The Struggle

Fascinatingly, there exists a struggle, not only between the different definitions of what ekphrasis is, but also between what ekphrasis accomplishes, or does not accomplish. The simplest definition of ekphrasis comments on its ability to explicate an image, a photograph, a painting, or a sculpture, using only words, to a person who has not seen the image, photograph, etc.  The two main concerns here focus on one; whether or not ekphrasis completely replaces the image by way of using the written word, or if the written word makes the image, etc more accessible and two; how best to describe what ekphrasis is exactly, which according to James Heffernan, is “the verbal representation of visual representation” (qtd. in Welsh 2). Many writers write ekphrastically in order to convey a specific message to the literary public, or to try to put to words what may not have been seen.

The use of ekphrasis seems notable as in many cases it might seem easier to simply see the image, photograph, etc than to read about how it may look, or how it may be interpreted. As ekphrasis dates back to ancient times though, some of these sculptures, or paintings, may not have been as accessible as they are today. To quote Homer would be to explain how ekphrasis was, and is, used when he takes part of his narrative in Illiad to breathe literary life into Achilles’ shield. Homer describes the creation of the shield by commenting,

There he fashioned earth and heaven and sea, with the tireless sun, a moon at the full, and all those constellations of the sky. Pleiades, Hyades, strong Orion, and the Great Bear, known as the Wain, who circles in her place by Orion and alone has no bath in Oceanus. (Homer 346)

The beauty of this passage is Homer’s ability to explain the shield and develop a sadness within the reader in that he creates a longing for a vision of the shield itself. In a lot of writing it would seem that this is the goal of ekphrasis as a whole; to explain an image well enough so that the reader may understand what it looks like, but still feel the need to see it for himself, or herself, because of its described assets, whether beautiful or ugly.

Among other writers, John Keats and W.H. Auden are also able to identify the aforementioned struggle and use it to empower their descriptions of certain objects as well. In Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the speaker is interested in not only identifying the pictures on the urn, but also creating stories for them. He is fascinated with their ability to be immobile physically, but also to be able to live through time as images. He exclaims toward the end of the poem, “When old age shall this generation waste,/Thou shalt remain…” (Keats 46-47). What Keats is accomplishing here is a sense that anybody can be ekphratic. Anybody can imitate Keats’ speaker in the poem by creating his, or her, own story from a simple urn.

Where Auden possesses similarities to Keats is in his ability to take an already ekphratic passage and recreate it in his poem “The Shield of Achilles” is in his ability to apply a different look at the same image. Auden has not seen Achilles shield as that was only a possibility for Homer, but he takes Homer’s verbal interpretation and applies it to his own creative style. Again, a theme exists that anybody can be ekphratic. This contributes to ekphrasis’ definition, but also in some ways detracts from the effect ekphrasis can have on the reader, or writer, as there may be a thousand ways to explain an image, a photograph, or a sculpture, but in the same vein there can only be one way to see it.

Works Cited

Ekphrasis. Winter 2007. Name The University of Chicago: Theories of Media. 31 August 2009 [http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/ekphrasis.htm].

Homer. The Iliad. Trans, Michael Reck. New York: Icon, 1994. 344-49. (Book 18. Lines 410-616).

Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” 1820.

Ekpharasis First Post

Before the first day of class, I never of the word ekphrasis. According to its definition meaning the description of the visual through words. I never thought there was a word for describing the visual to words. But everything we read is a description of visual art.  Just reading anything you visualize a setting like a room, classroom and etc. It creates the mood on what we read and creates pictures in our mind.

The poems we read were all about visualizing something like a shield or the fall of Icarus. The words in the poems created a world in which we conntect the visual art with their words. The writers allow us to enter their world on what they visualize and creates imagery in our mind. The imagery is the most important element in liturate for it attracts the audience.

Personally I thought The Ilian by Homer was the most visual to me. All of the poems had such strong imagery about the setting of the poems. My favorite line was towards the end which it says “he made him a breastplate brighter than flame and made a heavy tight-fitting helment”(610). By just picturing a shield that is brighter than fire, it allows to visualize the shield to be extremely bright. The presence of the shield is enough to blind you, but how bright it is.

Although they arent any actual pictures in the poems. They are all created in our minds. Pictures show many emotions, ideas, and thoughts on what we see. The pictures we saw in class everyone say something completly different. Pictures have the power to speak to us through words. Sometimes words allows us to see the emotion thats going on in a book like childrens books.

The Life Within Ekphrasis…

The University of Chicago says about Ekphrasis, “to share the emotional experience and content with someone who had never encountered the work in question.” This is more than just the truth. Words and pictures allow us bring art to life in our own way and terms. Ekphrasis allows us to describe the art in its complete essence and form. In Keats, Ode on A Grecian Urn and Auden’s, The shield of Achilles and Musee des Beaux Arts ,we’re able to interpret a moment in time and divulge it.

 In John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, we’re able to foster between the words and the history of the urn. “Who are these coming to the sacrifice/ To what green altar, O mysterious priest.” (31-31) He questions what he sees through the urn and brings a history of his own. The urn continues to have a strong affect on him through the years and it allows him to an emotional and physical connection. The urn has been taken for centuries and it allows the reader to connect to the past. The urn suggests, through the scenes carved, that the love that they had was never going to end. Many in this day and time can relate to the history.

 In comparison with both of Auden’s work, we see an emotional stance; pain. In Musee des Beaux Arts, he says, “That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course/Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot/ Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse.” Auden explains that life is not fixed or predictable. These words affect the reader’s conscience through the pain and suffering. Just like The Shield of Achilles, “were axioms to him, who’d never heard/ Of any world where promises were kept/Or one could weep because another wept.”

 The works of these great artists allow us to interpret a different world and a different time of our own. It allows us to take the words, the pictures and bring them together. We can interpret each individual piece in such a way that allows us to understand the work. Ekphrasis brings the two different concepts of visual and verbal together.  That’s what makes Ekphrasis such a remarkable thing. We can connect to the art.  Undeniably.

~Fabiola Franco~

Ekphrasis

                The concept of ekphrasis, according to the University of Chicago: Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary, is defined as the “intersection of verbal and visual.” The question that arises from this definition becomes: Is it necessary or desirable to have a connection between the two? Roland Barthes, in his essay “Rhetoric of the Image,” would frown on this melding of verbal and visual saying that verbalizing an image through text pushes the viewer toward a particular interpretation of the image and does not allow the viewer to interpret it on his own. But, while ekphrasis may in some instances adhere to this definition, it can in other circumstances be more positive. In the University of Chicago article, ekphrasis is said to “make efforts to embody qualities beyond the physical aspects of the work they were observing.” In this way, rather than hinder a viewer’s interpretation, it adds to and enhances it. In truth, the nature of ekphrasis depends on the way in which it is expressed by the writer. If, as in some advertisements and media, the language used to describe a work of art manipulates a viewer’s particular way of thinking, it acts as a hindrance to the viewer’s perceptions. The example we used in class of the photo which was classified “The First Murder” does lead the viewer toward a particular means of interpretation because it uses suggestive language. If, on the other hand, a writer uses colorful language to provide a story or background details about a particular piece of art, he is not so much pushing the viewer toward a certain interpretation as offering his own interpretation as a means of enhancing the viewer’s experience of the visual.

In the University of Chicago article, Wagner writes that the verbalization of a visual work of art “stages a paradoxical performance, promising to give voice to the allegedly silent image even while attempting to overcome the power of the image by transforming and inscribing it.” This definition describes both the positives and negatives of ekphrasis. On the one hand, a writer can give voice to the silent visual art by providing it with a story, giving the reader details which are not available simply by looking at the visual work itself. For example, in John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” Keats not only interprets the inanimate art object, but humanizes it, calling it a “mysterious priest” and making it a philosopher and advisor to humanity as though it had been sitting contemplating life as it gathered dust on a shelf: “When old age shall this generation waste / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe / Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, / ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’” (46-50). In this way, Keats’ writings enhance the viewing experience of the urn by adding engaging, creative details. On the other hand, as Wagner also suggests, Keats’ interpretation may also “transform” the viewer’s experience by verbalizing his perception of the art object and not allowing the viewer to form his own interpretation. W. H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” acts in much the same way. In the lines “An unintelligible multitude / A million eyes, a million boots in line / Without expression, waiting for a sign,” (12-14)  the word unintelligible is his interpretation of the looks on the faces of the people on the shield and his saying that the multitude was “waiting for a sign” is a perception. There is no way to know what the people depicted on the shield are waiting for or if they are waiting for anything at all, but his depiction adds another dimension to the visual. In The Iliad, too, when Homer writes about Achilles’ shield, he describes one part of the shield as depicting two armies which “and they stood quarreling whether to attack or to offer terms of half the wealth that capital possessed” (510-512). This again, is an interpretation. Since the shield does not provide the viewer with audio, we cannot know whether the soldiers depicted on the shield were arguing or what they were arguing about, but Homer’s interpretation is engaging, nonetheless. In all of these works, the detailed descriptions and engaging words enhance the viewer’s experience of the works despite being interpretive and therefore possibly influencing the readers’ perceptions of the visual work.

So, the question remains, is it OK to have an artistic representation of a visual work if it enhances the experience of the viewer or does it hinder the viewer’s perception of the visual work? W.J.T. Mitchell, in the University of Chicago article, describes the concept of ekphrasis in three stages: ekphrastic indifference, ekphrastic hope and ekphrastic fear. Ekphrastic indifference refers to the “seeming impossibility of the verbal and visual ever meeting.” In other words, the written word and visual art are such different means of expression that using one to describe another is ineffectual. Part of the reason for this could be that the written word is too limited to truly do justice to a work of art. Friedrich Nietzsche talks about language’s inherent limitation in his essay “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” when he discusses the concept of a leaf: “Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily” (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 877). In other words, a leaf from yesterday and a leaf from today are both described as leaves. We can use adjectives to say for example that one is small and one is large, but we have only one word for the concept of “leaf.” Language is limiting in this way. In the same way, when a writer attempts to describe a work of art, he is limited by the language and may not fully be able to capture the true spirit of the work. Keats, Homer, Auden and Williams, however, are still able to create engaging perceptions using words.

Therefore, we go on to the next concept, “ekphrastic hope” which Mitchell describes as “a way to write about objects so that someone could encounter them verbally, but still be impressed with the visual.” In this way, ekphrasis would make the verbal and visual complementary. What might be missing from looking only at the visual would be enhanced by encountering the verbal alongside the visual. By encountering the verbal and visual together, it would create a new kind of combined art form, a kind of melding of two different means of artistic expression. Certainly, Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” could be interpreted this way. In it, Auden gives the viewer his interpretation of the visual work “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Brueghel. He infers the indifference and self-centeredness of man with his line “And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something amazing / A boy falling out of the sky / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on” (19-21). This description is clearly interpretive, but it also adds context and depth to the painting using colorful and engaging language.

Finally, we look at Mitchell’s concept of “ekphrastic fear,” which, he says, “arises from the possibility that the verbal ever could displace or replace the visual by actually accomplishing the goal of replicating the visual in the verbal.” Here, the fear is that if the verbal were able to completely replicate the visual, the visual would lose some of its power as an art form. But, this is an impossibility because of the limitation of language and because the writer cannot ever truly know what the visual artist was thinking when creating the visual work. Therefore, the writer cannot interpret it so well that the visual would be replicated in the verbal.

So, while it is true that some ekphrasis is leading, as in the title of the photo we used in class, “The First Murder,” verbal representation does not have to limit the viewer’s perception of a work. Instead, it can enhance the experience through colorful description and with “ekphrastic hope,” bridge the gap between the verbal and visual. The poetic interpretations by Auden, Homer, Williams and Keats are examples of how ekphrasis can work as complementary means of artistic interpretation.

The Bridge to Two Different Worlds

   After reading Auden’s description of “The Shield of Achilles” and Homer’s representation of it, it is hard to escape the difference in interpretation. They are both describing the same shield  but, the shields are different because they are seen through different eyes. The same can be said about Keat’s description of the Grecian Urn. Had some other eyes seen that same urn, the words used to describe them would have given a different interpretation of it. This reminds us of the endless possibilities hidden behind the details of a picture or work of art. The visual is highly subjective to our reactions and perspectives. We can recreate what we see based on our own ideas, feelings, and experiences. We can see in a picture what we want to see or what we wish was there. Words are the tools we use to communicate what we see and feel in response to the visual. Consequently, these are two different worlds in that they, obviously, use different modes of expression. However, this difference does not separate. I would challenge the notion that they can be separated. Although different, they are intertwined, bridged, and connected by our reactions and our desire to communicate what we see and feel to others. When I look at a work of art, I want to share what I see and feel about it with a friend – that is ekphrasis in its simplest and most basic form. Similarly, we all react to a picture and, eventually, might or might not express what we see in words.

Words, on the other hand, could also be interpreted in many ways. Although not as subjective as the visual, it does have potential to be recreated based on the reader’s reaction to them. The way a painter can recreate a description found in the paragraph of a novel can be different from that of another artist. Thus, the two do have some common ground. They are both connected by the reactionary process of the consumer and as long as we want to share our views and reactions, ekphrasis will exist. Ekphrasis is what helps see what our eyes cant see and what others can. It opens our minds to other views – other worlds. It enables the visual to transform itself into something – into another mode of expression and vice versa. Consequently, they cant be separated for too long.

Lost in the Ekphratic Forest

As I read Welsh’s essay on ekphrasis, I began to interrogate the concept of ekphratic dialogue between words and images through a mimetic lens, and found myself getting lost in what seemed an endless landscape of mirrors reflecting back on one another. The clearest way through this forest seems to me to pose the questions which formed in my mind, and to attempt to answer them, at least partially, using Welsh’s work and the poetry of Keats, Homer, and Auden.

First, I’d like to address the mimetic questions which came to mind, chiefly, isn’t ekphrasis simply double mimesis?  Wouldn’t Plato scoff at attempts to describe/interpret works of art which are themselves simply representations of actual objects, people, places, and events? Even if ekphrais is a rhetorical skill, therefore perhaps an “art,” as Welsh states it was taught to students in ancient Greece, you now have one mimetic art form being used to dialogue with another. For example, in Homer’s Iliad, poetry, a linguistic art form which uses words to describe emotions and experiences, is used to try to bring to “life,” to experiential reality, an object which in itself depicts scenes and events which are representations of (possibly fictional!) “real life”  scenes and events. Homer attributes various emotions and states of being to objects: he labels the bronze used in the shield “stubborn,” the wine served in the fields as “mellow,” the depicted king as “happy,” yet these are all states which the poet creates from his imagination – there is nothing in the carvings themselves to suggest such states. One could even question whether the shield itself is truly “art,” or “media,” given that it is in fact a weapon of war.  And is the poem meant to celebrate the artistry of carvings on the shield, or the craftsmanship of its creator? “Art” and “craft” are usually separated in the world of criticism.

The same questions could be applied to Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” – we again have a text which assigns actions, states of being, and emotions -past, present and future – to figures carved upon a vase. While Keats’s imagination can certainly be lauded, we once more have a mimetic art form used to describe and interpret another.

The first concept of the three-part “understanding” of ekphrasis proposed by Mitchell, which Welsh includes in his essay, would seem to be at play here – namely, the idea of “indifference:” words and images as separate, and incapable of being interwoven. This concept would seem to say there is no substitution for actually viewing the artwork, that the experience of visually encountering such media cannot be captured in words. Under this concept, ekphrasis is a dead end.

Mitchell goes on to introduce the second concept in his theory, what he terms “ekphratic hope” – that words maybe can truly capture the experience of viewing a piece of art, for certainly it can be argued that many people are moved intellectually and emotionally by the words used to represent an object.  In fact, it would seem to be a natural human hunger for words to accompany visual images – we are eager to read the captions under photos in newspapers, we long for written and oral reviews of films, painting, plays, and TV shows, we laud works such as Keats’s and Homer’s for being as beautiful as the objects they rhapsodize over. Despite Plato’s derision, humans seem to have an inborn drive to create visual representations of what they observe and experience, and to supply textual and oral descriptions and interpretations of those representations.

As we move into the third and final concept of Mitchell’s three-part theory, Plato’s mimetic objections seem to collapse even further. Mitchell terms this concept “ekphratic fear,” calling it the place where the verbal or textual representation of an image can and does replace the visual experience of an artistic object.  As I mention above, the words of Keats do stir the emotions of the reader, and ironically, his very words create images in the reader’s mind, standing the dialogue between text and image on its head.  On a practical note, Keats and Homer become the only way the urn or the shield they write about can be experienced, for the originals, if they ever existed, are long gone.  And what of films based on literature? Is this a form of “reverse ekphrasis,” where images are used to represent an original text? Again, we stand a rhetorical form on its head.

And finally, we come to Auden’s poem, in which he uses a previous ekphratic text as the jumping-off point for his own original literary creation – the scenes he describes in his poem as existing on the shield do not exist in Homer’s poetry. We now have a text which creates images in the reader’s mind which is based on a text attempting to replicate an object which in itself is a representation of other visual images, which exists in the realm of oral and textual mythos, which create images in the listener’s and reader’s mind and….I’m now lost in the forest of mimetic mirrors again!

All of this is not to say that I think the concept of ekphrasis is useless. On the contrary, I think contemporary approaches to media only heighten the need for debate. Ekphrasis seems at best a slippery concept, as Welsh states in his essay when he quotes Peter Wagner: ” ‘ the definition ultimately depends on the particular argument to be deployed’ .” And I must point out that I particularly enjoy the irony of arguing over something which represents something which represents something else – for ultimately, any text or image is completely open to the interpretation and understanding of anyone, academic or not, who encounters it.