FALLING IN LOVE WITH ONE'S OWN CREATION- in LITERATURE, CINEMATOGRAPHY, MUSIC

The act of falling in love can be one of the most alluring, bewildering, seductive and ultimately dangerous experiences that can happen to a person. Writers, poets, and philosophers have attempted to define what it means to fall in love and how it comes to manifest itself for centuries, without much overall success or agreement.
One highly popular ideology originated from ancient Greece. 

The Greeks defined love in many ways; Agape meant unconditional love, Philia was the form of innocent love reserved for siblings. Then of course there is Eros. This is what we mean by 'falling in love.' Eros is "the divine discontent" the baffling urge to merge. A compellingly persistent restlessness that pushes us to seek, to create, to express, and to surrender to another the love we wish to give and later receive. The Greeks also have a highly developed philosophy behind their ideas on Eros. The idea is that when falling in love or succumbing to the powerful lure of Eros, the beloved or victim, depending on how one perceives it, is recognizing in another un-manifest qualities they wish to possess or assimilate within themselves.

However, sometimes, people fall in love with their own creation, as it is very facile to fall in love with someone that represents an ideal for you, being born from your imagination and deepest desires. Moreover, despite representing impersonal things, as they are only ideas pieces of one's imagination, people's affections for them can feel very personal.

As I have mentioned before, it is very facile to fall in love with one's creation is because they embody the traits we value the most and want our partener to posses, and this idea is highly supported by "The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea", as main theme of Pygmalion's myth is the artist's love of his own creation. In the story, Pygmalion becomes so infatuated with his work that he begins to treat it as if it were a real person, as it represented his one and true love, being almost obsessed with it.

"The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea" is one of the most popular myths of Greek Mythology, and it is one of the most influential and inspiring ancient Greek stories to ever be written. It tells the story of Pygmalion was a talented Greek sculptor from Cyprus, who, after becoming disgusted by some local prostitutes, lost all interest in women and avoided them and implicitly avoided falling in love with one, considering them flawed creatures. 

He started dedicated himself to his work and soon created Galatea, a beautiful stature of a woman out of ivory. He did eventually fall in love with her and would bring her gifts such as beads, songbirds, baubles and flowers, caress her, kiss her and talk to her every day. He would dress the statue in fine clothing and decorate herwith expensive jewelery. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, took pity on the young man and on his desperate love and brought the statue to life.  Their love blossomed over the days and they got married, with Aphrodite blessing them with happiness and prosperity. The happy couple had a son, Paphos, who later founded the city of Paphos in Cyprus. This myth is know to be an example of a happy love story, because their love had the capacity to blossom and was formed under divine blessing.

On the other hand, the classical musical "My Fair Lady", based on the play "Pygmalion", focuses on the importance of what's on the inside. The musical presents a very interesting taleof two people who "are better for having known each other", Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins, who enter into a contentious kind of companionship that grows into friendship as they get to know each other. Through their friendship and the time they spent together trying to learn more about each other, both learn about the world of 1900s London and themselves. 

Eliza Doolittle was a poor girl with "low-class" accent who wanted to learn formal English in order to get a better job in a flower store. Henry Higgins, a phonetic professor, accepted Colonel Pickering's challenged of transforming Eliza into a lady with perfect English and manner. Hence, he trained Eliza for six months in his house along with Colonel Pickering as witness of this challenge. After six months, in order to claim his success, Henry Higgins decided to send Eliza to the embassy ball hold by the queen of England. After Eliza successfully tricked everyone in the ball into thinking she is a Hungarian princess, no one encouraged her. Hopeless, Eliza left Higgins' house, but soon she realised that she will not be happy without Henry, thus she went back to him. In the meantime, Henry realised the same thing, making the need of being with each other mutual and intense.

In spite of the lack of flashbacks in the movie, the director embraced the original music of the play "Pygmalion" to express the characters' point of view many times throughout the movie, as there are total of twenty-five music pieces in both the movie and the play, each of them contributing to expressing the emotions of numerous characters.

Overall, I think that falling in love is an action which cannot be expressed in words, nor can it be fully understood, hence these are the main reasons why it is still highly debated amongst writers, scientists and philosophers. Whilst many people are still trying to understand love, from my perspective, it will always represent an intriguing mystery.