Faking it

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