Ekphrasis

In helping explain Rosslyn Redux, I sometimes refer to it as an ekphrastic experiment. While this website (and its various accompanying social media sidekicks, stage performances, etc.) focus a fair bit on narrating our adventure looking for, purchasing, restoring, and building a life at this historic property, the most meaningful and enduring impact of this life experience comes from the ways this property has changed us.

ekphrasis: a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art (Source: Merriam-Webster)

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The verbal representation of visual representation (Source: James Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (University of Chicago Press, 1993) via College of Liberal Arts | Oregon State University)

The word’s etymological roots are Greek with ek (“out”) and phrazein (“to declare” or “to make known”) offering some foundational insight. I understand that originally the idea communicated through the word was broader than our modern use as a literary work that describes or explores a work of visual art (often just a poem about a painting). In early use ekphrasis apparently referred to descriptive language so vivid and evocative that it blurred the boundaries between experiencing something itself versus having it described in language.

Although “ekphrasis” (also spelled “ecphrasis“) is a relatively new entry in our dictionary, the practice of using words to comment on a piece of visual art is an ancient one. One of the earliest and most commonly cited forms of ekphrasis occurs in The Iliad, when Homer provides a long and discursive account of the elaborate scenes embossed on the shield of Achilles. It should be no surprise, then, that the term ekphrasis derives from Greek, where it literally means “description” and was formed by combining the prefix ex- (“out”) with the verb “phrazein” (“to point out or explain”). (Source: Merriam-Webster)

Although my understanding of (and interest in) ekphrasis is best understood by poking through my posts, I broadly use the idea to refer to the representation of a visual artwork within another (typically literary) artwork. I’m especially drawn to the encounter between written word and visual representation, at once dialogic and speculative, as a way to explore and engage and even to develop a relationship that transcends a merely visual cataloguing. For this is what I have experienced in my experience with Rosslyn!

Ekphrasis Archive

The following Rosslyn Redux posts, explicitly or indirectly, explore the experience of ekphrasis during our stewardship of Rosslyn in Essex, New York.

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