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Sounding Out Ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Andrew Laird
Affiliation:
University of Newcastleupon Tyne

Extract

The term ecphrasis in ancient doctrine denoted any poetic or rhetorical description, including descriptions of landscape (topothesia), buildings, battles, and storms. In recent critical idiom it has been narrowed to refer specifically to literary descriptions of visual works of art. This critical focus indicates the interest of the problem of comparing the two media of literature and the visual arts. The great benefit of considering ‘ecphrasis’ in the modern sense is that it forces us to confront both the nature of the visual artistic medium and that of the verbal medium describing it.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Andrew Laird 1993. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I would like to thank Sandrine Dubel, Denis Feeney, Don P. Fowler, Tony Woodman and the Editor, who carefully read earlier versions of this piece, for a number of very helpful comments, criticisms and suggestions. I have also benefited from conversations with Mark Edwards, Edith Hall, and David West.

2 Here ‘ecphrasis’ will be italicized when the term is used in the ancient sense. On conceptions of ecphrasis in Greek and Latin rhetoric and poetry, see Baldwin, C. S., Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics (1924), 203Google Scholar; Downey, Glanville, ‘Ecphrasis’, in Reallexicon (iv) (1959), 922–43Google Scholar; Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik (3rd edn, 1915), 396Google Scholar; Kennedy, G., Greek Rhetoric under the Christian Emperors (1983)Google Scholar; Lucian, , Quomodo historia scribenda est 57Google Scholar; Horace, Ars Poetica 1–19; Quintilian IV.3.12–13. The Servian corpus on Aeneid x.653–5 offers ancient views of ecphrasis / descriptio and its relation to narrative or poetic discourse in general.

3 These principal concerns are listed by G. Ravenna, ‘L’ekphrasis poetica di opere d'arte in Latino: Temi e problemi’, in Quaderni dell'Istituto Filologica Latina Padova 3 (1974), 152Google Scholar.

4 See e.g. Jucker, H., Vom Verhältnis der Römer zur bildenden Kunst der Griechen (1950)Google Scholar; Klingner, F., ‘Catulls Peleus-Epos’, 1Studien zur griechischen und römischen Literatur (1956), 156224Google Scholar.

5 See Friedlander's, P. introduction to Joannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentarius (1912)Google Scholar; Ravenna, op. cit. (n. 3), and S. Goldhill, ‘Reading, seeing, meaning: the poetics of Hellenistic ecphrasis, in the forthcoming C.U.P. volume on Greek art and texts edited by Osborne and Goldhill.

6 Fowler, D. P., ‘Narrate or describe: the problem of ecphrasis’, JRS 81 (1991), 2535Google Scholar. (I will provide some account of Roman views of that relation in J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture.) Fowler and Ravenna provide ample bibliography on ecphrasis/ecphrasis respecively. Additional bibliography on ecphrasis in later literature can be found in Comparative Criticism — A Yearbook 4 (1982)Google Scholar and Krieger, M., Ekphrasis (1992)Google Scholar.

7 Words like ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ can be hazardously anachronistic in discussion of ancient texts and categories: see Gill, C. and Wiseman, T. P. (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The terms here serve only to distinguish between ecphrases which present works of art otherwise known and attested, and those (the majority of literary ecphrases) which do not.

8 SirPhillimore, Robert, Laocoon — with Preface and Notes (1874), 144Google Scholar. The third Earl of Shaftesbury remarked in 1711: ‘Comparison and parallel run between painting and poetry because of the pictoribus atque poetis etc. and the ut pictura poesis almost ever absurd and at best constrained, lame, or defective.’ Rand, B. (ed.), Second Characters (1914), 141Google Scholar.

9 It seems that Phillimore here means enargeia — ‘vividness’. Enargeia and energeia were confused textually or associated conceptually in ancient as well as later times: Longinus does not use the term ἐνέϱϒεια, but ἐνἑϱϒεια is discussed in De Sublimhate 21.8. For ἐνέϱϒεια, see Aristotle, Rhetoric III.11 (1411 b31).

10 Furbank, P. N., Reflections on the Word ‘Image’ (1970), passim argues this caseGoogle Scholar.

11 Examples of these misapprehensions: ‘Catullus may have been thinking of a particular representation of the Ariadne story in art’, Fordyce, C. J. (ed.), Catullus (1961), 273n.Google Scholar; ‘Bacchus comes in with his rowdy throng, seeking the love of Ariadne. Once more all is young, vigorous, full of joy. Perhaps this is the scene Catullus meant originally to have described on the coverlet’, M. C. J. Putnam, ‘The art of Catullus 64’, H.S.C.P. 65 (1961), 165–206; cf. Jenkyns, R., ‘Catullus and the idea of a masterpiece’, Three Classical Poets (1982), 122 and 137Google Scholar.

12 See e.g. G. Pasquali, ‘Il carmen 64 di Catullo’, S.I.F.C. (1920), 1–23, at 19; C. Muller's commentary (1836) suggests only the contents of 50–75 and 251–64 are represented on the vestis, the rest being digression.

13 For discussions of Ariadne's appearance in ancient art, see T. B. L. Webster, ‘The myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus’, G&R 13 (1966), 21–31. Maiuri, A., Roman Painting (1953)Google Scholar notes Ariadne was the most popular subject to be depicted in Pompeian art. Perseus was the next most frequent, and then, significantly, figures of Maenads (cf. 64.60, 64.251).

14 The comparison is only to the other ecphrases extant in Greek and Latin literature.

15 This is partly because Homer provides specific details of the shield's physical design, e.g. 481–2, 519, 549, 574, 607. For similar effects in the ecphrasis of Aeneas' shield, see Gransden, K. W., Virgil. Aeneid Book 8 (1976), 162–3Google Scholar and West, D., ‘Cemere erat … The Shield of Aeneas’, in Harrison, S. J. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid (1990), 295304Google Scholar.

16 See remarks quoted in n. 11 above.

17 For a consideration of how far visual narratives can accommodate conventions of linguistic narrative, particularly ‘flash-forwards’ and ‘flashbacks’ see Goodman, N., ‘Twisted tales’, in Mitchell, W. G. T. (ed.), On Narrative (1981), 99115Google Scholar. S. Chatman, ‘What novels can do that films can't’, idem, 117–36 is also helpful.

18 I am not counting discursive expositions indirectly prompted by imagined works of art like the narrative of Daphnis and Chloe or Eumolpus’ verses on the painting of the capture of Troy in Petronius, Satyricon 89.

19 Gransden, op. cit. (n. 15), 162 notes, ‘Only on a frieze, like the Bayeux tapestry, can the viewer's experience be controlled as the poet's controls the reader's.’ More to the point, the Bayeux tapestry combines a written text with the pictorial one.

20 Lessing, Laocoon (Section 18) emphasizes the distinction prescriptively: succession of time is the domain of the poet, as space is the domain of the painter. On the relation this question has to the distinction between narrative time and story time, see Fowler, op. cit. (n. 6), 29 and Genette, G., Narrative Discourse (trans. Lewin, , 1980), 33f. and 93fGoogle Scholar.

21 Kroll, W., Catull (1922), ad loc. cites Ciris 165f. as a parallelGoogle Scholar; A. Pease on Aeneid IV.301 finds other such Bacchante comparisons.

22 Tony Woodman has pointed out to me that the phrase saxea effigies is used of a speaking statue in Tacitus, Annals II.61.

23 This, along with the mention of Ariadne at 592 (in the context of material artistry) suggests a possible link with Catullus 64.

24 On the programmatic nature of the mise–en–abyme here, see F. Cairns, WS NF 18 (1984), 89–113, at 102–5.

25 A. S. F. Gow (1968), ad loc. on 34.

26 op. cit. (n.6), 29.

27 On these see Zeitlin, F. I., Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes (Filol. ecritica 44) (1982)Google Scholar.

28 G. O. Hutchinson(1985) on the Septem (369–652 ad loc.) remarks: ‘The speeches inscribed for the figures are unique … Letters are used on shields only to identify city or owner. It is true that painters representing shields might use the space for statements of their own (Chase 110f., Paus. 5.19.4); and that people on vases are sometimes given little speeches of this kind (Kretschmer, , Die griechischen Vaseinenschriften, 86ff.Google Scholar) A. wishes the figures to embody as vividly as possible the aspirations of each hero.’

29 The ram here might be compared to Myron's representation of a cow (A.P. 9) and generally the topos in epigram of statues that might speak. See Fua, O., ‘L'idea dell'opera d'arte ‘vivente’ e la buccula di Mirone nell' epigramma greco e latino’, Rivista di cultura classica e medievale 15 (1973/1), 4955Google Scholar and Zanker, G., Realism in Alexandrian Poetry (1987), 44–5Google Scholar.

30 Compare Socrates’ comparison of writing with painting in Phaedrus 275, and this excerpt from an ecphrasis by Guarino, in a letter written in 1430 to thank a friend for the gift of a carved inkstand: ‘Subinde delectatione non possum cum imagunculas inspecto et vivas in argilla facies … ungues, digiti, molles e terra capilli visentem fallunt. Cum oris hiatum inspicio, emanaturum vocem stultus expecto…’, Sabbadini, R. (ed.), Epistolario di Guarino Veronese 2 (1916)Google Scholar, III. Baxandall, M., Giotto and the Orators (1988), 92 notes a related conceit in Byzantine ecphrases: poets warn readers to be silent in case their utterances break in upon the world of the pictures they describeGoogle Scholar.

31 Compare the image of Apollo in Philostratus, Imagines 1.26.34 and the ambiguous ἐτώοια μοхθίζοντι in Theocritus, quoted above. Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is laden with such irony throughout. The praise of Herodotus’ use of second person address in De Sublimitate 26.2 shows how the device can enhance the vividness of a topographical description.

32 ‘The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis’, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature Volume II (1982), 187fGoogle Scholar.

33 Again cf. Keats: ‘What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?/Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter’. See Zeitlin, F. I., ‘On ravishing urns: Keats in his tradition’, in Higgins, L. and Silver, B. (eds), Rape and Representation (1991), 278302Google Scholar. The ecphrasis in Aen. V.520f., discussed by West, D., ‘On serial narration and on the Julian star’, in Proceedings of the Virgil Society (1992)Google Scholar, involves a cloak and ends on a sonic note: ‘saevitque canum latratus in auras’. Serial narration can be an important feature of ‘disobedient’ ecphrasis, but identification of it does not ease or make redundant the problem of the ‘mingling’ of description and interpretation in ecphrasis, even when (as here in Aen. V.520f.) there is no apparent deviant focalization.

34 e.g. Kroll, op. cit. (n. 21), ad loc. See also Jenkyns, op. cit. (n. 11), 123 for other references.

35 For structural punctuation of ecphrases, see Barchiesi, M., Il tempo e il testo (1987), 8091Google Scholar. Moschus and Apollonius have resemblances of sense rather than diction between the beginning and ends of their ecphrases (Europa 37, 62; Arg. 1.721–3,768). ‘Plastic’ frames more similar to Catullus' can be found in Theocritus' description of the ivy-garland (1.29, 1.55) and Iliad XVIII where Ocean forms the rim of the shield (478–89, 607–9) although the introductions and conclusions are not as verbally similar as they are in Catullus.

36 This conjunction appears in Quintilian, Inst. Or., e.g. IV.2.22: ‘plurimis figuris erit varianda expositio’.

37 See OLD (1982), s.v. uario, 1 and 2, for examples of both senses.

38 See Lausberg, H., Manuel de retórica literaria (Sp. trans. Riesco, , 1975)Google Scholar.

39 Varro, De Lingua Latina VIII.71, IX.55.

40 e.g. at 1.1.15, 1.2.16, 11.1.23; 11.3.18. For Seneca's technical terms, see Bardon, H., Le Vocabulaire de la critique littéraire chez Séneque le rhéteur (1940)Google Scholar.

41 One example (suggested to me by David Norbrook) comes from a letter to Milton written by Andrew Marvell in 1614 in which he praises Milton's Defensio Secunda published that year: ‘When I consider how equally it turns and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajans columne in whose winding ascent we see imboss'd the severall Monuments of your learned victoryes.’

42 op. cit. (n. 21), ad loc.

43 Brink, C. O., Horace on Poetry (1971), 96Google Scholar. v. 14–16 ad loc. The verses run: ‘inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis/purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter/adsuitur pannus …” We might tentatively compare ‘tincta tegit roseo conchyli purpura fuco’ in Cat. 64.49. Compare verbs like splendeat, emineant, niteant, eminet, deceat in the passages of literary and rhetorical criticism quoted here with the words conveying the brilliance of Peleus’ palace in 44–8, noted by Quinn, K., Catullus: The Poems (1970) ad loc: fulgenti, splendent, candet, collucent, splendida and politumGoogle Scholar. Two senses of ὲνάϱγεια / ἐναϱγής could explain this: these words are used to convey clarity and brilliance of views and objects as well as of words (Liddell and Scott (1968), s.v. ὲνάϱγεια, 2 and 3.556).

44 Inst.Or. VIII.5.26: ‘nec pictura, in qua nihil circumlitum est, eminet; ideoque artifices etiam, cum plura in unam tabulam opera contulerunt, spatiis distinguunt, ne umbrae in corpore cadant.’

45 Aristotle gives πλοϰή a different sense (n. 59).

46 See Brink, ad loc. on Horace, Ars Poetica 7, 9, 21, 361 for further examples.

47 Ion of Chios (fr. 8 von Blumenthal).

48 On this saying, quoted by Plutarch, De audiendis poetis 17f–18 and Quaest. conv, 9.15, see Spencer, T. J. B., ‘The imperfect parallel betwixt painting and poetry’, Greece and Rome 7.2 (1960), 173–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 175. Yates, F. A., The Art of Memory (1966), 28Google Scholar thinks Simonides’ appearance in Cicero, De Oratore II.86, as a mnemotechnician must be related to his commutatio comparing poetry and painting. This is obviously speculative, but of interest insofar as the imagines prescribed for orators to aid memory are not unlike ecphrases (cl.Ad Her. III.28–40).

49 See Servian corpus on Aen. VIII.625. Propertius brings out the difference between art forms by demonstration as well as comment (as in III.2. 17f.). 11.12 praises the aptness of visual representations of Amor, but the last couplet challenges the painter: ‘qui caput et digitos et lumina nigra puellae, / et canat ut soleant molliter ire pedes?’

50 Granarolo, J., ‘Catulle — rhéteur’, in Chevallier, R. (ed.), Colloque sur la Rhétorique — Calliope 1 (1979)Google Scholar, considers Catullus’ education and the relation between lyric and rhetoric. See also Bardon, H., L'art de la composition chez Catulle (1943)Google Scholar; Bayet, J., Catulle, la Grèce et Rome, Entretiens Hardt (1953), 33–6Google Scholar; Clarke, M. L., Rhetoric at Rome (1953), 1085CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kennedy, G., The Art of Persuasion in the Roman World (1972)Google Scholar, and Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (1985), 143fGoogle Scholar. Granarolo suggests an Asiatic influence in Ariadne's lament and in Poems 65–6 to Hortensius. See the discussion of Asianism in Nisbet, R. G. M., ‘Cicero's speeches’, in Dorey, T. A. (ed.), Cicero (1965)Google Scholar. The loud volume at which Ariadne speaks (125, 202) might have been a feature of this trend in oratory: cf. H. Caplan in a note to his trans, of Ad Herennium (1981), 193.

51 Prog. 37.13–14, ed. Rabe (1926).

52 22.19–23.6, ed. Rabe (1913).

53 See Dionigi, I., Lucrezio: le parole e le cose, 24Google Scholar and Feeney, D., ‘The taciturnity of Aeneas’, in Harrison, S. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid (1990), 171 on rhetorical terms in Aen. IVGoogle Scholar.

54 Ciris 9 (‘coeptum detexere munus’), especially the lengthy play on weaving at 21f. (‘sed magno intexens, si fas est indicere peplo’ etc.) and 339 are especially striking. Cf. Kenney, E. J., Cupid and Psyche (1990)Google Scholar on Apuleius Met. v.16.5 ad loc. R. O. A. M. Lyne (ed.), Ciris (1978), ad loc. offers material on literary comparisons between poetry and weaving. See J. McIntosh Snyder, ‘The web of song: weaving imagery in Homer and the lyric poets’, CJ 76(1980–1981), 193–6.

55 Again see Lyne, op. cit. (n. 54) and the OLD s.v. textum 1b.

56 I am taking into account the serial narration noted by West. Generally this ecphrasis functions differently from the one in Cat. 64. Note, for instance, the operation of the simile at VIII.691–2 — ‘pelago credas innare revulsas/Cycladas aut montis concurrere montibus altos…’ This explicitly impressionistic observation imputed to us by credas is quite unlike the Maenad simile at 64.61 discussed earlier.

57 cf. Servian corpus ad loc: ‘NON ENNARABILE TEXTUM bene “non enarrabile”’ etc. Lazzarini, C., ‘Elementi di una poetica serviana’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 7 (1989), 56109Google Scholar, cites this to show that the relation between narrative time and story time was of interest to Servius. Fowler, op. cit. (n. 6), 26f., notes the problem of time in describing artworks.

58 Ariadne's garments fall off (63–6); the thread she gives Theseus (113–15); Ariadne's tegmina (129); the imagined purple bedspread (163); the ship's cable (174); the redimita frons of the Eumenides (193–4); the funestam vestem of T.'s sails (234); the twined serpent belts of the Bacchantes (258); Chiron's garlands (283); Penios's lattice–work (292); the garb (vestis and vittae) of the Parcae (306f.); weaving of the Parcae (311f.); the knot of love between Peleus and Thetis (334–5); the thread around Thetis’s neck (377); as well as 50–1 and 265–6.

59 πλοϰή in Aristotle, Poetics 1456a is equivalent to δέσιϛ (‘complication’) in plot.

60 e.g. Ellis ad loc.

61 cf. Rudens 205f.: ‘Ita hic sola solis locis conpotita … Nec mi obviam homo quisquam’.

62 J. C. Bramble, ‘Structure and ambiguity in Catullus LXIV’, PCPS 16 (1970), 22–41, considers aspects of the question for this poem; Fowler, op. cit. (n. 6), looks at the relation between ecphrasis and narrative as a whole.

63 Gransden, op. cit. (n. 15), 162–3.