"Virgil and Ekphrasis"

Elizabeth Drumm

 

A.  Ekphrasis: "the verbal representation of visual representation" (Heffernan, 3).

 

Lessing's oppositions: 

Painting                                   Poetry

Space                                       Time

Natural signs                           Arbitrary (man-made) signs

Narrow sphere                         Infinite range

Imitation                                  Expression

Body                                       Mind

External                                   Internal

Silent                                       Eloquent

Beauty                                     Sublimity

Eye                                          Ear

Feminine                                 Masculine  (Mitchell, Iconology, 110).

 

B.

". . . and people were speaking up on either side, to help both men. 

But the heralds kept the people in hand, as meanwhile the elders

were in session on benches of polished stone in the sacred circle

and held in their hands the staves of the heralds who lift their voices. 

The two men rushed before these, and took turns speaking their cases,

and between them lay on the ground two talents of gold, to be given

to that judge who in this case spoke the straightest opinion" (Iliad, 18.502-508).

 

"He made upon it a soft field, the pride of the tilled land,

wide and triple-ploughed, with many ploughmen upon it

who wheeled their teams at the turn and drove them in either direction. 

And as these making their turn would reach the end-strip of the field,

a man would come up to them at this point and hand them a flagon

of honey-sweet wine, and they would turn again to the furrows

in their haste to come again to the end-strip of the deep field. 

The earth darkened behind them and looked like earth that has been ploughed

though it was gold.  Such was the wonder of the shield's forging" (Iliad, 18.541-549).

 

C. 

"He sees the wars of Troy set out in order: 

the battles famous now through all the world,

the sons of Atreus and of Priam, and

Achilles, savage enemy to both.

He halted.  As he wept, he cried: 'Achates,

where on this earth is there a land, a place

that does not know our sorrows?  Look! There is Priam! 

Here, too, the honorable finds its due

and there are tears for passing things:  here, too,

things mortal touch the mind.  Forget your fears;

this fame will bring you some deliverance.'

He speaks.  With many tears and sighs he feeds

his soul on what is nothing but a picture" (Aeneid, 1.647-659).

 

"Elsewhere young Troilus, the unhappy boy --

he is matched unequally against Achilles --

runs off, his weapons lost.  He is fallen flat;

his horses drag him on as he still clings

fast to his empty chariot, clasping

the reins.  His neck, his hair trail on the ground

and his inverted spear inscribes the dust. 

Meanwhile the Trojan women near the temple

of Pallas, the unkindly; hair disheveled,

sad, beating at their breasts, as suppliants,

they bear the robe of offering.  The goddess

averts her face, her eyes fast to the ground" (Aeneid, 1.671-682).

 

D. 

"And facing this, he [Daedalus] set another scene:

the land of Crete, rising out of the sea;

the inhuman longing of Pasiphaë,

the lust that made her mate the bull by craft;

her mongrel son, the two-formed Minotaur,

a monument to her polluted passion.

And here the inextricable labyrinth,

the house of toil, was carved

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

And Icarus, you also would have played

great part in such work, had his grief allowed;

twice he had tried to carve your trials in gold,

and twice a father's hand had failed" (Aeneid, 6.32-47).

 

E.

"Across the center of the shield were shown

the ships of brass, the strife of Actium:

you might have seen all of Leucata's bay

teeming with war's array, waves glittering

with gold.  On his high stern Augustus Caesar

is leading the Italians to battle,

together with the senate and the people,

the household gods and the Great Gods; his bright brows

pour out a twin flame, and upon his head

his father's Julian star is glittering" (Aeneid, 8.874-883).

 

". . . And facing them, just come

from conquering the peoples of the dawn,

from the red shores of the Erythraean Sea --

together with barbaric riches, varied

arms -- is Antonius.  He brings with him

Egypt and every power of the East

and farthest Bactria; and -- shamefully --

behind him follows his Egyptian wife" (Aeneid, 8.888-895).

 

Bibliography

 

Heffernan, James A.W.  Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to             Ashbery.  Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1993.

Homer.  The Iliad.  Trans. by Richmond Lattimore.  Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1954.

W.R. Johnson.  Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid.  Berkeley: University of             California Press, 1976

Lessing, G.E.  Laocoon:  An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry.  Trans. by             Ellen Frothingham.  New York: The Noonday Press, 1968.

Meltzer, Françoise.  Salome and the Dance of Writing: Portraits of Mimesis in Literature.              Chicago: U. of Chicago Press,  1987. 

Mitchell, W.J.T.  Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology.  Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1986.

--------.  Picture Theory:  Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.  Chicago: U. of             Chicago Press, 1994.