Transformation of the Myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in H. Heine's Artistic Prose

The article focuses on the transformation of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in H. Heine's artistic prose. The author draws on mythological studies (A.F. Losev, O.M. Freidenberg, N.V. Braginskaya) and studies of Heine's literary texts (S.P. Gidzheu, V.A. Pronin, S. Wurfel, M. Broad, J. Sammons and others). The mythologem of the “revived statue” is relevant for the literature of the early 19th century due to “remythologisation” and increased attention of romanticists to the synthesis of arts. Heinrich Heine actively uses the images of living statues and paintings, including those that really exist, in his journalism and lyrics. The idea of a revived statue is rooted in the ancient story of a hero charmed by a statue. Antique ekphrases record the similarity of a work of art with a divine model, outlining an obvious connection with the problem of imitation as a key problem of ancient aesthetics. In the antique world, statues were the objects of love and aesthetic worship, perceived as reservoirs of divine powers and visible evidence of the art transforming power. Heine addresses the problem of a sculpted copy realism and raises the debatable question of the relationship between illusion and reality, the living and dead, nature and creations of human genius. Ancient and medieval sources are used in romantic poetry as a syncretic unity, including deep meanings associated with the author's personality. Heine uses Antiquity and Christianity as a component of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, playing with their oppositions: polytheism and monotheism in his poetry are both opposed to as well as mixed with each other. The myth of a reviving statue in Heine's prose often leads to the motifs of Plato's epistemology caused by the dualism of Plato's cosmology. The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea demonstrates the specificity of a romantic worldview, which seeks to combine poetry, philosophy, and mythology. The archetypal basis of the plot and the Neoplatonic paradigm act as a synthetic unity, which provides the narrative with universality and polysemy, often reducing it to a symbol or reference. In H. Hein's works, the images of reviving statues are often subject to symbolisation or travesty reevaluation, demonstrating a certain inconsistency of the mimetic idea in plastic art that captures one frozen moment. Heine's image of ideal, inaccessible beauty is verified by human Imagination, which gives subjective emotionality and dynamics to the object reproduced in art.

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