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Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Criteria for Describing Word-and-Image RelationsAuthor(s): A. Kibédi VargaReviewed work(s):Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 10, No. 1, Art and Literature I (Spring, 1989), pp. 31-53Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772554 .

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Criteria or DescribingWord-and-ImageRelations

A. Kibedi VargaLiterature, Free University

There is a great and quickly increasing number of studies on word-

and-image relations, but few efforts have been made as yet to make

explicit the general problems underlying this kind of research. I seeat least two central problems, one methodological and one taxonomic.The former concerns the legitimacy of composing verbal and visualartifacts or transferring methods used in one field to the other field,the identity or difference in the meaning of our critical idiom when itis applied, simultaneously or separately, in both fields, and so on.' The

methodological approach requires a well-chosen point of departure;thus

WendySteiner (1982)

picks upthe historical "ut

pictura poesis"tradition and tries to examine it in the light of modern, especiallysemiotic, criticism, whereas Manfred Muckenhaupt (1986) examinesthe current methods of comparing words and images from the pointof view of modern linguistics, Gottfried Boehm (1978, 1986) andOskar Batschmann (1977) from that of modern philosophy (especiallyaesthetics and hermeneutics).

The second general problem is more practical. Facing the tremen-dous variety of phenomena which belong to word-and-image research,one would like to find

some very general categories or headings whichwould allow a clear and comprehensive classification of all these phe-

1. I have made an attempt to compare rhetorical vocabulary as it is used in poeticand pictorial theory at the end of the seventeenth century (see Kibedi Varga 1984,1988).

Poetics Today 10:1 (Spring 1989). Copyright ? 1989 The Porter Institute for Poeticsand Semiotics. ccc 0333-5372/89/$2.50.



32 PoeticsToday 10: 1

nomena. The question arises here again which point of view should be

adopted from the beginning. Should we follow the traditional chapters

of literary and art history and classify studies according to whetherthey deal with the style or the theme of the works, with mixed forms

(like film) or with the artist (e.g., Doppelbegabung), s has been done

by Franz Schmitt-von Muhlenfels (1981)? Or should we adopt a more

rigorous method, for instance, a semiotic one, at the risk, however, of

excluding some (more historical-biographical) fields of research (seeNoth 1985: ch. 5; Thibault-Laulan 1973; Rio 1975-76)?

In the following pages I shall try to isolate and describe a few

elementary surface criteria for classifying word-and-image relations,

starting from my own experience of seeing and reading, that is, in aninductive and very tentative way.

Before presenting this taxonomy, some preliminary remarks mustbe made:

Every student of word-and-image relations should bear in mind thatall comparisons of and analogies between these two categories of ob-

jects are vitiated from the very beginning by the fact that the sensoryperception of these categories is not "equal"in all parts. First, there isa

hierarchyof senses;

hearingand

seeingare much more

developedthan the others. In an interesting series of experiments, Yvette Hat-well (1986) has thus shown that the tactile sense is subordinate to sightwhenever information is concerned. Secondly, seeing might be the

highest sense hierarchically, superior even to hearing. In modern re-search word-and-image relations rarely concern the simple dichotomyof hearing and seeing; since the invention of writing, the word has

belonged, at the same time or alternately, to two very different do-mains: it is heard and it is seen. Most modern critics, when they study

word-and-image relations, do not parallel the word that is heard andthe image that is seen; in fact, they study, without being aware of it,two visual phenomena. The illusion of sensory difference is merelyconventional, caused by the fact that we read words, especially in the

European tradition, in a very inconspicuous typography. It is like look-

ing at a plain white or gray wall and not noticing that even such an

uninteresting wall does have a color.In spite of this, and in order not to complicate this very complex

matter, I shall have to proceed by the exclusion of certain phenomena.

I shall limit myself to the written word and omit the auditory sense; Ishall not take into account the part played by color;2 and I shall not

enter into details about the content of parallels and comparisons (of

2. Some suggestive though brief remarks about the semiotic value of colors can be

found in Bense 1971.



KibediVarga * Word-and-ImageRelations 33

the kind "iconic versus arbitrary signs," one or two dimensions, fixity,

discursivity, etc.).

If we survey the whole field of modern word-and-image research, wecan state that a first and very fundamental distinction should be madebetween possible relations and parallels between objects, on the one

hand, and possible relations and parallels between comments aboutthese objects, on the other. By "objects"I mean visual and verbal arti-

facts; by "comments" I mean texts (or, rarely, images) dealing in acritical way with those artifacts. This distinction is well known fromthe philosophy of language, which separates the object evel from themeta-level of discourse (see Figure 1). At the object level, research

matches words and images more or less closely related to each other;their degree of relationship can be described in terms of a grammar.At the meta-level we enter the pragmatics of discourse; this research is

not concerned anymore with completed works of art or cultural prod-ucts, but with the comparison of judgments and critical commentsabout them: Do we use the same words and do we proceed in the same

way when we interpret a painting as when we interpret a poem? It willturn out to be much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to findclear-cut criteria that establish strict categories at this level.

Relationsat the Object Level

1. The word and the image can appear simultaneously r consecutively;this constitutes a first general distinction. In the first case, the beholderis struck by words and images at the same time; he cannot perceivethem separately. That is the case of the emblem and of comics. Inother cases, the artist is inspired by a preexisting image and writes

ekphrasis, or by a preexisting text and paints some scene in Homeror the Bible. In this

case,the beholder

onlysees a

picture,the reader

reads a poem, without necessarily perceiving the other part too.This distinction implies that we must argue from the point of view

of reception rather than production. Simultaneous appearance does

not, of course, mean that the words and image in emblems or comic

strips have been made at the same time; we know that in some cases

printers ordered etches for existing poems and sometimes poems tofit existing, given images. From the point of view of production, imageand text always appear consecutively insofar as they stem from differ-

ent artists,3 but from the point of view of reception, there is a greatdifference between cultural products which offer words and imagesat the same time and cultural products which clearly belong to one

3. In the case of one artist, this cannot be verified; strict simultaneity can, however,be postulated for calligraphy and visual poetry.



Word-and-imagerelati

A. Object-levelrelations

1. Primary 4. Secondary(simultaneous) (successive)

Dopp

Word before Image befor

image word

2a. Single 2b. Series

Fixed Moving

3a. Disposition 3b. Composition

Identical Separated

Coexistence Interreference Coreference

Figure 1. Taxonomy of word-and-image relations.



KibediVarga * Word-and-Image Relations 35

domain only, although they owe their existence to a cultural productpreviously made in another domain.

2. Our next taxonomic distinction rests upon quantity:Are we deal-ing with a single object or with several objects which together form aseries? An emblem and a poster inviting us to meditate on a moral

topic and to buy Coca-Cola, respectively, are good examples of the

former; cartoons, comic strips, or church windows having both imagesof a saint's life and inscriptions, of the latter. The problem, however, iswhat the reader-beholder is willing to understand by a series.Comics,mural paintings, and goblins on the walls of a castle should obviouslybe apprehended together, but for some beholders the similarity of

context might have the same effect. Most emblems since Alciati have

appeared in emblem books and are part of a long series of emblems,and posters often appear on a pillar, in the company of many others.In all these very different cases, it is the socially determined placeof appearance which influences the decision of the reader-beholder,whether he wants to consider an object single or part of a series. Alien-

ating such an object from its conventional place is an artistic deed-wehave known that since Duchamp's ready-mades-but the same holdsfor

singlingout

somethingthat was

originallymeant to be

partof a

series, as in the case of Roy Lichtenstein's individualized "cartoons."The place is related to meaning; the location has a semantic value. It

has long been recognized that the more the place is ideologically fixed,the less the meaning of the object has to be explicitly stated, and viceversa. The abbe Du Bos (1719), for example, made the remark thatthe "tableau de chevalet" must have a more independent meaning, its

subject matter must be more easily recognizable than, for instance,that of a painting on a church wall, simply because it can be movedfrom one

placeto

another.A further subdivision should be made in the case of verbal-visual

objects which appear as a series. Some of them are perceived by thereader-beholder asfixed, others as moving.Comics arejuxtaposed, likechurch windows, and it is the reader-beholder who moves. Cartoonsand other projected objects (films) represent moving series; the eye ofthe spectator remains more or less "fixed."

The criterion of quantity has a very interesting consequence forthe interpretation of images in general and more especially for that

of verbal-visual objects. Ever since the Greeks, European civilizationhas tended to separate argumentation rom narration, the first beinga vehicle of rationally accepted knowledge, the second a source ofundefinable and general wisdom. The point for word-and-image rela-tions is that a single object mostly has the first function and a series

mostly the second.A single object, be it a poster or an emblem, is directly persuasive;



36 PoeticsToday 10:1

it argues with us. Painters, it is well known in the history of art, haveoften tried to suggest narration in a single painting; the whole classical

debate from Poussin to Lessing hinges in part on whether the art ofspace should compete with the art of time. Prior "word" knowledge-bookish knowledge of the beholder-interpreter-can destroy the

temporal unity of a painting and introduce a narrative sequence into

it, as in the case of Poussin's famous Mane dans le desert(see Imdahl1979: 196-200). But words, as soon as they are added to images, tendto restrict the possibilities of interpretation; they "desambiguisent" the

image, make its meaning unambiguous. The floating interpretationsof narratives disappear; 4 the arguments become clear.

Series of images, on the other hand, whether they are accompaniedby words or not, we are inclined to interpret as exclusively narra-

tive, because they require us to spend time on them and to followthem.5 Even if nothing seems in reality to link the elements to whichthe successive images refer, we are tempted to accept the "post hoc

ergo propter hoc" fallacy and establish between them a chronological,hence a narrative, order.

The foregoing remarks refer merely to tendencies; they do not

implythat a

single image alwayshas a

strictly argumentative character,nor that a series shows an inherent lack of implied opinion and, as

such, of argument.The distinguishable functions of single object vis-a-vis series hold

true for two-dimensional artistic objects. In the case of three-dimen-

sional objects, like sculptures, it seems that the decision is up to the

beholder-interpreter whether to consider it argumentative or narra-

tive. As Joy Kenseth (1981) points out for Bernini's "Borghese sculp-tures," if the beholder decides to walk towards and then around the

statue, he can distinguish the subsequent phases of an action. But ifthe beholder-interpreter stands still, the effect will be more directly

persuasive; the statue will stir up emotions which in turn tend to pushhim to make decisions.6

3. After the criteria of time (simultaneity vs. successivity) and quan-

tity (single vs. plural), we can turn to those of form.7Our descriptionhere proceeds in analogy with grammatical categories.

4. Thorough examination of the frame comment in older collections like the Gesta

Romanorum shows that the same story can be used to support very different mes-

sages.5. We can, of course, find exceptions, but they seem always to refer to well-known

elements of our cultural tradition, for example, representations, on four separate

paintings, of the four virtues. See also Brilliant 1984.

6. By persuasion we mean, as in traditional rhetoric, rational as well as emotional

appeal.7. There have been several attempts to formulate a "visual grammar." See Dondis

1973 or N6th 1985: bibliography.




a. In what I would like to call word-and-image morphology,which

concerns the spatial disposition of verbal-visual objects, we can first

make a general distinction between identityand separateness.n the firstcase, word and image merge completely; in the second, the two partsare distinguishable. Within the category of unity we can establish a fur-

ther subdivision into calligraphy and "calligramme,"or visual poetry.

Calligraphyis the purest and most radical example of fusion of word

and image because in it we cannot decide whether a letter becomes an

image or an image a letter. The social and aesthetic significance of this

phenomenon is probably much greater outside the cultures which use

the Latin alphabet, especially for Islam and the Far East (see Khatibi

1974). In the European tradition, calligraphy has a kind of "disalien-

ating" effect; words are deprived of their purely utilitarian character,and the word becomes an aesthetic object. In visualpoetry,which has a

very long tradition,8 the fusion is not less complete but the "direction"

of the metamorphosis can be determined; it is always the letters and

the words which imitate the image, never the other way round. Letters

separated from the other letters of the words to which they belong can

yield new, hidden meanings, as in acrostics, but acrostics can at the

same time have a visualappeal,

as in the verbal-visualexperiments

of

Hrabanus Maurus in the Middle Ages (see Figure 2). Here the back-

ground is constituted by letters, and the letters privileged by the acros-

tic suggest an image in superposition. Modern visual poetry mostlycreates another relation: not between letters and letters, but between

the white page and words. Apollinaire's words imitate the movement

of falling raindrops or the contours of an object on the landscape of

the page; in a more abstract way, Marinetti combines words and lines

to suggest a military map (see Figure 3). The visual acrostic of former

times has a more intellectual function,whereas modern visual

poetryseems on the whole to refer more directly to our personal experienceand to our senses.

The more intensely word and image are united, the more compli-cated it becomes to perceive or read them. In the case of an emblemor illustration, it is completely legitimate to pass from the image tothe text and vice versa, to modify alternately and regularly our way of

perceiving a verbal-visual object. But in the case of a complete unionof verbal and visual elements, we cannot switch from one way of per-

ceiving to another; we in fact perceive in two different ways at thesame time. In other words, to read a visual poem is to betray it; torestore it to verbality is to eliminate half of its meaning. In spite of

this, reading the words of an acrostic, having first read the whole text,

8. See Pozzi 1981. For the twentieth century, and in a more historical and inter-

pretative vein, see also Faust 1977.




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can add something important to the meaning of the whole. The prob-lem becomes more complex as soon as we want to read modern visual

9. For a structuralist approach to visual poeven ryee various studiesray the isual partoupe

and just read. Pierre Garnier's visual poems, for instance, refuseo1979).

be read; the words do not refer to an image, they only suggest it (see

Figure 4).9In those cases where the beholder can clearly separate the words

from the image, we can distinguish three degrees of decreasing union:

9. For a structuralist approach to visual poetry see various studies by the Groupe

de Liege ( 1977, 1979).




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Figure 3. Marinetti, Apres la Marne, ]offre visita le front en auto, 1919.

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(1) Word and image coexist within the same space, as in commercial

posters. Here theimage yields the frame; the words are inscribed in

the image. (2) Word and image are separated but presented on the

sam .. Mr ine, As a relationof interrefrnce: they refero each

other. Emblems, illustrations,'0 and posters (of another kind) wouldbe good examples, but interreference characterizes also the relationbetween a painting and its title, between a text and its illustration."

10. Illustrations like Grandville'sor Dore'sof La Fontaine (or Braque'sof poemsby Rene Char) appear on the same page and are perceived simultaneously by thereader-beholder.11. The examples given here refer to the category of single objects. But in thecategory of series, comic strips as well as visual hagiographiesof the Middle Ages(see Figure 5) are characterizedby the same relations of coexistence and interref-erence.




: i 0: :7 :; 0.0::::::

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Figure 4. Pierre Garnier, Poemes.



Kib6diVarga * Word-and-ImageRelations 41

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i' tt. t U:IV(!wtt11:0i;

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Figure 5. Lifeof Saint Paul Hermit,fourteenth-century illustrated lives of saints,

Hungary. The legends read as follows: I. quomodo videt duos unum in miseriset alium in solatio magna; II. quomodo unus lupus conduxit S. Antonium adcellam S. Pauli; III. quomodo unus corvus portabat ipsis duplices cibos; IV.

quodmodo leones sepelierunt eum cum S. Antonis.




(3) Word and image are not presented on the same page but refer,

independently from each other, to the same event or thing in the natu-

ral world. The term coreferencean be used to designate the relationbetween separate verbal and visual advertising for the same productor between paintings and poems made to commemorate the same il-

lustrious event (the birth of a king's son, a battle, etc.). These three

kinds of relations can be represented by the following diagram:

coexistence interreference coreference

wi II

The third category is a borderline case in two respects. First, it tran-scends the domain of morphology and enters that of pragmatics; the

artists have worked separately, and the verbal-visual relation between

their works exists only in the mind of the reader-beholder. Malherbe

wrote an ode on Maria de Medici's arrival in the harbor of Marseilles

and Rubens made a painting about the same event, but it is we who

draw a parallel, because of the referential identity. Secondly, it is not

always easy to determine whether the two works belong to the categoryof simultaneous or

subsequent appearance;after all, we could con-

sider Rubens's painting an illustration of the ode written by Malherbe

and so leave the domain of primary word-and-image relations.

b. Morphology deals with spatial disposition, syntax with composi-tion, that is, with the nature of verbal-visual relations. There is a syntaxof sentences and there are compositional rules within an image (seeMarin 1970) which can be extended to transverbal and transvisual

situations. The most important and general issue here, however, is

the problem of hierarchy.Are all specimens of word-and-image rela-

tions hierarchically ordered? Is it impossibleto

imaginean

exampleof

word-and-image relation based on strict coordination? But if there is

only hierarchy, which part is subordinate to the other? To answer the

last question, we must again take up the criterion of quantity. In sin-

gle verbal-visual objects, image dominates only in the exceptional case

when the given image is so well known to the beholder that he does

not need any words to identify it or to grasp its meaning and message;in all other cases, image is subordinate to the word. In emblems as well

as in the image-title relation, the word explains the image; it restricts

its possibilities and fixes its meaning.This applies, of course, only to traditional objects. In modern art,

painters have made several attempts to free painting from verbal

dominance by altering the relation between the title and its visual ref-

erence. Two main lines can be distinguished. The "poetic" titles that

surrealists such as Magritte or Max Ernst gave to their paintings and

collages can be seen from our perspective as attempts to establish co-



KibediVarga * Word-and-Image Relations 43

ordination. The words, far from restricting the meaning of the image,in fact add something to it. On the other hand, some painters prefer

very general and uninteresting titles, like "landscape" or "composi-tion," in order to disappoint the reader-beholder, who now, havingfound no support in the title, can turn his full attention to the pictureand examine it more thoroughly without words.'2

In a series, the dominance of the word is less obvious. Successive

images can "explain" each other; words can be either functional and

indispensable or simply ornamental. Narrative sequences in comicscan be divided into two categories: those which cannot be understoodwithout reading the words in the balloons and those where our eyecan move quickly from one image to the other because the balloonscontain only stereotyped words (a yell, a sigh, a curse) characteristicof a given personage (see Masson 1985; Gauthier 1984: 12).

4. Up to now we have listed only word-and-image relations whereboth appear simultaneously; their hierarchical interdependence is afunction not of time but of other factors, mostly cultural ones. If weturn to secondaryrelations, relations where word and image appearsubsequently, we do not find the same type of relations. The morpho-

logical categories disappear completelyand the

syntactic problemof

hierarchy obtains here a very clear solution. That part which appearslater dominates the original part; it is in every case a statement aboutand thus a reduction of the older object. What remains is no longer a

problem of form or of structure; it is a problem of semantics.The taxonomy of secondary word-and-image relations has two cri-

teria, which depend on which part appears first and whether the ob-

jects involved are single or plural. If the word precedes the image,we speak of illustration.This term not only designates the illustration

strictosensu, like Dore's to Cervantes, La Fontaine, or Milton, but alsoindicates the kind of relation which connects innumerable paintings ofthe classical period in Europe to the Bible, to Homer and Virgil, or toOvid's Metamorphoses. he modern reader-beholder will be tempted tolist Dore in the category of primary relations, because Dore's etchingsappear on the page as he reads the Bible or Don Quixote,and, on theother hand, he would probably refuse to put Titian or Poussin in anyword-and-image category at all. This means that secondary relationsconstitute a semantic category with a historical component and not a

pragmatic category anymore.If the image precedes the word, the term used is ekphrasis r Bildge-

dicht. Specimens are less numerous, but this genre has also been wellknown since antiquity; Homer is said to have described paintings (since

12. These problems have been treated in several studies by Gombrich and espe-cially by authors dealing with surrealist painting. See also Hammacher 1973.




lost) in his epic poetry, and until the late eighteenth century, descrip-tive poetry often had the structure of a collection of related paintings

(see Mittelstadt 1967; Davies 1935). Bildgedicht efers more specificallyto poems inspired by one painting or one painter (see especially Kranz

1981); it can be seen as a free verbal variation, whereas ekphrasisorigi-nally applied to an exact description meant, to a certain degree, toevoke and substitute for the painting itself.

What comes first is necessarily unique; what comes after can be

multiplied. One image can be the source of many texts, and one textcan inspire many painters. These secondary series can become the

objects of comparative study, which makes us aware of the fact that

illustrations and ekphrasis-in fact, all manifestations of subsequent,secondary relations-are just different modes of interpretation.The

interpreter is never an exact translator; he selects and judges. And

this, precisely, happens whenever a poet speaks of a painting or a

painter illustrates a poem.We can study the history of interpretation of one famous work, like

Giorgione's Tempestan art history or Baudelaire's sonnet Les chatsor

Camus' Etranger in literary criticism; 13in both cases we have to deal

with verbalinterpretations

of visual and verbal works. But we can

extend our research and attempt to study (in words again!) visual in-

terpretation,especially of narrative texts. The numerous illustrations

of Don Quixoteare so many iconic interpretations of Cervantes' novel

and have a special narratological interest. In order to compare these

interpretations, as we would do with literary criticism, we must ask

two preliminary questions. First, which moment of the action has been

chosen for representation? This question takes us back to the classi-

cal debate of the "pregnant moment"14 and shows the disadvantage

of space against time, of fixity against continuity. Secondly, whichelements have been deleted or added? This question shows, on the

contrary, the advantage of simultaneous versus continuous represen-tation, because the painter must invent many details (the color of a

dress, the size of a rock, the species of a plant) that the writer did not

care about.Without entering into details, I would like to show by a summary

examination of one example the rich potential of such a comparative

study of visual interpretations. La Fontaine's fables have been illus-

trated many times; from the numerous illustrations of Death and the

13. For Les chats see the debate begun by Jakobson and Levi-Strauss's structuralist

analyses, as it is reviewed by Drijkoningen (1973) and by Fokkema and Kunne-

Ibsch (1977). For L'etranger see the review article by Hoek (1982). For Giorgionesee Wind 1969 and Kibedi Varga 1983: 55.

14. One of the clearest statements of the "pregnant moment" theory can be found

in Shaftesbury 1714.



Figure 6. La Fontaine's La mortet le bucheron,llustrat

':c :*

If : :

:t:




*-:I r?y?,d:'c*? ?'-:."?-92:: a

:,* 9? .*`::"-"P *(*p:: '-*T

IZj

Figure7. La Fontaine'sLa mort tlebucheron,llustratedby Grandville,1838.

Woodcutter choose four, those made respectively by Chauveau (1668),

Jean-Jacques Grandville (1838), Gustave Dore (1868), and GustaveMoreau (1886) (see Figures 6, 7, 8, and 9). Except Dore, who, in

accordance with the aesthetics of symbolism, prefers suggestion andevocation to dramatic confrontation, the illustrators choose the samecentral moment. But the mutual attitude of the two protagonists isdifferent every time. Whereas the contemporaneous illustrator followsAristotelian poetics and, insisting on action and crisis, puts the two

personages at the same level, the romanticist Grandville is preoccu-pied with morose and pathetic thoughts about Death triumphant and




Figure8. La Fontaine'sLa mort tlebucheron,llustratedby Dore, 1868.

presents a standing tableau. Moreau, finally, completely reinterpretsthe tradition and

radically changesthe

messageof La Fontaine's text

by giving Death the shape of a woman. This is, it seems, in disagree-ment with the poet's simple lesson ("Le trepas vient tout guerir / Maisne bougeons d'ou nous sommes / Plut6t souffrir que mourir / C'estla devise des hommes"): Death appearing as a seducing woman can-not inspire fear in the same straightforward manner as Grandville'sskeleton is meant to do.

The choice of attributes of course supports the interpretation. Chau-




Figure9. La Fontaine'sLamort tlebucheron,llustratedby Moreau,1886.

veau has only a very sketchy background, in order not to divert atten-tion from the plot; Grandville introduces an owl and a tower in ruinswhich are not in La Fontaine's text but which reinforce the sensationof mortality; Dore's mysterious forest is much more important than

its verbal equivalent, which is minimal; and Moreau's nature seems tohave the same ambiguity as his feminine Death.

The comparative study of the visual interpretations of a verbal work




of art is the exact counterpart of the comparative study of the verbal

interpretations of a visual work of art.15

Metarelations

Metarelations are "indirect" relations: they do not allow us to paral-lel words and images; they function between people who create cul-

tural artifacts of a verbal or visual kind and/or comment on them. A

comprehensive taxonomy should include psychological and biographi-cal material: How are word-and-image relations to be described if

they exist inside an artist, as in the case of Doppelbegabung?What is

the relevance for word-and-image studies of the numerous examplesof friendship or hostility between writers and painters (Diderot andGreuze, Baudelaire and Delacroix, Zola and Cezanne, Reverdy and

Picasso, etc.)? 16

On the whole, however, the term metarelationsdesignates in the

first place relations between comments made separately on imagesand texts and the historical, philological, and other methods underly-

ing these comments. One could, for instance, extend the comparative

study of La Fontaine interpretations to both visual and verbal com-

ments andtry

to findparallels

between the visual and verbal methods

of commenting. This relation no longer concerns the artistic object,

only the comments made on it. The border between secondary rela-

tions on the object level and metarelations is not always easy to trace.

We can relate Bildgedichtestrictly to their object, but we can more or

less neglect this object, a given painting, if we are mainly interested in

the style and vocabulary of the comments (mostly made according to

different methods).It would be tedious to sum up all the well-known and current ap-

proaches in art history and literary history which could and should becompared here. Lanson (1965 [1910]) insisted that literary history ismuch nearer to the history of art than to general history. For older

paintings and poetry, the study of rhetorical methods is extremelyuseful, because both painters and poets borrowed their theoretical

vocabulary from classical rhetoric; there have even been attempts tomake a strict and detailed application of rhetoric to pictorial art.17We

15. Louis Marin (1970) does this when he compares three descriptions (by Fenelon,Felibien, and

Baudet)of one

painting.16. I have the impression that this point has not been sufficiently studied, becauseof the separation of art and literature departments in our universities.17. See Coypel 1711. Rhetorical inventio and dispositiohave their more or less strict

analogies in pictorial theory (see Kibedi Varga 1983, 1984). The main problem,however, is mostly not even hinted at in classical treatises: Whether the figures of

elocutio, that is, of style, can be rigorously applied to images. Can they be "trans-lated"? What is a visual metaphor? On this last topic see Aldrich 1968 and Johns1984.




Figure 10. St. Francis and Episodesof His Life, thirteenth century. Florence,Basilica de S. Croce.




saw earlier that persuasion is not simply an affair of words and thatthe mixture of argumentative and narrative modes characterizes not

only pieces of eloquence or poetry but also images. The portrait of St.Francis of Assisi (Figure 10) looks at us and tries to convince us, andthe narrative episodes flanking his portrait are as many evidences, lociwith a persuasive value: He who lived thus, he who cured, helped,wrought miracles, should be believed and adored. Narration is sub-mitted to persuasion.

The comparative study of comments and methods should not, of

course, stop with ancient times. Interesting stylistic parallels can bediscovered in symbolist writings on poetry and painting. And after the

great wave of structuralist activities, such synthesizing works as thoseof Wendy Steiner (1982) and Winfried N6th (1985) show the impactof modern literary theory and especially of semiotics on this kind ofresearch.

Among the problems we have to deal with in this section on meta-

relations, the most general ones transcend taxonomy and go back to

methodology. Can a word be translated completely into an image andvice versa? Or is every parallel an interpretation, that is, an admissionof the

impossibilityof translation? When we

interpret,we

betray;we

delete and add. There are some fundamental epistemological limitsto our endeavor (see Boehm 1978).

The problem of hierarchy is narrowly related to the problem oflimits. Can metarelations be formulated only with words? Are verbaltools superior, then, to the visual ones, and more complex? It hasbeen said that image does not know the negation; that was one ofthe many things Magritte wanted to "say"with his painting Ceci n'est

pas une pipe. Again, it has been said that image misses autoreflexivity.

But intertextuality and irony are not limited to words: Duchamp, aswell as many modern posters, is the proof. And Hans Hollander was

probably right when he remarked that Magritte's major achievementwas to create visual philosophy.

If we maintain as essential the difference between translationas a

perfect and interpretation s a partial analogy, we can postulate that in-

terpretation on the whole characterizes word-and-image relations onthe object level, whereas it might be possible to achieve translation insome fields on the meta-level, for instance, to have a precise and uni-

fied terminology. It should be possible to define terms like compositionor metaphoron a sufficiently high level of abstraction to fit both verbaland visual products. But this means, of course, that we cut the knotand decide that on the meta-level we use only words (or either wordsor images, but not both together).

Thus, the immense domain of metarelations comprehends bio-

graphical points as well as stylistic research, but it extends at the same




time to the question of the ontological status of interpretation and the

potential autonomy of visual experience.

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poetica visual

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