Poétique de la toile vide, ou l’envers de l’ekphrasis

Abstract

A plastic narcissism of imitation culminates in the trompe l’oeil in painting, in ekphrasis in literature. What then does renouncing the description of a painting mean for the one who writes? Through the study of Nerval’s « El Desdichado », the pre-original edition of Balzac’s Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, of E.T.A. Hoffman’s « Salvator Rosa », of Daudet’s Trésor d’Arlatan, a few of Rimbaud’s verses and some panels by Hergé, we can discern five types of imaginings around the empty canvas, organized according to a dynamic that renders the painting all the more active in the fiction as its description is absent; and motivated by the creation of a relationship of proximity, of complicity even, between author and reader, engaging shared feelings or values.