A technical note:
Several of you have asked me privately about the incorrect times showing on your blog posts. Not to worry: what you were seeing is Greenwich Mean Time, or Universal Time (UTC), which is hours ahead of California time (PCT).
I will change the settings on the blog so that in future the times should match California time. But all of the posts already published will probably continue to show UTC. No problem: I know when you posted!
See you soon!
Wow, looks like we’re in for some good discussion tomorrow.
I look forward to rereading and making further comments. And to talking to you all in class!
Although ekphrasis’ definition continues to be debated today most people refuse to disregard its use. Throughout history, it has been known that ekphrasis plays a central roll in both visual and verbal expression. As I read the different definitions that exist for ekphrasis I began to feel as though it was a concept that felt very familiar to me. It might not be as literature oriented but I find that most people will use language, the verbal form, to express something visual when they are having a conversation and are trying to describe something or someone with preciseness. It is as though the practice of ekphrasis has not faded away but on the contrary has become central in terms of communication. Not only is there something visual that can be appreciated but there is a verbal description of it as well. I think that many of us are able to portray a specific message, emotion, idea, or clear provide a clear description of an object, person, or place through the tool of ekphrasis- we use both visual and verbal forms to communicate. The use of visual and verbal description in order to bring, “the experience of an object to a listener or reader through highly detailed descriptive writing” as Ryan Welsh mentions seems to remain powerful not only in literature but also in performing arts, the media, advertising/marketing etc. and equally in math when it comes to describing geometry as well as the sciences, etc. This form of description brings a sense of feeling or familiarity to people.
As I read the assigned readings I felt as though I was a part of the plot. My mind dove into the story and carried away with the verbal description of the scenery that only became more vivid as the description of what was occurring became more detailed in the writings. In the Iliad by Homer, I found myself living the experience side by side with Hephaestus. As Hephaestus created the “new-forged shield”(458) that he designed for Achilles, son of a mortal, Peleus and an Olympian goddess, Thetis, I began to imagine how powerful and protective the shield would turn out. As Homer described how detailed Hephaestus created each part of Achilles’ shield I could not avoid but to imagine such a beautiful and enormous shield as well as how strong and powerful Achilles was.
From the very beginning Homer captures the reader’s attention as he describes the bronze, silver, and gold that would be use to create the shield for Achilles. As the description of the shield begins ekphrasis is encountered. As Homer states in line 478 “First he made and enormous sturdy shield” and then continues to write in lines 483-485, “There he fashioned earth and heaven and sea, with the tireless sun, a moon at the full, and all those constellations of the sky” the ekphrasis allows for the reader to experience the creation of the shield. With the verbal description of the visual object, the object becomes powerful and tangible to the audience or reader.
Likewise, in “The Shield of Achilles” written by W.H. Auden there are many descriptions given of what Thetis saw as, “she looked over his shoulder”. These descriptions give a glimpse of what the character saw and yet we can imagine it through the detailed description portrayed as it is done when Auden writes, “She looked over his shoulder/For athletes at their games,/Men and women in a dance/Moving their sweet limbs/Quick, quick, to music,/But there on the shining shield/His hands had set no dancing-floor/But a weed-choked field.” These descriptions do not only give us a picture that we will allow us to experience a object or a situation but it also brings out emotion and therefore, it is easier to connect or understand the passage or message that is trying to be delivered.
Also, in both, “Musee des Beaux Arts” by Auden and “Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus” by Williams ekphrasis helps the reader hear and see/imagine what is occurring. With Auden’s poem it is not hard to picture as he writes, “…the dogs go on with their doggy life…” the dogs going about their day and actually actively living their “doggy life”. In both poems together, the reader encounters the ploughman that brings a picture to mind along with, in Auden’s poem, “the splash, the forsaken cry…the sun shone as it had to the white legs disappearing into the green water” and in William’s poem, “sweating in the sun…a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning” in both, the reader can feel the heat of the sun through the verbal description as well as can hear the “splash” of the water and the “cry” even though it went unnoticed.
In Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the verbal description of sound and silence creates and emotion to the reader. Keats also writes that sound is sweet but to the sensual ear, the absence of sound can be sweeter as he writes in line 11-12, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter;therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;” he also brings a happy tone to the poem by speaking about happiness, melody, youth and warmness as he describes in lines 23-27, “And, happy melodist, unwearied,/For ever piping songs for ever new;/More happy love! more happy, happy love!/For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d/For ever panting, and for ever young;”. Ekphrasis was vivid throughout the handouts assigned to read. As a reader, I found that after reading about ekphrasis I appreciated what I read even more. I indulged consciously into the reading and enjoyed the details within the reading more as oppose to overlooking key descriptions.
There seems to be a discrepancy between the words one uses to explain how a work of art is viewed and the image of the art itself. Though the University of Chicago’s definition of ekphrasis states right in the beginning that there is a “conflict of word and image in media,” more seems to be at stake than the mere rendering of an artistic work into words. Greek students were taught to not only give simple details about an object of art but to make a reader “share the emotional experience and content with someone who had never encountered the work in question.” The authors we have studied this week do give information about works of art, but I think they are doing more than just making a reader have “an emotional experience.” These works of ekphrasis are so literary that even though I as a reader often cannot feel the emotion that the poet wishes me to have, I feel tempted to fake it. As a student of literature, if I am not moved to experience the poem “emotionally,” I feel like there is something wrong with me, especially if other students seem to be succumbing to emotion.
As a student studying literature, I feel that some people “get” literature better than I do. I am a narrative writer and a playwright— but definitely not a poet. I have said before that I am not deep enough to write poetry, and I worry that I am not deep enough to even read it properly. When I read Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” I do not have an emotional experience. Even if I look at a picture of a real Grecian urn, and I did look at a few images online, I do not feel this. I tried squinting my eyes the way I used to when I looked at those pictures within a picture that used to be popular at Spencer’s Gifts and such places. I could never see the picture just like I do not feel the emotion of the poem. I remember studying this poem in a British literature class a couple of years ago. The students around me, lit. majors all of them, were rhapsodic. “Oh, this is so beautiful.” And “Keats is a master.” One woman near me wiped a tear away. “It’s so, so true,” another woman said. “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’” I looked at the excited people around me, and I was upset that I did not experience what they so obviously felt. I wanted to. I felt like a failure, so I tried to fake it. “Yeah,” I said. “Like, for real, I’m moved. Yeah, ‘ye soft pipes, play on.’ It’s like Keats had the courage to say what we were all thinking.” Someone nodded at me, and I instantly felt like part of the club, like I could see the picture within the picture at Spencer’s. I was a part of something greater than myself for once. I was one of the lucky and learned few who GOT Keats.
Flash forward a few years and many therapy sessions later. I no longer feel the need to pretend to understand poetry, and I definitely do not feel the need to fake tears to fit into some imagined literary club where I will be ostracized for not feeling emotional while reading “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The University of Chicago’s definition of ekphrasis quotes W.J.T. Mitchell , channeling Nelson Goodman, “no amount of description, as Nelson Goodman might put it, adds up to a depiction.” Mitchell goes on to write that “the ‘indifference’ here really emphasizes the split between word and image as two separate modes of representation that cannot be intertwined, as ekphrasis would indicate.” This seems to me that maybe this ekphrasis of earlier times was necessary because only the privileged few had access to see some of these works of art in person. Poems were easier to reproduce, and if people could get the feeling of the work, they would never feel like they were missing something by not seeing the actual work. I would argue that in today’s world of the internet, just about any image is available online. People have the opportunity to see a picture of the work of art for themselves and make their own interpretations. I feel that these poems we have studied for class have their own place in literary history, but this is not necessarily for making the emotion of one of these art objects come to life. These poets have their own ideas and ways to turn a phrase that might be inspired by the art but are ultimately the poet’s unique views. Perhaps tying one’s poetry to a recognized work of art somehow also makes the poetry an automatic work of art. Perhaps the poem takes on a persona of its own that is nothing like the art that inspired it.
I don’t know. I’m probably the wrong person to ask about any of this. I’m not really deep enough to get poetry.
Jennifer Ellis
After reading what the University of Chicago had to say about ekphrasis I had a better understanding of why we read the various handouts. I had read the handouts before I read the definition of ekphrasis, and in fact I had never before heard the term. After I read about ekphrasis I went back and reread all of the handouts a second time. This helped me to really look for detail in the writing and to try to figure out if my imagination could in fact create a duplicate of Achilles’s shield or the painting of Icarus falling into the water. I was trying to comprehend what Mitchell called ekphrastic fear; the belief that it is possible for a writer to actually duplicate the object being described through detailed writing. I do not believe that ekphrastic fear is possible because when you are reading your imagination will be able to create anything, it could be far more spectacular in your mind than it is in real life or it could be less spectacular.
Where the visual and the verbal really meet is through ekphrastic hope; the idea that what is written about an object can actually enhance one’s view of it, but they will still be impressed with the actual visual object. For instance you can see the shield of Achilles and notice the detail in the craftsmanship of that shield but through reading Homer’s The Iliad we receive information about how the shield was made. We get a list of all of the elements that go into making this great shield. This would therefore enhance our view of it, but we will never really be able to picture the shield as it is in real life. It is hard to imagine the shield when you are reading The Iliad because there is so much detail in the description. When I was reading it I could not imagine a shield being able to carry all of the information and story that is described in the text.
In Keats poem he seems to make reference to ekphrasis when the narrator says, “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ are sweeter” (11-12). It would seem that Keats is saying that while verbal descriptions are good things that are seen are better. Later on in the poem we see that visual art is not affected by time when the narrator says, “Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed” (19).
In both of the poems about the fall of Icarus the reader gets a small portion of Brueghel’s painting. In W. H. Auden’s we are able to picture the ploughman, the sun, the water, the ship, and finally Icarus’s legs. In William Carlos Williams’ we are able to see the ploughman, the water, the sun, the coast, a splash, and Icarus drowning. Each poem only gives us a small glimpse of the whole picture. We are not able to see the landscape, the ripples in the water, and the city in the background. Even though we do not see the whole picture we do enhance our view of the painting. Someone could possibly see the painting and not know who Icarus is; through the poems we receive that information. We know that Icarus was trying to fly and fell into the sea; therefore, we will have an enhanced view of the painting. This proves that there is ekphrastic hope; we are impressed with the visual object but our view is enhanced through the verbal or written text about that object.
Often times, pictures are not only visually appreciated but are depicted through words to capture an underlying or hidden meaning. Without knowing it, when someone describes a painting or image they are subconsciously participating in ekphrasis. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ekphrasis is defined as “a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art”. In considering the reading assigned for this week, it is appropriate that the word ekphrasis has Greek origins. A picture, although visually descriptive, can have numerous interpretations. Writers attach words, each with very specific meanings, to previously existing images or to create a specific image in the readers mind.
W. H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” and the excerpt from Homer’s “Iliad” are both examples of ekphrasis and can be juxtaposed to prove how differently a picture can be interpreted through its description. In the “Iliad”, Homer describes the picture that Hephaestos is depicting on the shield that he is making for Achilles. Hephaestos fashions “earth and heaven and sea, with the tireless sun, a moon at the full, and all those constellations of the sky” (483-85). This description depicts a beautiful and glorious setting in the readers’ mind. The poem continues with descriptions of “two armies in bright armor besieged the other town” (509-10) and wants the reader to see the armies marching “out led by Ares and Athena, gods of gold attired in golden clothing, huge and magnificent, as gods should be” (516-18). All these descriptions lead the reader to believe that the image on the shield is one of glory, beauty, and pride in battle. The reader is led to believe that this shield is as epic as the legend of Achilles himself. The shield is therefore fashioned to inspire envy and awe. Interestingly enough, Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” proves that this image can be interpreted differently than its previous intention. In this poem, Thetis, Achilles mother, sees “A plain without a feature, bare and brown,/No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood (9-10). Rather than seeing images of beauty and life, she sees barrenness and lifelessness. She sees the armies as “an unintelligible multitude,/A million eyes,/a million boots in line,/Without expression, waiting for a sign” (13-15). This image of the army conflicts with the description in the “Iliad”. By utilizing words that present a dull and “unintelligible” multitude the image has transformed from awe-inspiring to uninspiring. Auden’s word choice in his description of the shield presents the opposing perspective and experience of viewing this shield.
Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Art” and William Carlos Williams’ “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus” describe the same painting utilizing ekpharsis but through different stylistic techniques. In “Musee des Beaux Art” Auden emphasizes that the painting depicts that suffering exists while others go about their daily routine right off the bat by stating that “About suffering they were never wrong” (1). The first lines expresses that the painting has to do with suffering. In William’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” the reader is depicted with a simple scene until the end where the splash that was “unnoticed”(19) was “Icarus drowning” (21) . Instead of suffering being the focus of Williams poem, Icarus’ death it is described rather insignificantly. By implying that, it implies that to Williams the focus of this painting was not on the significance of Icarus’ death. Through this style, the reader experiences the irony of the painting through the eyes of Williams.
Like the other poems discussed above, John Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, is an example of ekpharsis. Throughout this poem Keats illustrates in meticulous detail what is depicted on the urn. The speaker in the poem addresses the urn as a “Sylvan historian” (3) that expresses history through its images. He then goes on to question all that the urn’s images represent and describes these images vividly for the reader to experience.
It is interesting to experience an image through words that represent anothers’ interpretation. The experience of the image is one perspective, that of the author’s. Instead of forming a relationship with a specific image, one is forming a relationship with an expression of an image and is interpeting what the image must be through language. Word usage is particulary important in ekpharsis because each word has the power to stimulate an emotional response in the reader. It’s interesting to juxtapose two perspectives, as well as the image that is being described in a work of literature to understand the multitude of experiences an image and its descriptions can elicit.
“ecphrasis.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.
Merriam-Webster Online. 2 September 2009
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ecphrasis>
Last week’s in class exercise showed us how an image can elicit varying responses depending upon the viewer’s perspective and at the same time certain aspects of the images seem to communicate the same thing to everyone. The photo of the widow for example seemed to clearly show her sadness while the objects surrounding her produced a variety of interpretations.
The two ekphrastic poems about Brueghel’s Landscape With The Fall of Icarus demonstrate a similar occurrence. In Auden’s poem Musee des Beaux Arts the ploughman turns leisurely away implying he is indifferent to the suffering of Icarus even though he had likely heard the splash. William Carlos Williams portrays the event slightly differently: the whole pageantry/of the year was/ tingling/ near. Williams’ depiction of the ploughman is that he is distracted by some form of joy in his work.
Another difference in the two poems is that Auden focuses on the intentionality of the artist who produced the painting and the people in it. Williams focuses on the landscape. It is interesting to see divergent focal points in a single image.
(I won’t say much about Keats. His poem is a very dramatic account of an inanimate object? It’s hard for me to follow this one from beginning to end. It seems mostly like a lament about mortality. Didn’t get a clear picture of the Urn in question.)
Auden’s The Shield of Achilles was an interesting poem to read. In comparison to the previously mentioned works this one had a clearer narrative. It took the initial visual object, Achilles shield, and compared it to a modern scene while at the same time conjuring ancient images of Greece.
The first stanza focuses on the past and then the poem shifts to a modern scene with an barbed wire. I felt that more so than the other poems this one really encouraged the reader to visualize what the poem was describing.
Homer describes the shield as an intricately crafted object. He describes it as being made from gold and silver. It depicts the entire night sky whereas Auden’s description is bleaker. Homer describes it in a reverent way as opposed to the dismal lead shield with an “untamed sea.” The way in which each describes the shield frames the reader’s perception. Cultural circumstances and beliefs may have led to each author’s description. Auden’s poem is post WWII and during the cold war leading to a bleak outlook.
Also the style of poetry written in Homer’s time was different. Epic poems promoted heroes and cultural prosperity.
e.caffey
The idea of ekphrasis seems, to me, not only archaic in its intentions but also decidedly uncreative and unimaginative in the approach. It is a technique that seems proper for an encyclopedia, but almost contrary to the tenets by which most literature is conceived. The ancient Greek “art” of rhetoric that spawned ekphrasis, was devised by and taught to the elite. Its purpose; to use language as a means of persuasion. Rhetoric in argument and politics was quite useful, but when it crosses over to art is where my mind starts to wonder. Does the audience of a piece of art, really need to be persuaded? Do they need to put themselves fully in the hands of the artist? When looking at a piece of art, no matter the type media, part of the pleasure and most of the entertainment lies in my interpretation of the artist’s representation. When the artist tells me exactly what it is I need to look at and how it needs to be understood, the piece of art transforms into a lecture of sorts. It’s then that I begin to ask whether the artist can be trusted as a teacher, and if that artist can’t be trusted as such, what good is their “art” in the way they deem it necessary to be viewed?
Rhetoric in art must have seemed necessary to the Greek upper class, not only did they extend their teachings to include ekphrasis, but they laid the claim that art is not art without following strict rules of rhetoric. Possibly they saw the potential audience of a piece of art, as unable to understand what it meant—If someone did not see art in the way the artist himself saw it, then there was no point in the piece at all.
Yet, works of wonder can be created through the principles of rhetoric and ekphrasis. The ability to describe an object as Homer does in the Iliad is masterful. His creativity shines, but it is written in a way that is almost self-aggrandizing. He requires nothing of the audience; no imagination, no emotion, no thought outside of what he has already stated, and in his extensive attempts to so fully describe something as real he loses what true art should always represent—that which is uniquely of the artist himself.
Plato and Aristotle would have been proud to read the Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. It is the modern representation of an ancient Greek lyric. He goes beyond telling you what you need to picture when reading of an object, he tells the audience what they are supposed to feel. This seems to me an artistic failure from the start, but the self-glorification present throughout creates a poem nearly inaccessible to a modern reader. The final two lines, two of the most famous in all western poetry, snap any connection the audience may feel towards the rest of the poem. To anyone who has existed outside a bubble, these lines show how inexperienced the poet is and creates a lack of trust that makes the rest of the poem difficult to swallow.
In opposition to the modernist concerns of the early part of the twentieth century, Auden did not consider an economy of words as the means to convey his perceptions. Auden claimed in his essay Writing that truth should be told in art and poetry so that the art cannot be claimed to have any “ulterior purpose”. Auden used Homer’s description of the shield to writes poem that recreates the image, while at the same time is a clear indictment of war especially in the modern era. His belief that only through words can the “truth” be told, is a mistake when it comes to art—each individual must find their own truth, decide for themselves what to take from each piece, or what use is an actual audience when a mirror would give the same effect. In opposition to the beliefs of Auden is Williams a true modernist poet. The contrast between these two is seen most clearly in their respective poems about a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Williams leaves a plot in the hands of his audience, rather than bombarding them with imagery. Meter and language take precedence in “Landscape With the Fall Of Icarus”. To Williams the poem has a separate existence from the reality in which we live; art not as an attempt at exact reconstruction but rather as the transmutation of an image from the mind of the artist to the paper. In Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” the reader is again seeing a modern example of ekphrasis; plot conveyed thoroughly through exhaustive imagery.
My major quarrel with rhetoric and its devices such as ekphrasis would be along the same lines as Williams or Eliot. I prefer to see the creation of art that represents itself as art, not of reality. As I said above, art based in rhetoric requires nothing of the audience except their open ears. While I do acknowledge the artistry that goes into describing something as convincingly as Homer or Keats, I also have a difficult time finding art out of their work as part of the audience. When there is nothing left to discover or dwell on after the final word has been read, then the whole thing seems to be labor above a love. Ultimately the textbook-like approach is resolutely far from art, but the creativity and imagination involved in translating an image into words as precisely as possible is, to many, an enviable artistic ability.
Michael Hammonds
Professor Hatfield
English 430
3 September 2009
“Are a thousand words really worth a picture? Do words sometimes fail us?”
A picture is worth more than a thousand words. There are an infinitesimal amount of words to describe the visual effect of a picture that an individual recieves and interprets: what he or she sees in a picture. There are many factors involved in a person’s descriptions and interpretation of a picture. Their past life’s experiences, the personal feelings and connections with the visual content, cultural background, language, etc. are all involved when a person interprets and takes in a picture. Thousands of words sometimes cannot be enough or sometimes just words alone are insufficient or lacking in order to capture the totality of the picture that only a visual interpretation and gut feeling will satisfy. Just the personal feeling alone accurately describes the image divorced from words.
In Homer’s description of the shield’s carvings made by the god Hephaestus for Achilles, the son of Athena, the scenes are simple and direct with minimal elaboration and embellishment. “And there he carved a herd of high horned cows in gold and tin, who loned as they hurried/from the stables toward their pasture meadow/by the bobbing reeds of a swift river” (348). Here Homer describes the religious sacrifice of their means of nourishment, the cow, that was common occurence among the Greek people of his time. Homer tells us with words that hit the point and lets the reader take in the scene is simply as possible upon envisioning the carving on the shield. It appears that the cows have long horns and are mooing as they walk from “stables” and pastures” by a fast moving river. The reader cannot but visualize the scene instantaneously as Homer described it. It is up to the reader to picture the color of the cows, brown, spotted and his or her experience of pastures and stables and fast moving rivers for Ekphrasis to take place. These scenes are common even for people to this day, along with the superb usage words of Homer that makes the Ekphrasis take place. Ekphrasis to the Greeks is defined not only using just the right amount of detail, but the attempt to convey an emotion that the picture evokes to the writer. The reader reading this Ekphrasis feels alive imagining being outside in the elements of sun, wind and earth and the care for domesticated animals whether for religious purposes or not. Homer accomplishes this and is a model for the all Greek students who are studying this last skill in their goal to be good writers in this rhetorical style.
In contrast, Keats’ “Ode to an Urn” is more embellished than Homer’s description of the shield in“The Iliad” and also gives the reader a more melancholy, sentimental interpretation of the picture on the urn creating an aura of spirituality and joy. “Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed/Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; /And happy melodist, un\wearied,/For ever piping songs for ever new; /More happy love! More happy, happy love!” (Keats, 1820). Keats is expressing an emotional reaction to the urn’s art work of a spring scene where the cold and lifeless season of winter has ended and transformed the earth into sunny, warm days, green trees and outdoor activities that include social gatherings, festivals, banquets and song and love. Keats is expressing the universal theme of new life that Spring brings to the world while describing and feeling this brief vision of the urn. This description is a moment of bliss, the unceaseing beauty of a Spring forest forever alive in the reader’s imagination, a brief moment of happiness. The reader feels the happiness, the joy, the warmth, the sun, the green leaves, and the soft breezes that the writer is expressing and sharing his experiences, the moment of elation. The speaker is contemplating a beautiful scene about life that will never fade nor end, but continue forever on this urn. The writer and reader together are filled with good things for just a moment before returning to the reality of life, hot, dry, dusty summers, back breaking work in the fields or working a trade, the everyday chores of the people to survive to feed their families. This brief moment of Ekphrasis is a welcome feeling before winter sets in that brings the cold and the lack of food and warmth. This is a good time to remember, reflect and enjoy when trees are bare, with icicles, there are no banquets outside, the sun hangs low on the horizon bringing no warmth, but cold wind. The trees can be green and full again, and a beautiful song will be sung again.
I read through the University of Chicago definition of Ekphrasis and thought that it seemed as if they were greatly over defining what used to be a simple word. In turn, I went to look it up on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, which gave me the definition of “a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art.” From this, I can more clearly see why these poems are structured the way they are, and why Homer wrote it a certain way. In the excerpt from the Illiad, we are treated to Hephaestus crafting pieces of armor for Achilles, but of note is the shield he makes. It was made with the world exquisitely carved upon it, using precious metals, careful crafting, and slow work. What actually appears on the shield, is Homer’s social commentary at the time, a society that appears beautiful, but is full of vast ugliness. Using ekphrasis, he was able to fill his work with social commentary, yet hide it from the world, carefully concealed within his story.
This is a tool that allows an author to tell people what they want seen, without having to leave it open to interpretation like a regular picture. For example, in Keats poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” he is not telling use what he sees on the urn. Rather, he is describing what he feels from the urn, his opinion, which, similar to any written work, influnces ones feeling upon whatever subject is being described. Take into consideration, a review in a newspaper that is negative to whatever subject work is being described. While people may have liked the item in question, by being told what another thinks of it leads one to change their own interpretation of it. Ekphrasis allows an author to merely define what they see in something, but to a greater degree it allows them clout among their audience.
But beyond even this, Ekphrasis allows an author to show an audience strife and darkness in the world. Returning to the two seperate descriptions of Achilles shield, both show the darkness and evil prevalent in the world, and how even in the Greeks advanced civilization, there still remains all the barbarism of less cultures. Notably, in Homer’s poem, there is a point where he describes a murder, and people are bartering to pay for it rather than take it as a crime. This is also shown in Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts,” about Achilles, where he shows the audience that people are too preoccupied with themselves to even notice a boy falling out of the sky to drown, a very strange occurence. Williams “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus” says a very similar thing, where a farmer is shown too concerned with himself to bother with Icarus. While the authors could have chosen to not allow Icarus any chances, he was ignored rather than unseen.
This in effect shows that while ekphrasis may have been intended as a descriptive tool to describe other works in literature, it is used as a way to conceal an author’s opinion within their works, in these cases shadowing the darkness of society into simple stories.
English 430: Literature & the Visual Arts 