Ana Rueda (review)

Abstract

the unexpected is part of the charm of this collection, which trulydoes represent'a lifetime'sreading'. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK ANNE L. WALSH Pigmaliony Galatea: Refracciones modernas deunmito.ByANARUEDA.(EspiralHispanoAmericana , 35) Madrid:EditorialFundamentos. I998. 460 pp. 2,880 ptas. Pygmalion, accordingto Greeklegend, was King of Cypruswho made a statueof a woman (Galatea),and then fell in love with it. He prayedto Aphrodite,the goddess of love and beauty (Venusto the Romans), who endowed the statuewith life. From this well-known myth Ana Rueda has produced a multifaceted and far-reaching studyof the countlessmodernversions- sheprefersrefractions- of the old Greek myths, by means of literary, dramatic, painterly, sculptural, musical, cinematographicand otherartisticmedia. This studyis made up of eightmore or lessuniformchaptersoffiftyto sixtypages each, with a brieften-page introductionbut, surprisingly,no conclusion or index to this cornucopia of names and titles. The study is divided into two parts, with Chapters I and 2 comprisingParti, which combines the analysisof a paintingwith that of a specific text. Chapter I is an oblique look at literature, suggested by a reading of the painting Pygmalion and Galateaby the French artist, Jean-Leon Gerome; that is, a visual display,whilst Chapter 2 representsa precise reading of a key text of Pygmalion in the Book x version of Ovid's Metamorphosis. Rueda's point is that our reading versions of the myth have been influenced by the plastic arts versions. The linkbetween the look (visualexperience) and the hand manipulation (sculpting)is a keypartof Rueda's thesis. Part ii is made up of six chapters which develop aesthetic questions raised in Part I. Each of the six chapters contains critical readings of selected texts from Spanish, LatinAmerican and Englishliterature,plus many from Europeanwriters. Although contributing to the main thesis of the Pygmalion/Galatea myth, each chapter is discrete, independent and self-contained. For example, Chapter 3 examines the topic of romantic creation (Frankenstein)and the catastrophic creation, the destructivestatue,in Hoffmann, Poe, Becquer and Merimee. Chapter 4 gives differentperspectives on the iconoclastic discourse, leading to destruction and artistic failure, through studies of Hawthorne, Balzac, James, Gald6s and Gomez de la Serna. Chapter 5 describes the veneration of the female image, for example, by the EnglishVictorians, in which love becomes almost a religion, with the concomitant view of the fallen woman, as in the works of Watts, Burne-Jones, Morris,W. S. Gilbertand the FrenchwriterGautier. Chapter 6 goes from revering women to moulding them, as in Shaw'sPygmalion and the popular stage spin-offMy FairLady.Other theatricalrefractionsof the Galatea/Pygmalion myth are found in TheTaming oftheShrew, Alarcon'sEl Capitdn Veneno, the SpaniardTorrado'sLasenorita Pigmalion, and otherversionsby the GermanWedekindand the Belgian Spaak.The cinema too has produced its variations, in Educating Rita, PrettyWoman, and the disturbingBoxingHelena.In this technological, cybernetic space age, one finds upto -date versionsof the theme, with robots,mannequins and dollstakingtheplace of the female statue, for example, in the worksof the SpaniardJacinto Grau and the Czech Capec, the Germans Bellmer and Kokoscha, the Italian Londolfi and the Mexican Arreola. The last chapter, for want of a proper conclusion, shows how women writers, especially feminists, attracted by the myth, break the traditional mould. This theoreticalaspect of the critic'swork,hinted at in my earlierreferenceto the 'gaze', the unexpected is part of the charm of this collection, which trulydoes represent'a lifetime'sreading'. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK ANNE L. WALSH Pigmaliony Galatea: Refracciones modernas deunmito.ByANARUEDA.(EspiralHispanoAmericana , 35) Madrid:EditorialFundamentos. I998. 460 pp. 2,880 ptas. Pygmalion, accordingto Greeklegend, was King of Cypruswho made a statueof a woman (Galatea),and then fell in love with it. He prayedto Aphrodite,the goddess of love and beauty (Venusto the Romans), who endowed the statuewith life. From this well-known myth Ana Rueda has produced a multifaceted and far-reaching studyof the countlessmodernversions- sheprefersrefractions- of the old Greek myths, by means of literary, dramatic, painterly, sculptural, musical, cinematographicand otherartisticmedia. This studyis made up of eightmore or lessuniformchaptersoffiftyto sixtypages each, with a brieften-page introductionbut, surprisingly,no conclusion or index to this cornucopia of names and titles. The study is divided into two parts, with Chapters I and 2 comprisingParti, which combines the analysisof a paintingwith that of a specific text. Chapter I is an...