GRADE 4_4th Quarter-READING(Used in Gabe & Cobbie’s Reviewer)

PYGMALION AND GALATEA

1 Long, long ago, on an island whose shores were washed by an aquamarine sea, whose hills were mottled with scrub and baked to a golden crust by a fierce sun, whose nights were soft as black velvet encrusted with the diamond-points of a myriad of stars, there lived a king. His name was Pygmalion and the island was Cyprus, and it belonged to the love goddess Aphrodite who had reached it by bobbing across the waves in a boat made of a sea-shell.

2 Pygmalion had no queen. This was not because of a shortage of candidates, for there were plenty of women of rank and beauty from whom he could have chosen. The fact was that Pygmalion was already in love but the one woman he wanted in all the world was the one woman he could not have. That woman was Aphrodite.

3 ‘Why will you not lie with me, oh heartless one?’ he wailed to her. ‘There are other men on whom you have bestowed your favors – why not me?’

4 But despite his entreaties, Aphrodite remained tantalizingly, alluring and frustratingly distant.

5 Pygmalion did not know what to do. His love and longing for the love goddess was making him ill. He could not eat, he could not sleep – he was a man lost in a mist of misery. No matter how inventive, how increasingly imaginative the palace cook’s creations were, still the king refused to partake of anything but the smallest morsels. Haggard – eyed and hollow-cheeked, he wandered the palace halls like a ghost. Clearly, his kingship was no defense against maladies of the heart, to which monarchs and paupers are equal prey. Pygmalion was, in short, horribly lovesick.

6 The king decided that if he could not posses the object of his desires, then he must have her image. So he set to work with chisel and blade and fashioned an exact, life-size replica of Aphrodite in ivory. The statue was identical to the goddess in every physical detail. The arch of her eyebrow, the gentle sweep of her nose, the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her thigh, the delicate line of her ankle; all were modeled to perfection, for who after all would know such details so well as one who worshipped her as passionately as Pygmalion?

7 The ivory statue gave the king relief from his anguish for a time. He would not be parted from it and – I am ashamed to say – even took it to bed with him, where he would embrace and caress its cool curves and smooth planes in the hope that somehow the inanimate form lying next to him would respond.

8 But it was no use. The beautiful, statue remained as icily unmoved as the cold ivory from which it was made.

9 ‘Have pity on me!’ Pygmalion prayed to Aphrodite. ‘You see how I suffer. Even your image affords me no comfort. I am cursed by love. Release me from this bondage or I think I shall die!’ And he turned to the statue by his side, put his arms despairingly around it, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

10 His tears fell on the statue’s cheek and then something strange and miraculous happened. As if in answer to Pygmalion’s weeping, a small, perfect, oval dew-drop issued from the corner of one of the ivory figure’s eyes and rolled slowly down the side of its exquisite nose. The statue was crying. Aphrodite, hearing Pygmalion’s prayer, had invisibly entered her ivory twin and had breathed life into it.

11 Awkwardly, the statue raised her arms and cradled Pygmalion’s head. The flesh that was once as cool and unyielding as stone now exuded warmth and life. The cheeks that were once pearl-pale were now flushed with rose. The lips that were once silent now speak.

12 ‘My name is Galatea,’ the statue said to an amazed Pygmalion.

13 Well, the rest of the story is as you might expect. Pygmalion married Galatea, and now that he had a real flesh-and-blood Aphrodite of his own he no longer yearned for the divine original, and his appetite and zest for life improved immeasurably.

GRADE 4_4th Quarter-READING(Used in Gabe & Cobbie’s Reviewer)

14 In time, Galatea bore Pygmalion a son by the name of Paphos, who in turn had a son called Cinyras who founded the Cyprian city of Paphos, named after his father, and there built a famous temple to Aphrodite, without whose kindness neither he nor his father would ever have been born.

15 So ends the tale of Pygmalion and his Galatea, which began sadly but ended happily, as we hope all good stories will.