughter, stooped over, frantically seeking her lover, Acis,
after he was buried under the Cyclops’ avalanche. It was the moment just
before a reed broke through the mound of earth that covered him, and Acis rose,
reincarnated as a river god. The complexity of emotions, sincerely expressed
in the bereaved nymph’s face and posture, overcame Pygmalion. He awoke
in tears, looking up at the marble block that loomed above him. Pygmalion knew
that he had discovered the form it contained.
~As promised, on the table beside the entrance there was a basket of food and
two skins, one for water and one for wine. He sat at the table and ate an apple,
while he made charcoal sketches of the woman in his dream. When beginning a
sculpture, Pygmalion’s preliminary sketches never depicted anything but
rough shapes, and they were often subject to radical change, because he knew
that the specifics all resided in his material, and the process of his skillful
manipulation. However, when he took these sketches into the workshop and began
to closely examine them against the marble, it appeared to lend itself to every
particular of the sculptor’s original conception. The block was free of
stress fractures or any such gross parameters, but to the expert eye, subtle
peculiarities of the grain indicated how portions of stone would naturally break
away. Everywhere he looked, Pygmalion saw a premonition of her shoulder, her
hip, or bent elbow, all just as he had dreamt them. He tossed aside his sketches
and set right to work….
©DCSmith 2003