Slovenska Literatura (Feb 2010)
PICTURE IN THE STORY – EKPHRASIS IN THE NARRATIVE. PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS FOR DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN DESCRIPTIVENESS AND VISUALISATION
Abstract
The term visualisation belongs in the last decades to most frequent expressions in discussions about culture. A contrastive example of quite a recent novel Miloš Urban: (Lord Mord, 2008) and a fiction fits in the narrative tradition of the 19th century Jakub Arbes: Saint Xaverius (Svatý Xaverius, 1873) show disproportional attention, which is in the interpretation paid to visual qualities of the text, and also to swapping the terms visualisation and descriptiveness. The study therefore submits classification of descriptiveness just in a form of work, in which like a decisive parameter the measure of visualisation is chosen. There is a distinction between visualisation as a quality of verbal experience supported by a concrete text and visualisation as potential effect of particular qualities of the text. Based on the criteria there are determined descriptions in the study such as fully informational, illustrational with symbolic function, suggestive description of the setting evoking atmosphere, “visual“ description, which means visually well-grounded in the textual level and directing the reader to visualisation of a described subject and – in gradational order description – to ekphrasis. In the examples of a specific literary genre – ekphrasis predominately deals with ways of its dynamizing; that means involving into narration both the microstructure of an action, as well as macrostructure of a story. Pursuant the level of involvement it is possible then to follow up the full scale of options within simple ekphrasis allusion of a picture and ekphrasis fully constructed through epic, including e.g. ekphrasis connected with gradually built up interpretation of a picture, that is a key for the interpretation of psychology of either characters or the entire story in the novel by Jaroslav Maria Saintesses, Ladies and Sluts (1927). Here and also in Arbes´ Saint Xaverius (Svatý Xaverius) there is a possibility to apply of interpretational art-historical methods for literary scholarship shown, in cases if iconographic analysis of the picture depicted in the story makes easier comprehension of the symbolic projection in reflexive element of narration. Differentiation between involvement of a “picture into the story“ and “ekphrasis in the text of narration“ seems to be heuristically useful, but most of the times also ontologically necessary.
