Study no 1
The Archetypal Forest (Point Lobos, California)
There are things in nature that captivate my imagination with such a sense of wonderment that I can feel in a state of enchantment, so much so that my mind becomes quite still and I feel transported into the realm of nature's core. It is the same place I do believe, where myths come from.
Ekphrasis is a word I had been unfamiliar with until I did an in depth investigation into the Romantic poet, John Keats, who lived a fascinating, but very short life. More will be said on Keats at a later time, for I hold great tenderness towards him and he continually gives me much to contemplate.
I was very interested in discovering the roots of this curious word. Ekphrasis stems from the Greek ekphrazein. It is generally an elaborately detailed description of an object, real or imagined. Ek translates as "out" and phrassein means "to speak". In classical Greek rhetoric this word became associated with the words fantasia as well as enargeia, another rhetorical term for a visually powerful description recreating an entitity, object or a person. With such acute vividness the description can be so successful as to cause it to become alive in the mind of the reader or viewer. It is also a word that is linked to "sister arts", a rivalry between the visual and the verbal art forms tracing back to the Roman poet, Horace (65-8 BC), who stated that poetry is a speaking picture while painting is silent poetry. Jean Hagstrum writes that ekphrasis "gives voice and language to the otherwise mute object" (Hagstrum, Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray, 18 note).
I was very interested in discovering the roots of this curious word. Ekphrasis stems from the Greek ekphrazein. It is generally an elaborately detailed description of an object, real or imagined. Ek translates as "out" and phrassein means "to speak". In classical Greek rhetoric this word became associated with the words fantasia as well as enargeia, another rhetorical term for a visually powerful description recreating an entitity, object or a person. With such acute vividness the description can be so successful as to cause it to become alive in the mind of the reader or viewer. It is also a word that is linked to "sister arts", a rivalry between the visual and the verbal art forms tracing back to the Roman poet, Horace (65-8 BC), who stated that poetry is a speaking picture while painting is silent poetry. Jean Hagstrum writes that ekphrasis "gives voice and language to the otherwise mute object" (Hagstrum, Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray, 18 note).
Point Lobos
What I find so fascinating about the mysterious tree is its own ability to evoke an ethereal* lyricism in which an inner voice leads me by the hand to a place of allegory that is mythical, feminine, dark, brooding, dangerous, ecstatic, beautiful and archetypal**.
Fin.
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ek•phra•sis (ˈekfrəsɪs)
noun
(rhetoric) a description of a visual work of art
~ Collins on line Dictionary
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e•the• re• al |iˈθi(ə)rēəl|
adjective
1 extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world : her ethereal beauty | a singer who has a weirdly ethereal voice.
• heavenly or spiritual : ethereal, otherworldly visions.
2 Chemistry (of a solution) having diethyl ether as a solvent.
~ On line Computer Dictionary
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ar•ch•etype |ˈärk(i)ˌtīp|
noun
a very typical example of a certain person or thing : the book is a perfect archetype of the genre.
• an original that has been imitated : the archetype of faith is Abraham.
• a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology : mythological archetypes of good and evil.
• Psychoanalysis (in Jungian psychology) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious.
~ On line Computer Dictionary
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