Crossings of Word and Image

Abstract

The title of Dennis Schmidt's book, Between Word and Image, could hardly be more appropriate. For this title names the very space in which Schmidt's analysis is situated, the space that it addresses and puts into question, though not without itself also entering that space. This same space, the space named by the title, expressed in the words and image, is also presented in the image shown on the cover of the book just above the title. It is an image of a work by Paul Klee entitled Bilderbuch (Image-book or Picture-book). This work depicts several plicated leaves of a book on which there are some figures that appear more like images and others that seem more like signs or letters. Thus, the image represented in Klee's work is such to open, within itself, the space between and image; and, in turn, an image set over against the words of the title, it again delimits this same space. Therefore, on the cover of Schmidt's book, at its outer gate, its threshold, the space between and image is, first of all, named, that is, expressed in the words of the title, then shown in the image of Klee's artwork, and then, still further, displayed the very space between the words of the title and the image of the artwork. Hence, before one even opens the book, before one passes through the outer gate, over the threshold, one will already have witnessed manifold presentations of the space that Schmidt's book will interrogate, presentations folded together on the cover like the leaves of the book in Klee's artwork. This configuration of presentations attests in advance to both the rigorous coherence of Schmidt's project and its far-reaching import.When one then opens the book, one at the very outset a series of four questions-or sets of questions-that are put forth the primary concerns of the book. One of these questions is precisely that of the relation of and image. Of specific concern is the capacity of the to extend across the space separating it from the image. Schmidt explains: as soon one speaks of images, a complication sets to work insofar one translates the image into the word (3). The problem is that, in most, if not all, translation, there is loss; what is unique to the image resists translation and ultimately is left behind in the transition to the word. The never quite extends completely across the space separating it from the image. Always there is something about the image that escapes its grasp.Consider one of the simplest, most elemental images, that of the blue of the sky. What we call the blue of the sky refuses to be captured by these words. What we behold when, amidst brilliant sunlight, we turn our gaze upward, skyward, always somehow attests that it surpasses what can be said of it, even if by the very nature of the case this attestation cannot itself be put into words. The blue that is precisely the diurnal sky withdraws from whatever is said of it; it remains always on the yonder side of the signification put forth in and through words. In the case of images within an artwork, which is Schmidt's primary concern, the incapacity of words is still more evident: if even the blue of the sky escapes our words, how much more must the blues of a Picasso painting elude our discourse. Or, on the contrary, is it-as Schmidt suggests-in painting that the image finds its closest proximity to the word (9)? In this case, Klee's work might well prove to be exemplary, especially those works in which Klee actually inscribes linguistic or protolinguistic elements on the image so that they literally belong to the work.Schmidt maintains that it is this incapacity that has been dismissed or overlooked in the traditional philosophical assertion of the authority of the logos. In other words, staking its claims entirely on the logos, philosophy regards whatever might escape the logos-whatever is held back on the side of the image-as having no pertinence with regard to truth. …