After a while out of mind, I am thinking about Pandora again. But happily, today, like an idiot.
At odd moments, I have inadvertently disclosed her name. You may have picked this up, when asking to borrow my password, when looking in my notebook. I wanted to write all about her, get out what it is about her and why, but now that I try, there are only fragments remaining of this discourse:
- She a finalist, myself a first year undergraduate
- She lived in the room directly above mine
- Ready salted crisps and taramasalata watching Grand Prix
- I took her best friend to the black tie ball
- Emerging in a cloud of vapour from the shower, beaded in droplets, wrapped in a towel, blushing in the few steps from bathroom to her room...
- The Independent short crossword
- Frozen peas on her twisted ankle
- A solitary, rambling, handwritten letter
I cannot pinpoint the moment that she became iconic, but I am sure of the fact that, like all objects of infatuation, she was gloriously unaware of her pedestal. I'm sure I was not the only one. So wildly different, outrageous, tempered, sensitive, no poetry does justice. Pretty? Yes, but not especially. I get angry that I have forgotten the sparse moments, and now only the illusion remains - persisting as only the insubstantial can.
I am thinking of the classical legend of Pygmalion. It goes like this: The sculptor, repulsed by what he sees as their imperfections, shuns the women of the material, fleshly world and commits himself to a state of celibacy. In this self-incarceration, he conjures in the temple of his mind the image of womanly perfection. As his thoughts become ideas, and these ideas become obssession, his fantasy begins to take on an agency. She takes possession of his fingers, exploiting his desire and skill, compelling the unravelling of ivory until the form of herself is exposed to the light. So perfect is the rendition of the form, and so taken by the realisation of his own ideal, Pygmalion succumbs to delusion. He treats his object as an animate partner, bestows ornaments on her, enrobes her in silks, gifts her confections of seashell and polished stones. Despite the simulation, however, Pygmalion remains conscious of his own attempts at self-deception. This interminable commutation of reality-fantasy plagues him, reminding him of the seeming impossibility of his situation. On the day of the feast of Aphrodite, in his desperation and shame, Pygmalion offers a prayer for the realisation of true love. Notably, he omits to make open admission in his prayer to the role of his ivory statue, pleading only for the salving of his torment of desire. Hearing his supplication, Aphrodite, for whom his omission is transparent, is moved and uses her divine favour to give life to Pygmalion's creation. When he returns home, Pygmalion finds that his creation has become warm flesh, human clay. Resplendent in her adornments, she is no longer a rigid artifice, but pulsing and physically articulate. Her limbs give under his fingers, and he can sense the warmth and moisture of her breath. In Ovid, theirs is left a blessed union.
In my reading however, it is not this kind of "happy-ever-after". For me, Pygmalion's most significant creation is not the image, nor the ivory statue he fashions in response. The major creative event in the story of Pygmalion is that of the goddess to whom he offers his prayers. At the moment he takes desperation and hope, and converges them into the possibility of transformation, it does not matter what is, in fact, reality. In my reading of the story, Pygmalion's statue remains mineral, and the transformation is not that of his statue into living tissue but is instead the trimuph of his fantasy. My point is that, from indulgence of a pantomime to immersion in the glory of her transformation, Pygmalion's sanity is rarified into an inalienable delusionary state. That is all anyone really wants in matters of the heart - the ability to remain forever in happy delusion.
