\u00abEkphrasis\u00bb o \u201cephrasis\u201d is a Greek word \u1f14\u03ba\u03c6\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 (ek and phrasis, ‘out’ and ‘to talk’), (from the verb \u1f10\u03ba\u03c6\u03c1\u03ac\u03b6\u03bf, ekphraso, from ek, out, and phraso, to explain with signs and words) that therefore means \u00abexhibition in detail, explanation, description from outside or from the beginning or till the end,\u00bb to make intelligible, discover, uncover, …. It is a vivid description placing the object or event before the eyes.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n\tThe term designates in Antiquity <\/em>a rhetoric figure of speech. For example, Hermogenes of Tarsus<\/em> (h 160 -.. 225 h) defines it in his Ecphrasis Progymnasmata<\/em> as "the extensive, detailed, vivid description, which places the object before the eyes."<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIn the ancient world the word ekphrasis <\/em>means any vivid description, full of energeia, energy<\/em>, of strength, of artworks, objects, landscapes and people which places them with words before the eyes of the listener or the reader.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tOver time this general sense was limited to verbal representation of a plastic object<\/em>, usually a painting or sculpture, because it would be more frequent in rhetorical exercises. That is the literary description of a work of art.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tPhilostratus Lemnius<\/em> was precisely who helped to fix this more restricted sense of this term at the beginning of his work in the second century, in Imagines I, 1:<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tWhosoever scorns painting is unjust to truth ; and he is also unjust to all the wisdom that has been bestowed upon poets — for poets and painters make equal contribution to our knowledge of the deeds and the looks of heroes — and he withholds his praise from symmetry of proportion, whereby art partakes of reason.<\/strong><\/em> (Translation by Arthur Fairbanks. \n\tThis is the sense that has prevailed modern. Thus Umberto Eco<\/em> (2003: 110): "When a verbal text describes a visual artwork, the classical tradition speaks of ekphrasis<\/strong><\/em>".<\/p>\n \n\tOr Leo Spitzer,<\/em> "the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art<\/strong><\/em>" (1962, 72);<\/p>\n \n\tor James Heffernan<\/em>: "the verbal representation of a visual representation<\/strong><\/em>" (1993, 3)<\/p>\n \n\tor Clüver Claus<\/em>: "the verbal representation of a real or fictional text set in a nonverbal sign system<\/strong><\/em>" (1994, 26).<\/p>\n \n\tIt is therefore a detailed description, from the beginning<\/em>, which is what the word "de- scribere <\/em>means: writing, from the beginning); and it is also a re-presentation or second presentation <\/em>because it represents another object, the painting, which is also the first representation of the object.<\/p>\n \n\tNote<\/em>: progymnasmata <\/em>(from pro <\/em>and gymnasmata<\/em>) designates the previous exercises in which the students of rhetoric were able to use the topoi or loci commonplace in speeches.<\/p>\n \n\tAs long as it is an emotional, vivid, lifelike, animated description,it coincides with the meaning of hypotyposis <\/em>(Greek: úποτúπωσις, sketch, to place a sketch before the eyes of someone<\/em>), or especially emotional story to excite the imagination of listening public. Some more nuanced, in the sense that in the hypotyposis <\/em>it leaves from a text and goes to the image and in the ekphrasis, by contrast, it leaves from the picture and goes to the text. Actually, the nuances are many, because there it is not an exact definition of the terms. Curiously, the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy<\/em> does not adopt the term ekphrasis <\/em>and instead it collects “hypotyposis<\/em>”, that is defined as: From Greek \u1f59ποτ\u03cdπωσις. Quick and powerful description of someone or something through language. The Webster's 1913 Dictionary<\/em> defines it: (Rhet.) A vivid, picturesque description of scenes or events.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tNote<\/em>: the “portrait<\/em>” is the description of the physical appearance and spiritual characteristics of a person; prosopography <\/em>is the portrait of physical ant ethopoeia <\/em>is the portrait of the interior. Topography <\/em>is the description of the land .. Other more specialized terms like topofesía and pragmatography <\/em> exceed the interest of this article.<\/p>\n \n\tTheorizing about ekphrasis <\/em>is part of the extensive theorizing about the relationship between the arts together and especially painting and literature, parallel and complementary arts: the visual arts are part of the static space and the verbal arts are developed in the time: painting tries to break the statism, the immobility, the poetry seeks the materiality of the space.<\/p>\n \n\tIt is attributed to Simonides <\/em>(c. 556 BC-c. 468 BC) to have raised the relationship between art and literature in accordance with the sentence "Painting is silent poetry and painting is verbal poetry<\/strong><\/em>", which was so successful later.<\/p>\n \n\tSo in écfrasis the literary expression, which is capable of expressing the movement and the time, imitates the stillness of the painting; the painting in turn often aspires, being static, to express the movement and time.<\/p>\n \n\tIs worth a picture more than a thousand words?<\/em> Perhaps it is in some cases, but the words can made to see something exciting the imagination and using metaphors. It is possible to give voice to the image.<\/p>\n \n\tToday the discussion is extended to the relationship between the verbal and the visual in the new digital context and textual video products support a wide variety of formats.<\/p>\n \n\tPlato <\/em>referred to these issues when he comes to try about the beauty and mimesis <\/em>or imitation. Mimesis <\/em>is representation, interpretation and recreation.<\/p>\n \n\tAbout the ,imitation Aristotle <\/em>says in his Poetics, 1448 b,<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tFrom childhood men have an instinct for representation, and in this respect, differs from the other animals that he is far more imitative and learns his first lessons by representing things.<\/strong><\/em> (translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932.)<\/p>\n \n\tIn this regard in relation to mimesis<\/em>, the ekphrasis <\/em>is representation but also interpretation and recreation, because naturally, the poet gives us his vision and interpretacón of the visual work. Even the poet can create the visual object, nonexistent before their description, as it is the case in the description of the shield of Achilles<\/em>, that I reproduce below.<\/p>\n \n\tPlato <\/em>says, linking poetry with painting, in Republic, X, 601a:<\/em><\/p>\n \n\t“Certainly.” “And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases the colors of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words, will deem his words most excellent,<\/strong><\/em> (Translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.)<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Aristotle <\/em>in his Poetics, 1460b:<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tSince the poet represents life, as a painter does or any other maker of likenesses, he must always represent one of three things—either things as they were or are; or things as they are said and seem to be; or things as they should be.<\/em><\/strong> (translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932.<\/p>\n \n\tThe phrase which summarizes sententiously the subject matter is the famous sentence of Horace "Ut Pictura Poesis", “Poetry is like painting<\/em>”, in his Epistula ad Pisones, v. 361<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tJust he started this work (Epistula ad Pisones<\/em>) on literary prescriptive with the comparison of the poetry to the painting: (v 1-10.) <\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIf a painter should wish to unite a horse's neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature], so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man's dreams, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing."<\/strong><\/em> (C. Smart. Theodore Alois Buckley. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1863.)<\/p>\n \n\tHumano capiti cervicem pictor equinam \n\tThe ekphrasis <\/em>or vivid and detailed description of a work<\/em> precisely interrelates the two arts and and provides liaison between the verbal and the visual.<\/p>\n \n\tOvid <\/em>is the poet who very often and in detail describes pictures and at turn he generated pictorial works over all time. The museums are riddled with paintings that recreate some of the myths and mythological characters described by Ovid<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tOvid indeed in this context of relationship between the textual and the visual and art and imitation, mimesis and reproduction of reality, had said in Metamorphoses, III, 155<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThe vale Gargaphia stretch’d along the glade, \n\tVallis erat piceis et acuta densa cupressu, \n\tCenturies later Oscar Wilde<\/em> made the statement “Life imitates art far more than arts imitates life”<\/strong><\/em> in The Decay of Lying. <\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThere are numerous examples of authors on every language. Probably the most famous in Antiquity <\/em>is the famous description in the XVIII book of Iliad<\/em> of the shield of Achilles <\/em>manufactured by Hephaestus<\/em>. His influence has been enormous in all poetry, especially in the epic. Despite its size, I reproduce the fragment at the end of this article.<\/p>\n \n\tI will give other examples:<\/p>\n \n\tThe vision of a painting that a certain Zoilus <\/em>has in the dining room of his home in Trier <\/em>is what causes the famous poem in 103 hexameters of Ausonius<\/em> (310-395) entitled "Cupid tortured" (Cupidus cruciatus)<\/em> in which he describes how some women are crucifying Cupid<\/em>, the god of love.<\/p>\n \n\tThe poem, in which Ausonius <\/em>sends greetings to his son Gregorius begins:<\/p>\n \n\tCupid crucified. 1,1-7) <\/p>\n \n\tAusonius to his son Gregorius, Greeting<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \n\t" Pray, have you ever seen a picture painted on a wall ? " To be sure you have, and remember it. Well, at Treves, in the dining-room of Zoilus, this picture is painted : Cupid is being nailed to the cross by certain lovelorn women not those lovers of our own day, who fall into sin of their own freewill, but those heroic lovers who excuse themselves and blame the gods. Some of these our own Virgil recounts in his description of the Fields of Mourning. I was greatly struck by the art and the subject of this picture. Subsequently I translated my amazed admiration into insipid versification…<\/strong><\/em> (Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn White, M.A. The Loeb Classical Library)<\/p>\n \n\tEn umquam vidisti tabulam pictam in pariete? vidisti utique et meministi. Treveris quippe in triclinio Zoili fucata est pictura haec: Cupidinem cruci adfigunt mulieres amatrices, non istae de nostro saeculo, quae sponte peccant, sed illae heroicae, quae sibi ignoscunt et plectunt deum. quarum partem in lugentibus campis Maro noster enumerat. hanc ego imaginem specie et argumento miratus sum. Deinde mirandi stuporem transtuli ad ineptiam poetandi.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThe poem follows them.<\/p>\n \n\tSee<\/em> now:<\/p>\n \n\thttps:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/christian-martyrs-prudentius-ekphrasis<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\tLondon: William Heineman Ltd. New York.G.P.Putman’s sons. MCMXXXI)<\/p>\n
\n\tiungere si velit et varias inducere plumas,
\n\tundique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
\n\tdesinat in piscem mulier Formosa superne:
\n\tspectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
\n\tCredite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum
\n\tpersimilem, cuis, velut aegri somnia, vanae
\n\tfingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni
\n\treddatur formae. Pictoribus atque poetis
\n\tquidlibet audendi simper fuit aequa potestas.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\tHid from the sun,and thick with Cypress shade,
\n\tSacred to Dian: … in its deepest part,
\n\tIngenious Nature, imitating art,
\n\tHad form’d a sylvan grot with moss o’ergrown,
\n\tArch’d in a bow, and bright with spars and stone;<\/em><\/strong>
\n\t(Translated by Thomas Orger. London, 1814)<\/p>\n
\n\tnomine Gargaphie, succintae sacra Dianae,
\n\tcuius in extremo est antrum nemorale recessu
\n\tarte laboratum nulla; simulaverat artem
\n\tingenio natura suo; nam pumice vivo
\n\tet levibus tofis nativum duxerat arcum.<\/em><\/p>\n