Ekphrasis - Fowler

7/27/2019 Ekphrasis - Fowler

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N A R RA T E A N D D E S C R IB E : T H E P R O B LE M OF E K P H R A S I S *By D. P . FO WL ER

T h e subject of ek phra sis, and in particular of th e ekphrasis of works of a rt, has recentlybegun to receive a great deal of attention from classical scholars.' As will become clear, Ibelieve t ha t the reason for this is that m any of t he theoretical issues that are m ost pressing inclassical studies- and indeed in cultural studies in general2- are raised by the study ofekphrasis. T h e purpose of this note on the other hand is mo dest: I wan t to say a li tt le about th enarratological issues that are raised by set-piece description (I ), and t o look at one example inthe Aeneid (11). But ev en so I have fou nd it impossible no t to offer some thou gh ts of afrighteningly general nature (111). I shall concentrate on the ekphrasis of works of art forreasons th at will again becom e clea r, bu t som e at least of w hat I shall say will also be relevantmutatis mutandis to the ekphrasis of natural features and ev ents.

Set-piece description is regularly seen by narratologists as the paradigm example ofnarr ative pause, in the sem i-technical sense of a passage at th e level of n arra tion to wh ich

* A first version o f this paper was delivered t o theUniversity of Bristol Classics Research Seminar inOctober 1990. I am most grateful for the invitation toCharles Martindale and Duncan Ke nne dy , and t o all thosewho of feredcom me nts, especially Christopher G ill , Joh nG ou ld , and Malcolm Hea th. Subsequen t versions wereread to the Cambridge Literature Seminar, at theUniv ersity of Wisconsin-M adison during an all-too-brieftwo weeks as Brittingham Visiting Professor, at theUniv ersity o f Pittsburgh, and at Northwestern Univ ersity:again I owe man y thanks to m y hosts on these occasions,respectively Richard Hunter, Alessandro Schiesaro,Hans-Peter Stahl, and Francis Dunn, and to all thosewho offere d com me nts, especially Joh n Henderson andIan DuQu esnay in Ca mbr idge, Barry Powell, FannyLemoine , J i m McKeown, and J e f f Wills in Madison, aloyal pupil o f Eckard Le fkv re in Pittsburgh, andBernadette Fort, Daniel G arrison, and Jea n Hagstrum inEvanston. In addition, a num ber o f scholars have beenkind enough to comm ent on written drafts: in particularAlessandro Barchiesi, Irene de Jo ng , Jo hn Elsner,Andrew Laird, Oliver Ly ne , Robin O sborne, theeditorialboard of JRS, and the anonymous reader who correctlydivined that I want to be loved. T h e usual disclaimersapply, but I hope to be able to take more account o f thecriticisms I have received in an expanded ve rsion of thispaper to appear in the collection edited by J . R. Elsner(see n. I below) .

I am thinking especially of E. W . Leach, TheRheton'cof Space: Literary and Artistic Representations of Land-scape in Republican and Augustan Rome (19 88 )and S .Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient N ovel, The Reade r and theRole of Descnption in Heliodoms and Achilles Tatius(1 98 9) , ut there are currently two volumes o f essays onthe subject in preparation from Cambridge, on Greektexts edited b y Sim on Goldhill and Ro bin Osborne and onLatin edited by J . R . Elsner. Bartsch offe rsagood generalbibliography: see also those in M. Fusillo, I1 RomanzoGreco (1989),83-90 and S . Richardson, The HomericN ar ra to r ( ~ g g o ) , c- 69 , and add amongst very recentw or ks N . W . Slater, Reading Petronius ( ~ g g o ) ,13-30,and D. Rosand, 'Ekphrasis and the Generation ofImages', Ation NS I ( ~ g g o ) ,1-105. T h e s tandard workremains that o f P. Friedlander, Johannes von G aza undPaulus Silentiarius (1912), -103; in Latin, there is anexcellent survey b y G . Ravenna, 'L'ekphrasis poetica diopere di arte in Latino: tem i e problemi', Qua d. Ist. Fil.La t . P ad ova 3 (1 9 7 4 ) ~-52 (se e also his article 'Ekph rasis'in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana). T h e most suggestivediscussion is that of A. Pem telli, 'L'inversione speculare.Per una retorica dell'ecphrasis', M D I (197 8) , 7 -98 = LaNarrazwne Commentata (19 79 ), h. z. I am not concerned

here with ekphrasis as an independent genre, as in theekphrastic epigram : on this see o f course Friedlander, o p.cit . , with the furtherbibliography in S. T .Stevens, Imageand Insight: Ekphrastic Epigrams in the Latin Anthology(Diss . Wisconsin-Madison, 1 983 ),and Simon Goldhill's'Read ing, seeing, m eanin g: the poetics o f Hellenisticek hrasis', forthcoming in the G oldhilVOsborne collection.I shall re fer to some o f the modern bibliography ondescription below: but note the special issues o f Yale FrenchStudies 61 (1981), oe'tique 43 (1980)and 51 (198 2),andLitte'rature 28 (1980),and the collections b y J . Bessikre,L'ordre du descn pt i f (19 88),P. B onne fis, La Description:Nodier, Sue , Flaubert, Hugo, Verne, Zola, Alexis, Fin io n(2nd edn. , 1980 ), and Y . Wert-D aoust , Descnpt ion -

e'criture -peintre (1 98 7) .Apart f rom G enet te, the mostimportant theoretician has been P. Ha mo n: see 'Qu'est-cequ'une description?'Poe'tique3 1 1 9 7 2 ) ~65-85 (trans . R.Canter in T . Todo rov (e d. ), French Laterary TheoryToday: A R eader (1 9 8 2 )) , nd especially Introduction aI'analyse du descriptif ( 1 9 8 1 an excerpt is translated as'Rhetorical status of the descriptive' in Yale FrenchStudies 61 (1 9 81 ), -26). Note also J . Hagstrum, TheS i s terAr t s (1953); . Pelc, 'O n he concept o f narration',Semiotics 3 (1 9 7 1 ) , -19; M . Barchiesi, I1 tempo e il testo,studi su Dante e Flaubert ( 19 87 ) and J . van Appeldoorn,Pratiques d e la description ( I 982) . Th ere is a large mass ofcomparative material, w hich o fte n touches on issues oftheor y: see e.g. E. L . B ergmann,A tt Inscribed: Essays onEkphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry (1 9 79 );A . Corb ineau-Hof fmann ,Beschreibung als Verfahren.Dze Asthetik des Objekts im Werk Marcel Prousts (1 98 0) ;P. D ubois , History, Rheton'cal Descnption and the Epic:from Hom er to Spenser (19 82 ); . L. Flaxman, VictorianWord-Painting and Narrative: Toward the Blending ofGenres (1 98 7) ; P. Im ber t, Se'miotique et descriptionbalzacienne (19 78 ); J . Ku rman, 'Ecphrases in epicpoetry', Comparative Literature 26 ( 1 9 7 4 ) ~1-13;L. Perrone-MoisCs, 'Balzac et les fleurs de l'Ccritoirel,Poe'tique 1 1 (198 0) , 305-23; W . H. Race, ClassicalGenres and English Poetry (1 98 8) ,56-85; J . Ricardou,Problemes du nouveau roman (1 96 7) ;L. Sp i t zer , 'The"O de on a Grecian Ur n", or content vs. metagrammar',Comparat ive Li terature 7 ( 1 9 5 5 ) ~ 03-55; M . Va nBuur en, 'L'essence des choses', Poe'tique 1 1 (1980), 26-46(o n Claude Si mo n) ; B. Vannier, L'inscription du corps,pour une s~miot ique du portrai t balzacien (1 97 2) ;M . Z ink , 'L es toiles Agamanor et les fresques deLancelot' , Lit te 'rature 38 (19 80 ), 43-61. T h e T en thInternational Colloquium on Poetics held at ColumbiaUniversity in 1986 was devoted to 'The Poetics ofEkphrasis' (se e Rosand, above n. I ) but the proceedingshave not been published.


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26 D . P . FOWL ERnothing corresponds at the level of story.3 T h e plot does not advance, bu t som ething isdescribed. There is an obvious sense in which description is more basic - one couldtheoretically imagine a narrative with only names in it, an d no referring expressions, bu t it ispractically imp ossible for any narrative of length not to contain description. I n a deeper sense,however , as Genette noted in h is art ic le on the 'Boundaries of N a r r a t i ~ e ' , ~escription ingeneral is secondary, is 'ancilla narrationis, the ever-necessary, ever-submissive, never-emancipa ted slave'. S et-piece description is not even in any real sense necessay. Hence thecontroversial natur e of de scription and t he str ong antipat hy to it which critics from L essing toLukacs have often shown.5 T hi s is connected with the issue of hum an interest, pu t in itscrudest form by Lukacs in 'Narrate or Describe' with its epigraph from Marx, ' T o be radical isto grasp things by the roots. T h e root of huma nity, however, is man himself ', and itsdeclaration that 'objects c ome to life poetically only to the ex tent tha t they a re related to men 'slife, tha t is why th e real epic poet does not de scribe objects bu t exposes their fu nctio n in themesh of hu m an destinies, introd ucing things only as they play a part in th e destinies, actionsand passions of m en'.6 Narrative is abou t people, de scription deals with things.I t is not difficult to challenge this Aristotelian o pposi tion of 'narrati ve' a nd 'descriptio n',and th e exaltation of t he telling of stories about h um an beings over description of th ings. I tmay be tha t what we are interested in in narratives is neithe r plot nor pictures b ut ideology, thevalues inscribed in the work through theme and imagery as much as by story and description.I n essence I think this is correct, and this essay could perhaps stop here. But I want to go ontalkin g of thepro blem of descrip tion because this prim acy of plot an d almost moral distaste fordescription7 has been very deeply engrained in the W estern traditi on. Historically, descriptionhas tended to make people nervous. As Riffaterre makes clear,8 this lies at the h eart of th etraditionally problem atic stat us of didactic (especially scientific didactic) poetry. T o allow aplace for a poem abo ut the world like the De rerum na tu ra , we m ust explain why we are to beinterested in the blind motions of atoms in the void, to answer Aristotle's exclusion ofE mpedo cles as n o t im i ta ting h u man a ~ t i o n . ~Loss of problem s' (in Wittgenstein's phrase) canbe dan gero us, because it can blind us to how lingering are the traces of th e beliefs that wedismiss. So I ask the reader for the m oment to join w ith me in worrying ab out description an dits relation to narrative. If we accept for the m om ent th e traditional opposition of nar ration an ddescription, we can isolate three approaches which have tried to deal with the problem of th eirrelation.T h e first is to stress the role of set-piece description in 'bri nging th e scene before o ur eyes'as traditional accounts of ena rge ia put it,' ' or to say with Barthes' ' tha t what we have is ' theeffect of th e real', t hat w hat details in a descr iption signify is reality itself: 'Flau ber t'sbarom eter, Miche let's little doo r finally say nothing b ut t his : we ar e the real' .12 Desc ription isadmitted to be narratively (or indeed thematically) redunda nt, bu t this redundancy increasesour sense of the reality of the scene before us. It is just as if we were there ourselves. Now,however, one defines these 'reality' fu nctio ns of description, they are unde niab le. B ut they d onot get us very far. It was an early lesson of old-fashioned structuralism that culturalprodu ctions participate in systems of m eaning inde pend ent of th e conscious intent ions of th eircreators or users. I m ay buy a Nissan car because of its reliability ( I did ) but t he significations

See e.g. M . Bal, Narratology, Introduction to the Not always 'almost': as Fanny Lemoine reminds me,Theory ofNarra tive (1985), 7 0 , 7 6 7 . some of the antipathy to description may be moreG. Genette , 'Frontiers of narrative', in Figures of explicitly motivated by a contempt for the things of thisLiterary Discourse trans. A . Sheridan (1982), 127-44, at world, whether from a Platonic or a Christian standpoint,134 (from Figures11 (1969): see also New Literary just as the growth of non-allegorical descriptive poetry inHistory 8 (1976), 1-13). modern times is bound up with Romantic pantheism.See especially H. C. Buch, Ut Pictura Poesis. Die M . Riffaterre, 'Systkme d'un genre descriptif ',Beschreibungsliteratur und ihre Kritiker von Lessing bis Poe'tique 3 (197z) , 15-30.Lukacs (1972). I shall return to Lessing, who has been cf. Tasso, Discourses on the Heroic Poem, trans.much discussed in recent years: see the introduction to M . Cavalchini and I . Samuel (1973). 7-8Laocwn trans. A. E. McCormick (1984) with D. E. lo cf. H. Lausberg, Handbuch d:r literarischenWellberg, ks sin g's Laocoon, Semiotics a nd Aesthetics in Rhetorik (1960), 399-407; G. Zanker, Enargeia in thethe Age ofRe ason (1984); G. Gebauer (ed .),D a s L a o k w n ancient criticism of poetry', RhM I 24 (1981), 297-3 I I .Projekt (1984: collection ofessays, some translated); and l1 R. Barthes, 'The reality effect' in The Rustle 3fespecially T. Todorov, 'Esthetique et simiotique au Language, trans. R. Howard (1986), 141-8, or trans. R.XVIII e sikcle', Cn'tique 308 (1973 )~6-39 = Thioriesdu Carter in T. Todorov (ed.), French Literary TheoryS.vmbole (1977), 161-78 (German translation in Gebauer). Today (1982), 11-17.G. Lukacs, 'Narrate or describe?' in Writer and Critic l2 idem, 148.andotherEssays , trans. A . Kahn (1978), 11-48, at 137.


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27A R R A T E AND DESCR IBE : THE PROBLEM O F EKPHRAS IS'boring' an d 'unstylish' which it bears when co ntraste d with a Porsche are indep ende nt of w hatI thou ght I was doing. Of co urse an interpret er can take this public signification an d mess itaro und , bu t she canno t ignore it. T h e ekphrasis of t he villain's car in a narrative may certainlybring t he scene before th e reader's eyes, bu t we can still ask what this car m eans against th ematrix of alternative possibilities. I n fact, it is striking how often set-piece description innarrative is of things that participate particularly obviously in social systems of meaning:clothing or armour, furnitu re, architecture, th e cultivated landscape. T he se social systems donot dete rmi ne or limit the m eaning of an ekphrasis, bu t they already take the reader beyond th ereality effect, however specified. Th er e is therefore no real 'solution' t o our 'problem' here.The other two approaches are more important. First, we can attempt to deal with theproblem of description by integrating it with t he narrative. A relatively crud e form of th is canbe foun d in Lessing's defence of the Hom eric shield description on th e groun ds that not theshield bu t its manu factu re is described:13 only slightly less cru de is Lukacs' defence of th ehorse-race in Tolstoy's A nn a Ka ren ina against that in Zola's N a n a o n the ground s that it is 'nome re tableau bu t a series of intensely dram atic scenes which provide a tur nin g point for theplot' .14 Clearly narration often continues through a description (there is rarely a completepause) and th e description may occasion reactions in participants im porta nt for the plot. Butth e needs of th e plot can usually be satisfied by a much mo re exiguous account than we areoffered in ekphrasis, an d it is difficult to see that Lessing's device of describing th e ma nu-factur e of an object rather th an th e object itself is other t han a trick. W e could easily tur n anydescription of an object into an account of its making, bu t would this really get to the heart ofth e problem ? Nevertheless, it is an impo rtant po int that description is rarely 'pure', be causeth e way that narrative im purity is introduc ed is often through th e figure of an observe r.I t is my third tactic however which is most commonly foun d in critical writing and whichraises the most important questions, that is the relation of description to narrative on apsychological level. T hi s can be don e in several different ways. T h e objects described m ay becausally linked with a character or an action: people choose their ow n furn itu re or wallpaper.We may have an explicit or implicit observer, through whose eyes the description isinstantiated. We m ay have an instance of pathetic fallacy, however we wish to define th at : th esto rm outside reflects the s tor m inside. O r we may have much looser metaphoric or especiallyme tonym ic links with t he plot, particu larly ones of prefiguration:15 the flower plucked inchapter one becomes the maidenhood lost in chapter four. M uch modern critical reading ofekphrasis in classical literature takes the fo rm of an atte mp t to show tha t wh at earlier critics hadseen as 'merely' decorative description can in fact be integrated with narrative, indeeddemands to be so integrated. Precisely because ekphrasis represents a pause at the level ofnarra tion an d canno t be read functionally, the reader is possessed by a stron g need to interp ret.As will be seen, I believe this is the right tactic. B ut it is obviously vulnerable to attack,and has come un der attack from post-modern theorists, for being organicist an d totalizing. Ifwe take the dominant trends in current criticism with Murray Krieger to be those which'celebrate margins rather than centers, th e aporia rather than the filled gap, th e arbitrary oreven the random rather than the necessary',16 th en it is clear that fro m those points of view theway in wh ich t he classical criticism t ha t I have been describing integrates ekphrasis may beseen as a minus n ot a plus. T o relate description in this way to narration is to accept its poorrelation status bu t to give it a limited fo rm of social mo bility: th e mo re radical move is to freedescription from t he chains of slavery and to give it true au tonom y. T h e vanguard of thisapproach was the nouve au rom an, particularly in the theorizing of Robbe-G rillet, with its cryth at 'instead of thi s unive rse of "significations" (psychological, social, fun cti ona l), one m us ttry to constr uct a world more solid, more imm ediate'" in which objects are given a role outsid eof any metaphorical or metonym ic system of reference. Now w hethe r the nouv eau ro ma n infact achieves tha t independenc e of th e object, and w hethe r even if it did it would be relevant to

l 3 Lessing, h c w n , ch. 16, e.g. trans. McCormick, P. Hardie, and M. Whitby (eds), Homo Viator (1987),op. cit. (n . s ) , 84, 'we see in the poet's work the origin and z4?-51.formation of that which in the picture we can only behold M. Krieger, A Reopening of Closure (1989), 3 .as completed and formed'. " A. Halsall, "'La Transition", desc ript~ons et

l4 op. cit. (n. 5 ) , 111 . ambiguitis narrativo-discursives dans "Victoire" del5 cf. R. G . M. Nisbet, 'The Oak and the Axe: William Faulkner', in Bessikre, op. cit. (n . 2), 27.symbolism in Hercules Oetaeus 1618ff.', in M. Whitby,


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28 D . P . FOWLERclassical criticism are questions I want to avoid, but this anti-organicist, anti-closuralmovement in late-modern and post-modern criticism should make us be at least a little self-conscious abou t th e stress on closure and integration wh ich do min ates classical criticism. Ageneration whose motto is 'the revenge of th e ~r Y sta l ' l 8s hardly likely to warm to a criticismwhich celebrates an integrating focus on h um an subjectivity.Moreov er. t he m odernist classical critic is likelv to find herself stabb ed in th e back bvreception theoi ists like Malcolm H ea th, who would d en y tha t ancient readers would have feftthis need to interpret which is th e standa rd star ting-p oint for accounts of ekphrasis.19 I d o notmyself believe that H eat h is right. Basic to his approach is the Hirschian opposition between'meaning' (identified w ith conscious intention ) and wider 'significance' as read in by m oderninterp reters, an d the exaltation of th e forme r characterized as historical over the latte rcharacterized as 'the forceful imposition of alien preconceptions on ancient literature'." I t is aneasy challenge to celebrate rather th e latter process, an d to dram atize one's critical practice asSocrat ic gueri lla warfare. Bu t i t is more impor tan t to decons t ruc t the o p p o ~ i t i o n . ~ ~n the oneha nd, th e belief th at one can ever free oneself from cont em porar y concerns is a delusion tha tcritics have alwavs to resist if the v are to avoid sel f- de ce ~t io n:t is not difficult to find elem entsin the present pi siti on of clas sic2 studies ou t of which A plausible account of t he factors whichencourage a cool historicism can be constructed. O n the othe r, He ath himself a dmits that abasic probl em w ith hi's approa ch is that a culture's 'prim ary poetic' instantiated in practice mayonly very imperfectly be captured by the 'secondary poetic ' which is represented in theconscious theorizing of rhetoricians and commentator^.^^ If on e takes a wid er view of ancie ntsemiotics, it is not difficult to find evidence of a strong he rme neut ic imperative at all periods inphenom ena like divination; an d indeed even in literary studies Heat h underplays elementssuch as the allegorical trad ition, w hich begins in th e fifth century B . c . , not th e fifth centuryoreover, over, it is most im porta nt no t to accept the characterization of 'reading against thegrain'24as necessarily unhistorical; t o accept th e conscious formulation of its own values by acultu re (o r some mem bers of i t) as authoritative looks mo re like a denial of history. On e mustboth resist th e simplification of anc ient attitud es and accep t that th e critic may at times stre sselements that m em bers of a cultur e neglected precisely in the nam e of history. But Heath'sattack is an im portant reminder that there is nothing necessarily natural or inevitable aboutmode rnist integrationism: it is an aesthetic that has to be defend ed. W e have another reasonnot sim ply to take as an obvious given that t he first thing on e does with t he description of a napple is to find a young virgin to whom it might correspond.I want to return to these themes at the end, bu t I hope it is already clear how th e way inwhich we app roach ekphrasis is paradigmatic of o ur attitu des to mu ch w ider issues ofinterpretation. Let m e, however, tu rn to a question that is constantly raised with respect toekphrasis, th at of 'point of view'.25 I mentioned above that o ne way in which description isoften related to narrative psychologically is through the figure, explicit or implicit, of theobserver. T hi s is pu t most strongly by J. K i t t a ~ : ' ~

When we read a representation, we also read, or read in, the account of the perception of thatrepresentation . . . T he re is always a choice of percipients. W e can read an act as perceived by th echaracter who carries it out (our hero, for examp le), by the character who is or will be its object, orby any character who migh t react to it, appreciate it, or be confused by it (e.g. an onlooker, aconfidant, a chorus) ... Th er e are no autonomous limits on this power of inference andconstruction, this reading-in of subjectivity, as there must be at least the possibility of access(imaginative as well as provided) to a subject-based reading of the represented. Empathy isavailable, of one character for another, of the narrator for any character, and of the reader foranyone.

l8 J. Baudrillard, k s t ra ti gi es fa ta les (1983); cf. D . and Medieval Technique (1987), with further bibio-Kellner, Jean Baudrillard, Fmm Marxism to Post- graphy: on Theagenes of Rhegium, conventionally mademodernism and Beyond (1989), I 54-62. thepm tos heuretes of allegory, see R. Pfeiffer, History ofl9 M. Heath, Unity in Greek Poetics (1989): see also Classical Scholarship I ( I968), g-I I .

The Poetics of Greek T raged y (1987), 98-1 I I . 24 J . Winkler, The Constraints ofDesire (~ggo) ,126.' idem, 1 5 5 . 25 For my use here of Genette's 'focalization' (and somecf. D . Kennedy, rev. S. J. Harrison, Oxford Studies of the problems with the concept), see 'Deviant focaliza-in V eqil's Aeneid, Hennathena (forthcoming). tion in Vergil'sAeneid', PCPhS 216 (~gg o),2-63.22 op. cit. (n. 19), 10 . 26 'Descriptive limits', Yale French Studtes 61 (1981),23 cf. J .Whitman, Allegory, the Dyn amic s of an Ancient 225-43, at 234.


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N A R R A T E A N D DESCRIBE: THE P R O B L E M OF E K P H R A S I S 29The question of focalization, of 'who sees?', is raised with and obvious force bydescription. Basic to Lessing's famous distinction of literary and plastic art were two notions:first, that 'succession of time is the province of the poet just as space is that of the ~a in te r ' ,~ 'ndsecond, that linguistic signs are arbitrary, visual ones iconic. A picture of a cat looks like a cat,the word 'cat' does not. Again these are distinctions which invite and have received a great deal

of deconstruction, but which I want for the moment to accept. Both of these aspects of theliterary description reinforce our feeling that a literary description necessarily inscribes a pointof view more strongly than a plastic one. O n the one hand, there is the phenomenon of what thelinguist W . J . M . Levelt has referred to as the speaker's linearization problem:28 when wedescribe in words a scene, we have to decide the order in which we are to present the details andthe duration- which may be zero- of the description of each of them. Narratologically, thatis, the visual scene described functions as story to the narration of the verbal description.There is no neutral, zero-focalized way of linearizing a visual scene: a point of view isnecessarily inscribed, though there may be accepted ways in a particular culture of orderingthe elements- asked to describe their house, for instance, most people will give a mental tourstarting at the front door and climaxing according to predilection in the kitchen, the bedroomor the study. T he focalization does not, of course, have to be that of the actual observer: asKittay remarks, empathy is available, and I can describe my house to a friend in a way thatrepresents neither the way I see it nor the way she does, but the peculiar interests of my aunt.But the speaker's solution of the linearization problem necessan'ly imposes a point of view.Similarly, the non-iconic nature of the linguistic sign means tha t there is a much wider matrixof choice against which a particular element is seen. In his work 1912 + I , Sciascia describes aphotograph of an Arab being shot amongst the dunes during the Italian imperialist war inLibya, and implicitly highlights the contrast between the emotional reaction of a modern to thescene with the presumed contemporary reading:29

In Cirenaica la guerriglia pungeva. Tribunali di guerra assiduamente sedevano per giudicare iribelli: e cio&per passarli ai plotoni d'esecuzione. Agli italiani ne arriva qualche immagine: schizzi,fotografie. Con qua1 sentimento& stato allora guardata questa fotografia che ho sotto gli occhi, dellafucilazione di un arabo tra le dune? I1 plotone schierato su due file, l'ufficiale che sta per dare ilsegnale del fuoco, il condannato che sembra lontanissimo dal plotone, come sperduto tral'ondulazione della duna. Agosto 1913. 1912+ I .In Cyrenaica the guerrilla war was causing irritation. Courts martin1 were in constant session topass judgement on the rebels- that is, to hand them over to the firing squads. A few images of thisreached the Italian public: sketches, photographs. What was their feeling then when they looked atthis photograph that I have before me, depicting the shooting of an arab in the midst of the dunes?The platoon lined up in two lines, the officer waiting to give the order to fire, the condemned manlooking a long way away from the firing squad, almost lost amongst the undulating dunes. August

Sciascia attempts to describe the scene neutrally, like a camera with the shutter open. But hischoice of 'fucilazione', like my choice of 'being shot' must be contrasted with alternatives like'being executed', 'being murdered', 'being martyred'. Th e same photograph can be read as asign of tr iumph or an indictment of crime, but verbal description has to take a stand, however'objective' it attempts to be. Again, there is an obvious sense in which description in languageinscribes a point of view more forcefully and more unambiguously than plastic art.Now I stress again that these oppositions are in actual fact far more complex: decon-struction is here as easy and as necessary as with the other oppositions that I have alreadydiscussed. The re are of course various ways in which narrative ar t can exist, throughconventions of placement, the use of panels and frames, the representation of more than onemoment of time in one picture.30 In an architectural set ting viewpoint may be 'controlled', asRobin Osborne has argued with regard to the Parthenon frieze.31T he converse of the speaker'slinearization problem is the artist's non-linearization problem, how to represent time through27 Trans. McCormick, op. cit. (n . s ) , 91 . Etruscan an d Roman Art (1 984 ), with bibliography; on

W . J . M . Levelt, 'Th e speaker's linearization some theoretical problems, see N . Goodman, 'Twistedproblem', in H. C. Longuet-Higgins, J . Lyons, and D . E. tales; or, story, study, and symphony', in W . J . T.Broadbent (eds), The Psychological Mechanisms of IS .itchell (ed.), On Narrative ( 1 9 8 1 ) , ~ 1Language (19 81 ) , 05 -15. " 'Th e viewing and obscuring of the Parth enon frieze',29 L . Sciascia, 1912+ I ( 1 9 8 6 ) , 1 7 . J H S 1 07 ( 1 9 8 7 ) ~8-105 .cf. R. Brilliant, Visual Narr atives: Stoly-telling in


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3 0 D . P . F OW L E Rsimulta neity, an d the re are various ways of solving this. In the literary descriptio n of a work ofart. we mav find traces of both linearization and non -linearization: the cleverest e x a m ~ l eknow is th it of th e ekphrasis in M oschus, where the story of A rgos and 10 which was i o n -linearized by t he artist in spatial term s is then relinearized by Mo schus in a way which allowsboth Drocesses to be seen.32 T h en too. Lessing has often been criticized for taking as his"paradigm scul ptur e in the ro un d: th ere is an even more obvious sense of p oint of viewinscribed in a panel painting. M y example from Sciascia of a photog raph migh t be said to becheating: figurative painting is not simply th e accurate representation of reality. No r even isphotogra phy. Art however realist is no more 'naturally' iconic than literature: in both t he signsare read according to systems of m eaning tha t are cultural constru cts. I n the en d, visual art isnot si~ nific antl v ifferent from literature.Nevertheless, Lessing's oppositions can be used to stress a paradox about visual andliterary description which seem s to me of g reat im portance for con temp orary classical culturalcriticism. T h e tendency of t he traditional view of a rt that I have been outlining is th at visual artmust be more oDen. less t ied to a ~ o i n tf view. less fixed in its int er ~r et at io nhan literarv art inwhich a point o'f view is constanGy imp osed bythe medium. Yet Ge are used to l i tera r icr i t icsbeing addicte d to am biguity and polysemy, w hile art critics are often rigidly historicist. T hi s is~ ar ti cu la rl v rue of t he criticism of ancient art. w here th e revolt against the 'connoisseur'i radi t ion irk t itu ted by Beaz ley in the footsteps of Giovann i ~ o r e l l i ~ ~ v h a ssed as its principalweapon a strictly functionalist m ethodology. T he re are of c ourse exceptio ns to this: indeedsom e of th e critics of ancien t art whose metho dology has been mo st rigorous (a nd successful)in its functiona lism have also taken pains t o stress the polysemy of the artistic scenes they havediscussed.34But th e confident historicism of m uch ancient art criticism is in striking contrast tothe (by now cliched) rheto ric of 'crisis ' that has grippe d art history m ore generally.35I n t h estud y of Rom an art especially, the stress in recent criticism has been on remorselessly show inghow artistic production serves the do m inan t ideology. A good example is E. Lefkvre's recentdiscussion of th e Portico of the D anaids in Aug ustus' temple-complex on th e Palatine.36T h eintervretation of this monument has alwavs been ~roblematic: Lefkvre argues that the~ a n a ' i d swho murdered the sons of Aegyp tusare to be'seen as a symbol of the ~ z m a n sn theirrecent trium ph over Cleopatra, theAegyptia coniunx. O ften of course the D anaids are seen assinners. but for Lefkvre it is axiomatic that suc h an intervretation is im ~ o ss ib le .~ ' ut howcould aktist or pa tron st op ancient re aders taking a dif fe rA t view of the 'Danaids, especiallywhen the al ternative v iew is so s trongly represented in Augustan l i t e r a t ~ re ? ~ 'efkv re's view ofthe mo num ent leads him to trv to read the famous scene on the balteus of Pallas in th e Aeneidin s imi la r te rms , wi th Pa llas i s the wor thy Danaids and Turn us the dasta rd ly E g y p t i a n ~ . ~ ~On ce the a rgum ent moves in to literature, its deficiency is clear: one could not say Lefkvre'sview of the balteu s was im possible, b ut it is easy to show th at very differe nt views are (at least)equally plausible and tha t no amo unt of evidence for an Aug ustan reading could remove th e'*Moschus, Eumpa , 37 -6 2 Three scenes are (1987), 41-58, at 42: 'no sign has a fixed meaning. . ignsdescribed: 10 crossing the sea (44-9), Zeus turning her are polysemic .. . not all the meanings produced by theback into a woman (5-4), and the phoenix arising from signifying elements in a signifier contribute to the

the blood of the dead Argos ( 5 5 4 1 ) That is, the order of production of one unified coherent meaning. Some canthe scenes chronologically is ACB (or conceivably ABB if produce different perspectives, warring discourses, whichthe second and third scenes were taken to be con- deconstruct the dominant one.'temporaneous). In the last scene, first Hermes is 35 cf. D. Preziosi, RethinkingArt History (1989).described; then 'nearby' Argos with sleepless eyes; then E. Lefilvre, Das Bild-Pmgramm des Apallo-Tempelsthe blrd arising (described in the imperfect, exanetellen) ; auf dem Palatin, Xenia Heft 24 (1989).then its outspread wings. The temporal sequence in the '' ibid., 15 'Es ware zudem absolut widersinniggewesen,last scene represents the spatial arrangement on the wenn Oktavian im Siegesjubel uber die Agypter an demcup, but in such a way that the temporal sequence in the Siegesmonument par excellence eine Darstellung zugelassenstory that the visual representation supposedly had to hatte in den Agypter als Ehrentrager erschienen.'delinearize shows through. Reading narrative art is '"f P. Hardie reviewing Lefevre in CR NS 40 (~ ggo ) ,. . .relinearization. 520.33 On the origins qf Morelli's methods, see Carlo 39 op. cit. (n. 36) , 16, 'Turnus ist ein Angreifer, dessenGinzburg's brilliant Clues: roots of an evidential Tat negativ zu bewerten ist: fur sie hat er zu bussen. Erparadigm', in Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. J . and A. C. kann also nur mit den angreifenden Aegyptus-SohnenTedeschi (1990). vergleichen werden, deren schandliches Handeln (nefas)34 See especially the work of Christiane Sourvinou- ein schmahliches Ende (foede) gefunden hat. Und PallasInwood, e.e. 'Menace and ~ur su i t : ifferentiation and ist mit den Danaiden verzlichen. insofern er freventlichthe creatiolof meaning', in'^. Birard, C. Bron and A. angegriffen wird. Auf ihnvbezogdn muss die Aussage derPomari (eds), Images et socie'ti en Grece ancienne. balteus lauten: Pallas wird geraht werden. Man beachteL'iconographie comrne me'thode d'analvse, Actes du auch die Anspielung: Pallas kommt vom Palatin! 'Colloque International, Lausanne 8-11 ftvrier 1984


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N A R R A T E A N D DESCR IBE : THE P R O B L E M OF EKPHRAS IS 3'alternative traces left by the com plexity of the tradition. My argu m ent is not that art critics arewrong to argue like this, or that we should simply switch to seeing art as more o pe n: I thinkthere is a genuine paradox in our att i tude to art as both more open and more closed thanliterature that is not to be resolved by com ing down unam biguously on either side. But there isa stron g case for a grea ter aw areness of this paradox -which, as we shall see, I believe w asrecognized in antiquity .O ur paradoxical intuition (if by now we have acquired one) th at art is both more closedand m ore open than literature makes the pheno me non of ekphrasis where they meet of peculiarinterest. W hatever position we a dopt as to the degree to which plastic and literary art inscribepoints of view, in literary ekphrasis the presence of the intermediary- usually fictional-visual artist introduces ano ther potential focalizer. Th is is particularly the case where th ere isan underlying n arrative element in the visual representation being described. Even leaving ou tthe more extreme possibilities that Kittay mentioned, we then have a complex hierarchy ofpotential po ints of view, which can be sum marized in the following diagram :

ARTIST (A ) Visual R epresentation-AUDIENCE I (B )INARRATOR/VIEWER/

TOPIC (c) AUDIENCE 2 (D) DescriptionIUTHOR (D ) AUDIENCE 3 (E )T h a t is, of any eleme nt in a desc ription we can ask wh ethe r the focalization is th at of th e artistwho m ade the original work of art , or his audience , or the observer, or his audience, or theauth or, or his audience: and we have still not brou ght in the observer's bro ther-in-law whomcha pter four will reveal to be th e hero of t he novel.

Let me try to m ake this clearer with m y exam ple, the fam ous ekphrasis in Book O ne of th eAeneid where Aeneas looks at the depiction of events from th e Tr ojan W ar in the T em ple ofJu no in Carthage."O Aene as is here an explicit observe r, whose reactions t o wh at he sees are alsoexplicitly stated : he weeps a nd groans because of w hat he saw , namque videbat . . .Moreover,within episodes, as Eleanor Leach observes,41 the orde r of presentation c reates confusionbetween th e visual image and Aeneas' thoughts'. T hi s is clearest in the Tr oilu s panel, w hereTro ilus is depicted both fugiens (474) and being dragged by his chariot (476) :parte alia fugiens amissis Troilu s arm is,infelix puer a tqu e impar congressus Achilli,fertur equis curruqu e haeret resupinus inani,lora tenens tamen ; huic cervix comaeque trahu nturper terr am , et versa pulvis inscribitur hasta.

In ano ther part of the picture poor Tro ilus, a mere boy and no m atch for Achilles, had lost hisarm our and was in full f light. His horses had ru n away with th e chariot and he was being draggedalong helpless on his back b ehind i t, still holding on to th e reins. H is neck and hair were trailingalong the gro und and th e end of his spear was scoring the dust behind him.42" Aeneid 1.441-93. The bibliography is predictably ekphrastic centrepieces', HSCP 87 (1983), 175-84; D.large: see especially R. D. Williams, 'Th e pictures on Clay, 'T he Archaeology of the temple to Juno in CarthageDido's temple (Aeneid 1.45-3)', C Q NS 10 (1960), ( A e n . I, 44&93)', C P 83 (1988), 195-205; Leach, op. cit.145-53; K. Stanley, 'Irony and foreshadowing in Aeneid (n. I); J . J . O'Hara, Death an d the Optimistic Prophecy inI, 462',AJP 86 (1965), 276-77; A. Szantyr, 'Bemerkung- V e ~ i l ' sAeneid (~ggo) ,5-9.en zum Aufbau der virgilianischen Ekphrasis', M H 27 4 op. cit. (n. 32j, 314;

(1970), 28-40; N. Horsfall, 'Dido in the light of history', 42 Trans. D. West (Penguin, 1990). I use West's newPV S 13 (1973-4), 1-13 = S. J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford version here and below because his attemat to make theReadings in Vergil's Aeneid (~ggo) ,127-40; W. R. description unambiguous for the reader inderlines how!ohnson, Darkness Visible (1976), 99-1 14; C. P. Segal, Vergil leans the other way. For some criticism of this as aArt and the hero: narrative point of view in Aeneid 1', method of translation, see my forthcoming 'Brief Notice'h e t h u s a 14 (1981), 67-84; R. F. Thomas, 'Virgil's in G N R 1991 (2).


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32 D . P . FOWLERSimilarly the scene between Priam and Achilles from Iliad x x ~ v ,s introduced with areminiscence of what had happened" before the scene depicted (11.483-7) :

ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora murosexanimumque auro corpus vendebat Achilles.tum vero ingentem gemitum dat pectore ab imo,ut spolia, ut currus, utque ipsum corpus amicitendentemque manus Priamum conspexit inermis.

There too was Achilles. He had dragged Hector three times round the walls of Troy, and now wasselling his dead body for gold. Aeneas groaned from the depths of his heart to see the armourstripped off him, the chariot, the corpse of his dear friend and Priam stretching out his feeblehands.Although we are told that Aeneas seesIliacas ex o~ di ne pu gn as ,~ ~he order and duration of thescenes has often been seen to represent a peculiar choice, which throws emphasis on the tragicelements like the death of Troilus, the first of so many dying youths in the Aeneid. T hestrongest version of this view indeed sees Aeneas as misreading the scenes. Nicholas Horsfalland others45have suggested that Aeneas got it all wrong. On this view,

Just as one would expect in a temple of Juno, the choice of pictures illustrates the success of herfavourites: while Aeneas is delighted to see that Troy is not forgotten, he quite fails to observe, aswe must do, that the attitude to Troy shown in these pictures is neither friendly nor sympathetic.They illustrate just those qualities which Carthaginians might admire in the victorious Greeks-greed and brutality, for which they themselves had such a fine rep~ta t ion .~~On this interpretation, we can see peeping out , especially in the final scene of Penthesilea,which clearly anticipates Dido's ent ry, hints of a different way of reading these scenes, a wayfar removed from sunt lacrimae rerum.There are good grounds for rejecting the crude form of this thesis as it is put by Horsfall,who is intent on showing that Aeneas did the right thing in Ieaving Dido. In her opening wordsto Aeneas she tells of how Teucer put in at Sidon and told her of the 'casus . . . urbis ITroianae',and how he 'ipse hostis Teucros insigni laude ferebat 1 seque ortum antiqua Teucrorum astirpe volebat' (623, 625-6). She associates herself with the tragic interpretation of Trojanhistory, and to view her as lying in so doing would be an extreme subversion to which the textgives no encouragement. Moreover, there is clearly a battle of paradigms in the depiction ofCarthage; is it Phaeacia or the land of the Cyclops? The presence of art is in itself part of theevidence pushing us towards Scherie; and Diskin Clay points out that when Odysseus arrivesin the Cyclops' cave, stress is laid on the fact that Polyphemus has not heard of him, whereasthe fame of Troy has reached P h a e a ~ i a . ~ ~nd finally, as Clay also stresses, one model for thescene in the temple and Aeneas' reaction is the story told variously of Aristippus and Plato ofthe shipwrecked philosopher coming upon geometric figures in the sand: there too what isdiscovered is indisputable evidence of ci~i li za ti on.~ ' ut while the view that has Aeneasdeceiving himself totally cannot be right, the question of the focalization of the ekphrasisremains of importance. Take, for instance, the detail of the description of Achilles 'selling'Hector's body, 'auro . . . vendebat' (484). K. Stanley49 pointed out that the reader herenaturally thinks not of the scene in the Iliad but of the common scene in art and elsewhere inliterature of Priam weighing out gold, and Stanley, like Horsfall, saw the presence of such abrutal scene in the temple as evidence that Aeneas' reading is fatally optimistic, though hedrew very different implications, that 'in Vergil's literary and historical perspective, Achillesand Aeneas, Greek and Trojan, Roman and Tyrian are bound to that realm where the roles of

43 On the use of the pluperfect, see Szantyr, op. cit. 45 Horsfall, Stanle Johnson, Clay, Leach, O'Hara,(n . 32) and especially Ravenna, op. cit. (n . I) , 34-46, o p g c i tt. (n. 32) (w itrvery different emphases!) . quoting Servius on 1.4 84 : ingenti arte utitur verbis: nam Horsfall, op . cit. (n. 32), 13 8. hoc loco, quia pingi potuit, praesens tempus posuit, Clay, op. cit. (n . 32 ), 197 . superius , quia pingi non potuit, sed referri, p;rfecto idem, 195- 6. T h e story is told of Aristippus in exsecutus est tempore dicendo "raptaverat non Vitm vius v 1.1 , and of Plato in Cicero, Rep. 1.29: see "ra tabat".' G . Giannantoni, I Cirenaici (195 8), 213 (Arist ippus frr. 49 On ex ordine and similar expressions, see Ravenna, 42;3).o p . c it . ( n . I ) , 1 6 1 7 . o p . c it . ( n . 3 2 ), 2 7 6 7 .


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N A R R A T E AND DESCR IBE : THE PROBLEM O F EKPHRAS IS 33the slayer and the slayed are inevitably un ited by th e reversals of time - where, indeed,"sorrow is implicit in the affairs of me n"'. T h e depiction of Achilles as cruel and m ercenary isof course anyway ambiguous: th at could be a Troj an view as much as a Greek one. But can webe certain tha t the scene before Aeneas was the 'brutal ' version? vendebat could representAeneas' interpretation of the scene; one migh t say that auro pushes the reader towards seeingthe scene as genuinely one of ransom because it looks like one of those details in ekphrasiswhich are simultaneously about the painterly surface and an object in the story beingd e p i ~ t e d , ~ 'ut th e existence of the golde n ransom is scarcely underplayed in the Iliad versionof th e meeting.'l In th is ekphrasis where so m uch is clearly 'read-in' rath er tha n 'seen' -insofar as such a distinction holds - it is not im possible that this too is Aeneas' view ra therthan what is actually 'there'.As often with qu estions of focalization, there is more th an o ne story tha t we can tell here ofwhose points of view the pictures and their descriptions represent.j2 Like other scenes ofekphrasis, th e scene is often- and surely rightly in some degree- taken as paradigm atic forthe interp retation of a rt , both literary and visual.j3 Eleanor Le ach ,j4 for instance, com m entstha t the interac tion between Aeneas as reader a nd the work of art 'will not appear foreign to thecontemporary reader who unde rstands that m eaning is not the inherent property of a text bu tis instead created in variant form s throug h variant experiences of re constructing the w ork astext' , and that Aeneas' 'deeply sentimental misreading of the frieze shows the process ofperception as one of selection, amplification, and reord ering, a nd th us it casts do ub t upon th ereliability of factual comm unication thro ugh pictorial narrative'. But one migh t take the sceneas more norm ative an d less aporetic, as enjoining upo n the read er like Aeneas to read tragicallyrather tha n trium phantly, whatever the picture tha t is offered. T hi s has obvious relevance toth e interpretation of Augusta n art. As I mentioned above, contem porary criticism of Au gustanart is dom inated by functionalism and historicism: it attem pts to show how subjects that areapparently aesthetically neutral actually serve Augustan ideology. If we take the scene inAeneid I as paradigmatic, however, it suggests that more allowance should be made evenwithin a historicist framework for more tha n on e way of re ading th e symbols: t ha t after all anobserver m ight be able to deconstruct R oman art as well as Rom an literature. T h e suggestionwould not perhaps be unparalleled. I n a well-known article on Philostratus and Ho me r whoseimpo rtance B artsch has recently stressed, Lesky had suggested tha t some of th e passages in theImagines were clear 'misreadings' of the underlying picture, not through misunderstandingbu t as a tour-de-force of 'sophistischer De utun gsk unst ' .j5 M isreading and cross-read ing arenot necessarily mo der n critical inventions: a nd th e ekphrasis in Aeneid I with its stress on thecomplexity of interp retation cannot be entirely isolated from its time . To o New H istoricist areading of A ugustan art begins to look unhistorical.

I n conclusion, I want to return to the issues with which I began in th e light of thecomplexities of focalization which have emerged in the exam ple from t he Aeneid. I said thatmy sym pathies were still very mu ch with th e organicist New Critical approach whic h wouldseek links between e kphrasis and th e narrative of w hich it is part , b ut I also implied th at th echallenge of post-m odern dislike of th is as totalizing an d authoritaria n needed t o be taken o nboa rd. T h e political m etaphors a re of c ourse basic to the assault of p ost-mo dern the orists likecf. R avenna, op. cit. ( n. I ) , 14-16 , R. Debray- reading, but understandable from a Trojan point of view; Genette 'La Pierre descr iptive', Poe'tique I I (19 80) , 293- Priam in Aeneid 2 provides a counterbalance.' 333 on Heliodom s v. 14 , which self-consciously plays with 52 PCPhS 2 1 6 ( 1 9 9 0 ) ~ f . 42-63.the convention. 53 This point might be strengthened by Richard

51 c f . Il ia d x x ~ v . 6, I 1 9 , 1 3 7, 1 4 6 7 , 1 75 -6, 1 9 5-6 , Thom as' suggestion, op. cit . (n . 32) , that the presence of228-37, 367, $1-2 ,435- 6, 502, 555, 579, 594, 685-6. I the peplos at the centre of the ekphrasis (479 -82 ) owe this point to Alessandro Barchiesi, who comm ents: 'It constitutes a sort of mise en abyme in the light of the is too easy to forget that ransom , and go ld, plays a role in tradition of ekphrasticp eploi. Hom er's narrative too. If A eneas was a reader of the Ilia d " op. cit. (n . 32), 323-3. (and in a sense he is) he c ould still point out exactly the 55 Bartsch, op. cit. (n. I); A . Lesky, 'Bildwerk und same points: cmelt , golden ransom, the gesture of a Deutung bei Philostrat und Homer', Henn es 75 (1 9 4 0 )~ father. T his wouldy be a selective, and tendentious, 38-5 3, at 45 = GesammelteSchriften (196 6), 1-25, at 17.


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34 D . P . F O W L E RLyotard on theories of interpretation which aim for a fixed overall truth: that way fascism lies.A carnivalesque dialogy looks radical against that. But it is not simply residual Stalinism thatmakes Marxist critics in particulars6feel unhappy about the assumption that stress on pluralityis always radical. I t can be a way of evading the difficult task of formulating a properly complexaccount of the relationship of the individual and society. If we move back from politics to thetext, we can similarly try to formulate an account of the relationship of a description to itsnarrative which takes adequate account of complexity but does not simply liberate theekphrasis to meaninglessness.A way forward is perhaps to be found in a neglected contribution by AlessandroP e r ~ t e l l i . ~ ~e set up an opposition between the total subordination of description to narrativethat he saw in the shield descriptions in the Seven against Thebess8with the total indepen-dence of description and narrative represented by the Aspis of Hesiod, and contrasted bothwith the relationship to be seen in Moschus' Europa, where there is an 'inversione speculare':10 of the ekphrasis corresponds not to Europa but to Zeus as the bull. Th is relationship hetermed neither narrative (where description is subordinated to narrative) nor descriptive(where it is set free) but rhetorical, conferring on the ekphrasis the status of afigure. Althoughhis examples are limited ones, this seems a very important insight. The most interesting recentwork on all types of 'digression' or narrative pause has been that which views the relationshipwith the main narrative as a figured one, in which elements shift and are transformed as wemove from detail to whole. Perutelli's 'specular inversion', for instance, is clearly related to theway that Colin Macleod treated the mythological example in his well-known article, 'A use ofmyth in ancient poetry'.s9 Discussing Catullus 68, he noted that in the exemplum of Laodamiaand Protesilaus both Catullus and Lesbia are compared and contrasted with both figures:

The myth, then, of Catullus 68 is neither a decorative and learned irrelevance, nor does it simplymirror the situation in which it is set; for the analogies between the two are qualified by no lesssignificant contrasts. But the result of such a complexity is not mere confusion; the myth, byindicating an area of feeling beyond the direct statements of the poem, helps to express a significantconflict of attitudes. I t thus makes a distinct and comprehensible contribution to the whole.Similarly, in discussing similes, Oliver Lyne has recently tried to move beyond the alternativesof multiple-correspondence and decorative independence 60

There is thus in most similes a visible point of contact with the narrative and an illustrativefunction tied to it which is often advertised; in many similes further points of contact andillustrative functions can be discerned. But this sort of function is not I maintain the important ormain function of a developed simile in the hands of a master. The main function of a simile is not toillustrate something already mentioned in the narrative, but to add things which are notmentioned, in a different medium: imagery. The poet is switching modes, switching from directnarrative to 'narrative' in the suggestive medium of imagery; and he capitalizes on the fact that he isnow operating in a suggestive, not an explicit medium. An advertised illustrative function andconcomitant point of contact with the narrative may often be seen as a means to an end, as littlemore than a formal device to effect the switch from direct narrative to 'narrative' in imagery.'jl

Similes and even more exempla bear, of course, different relationships to their contexts fromthat we might wish to posit for set-piece description. But both these formulations reflect asimilar desire to Perutelli's for an account of the relation of part to whole which is significant ina non-reductive way.

56 See e. g. some of the pieces in the collection edited by empiricist' comes close to the terms in which a modernM. Krieger, The Aimsof representation (1987),especially French critic, L. Perrone-MoisCs, has discussed descrip-D . LaCapra, 'Criticism Today'. tion in Balzac, op. c it. (n . I ) . Distinguishing between57 op. cit. (n. I ) . 'static' description, 'a fonction redondante ualificante,58 The choice is ironic in the light of Froma Zeitlinh explicative ou emphatique' and 'dynami>,q'?i fonction

Un der the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics an d Aeschylus de dkplacement, de compensation, de dkfoulement', sheSeven against Thebes (I 82). comments that whereas the first 'renvoie circulairement a59 CQ N S 24 (1974).82-93, at 88 = Collected Essays un dCja-dit du rCcit', the second produces another level of(1983)~59-70, at 165. narrative: 'la description apparait ici non comme un arr&tWords and the Poet (1989), 68. du rkcit (pour renseigner, reposer, distraire ou convaincre61 It is interesting to observe how Lyne the 'English le lecteur), mais comme le suit du rkcit l u n autre niveau'.


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N A R R A T E A N D DESCRIBE: T H E PROBLEM O F E K P H R A S I S 35Perutelli's use here of the concept of 'figure' suggests an obvious comparison with GianBiagio Conte's similar use to explain the phenomenon of allusion:62Thu s allusion works in just the same way, and in the same semantic area, as a rhetorical figure. Thegap in figurative language that opens between 'letter' and 'sense' is also created in allusion betweenthat which is said (as it first appears), a letter, and the thought evoked, the sense. And just as nofigure exists until t he reader becomes aware of the twofold nature of figurative language, so tooallusion only comes into being when the reader grasps that there is a gap between the immediatemeaning ('after I have sailed through many peoples and on many seas"j3)and the image that is itscorollary ('as Odysseus sailed'). In the art of allusion, as in every rhetorical figure, the poetry lies inthe simultaneous presence of two different realities that try to indicate a single reality . . . Thepoetry lies in the area carved out between the letter and the sense. I t exists by refusing to be onlyone or the other. This still unknown area, this tension between meanings, can be described only byreferring to the two known limits that demarcate it.

Just as with allusion, with any passage where in any sense we for a moment 'stand back' fromthe narrative we have the presence of two realities: the passage taken in isolation and its widercontext. While as with allusion the extremes set the limits of meaning, what matters in thesignificance of the simile or ekphrasis or exemplum is that which in Conte's words 'exists byrefusing to be only one or the other'. Any relationship we posit is inevitably an uneasy one.Precisely because the correspondences and contrasts are figured, the interpretation of themcannot be simple or clear: there is room for disagreement. We are conscious not only of a desirefor integration but of a resistance to it. There is more than a whiff of the Zeitgeist here. I haveexcused my use of political terminology on the grounds that it is so used by post-moderncritics, but this is an evasion: I believe that they are correct to see a connection between textualand political integration. And it is tempting to suggest that the troubled integration of theekphrasis or example or simile or intertextual reference asfigure represents the same attempt atapalintonos harmonia as the critics of Lyotard and other post-modernists have suggested as analternative to the simple celebration of individualism in the political sphere.We have moved a long way from the formalist narratology with which I began: perhapstoo far. But it is important, I believe, to see that this movement is inescapable. It is a commoncriticism of narratology that it is merely another twentieth-century formalism, a way of talkingabout texts without bringing in ideology. In fact, however, if the issues raised by formalanalysis are pursued, we find we cannot escape the movement towards politics. The relation-ship between the aesthetic and the political is not a simple one: the analogies and contrastsdrawn are precisely themselvesfigured in the way that I have suggested are those betweenekphrasis and narrative. And as figured, they can of course be interpreted in different ways.But the relationship is no more to be denied than ekphraseis are to be separated from theircontexts-or reduced to them.Jesus College, Oxford

62 G. B. Conte, The hetoncoflmitation (1986),38-9. 63 Conte is discussing the allusion to the opening of theOdyssey in Catullus 101.

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