Ontological ekphrasis Elena Shvarts’ poem “Memory of the Fresco of Fra Beato Angelico ‘Baptism’ at the Sight of the Head of John the Baptist in Rome”

Abstract

Scientific interest in the problem of ekphrasis and the peculiarities of ekphrastic description has increased over the past decades. The article analyzes the ekphrastic poetics of E. Shvarts’ poem “Memory of Fra Beato Angelico’s fresco ‘Baptism’ at the sight of the head of John the Baptist in Rome”. The aim of this article is to identify the intermedial correlation of the verbal level with the visual level, revealing the ontological ekphrasis in this poem. The author of the article examined how the three levels of the image in the poem correlate in their ratio: artistic text, frescoes’ visual images, and symbolism (cultural codes). Ontological ekphrasis helps the poet find new ways to reveal traditional Christian themes. Visual images of the early Renaissance fresco acquire an ontological status in the text (dove, “rose,” gray color, water, fog, coal [fire], flower, river, blood, wine, relics [the head of John the Baptist], Lapis Niger, dawn). Through symbols and cultural codes, these images reveal the metaphysics of Baptism from a historical, cultural, and modern perspective, leaving the reader with options for interpretation. In the spirit of the early Renaissance artist himself, Shvarts ontologically recodes the medieval symbolism of Baptism, immersing it into thereality, perceiving Christian history as a struggle of life and death, culminating in the eschatological hope of the Second Coming of Christ. Fra Angelico turned out to be in tune with Shvarts precisely as an artist of the early Renaissance, in the painter’s movement of medieval mysticism to Renaissance ontologism and humanism.