EKPHRASIS AS AN AESTHETIC PROBLEM
Retelling the painting
The relationship between textual and visual art is a complex one, marked by both
internal struggle and interdependence. As new research offers fresh insights into
this fraught relationship, Professor Mats Jansson shares his project’s findings
Could you describe
how the project
originated, and set out
its principal aims and
objectives?
The project grew out of
my previous research on
the Swedish modernist,
poet and painter Sven
Alfons (1918–96). In
my monograph on
Alfons from 2005 I
took an interest both
in the way his paintings were related to literature and the
way his poetry was related to painting, thus the concept of
ekphrasis was brought to the fore, and I found it interesting
to try and broaden the scope of my research and put the
concept to work in a wider historical and generic context. The
aims and objectives are to give an overview of the growth
and development of the modern Swedish ekphrasis from
Romanticism onwards, and to analyse its function in the
writings of selected Swedish modernists where it has been
of seminal importance. Hopefully this will show that the
historical gap between Romanticism and Modernism can be
bridged if focus is put on recurring tropes within the poetic
subgenre known as ekphrasis.
Your focus is mainly upon poetic texts from Swedish
modernism. What characteristics of this genre make it
suitable to your studies?
For some reason, probably due to the concentrated format
and the characteristics of poetic language at large, poetry
has come to be the ekphrastic genre par préférence. Via
metaphors, similes, and other figurative devices, poetic
language often directs attention to its own means of
expression and to poetry as an artistic medium. It seems that
this general function of the poetic language easily lends itself
also to the description and interpretation of other art forms,
such as pictorial art. Following the linguistic turn in the 20th
Century, modernist poetry in general is often meta-orientated
and from this viewpoint it is easy to imagine that the interest
in another art form would be a natural prolongation of such a
fundamental linguistic meta-drive, so to speak.
Given that to translate art is also to transform it, is
ekphrasis in its purest sense an impossible feat?
Yes, I would say it probably is. That is, if we by ekphrasis
mean a pure and simple description that adds nothing to
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INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION
the art object and alters nothing. On the other hand, what
if we consider the ontology of the work of art? It would
then be possible to argue that a painting, for instance, does
not exist until someone views it. And since an ekphrasis
is always the result of someone viewing, at least when
we’re talking about ekphrasis as factual and not notional,
ekphrasis is not so much a question of an impossibility as of
a necessity for the art object to come into being.
Is the reader an active participant in ekphrastic literature?
Yes, the reader is always a crucial participant since we are
dealing with a hermeneutical process. This is sometimes
made explicitly evident via deictic markers in the ekphrastic
poem, using words such as ‘see’, ‘here’ or the like. This
immediately alerts the reader’s awareness and directs his/
her attention to the art object in question. The reader is
thus also given the role of a viewer, indirectly as it were,
since he/she is called upon to ‘see’ something that in a
literal sense is most often not there.
Have you reached any conclusions about the coexistence
of words and pictures within the history of Swedish
modernism?
My preliminary findings point to the fact that ekphrastic
writing has been constantly ongoing since the Romantic
period, and even before that. The nature of the coexistence
of words and pictures made manifest in ekphrases of
course change over time. Each period and each writer has
its own historical, ideological and aesthetic conditions
that determine the coexistence of words and pictures.
Suffice it to say that the crossing of artistic boundaries
is a systematic feature within the Modernist era at large.
Artists, painters and poets during the 20th Century have
constantly challenged conventional ways of expression
within their own media. This makes the coexistence of word
and picture in Swedish ekphrastic writing doubly interesting
and, at least, doubly problematic.
What is the next stage of your research?
The systematic part of my work is nearly complete and
the actual writing process is about to begin. I have a
rough sketch of the historical background from the 19th
Century with illustrative examples of ekphrastic writing.
This is then to be tied together with analyses of select
Modernist ekphrases. The guiding principle for this part of
my work will be to try and show that historical continuity
and individual variations are two sides of the same
ekphrastic coin.
EKPHRASIS AS AN AESTHETIC PROBLEM
Between word and image
‘A picture tells a thousand words’ might well be something of a cliché, but from Homer’s Iliad through to
Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, the lines between language and image have presented a ripe area for
hermeneutic debate. New research is weighing in against the backdrop of the Swedish modernist movement
SINCE THEIR INCEPTION, the visual and
textual arts have shared a complicated
relationship – often mutually enriching, often
fraught with a fierce competitiveness. For
many centuries it was thought that poetry
should emulate the visual arts, as in Horace’s
famous dictum, ‘ut pictura poesis’ – ‘as in
painting so in poetry’. In the 18th Century,
however, the German philosopher and art
critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing emphasised
the fundamental disconnection between the
two, asserting that since painting existed
solely in the spatial realm, and poetry solely in
the temporal, they could not be comparable.
What is certain is that the relationship
between text and visual representation has
provided extraordinarily rich territory for the
discussion of aesthetic meaning.
The nexus of this debate has long been the
concept of ‘ekphrasis’ – a term coined in
antiquity and given new currency by modern
literary theory as it seeks to explore complex
questions of meaning-creation across art
forms. ‘In the eye of the beholder. Ekphrasis
as aesthetic problem and poetic practice’ is a
study conducted by Professor Mats Jansson
that aims to investigate ekphrasis in modern
and modernist Swedish poetry and, in doing so,
provide new insights into the complex interplay
between visual and textual forms.
MARKING OUT THE BOUNDARIES
Ekphrasis is a Greek word derived from a verb
meaning ‘to speak out’, often translated simply
as ‘description’. In its original rhetorical context
it signified a vivid description of almost anything
– a person, a place, an event, and not necessarily
an art object. Its main purpose was to create
a desired psychological effect in the listener’s
mind, making the listener into a viewer: but long
before this rhetorical use, descriptions of art
objects could be found in literature – Achilles’s
shield in Homer’s Iliad being a famous early
example. More recently, the meaning of the
concept has narrowed to signify a description of
a piece of art and, in critical theory, has become
a much-debated term: does it signify a genre, or
a mode of writing?
The term becomes peculiarly charged in
relation to modernist literature, as modernist
art frequently seeks to trouble the distinctions
between its various forms, radically reexamining conventional methods of capturing
reality. Ekphrasis, occupying the border-territory
between visual and textual art, raises specific
semiotic and hermeneutical questions about the
way meaning is produced in each form. Swedish
modernist poetry provides particularly fruitful
territory for these questions, as Jansson keenly
observes: “Swedish modernist poetss are often
found to be relating to pictorial art; ekphrasis
becomes a prominent text-type during the
modernist period”. He continues: “My study
will trace the genre of ekphrasis in modern and
modernist Swedish poetry and focus on the
way meaning is produced in this specific texttype. The historical axis is thus combined with
analyses of literary, mainly poetic, texts. These
analyses intend to show that certain literary
tropes are recurrent features of ekphrastic
poetry over time and thus something of a
generic characteristic for this text-type”.
AN ONGOING TENSION
These characteristic tropes play on the essential
dichotomies which hold poetry and painting in
their fraught symbiotic relationship. Stillness
versus movement is one such example, as
Jansson notes: “However challenged and
however controversial, it is a basic dichotomy
that all ekphrastic writing, in one way or
another, brings to the fore”. If visual art exists
in a static spatial realm, poetry can attempt to
invest it with temporality and forward motion.
The modern and modernist Swedish poetry he
has so far analysed reveals a deep concern with
this dichotomy.
Linked to this is the desire to draw out – or
to impose – narrative plot. As Jansson puts it:
© DACS 2011
Th painting
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LLorentzon ((1899–1984)
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poet Erik Lindegren (1910-68). Lorentzon’s painting and Lindegren’s ekphrastic and iconic poem were printed on the same page in the
book Halmstadgruppen (1947), featuring a group of Swedish painters influenced to some extent by surrealism. The painting was originally
printed in black and white.
WWW.RESEARCHMEDIA.EU 101
INTELLIGENCE
EKPHRASIS AS AESTHETIC PROBLEM
AND POETIC PRACTICE
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this project are to uncover,
describe and analyse the poetic subgenre
of ekphrasis in Swedish literature from
Romanticism and into the Modernist and
Postmodernist era. The aim is to combine
an historical axis with analyses of selected
Swedish ekphrases in order to show how
this particular text-type produces meaning.
The project thus aims to contribute to the
understanding of the fraught relationship
of word and image in its various ekphrastic
manifestations. In addition to his, a purpose
will be to show that ekphrastic writing has,
over time, become increasingly frequent and
has grown in importance and complexity as
a poetic genre.
FUNDING
Swedish Research Council
CONTACT
Professor Mats Jansson
Principal Investigator
University of Gothenburg
Department of Literature
History of Ideas, and Religion
Faculty of Arts
PO Box 200
SE 405 30
Gothenburg
Sweden
T +46 31 786 41 35
F +46 31 786 11 44
E [email protected]
http://vrproj.vr.se/detail.
asp?arendeid=67108
MATS JANSSON is Professor of
Comparative Literature at the University
of Gothenburg. He is working in the
Department of Literature, History of Ideas,
and Religion, where he currently holds a
position as Associate Head of Department
for Doctoral Studies. For brief periods in
2000 and 2005 he was a Visiting Scholar
at St Edmund’s College, University of
Cambridge.
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INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION
“Narrativity is another device worth studying, ie.
the desire of words to tell the story that is latent
in the pregnant moment of the painting”. For
example, in Göran Tunström’s poem ‘A Carnival
Evening’, from his debut collection Inringning
(1958), a story is developed based on the couple
in Rousseau’s painting of the same name. In the
written text, the title of the poem is followed by
the words ‘After H Rousseau’, which signals that
the poem takes the painting as its source and
starting point, but perhaps more crucially means
that our reading of the poem is not to be limited
by the iconography of the painting. In this way
an ekphrastic relation is established whereby
the poem may deviate and build on the original
meaning of the painting. Such a trope reveals a
fascinating tension between the visual and textual
form, as the ekphrastic poem is dependent on
the painting yet implicitly in competition with
it. The exploration of this tension is a key aspect
of Jansson’s research: he observes that in various
types of ekphrases the word dominates and
subsumes the painting; in others it takes on a
subservient role, helping to express meaning. If,
as he notes, the relationship can ultimately be
seen as a ‘dialogue’ between the two forms, each
questioning the other, then ekphrasis can be seen
as “a sort of hermeneutics in practice”.
This question of hermeneutics is central to the
study of ekphrasis: to describe is always also to
interpret. Separating and analysing multiple layers
of interpretation is a challenging task, as Jansson
observes: “The interesting thing is that we are
dealing with a hermeneutical process in several
steps: first, the painter or artist interpreting the
world in his/her artwork; second the poet (who
is also a viewer) interpreting this interpretation
in his/her poem; and third, the reader interpreting
this interpretation of an interpretation”. This chain
of interpretation means that ekphrastic literature,
and the study of it, necessarily joins an aesthetic
discussion of art, creativity and the representation
of reality that extends as far back as Plato’s
dialogues and will extend far into the future.
We are dealing with a
hermeneutical process in several
steps: first, the painter or artist
interpreting the world in his/
her artwork; second the poet
interpreting this interpretation in
his/her poem; and third, the reader
interpreting this interpretation of
an interpretation
DIGITAL DIALOGUES
Exploring such a complex historical discussion
– whilst also undertaking distinct analysis of
selected poems – has meant that Jansson has had
to organise a vast amount of empirical material to
get to the more interesting points of intersection.
In his words, it is a question of “combining a
diachronic and synchronic approach. In seeking
to establish the characteristic tropes of Swedish
modern and modernist literature, and evaluate
them within the broader context of ekphrastic
aesthetic discussion, you need both an historical
timeline and analytical examples to verify your
hypothesis”. Jansson is now at the writing stage
of the research, and hopes it will be completed by
2012–13. By contributing to our understanding
of ekphrasis and its historical development,
the project will contribute to a discussion that
has great currency. In the digital age, new ways
of reading are complicating still further the
hermeneutic questions that have driven ekphrasis
and its study. “The image and the text could
literally be made to coexist on the digital page,
and the reader’s role would therefore also be one
of a direct co-creator in the aesthetic process,”
Jansson observes. “Undoubtedly, digital media
will enable the reader to play an interactive part
in a radically new way.”