Description; in Literature and Other Media (Studies in Intermediality)

Description in Literature and Other Media

Studies in Intermediality (SIM) 2 Executive Editor:

Walter Bernhart, Graz Series Editors:

Lawrence Kramer, New York Hans Lund, Lund Ansgar Nünning, Gießen Werner Wolf, Graz The book series STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM), launched in 2006, is devoted to scholarly research in the field of Intermedia Studies and, thus, in the broadest sense, addresses all phenomena involving more than one communicative medium. More specifically, it concerns itself with the wide range of relationships established among the various media and investigates how concepts, of a more general character, find diversified manifestations and reflections in the different media. The book series is related to, and part of, the activities of the Intermediality Programme of the Humanities Faculty at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz/Austria. STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM) publishes, generally on an annual basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional dimensions and prospects of Intermedia Studies on an international scale: conference proceedings, university lecture series, collections of scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual topics reflecting more general issues.

Description

in Literature and Other Media

Edited by

Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Cover Illustration: Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple, Paris (c. 1838). Daguerreotype (12,9 x 16,3 cm). Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2310-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands

Contents

Preface .............................................................................................. vii

Introduction Werner Wolf Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation: General Features and Possibilities of Realization in Painting, Fiction and Music .................................................................................................. 1

Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media Ansgar Nünning Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction.............................................................................................91 Walter Bernhart Functions of Description in Poetry ................................................. 129 Arno Heller Description in American Nature Writing ....................................... 153 Doris Mader The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’? ........ 179 Klaus Rieser For Your Eyes Only: Some Thoughts on the Descriptive in Film ............................................................................................. 215

Description in Visual Media Johann Konrad Eberlein Dürer’s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction: A Contribution to the History of Descriptive Techniques in the Visual Arts ..................................... 239 Götz Pochat “Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”? Description in the Visual Arts ...................................................................................... 265 Susanne Knaller Descriptive Images: Authenticity and Illusion in Early and Contemporary Photography ............................................................ 289

Description in Music Michael Walter Musical Sunrises: A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential of Instrumental Music ..................................................................... 319

Notes on Contributors ..................................................................... 337

Preface Intermediality studies in a broad sense, besides dealing with artefacts that involve more than one medium, are also concerned with phenomena that can be observed in several media and/or arts. This ‘transmedial’ perspective opens a rich mine of medial comparisons both from a systematic and a historical perspective. The present volume, the second in the series Studies in Intermediality, continues this transmedial approach which already informed the first volume, dedicated to Framing in Literature and Other Media (2006). This time the transmedial phenomenon under scrutiny is description. Description has traditionally been discussed as a monomedial and indeed monogeneric phenomenon from a decidedly monodisciplinary perspective. It is a curious fact that even within literary studies, and more precisely within narratology, description has received much less attention than, for instance, narrativity. Indeed, in a recent introduction to narratology, Monika Fludernik’s Einführung in die Erzähltheorie (2006), this lack of critical attention concerning description was again mentioned and further research in the field registered as an important desideratum. The scholarly neglect of description is all the more surprising in comparison to, e. g., much-researched narrativity, as description also constitutes a major ‘semiotic macro-mode’ or ‘macro-frame’ which by far transcends the boundaries of narrative texts, or even of literature in general. One aim of the present volume is to contribute to filling this conspicuous research lacuna and to generally rekindle critical attention to description as a major phenomenon which is in fact relevant not only to novels and short stories but also, for instance, to lyric poetry, film, the visual arts, and arguably even to music. The introductory essay in this volume therefore offers a detailed theoretical discussion of description, which is from the very start conceived of as a transmedial phenomenon applicable to more media than merely literature. The ensuing contributions are dedicated to individual media both from a theoretical and historical point of view. The volume originated from a cycle of lectures held at the University of Graz in the summer term of 2005 as a part of the Intermediality Programme of the university’s Humanities Faculty and presents a selection from the lectures given.

viii

The publication of this book would not have been possibly without ‘pooling’ the expertise of scholars from various fields, and it is therefore the editors’ principal duty to thank the contributors to the aforementioned lecture series for their efforts. I would like to voice my thanks also on behalf of co-editor Walter Bernhart, who gave invaluable support to the enterprise both in matters of organization and of scholarly content. In addition, I would like to thank Ingrid Hable for her valuable work in preparing the manuscript in the first phase of the editing process, as well as Katharina Bantleon for taking over Ingrid Hable’s task in the decisive later phase in such an expert and enthusiastic way. Graz, July 2007

Werner Wolf

Introduction

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation General Features and Possibilities of Realization in Painting, Fiction and Music Werner Wolf Description has traditionally been viewed from a monodisciplinary and monomedial (mostly literary) perspective. This introductory essay attempts to remedy this one-sidedness from a mainly theoretical angle and paves the way for the discussion of descriptions in various media undertaken in the contributions to this volume. The first, general, part of the essay highlights the transmedial relevance of description. It presents some of the discursive contexts outside the arts and media in which description occurs and which influence the meaning of the term, before focussing on its use in literature and other media. The descriptive, like narrative, generally appears as a cognitive (macro-)frame or semiotic macro-mode which is realized in, or triggered by, concrete sign systems (texts, artefacts or parts of these) to a higher or lower degree, according to their variable relations to prototypes and their characteristic features. The transmedial nature of the descriptive permits one to locate it within a typology of semiotic macro-modes, which not only includes media and genres but also micro-level realizations since the descriptive can occur on the macro-level of entire works as well as in parts of them. The bulk of the essay’s first part is dedicated to the discussion of the characteristic features (functional, content-related and formal/presentational ‘narratemes’) of the descriptive as opposed, notably, to narrative, features that also function as triggers of the corresponding frame in the recipient’s mind. All of these reflections lead to a definition of description and serve as a basis for the second main part of the essay, i. e. a survey, by means of concrete examples and media-specific reflections, of the descriptive potential of three media: painting, fiction, and instrumental music. In conclusion, a brief comparison of these media is made on the basis of the findings of the previous discussion.

2

Werner Wolf

1. Introduction: The transgeneric and transmedial relevance of description as a basic referential mode of organizing signs, and its hitherto predominantly monodisciplinary and monomedial discussion Descriptions occur in very different forms and situations, as the following three examples illustrate (the first is a part of an imaginary lecture course, the second part of an imaginary everyday conversation among music lovers, the third is taken from a literary text): Example 1: “In order to understand what ‘recursive embedding’ means, imagine one of those little, hollow dolls from Eastern European which open at their waists and contain a similar hollow doll that, in turn, contains yet another doll on a smaller scale.” Example 2: “There is a famous Mozart symphony whose name has presently escaped me. Its last movement has a simple theme which one can easily recognize if the first theme is whistled.” (whistles the notes C-D-F-E) Example 3: “If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.” (Carroll 1865/1970: 124; see Illustration 1)

Illustration 1: “Gryphon” from: Carroll 1865/1970: 125

These variants of description illustrate at least two basic features of the phenomenon under scrutiny: firstly, they show that the descriptive – as also, for instance, narrative – is a common macro-mode of organizing signs that can occur in everyday life as well as in various other situations, text types and genres. Secondly, they demonstrate that in

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

3

order to describe one can use different media: all three examples include words, but in Example 2 there is additionally some sort of music (whistling or humming the first theme of the fourth movement of Mozart’s last symphony in C major, the so-called Jupiter Symphony), while Example 3 employs an image. Thus, description appears to be not only a transgeneric but also a transmedial phenomenon, that is: a phenomenon that can occur in more than one medium. The transmedial nature of description implies notably that, in contrast to current views as epitomized by JeanMichel Adam (see 1993: 3), it goes beyond verbal media1. As ‘transmediality’ is a variant of ‘intermediality’, description is a fitting object for the kind of studies explored in the book series in which the 2 present volume appears, namely Studies in Intermediality . In fact, no one would deny that paintings can describe – perhaps even better than literary texts –, and who would not agree that film scenes can be highly descriptive or that certain musical compositions – in particular programme music and ‘symphonic poems’ – also attempt to describe? Considering the obviously transmedial nature of the descriptive, the current research situation is surprising. So far, descriptive phenomena – where they have been discussed at all3 – have almost exclu1

One may object that this is disregarding the definition of the term ‘description’, which in The New Oxford Dictionary of English is given as “a spoken or written representation or account of a person, object, or event” (Pearsall 1998: 499). ‘Description’ seems to be restricted to verbal media, if not to scribere, ‘writing’, alone. Yet, a simple exercise in finding synonyms of ‘description’ in both English and German will prove that an exclusive focus on verbal media is certainly too narrow. After all, instead of ‘Beschreibung’ one can say ‘Schilderung’, and ‘description’ is arguably synonymous with ‘portrayal’ and ‘depiction’ (for a possible differentiation between ‘description’ and ‘depiction’ see Walton 1990: 293-304, and below, chap. 3.1; from a transmedial perspective I will, however, disregard this distinction and regard ‘description’ as including ‘depiction’). Thus, in both languages these synonyms include at least the pictorial medium in the group of potentially descriptive media (‘Schilderung’ being derived from the activity of painting shields, ‘portrayal’ from portrait painting, and ‘depiction’ from ‘pingere’, ‘to paint’).

2

For the definition of ‘transmediality’ as a sub-form of ‘intermediality’ see Rajewsky (2000/2003: 363, and 2002: 206) and Wolf (2002b: 18f.). However, as part of the Studies in Intermediality series, the present volume including this essay will subsequently focus on the transmedial rather than on the transgeneric nature of description.

3

For a critical overview of research (up to the 1990s) and the neglect of description see Lopes (1995: 8-19), and most recently Fludernik (2006: 131), who considers description a ‘lacuna’ in narratology.

4

Werner Wolf

sively been considered from a monomedial perspective, with literary theory being most advanced in the field. Within literary theory, description has mostly found attention with reference to fiction, which accounts for the tendency to discuss this phenomenon not only from a monomedial but also from a monogeneric perspective. This state of affairs is all the more surprising as a closely related macro-mode of organizing signs, namely narrative, has received disproportionately more attention and has been highlighted both from a transgeneric and a decidedly intermedial or media-comparative point of view over the past few years (cf. Nünning/Nünning 2002; Ryan, ed. 2004). Description, however, seems to have escaped scholars engaged in the field of intermediality studies so far, and even within literary studies description does not appear to be a key concept. This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that with the laudable exception of Ansgar Nünning’s Metzlers Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (1998/2004) and the recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (see Pflugmacher 2005) a surprising number of dictionaries of literary terms do not even have an entry on description (cf. Preminger/ Brogan 1993; Hawthorn 1994; Beck/Kuester/Kuester 1998; Cuddon 1998; Murfin/Ray 2003). This unsatisfactory situation, worsened by the circulation of sometimes rather unprecise notions of the descriptive, has, however, one advantage: it provides an opportunity to survey a neglected field that is only waiting to be explored. The present volume is intended as a contribution to filling the aforementioned lacunae, thereby continuing a project which began with a cycle of lectures, held at the University of Graz in the summer term 2005 and which forms the basis of the present volume. It is informed by a perspective on description that not only continues the reflection on what description actually is, but also wants to do justice to its transmedial nature by enabling scholars from different areas and disciplines to focus on the descriptive from their particular points of view. As a result of this innovative transmedial approach, the possibilities, but also the limitations, as encountered by various media and arts in the field of description, will hopefully emerge more clearly, along with techniques and functions of description that are shared by several media or exist as typical properties of individual media. In some cases (notably film and audioliterature but to some extent also lyric poetry) the innovative power of this transmedial approach also becomes manifest in that it has led to survey territories which have hardly ever been explored before with respect to description.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

5

In the gestation of the present volume literary studies provided the trigger for the transmedial project undertaken in it. In view of this fact, and also of the leading state of literary research in the (alas, as yet all too limited) field of descriptive studies, it will not come as a surprise that literature is mentioned explicitly in the title of this volume (as well as in the title of the original lecture series). Nor will it surprise that in the present essay literary theory and literary examples will loom large. However, as far as this essay is concerned, literature will only provide a basis and background for the general description of typical features of the descriptive, which, in principle, could also be explained with reference to other media, for instance film. My choice of literature for the general survey of the phenomenon ‘description’ is thus not a sign of a hegemonial attitude on the part of a literary scholar but motivated in part by the pragmatic fact that this happens to be the area of my expertise, as well as by the even more important fact that research is most advanced is this field. At any rate, a conception of description will be aimed at that is open to further application and thus transcends a merely literary, let alone narratological, perspective4. As the distinctive quality of what renders a system of signs descriptive is by far not self-explanatory nor clear in research (including literary theory), a theoretical discussion of description and the descriptive is at any rate not amiss as the first part of the present essay. As description shares some elements with narrative, while at the same time often being sharply opposed to it, this alternative mode of organizing signs will in the following repeatedly be used as a point of reference. I propose to focus, firstly, on the descriptive as a mental concept or cognitive frame, secondly, on major contexts and functions of descriptions, before, thirdly, exploring some general formal features and the location of the descriptive within a typology of basic macromodes of organizing signs. I will, however, not be concerned with a typology of description, as this aspect – which has hardly ever met

4

Considering the transmedial character of description it is in fact not advisable to follow Bal’s claim that “[d]escriptions [...] must be placed and studied within a narratological model” (1981/1982: 105), for this leads to the idea that description is not an independent macro-mode of representation (see ibid.: 144).

6

Werner Wolf

with a theoretical interest5 – is dealt with in Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this volume. Based on the findings of the first, theoretical part of this essay, the second part will give a comparative survey of the descriptive faculties and limits of three media: painting, fiction, and music. Here, however, the emphasis is only on a systematic ‘survey’, as these introductory reflections shall not anticipate the ensuing contributions written by specialists who consider various verbal and non-verbal media in much more detail and mostly in the frame of individual case studies, in particular: fiction, lyric poetry, (non-fictional) ‘nature writing’, audioliterature, film, photography, the visual arts, and music. While all contributors will also address historical aspects of descriptions, which here as elsewhere form a crucial element of interpretation, the limitations of a volume like this do unfortunately not permit extended overviews of the development of description in individual media. Historical surveys of descriptive techniques and functions – notably with reference to media other than (narrative) literature6 – must therefore remain a desideratum for future research.

2. The descriptive in general: major contexts of the descriptive as a cognitive frame, its characteristics, its location within a typology of semiotic macro-modes, media, genres and micro-level realizations, and its concretization in the recipient’s mind 2.1. The descriptive as a cognitive frame Everyone recognizes a description when seeing one, just as we do when being confronted with a narration or a specimen of any other discursive macro-mode. A glance at the following examples (Quotations 1-4) of various macro-modes of organizing signs in verbal media may activate, and thus show the existence of, this intuitive faculty quite easily: 5 The analysis of descriptive forms is in fact a remarkably neglected field of theory, for which Chatman’s rudimentary typology of descriptive variants in cinema (see 1990: chap. 3) is a rare exception. 6

For descriptions of nature in the history of English fiction see, e. g., Th. Kullmann 1995, and for description in French nineteenth-century literature see D. Kullmann 2004.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

7

Quotation 1: Beschreibung, im lit.wissenschaftlichen Sinn bezeichnet B. die auch als ‘Deskription’ bezeichnete Schilderung und Ausgestaltung der fiktiven Welt eines literar. Textes, in der sich die Handlung ereignet und die p Figuren agieren. Sie steuert die leserseitige p Konkretisation der erzählten Welt und trägt damit wesentlich zum p Realismus-Effekt und zur p Illusionsbildung bei. Traditionell vom p Erzähler geleistet, besteht die B. aus “potentiell ‘wertneutralen’ Informationen über die Figuren, Handlungen und die fiktive Gesellschaft” sowie aus “Anschauungsdaten, die den Figuren eine lokale und temporale deiktische Determinierung in ihrer jeweiligen [p] Sprechsituation verleihen”. (Nünning, ed. 1998/ 2004: 60)7

Quotation 2: GRAZ Kennzahl 0316 -- A -A & A PEASTON, Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschbüro, Schörgelg Nr 6 [...] A & L Beschaffungsmanagement GmbH, Eckertstr 1 [...] A & M plus Bücherläden GmbH, Hans-Sachs-G 5 [...] (Telefonbuch 2005/2006: 1)

Quotation 3: The rambler who, for old association’s sake, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip and shade, their lower limbs stretching in level repose over the road, as though reclining on the insubstantial air. At one place, where Rubdon Hill is crossed, a bank slopes up to the trees on the left hand, while on the right spreads a deep and silent vale. The spot is lonely [...]. (Hardy 1887/1998: 5) 7

‘Description, in the sense used in literary studies, d. denotes the depiction and organization of the fictional world of a literary text in which the action takes place and characters act. It regulates the reader’s concretization of the narrated world and thus contributes essentially to the ‘reality effect’ as well as to the creation of aesthetic illusion. Traditionally a function of the narratorial discourse, d. consists in ‘potentially neutral (as to evaluation) information on the characters, the action and the fictional society’ as well as in ‘sensory details which provide a spatial and temporal deictic determination for the characters in their respective communicative situations.’ [My translation]

8

Werner Wolf

Quotation 4: At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there stood a man who had thus indirectly entered upon the scene from a stile hard by, and was temporarily influenced by some such feelings of being suddenly more alone than before he had emerged upon the highway. [...] He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his walking-stick. [...] At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of labouring wheels, and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became audible [...]. (Hardy 1887/1998: 5f.)

As one will doubtlessly have recognized, Quotation 3 is a description, whereas Quotation 4 is the beginning of a narration (both quotes are taken from the beginning of Thomas Hardy’s realistic novel The Woodlanders [1887]); Quotation 1, however, is a dictionary definition, while Quotation 2 is a list of references (to be more precise, it is a quotation from the 2005/2006 telephone directory of the city of Graz, Austria). What makes these modes of semiotic macro-organization so easily recognizable, though? The reason is clearly that we have an ‘intuitive’ idea of basic forms of discourse organization stored in our minds8. This points to the fact that ‘the descriptive’ – as well as narrative, argument, definition and other semiotic macro-modes – is a mental concept, or in contemporary cognitive terminology, a ‘cognitive frame’. As such, it is, of course, a mental construct, not a free-floating one, however, but one that is aimed at regulating specific forms of organizing signs in various genres and media for specific purposes. It therefore can be illustrated by prototypical examples and is recognized owing to certain typical functions and other features. Frames that correspond to prototypes have the advantage of being flexible meta-concepts that fit given phenomena more or less. Thus, ‘descriptivity’, the defining quality of the corresponding frame, is – like ‘narrativity’ – a gradable phenomenon (cf. Sternberg 1981: 76). It has ‘fuzzy’ edges but a relatively clear centre. Before describing this centre and its features, one should insert two notes. The first concerns the usefulness of maintaining a concept which has been questioned in a fundamental way. Thus, Ruth Ronen has argued that description is a theoretical construct created by “the need to define ‘the other’ of narration” and by the classificatory urge 8

This has also repeatedly been stated in research (cf. Lopes 1995: 20).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

9

“of assigning the representation of objects to a distinct mode of writing” (1997: 283f.) but that it is a construct which frequently cannot be found in textual reality, where both phenomena tend to overlap. Ronen therefore pleads for “giv[ing] up” the “opposition description – narrative” (ibid.: 284). This plea is, however, to be rejected for several reasons: Ronen constantly uses the concept of description herself and, moreover, discusses it in comparison to narrative. This shows that there is at least some practical need for this opposition and hence for the notion of description as one of its terms, and be it only in order to relativize it (and, one should indeed do so, for description is certainly not only theoretically opposed to narrative but also, e. g., to argument; moreover, there are cases – and media – in which narrative tends to be based on description, although the extension of description in these cases – as well as elsewhere – can, of course, vary). In addition, the fact that in textual and medial practice there are overlapping zones between the descriptive and narrative is not an argument against maintaining the concepts as such, in particular if one adopts a prototypical conceptualization that permits – and accounts for – such fuzzy edges. Moreover, Ronen approaches the topic from an exclusively narratological and monomedial perspective. From a transmedial point of view, the usefulness of the distinction ‘narrative vs. descriptive’ presents much fewer problems: thus, for instance, home-videos representing landscapes which one has toured during one’s holidays can clearly be classified as descriptive and at the same time as non-narrative, while it is also possible to use the medium ‘video’ to represent stories, a usage in which the narrative function would clearly be dominant, although a subdominant descriptive function would arguably never be completely absent. The second preliminary note refers to terminology, more specifically to theoretically desirable distinctions and their almost unavoidable fuzziness in discursive practice. When discussing description, one should in principle employ different terms in order to distinguish the abstract concept or frame from its concrete manifestations. One could, for instance, call the abstract cognitive frame ‘the descriptive’ (as opposed to ‘narrative’), while a realization of this frame in a concrete descriptive text, in illustrations etc. should be called ‘a description’ (as opposed to ‘a narration’). Yet, owing to the clumsiness of the phrase ‘the descriptive’, ‘description’ tout court will also be used, provided the reference to the frame and not merely to a concrete example is clear. As a plurality of descriptions usually also manifest fea-

10

Werner Wolf

tures of ‘the descriptive’, the plural ‘descriptions’ may, in addition, also be used for the explanation of general functions and features of the descriptive. 2.2. Major contexts and basic functions of the descriptive As ‘the descriptive’ is a macro-mode of organizing signs and thus a mode of communication, its features mainly derive from certain basic functions which one should therefore take into account in the first place. Functions depend on contexts and systems within which they exist, and contexts also provide the framework in which individual frames are opposed to other frames. As for description, this frame operates within contexts that include what interests us most, the arts and media, but also many others. Since these other contexts may give us valuable hints about the functions of the descriptive in literature and other media, some of them should at least be mentioned. The first two important contexts are the theory of science (Wissenschaftstheorie) and philosophy, where the term ‘description’ is used in the sub-disciplines of logic and epistemology9. In logic, description has been used as a form of definition and consequently as a form of verbal reference (basically, all of the initial Examples 1-3 could be used as illustrations of this point). According to a renowned historical dictionary of philosophy, “definitio descriptiva” has since classical antiquity been a way of defining an object by attributing a matrix of characteristic qualities to it, qualities which individually may also occur in other objects but whose combination is characteristic only of the object in question (cf. Nobis/Kaulbach 1971: 839 and with reference to the entry “Description” of the Encyclopédie, Adam 1997/2005: 81)10.

9 For earlier uses of descriptio in a religious and metaphysical sense see Nobis/ Kaulbach 1971: 838. 10

Bertrand Russell’s concept of the ‘definite description’ is another variant of the link between description and the definition of, and hence reference to, a phenomenon by mentioning defining properties. The basic idea of a ‘definite description’, as formulated in Russell’s Principia Mathematica, is “that one and only one thing of a certain sort exists and that it has a certain property” (Encyclopedia Britannica CD-Rom, s. v. “Analytic philosophy: Bertrand Russell”). For a critical view of description and its emphasis on outer accidentals as “une définition moins exacte” from a neoclassical perspective, which focusses on the general and essential, see Adam 1993: 6-9.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

11

In a famous passage in Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen (no. 109), ‘description’ is employed in a different sense, namely as part of a basically anti-metaphysical and language-centred epistemological programme, in which description is emphatically opposed to explanation11: Alle Erklärung muß fort, und nur Beschreibung an ihre Stelle treten. Und diese Beschreibung empfängt ihr Licht, d.i. ihren Zweck, von den philosophischen Problemen. Diese sind freilich keine empirischen, sondern sie werden durch eine Einsicht in das Arbeiten unserer Sprache gelöst [...]. (Wittgenstein 1953/1968: 47)12

This opposition between ‘description’ and ‘explanation’ can also be encountered in the use of ‘description’ in science and in the theory of science, as defined in the following entry on description taken from another dictionary of philosophy: Beschreibung, Deskription, geordnete Darlegung eines Sachverhaltes mit dem Zweck, eine klare und deutliche Vorstellung von ihm zu vermitteln. Die B. hält sich an die Tatsachen, an das Was und Wie, während die Erklärung auch die Ursachen zu geben versucht, das Warum und Weil. Das Verfahren der B. (deskriptive Methode), die sich in der Regel der natürlichen Sprache bedient, ist eine [...] Verfahrensweise der p Wissenschaft. (Schmidt/Schischkoff 1974: 64)13

As we can see here, description, in the sciences, and above all in the natural sciences, serves the function of identifying phenomena and of communicating information excluding explanation and evaluation14. Concerning these functions in science (as in other non-literary 11 A further employment of description in philosophy is to be found in Russell’s epistemology, where ‘description’ is used in order to set off a certain, namely indirect, second-hand way of gaining knowledge (‘knowledge by description’) as opposed to the direct means of acquiring ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ or actual experience of sense data. Ultimately, knowledge by description, in Russell’s conception, can, however, also be traced back to sense data, and thus description is nonetheless linked to empirical data, albeit indirectly so. 12

“We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language [...].” (Wittgenstein 1953/1968: 47e) 13

‘Description, ordered discussion of an issue with the purpose of transmitting a clear and distinct idea of it. D. is centred on facts, on the questions of ‘what?’ and ‘how?’, while explanation also tries to give the reasons, to answer the questions of ‘why’ and ‘wherefore?’. The method of d. (descriptive method), which, as a rule, uses natural languages, is a modus operandi of the sciences.’ [My translation]

14

According to Kötter/Inhetveen (1996: 7), the focus of contemporary theory of science is rather on theories of explanation than on theories of description.

12

Werner Wolf

fields), Michel Beaujour has, however, rightly pointed out that description as a verbal practice has played “second fiddle to pictures of all kinds” (1981: 50) ever since techniques of pictorial reproduction have rendered illustrations in books and other print media relatively cheap and easily available. In spite of this media shift, the allegedly objective quality of description has remained a constant in scientific and other pragmatic uses, where it is regarded as a result of the collection and subsequent representation of sense data, be they directly accessible to observation or indirectly so through instruments and experiments. Yet even in this context, descriptions are usually not an end in themselves, but are implicated in the construction of models as well as in explanations and thus in a larger explanatory and argumentative frame. To some extent, this already points to the use of description in other fields, in particular to its literary use, as will be detailed below (chap. 3.2). In the humanities outside philosophy, ‘description’ is less frequently opposed to ‘explanation’ than to interpretation (see Kindt/ Müller 2003), although a clear-cut differentiation between these two notions is sometimes regarded as questionable (e. g. by Danneberg 1996). In Clifford Geertz’s notion of the so-called “thick description” (see 1973, in particular chap. 1), which has become highly influential in New Historicism and beyond, this opposition is even programmatically undermined, as “thick description” implies the attribution of cultural functions, and hence explanations, to historical data. It is time to draw an intermediate summary: so far, three basic functions of the descriptive have been established: a. description as a means of identification and reference through characteristic attributions; this attributive, referential nature of the descriptive, which points at something in the world (or at least a possible world), differentiates it from purely logical and selfreferential modes of organizing and using signs, as, e. g., in mathematical equations; b. description as a means of identifying and communicating sense data that one receives from the observation of a given reality; c. description as a means of providing objective information rather than explanations or interpretations (one has, however, to qualify this by saying that in most contexts it is recognized that description often provides the basis of subsequent explanation and interpretation).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

13

All of these functions refer to description as a special frame in special contexts. Are these functions also present in everyday situations? Indeed, everyday communication deserves attention, for it arguably provides the origin of, and a common denominator for, not only special discourses such as philosophy and the theory of science, but also concerning what is in focus in the present volume, namely the use of description in literature and other media. So, for what purposes do we use descriptions in everyday communication? The three examples given at the outset of the present essay may serve as initial clues: all of these examples – the Russian doll, the Mozart symphony and the Gryphon – referred to absent phenomena and served to identify them as alternatives to the respective lexemes, which, for the sake of argument, where assumed to be unknown, momentarily unavailable or not sufficiently meaningful. As the absence of these objects precluded direct identification through deixis, the reference was made through some of their qualities. Description, it appears, has obviously a referential function, but employs reference in a special way which permits the identification of the object or phenomenon that is meant. In this identificatory function the descriptive differs from narrative, which is also referential or at least suggests referentiality, without, however, typically or necessarily serving the purpose of identification. (Rather, narrative frequently either presupposes or implies the identification of relevant elements of a story through naming or provides them precisely through description.) However, description is not limited to identifying objects and does not do so through simple naming but, as a rule, through multiple attributions. This is why the first typical function of descriptions in everyday life should be formulated as indirect identification through attribution. If description, as used in everyday discourse, in this first function differs from narrative, description is quite similar to narrative in a second typical function, namely in its presentational or re-presentational function. This effect, which could also be observed in Examples 1 to 3, derives from the common referential nature of both semiotic macro-modes as means of rendering present absent or distanced phenomena15. 15

In the rare cases where narration or description are used with reference to present situations some kind of at least cognitive distance is nevertheless to be assumed (for description in these borderline cases see below).

14

Werner Wolf

Owing to their typically detailed quality, descriptions in everyday use tend to fulfil a further, related function, which is an intensification of (re-)presentation, and also applies to narrative, namely to provide and store experience. However, differences again appear between description and narrative in this respect: the experientiality of narrative is geared to allow the recipient to re-experience events and happenings in which a story’s character(s) is (are) involved. A typical effect of the experience of ‘good narratives’ both in everyday situations and in the arts and media is the impression of becoming part of the narrated world and becoming re-centred in storyworlds even to such an extent as to feel suspense. Successful descriptions also frequently elicit a feeling of being ‘close’ to the phenomena described, but their relationship to suspense is more indirect: descriptions can, e. g. through the creation of a certain atmosphere and the raising of concomitant expectations, contribute to suspense but in this depend on the overarching frame narrative. Descriptions alone, without such a support, cannot be suspenseful. In comparison to narrative, the experientiality of description is generally of a different nature and fulfils other functions. While (‘good’) narratives (besides other functions, such as making sense of temporal experience) often allow us to become immersed in the eventful facets of represented worlds and to witness the actions and fates of anthropomorphic beings, descriptions generally confront us with the sensory aspects, the ‘whatness’ of individual phenomena and world-facets. As stated above, these phenomena are, as a rule, absent. They are usually described in order to convey a vivid idea of them, to ‘re-present’ or evoke them to the imagination of the recipients. Description then serves as a substitute for sensory experience. Where, exceptionally, phenomena are present in the perception anyway (for instance, when an art historian explains a painting to a group of museum visitors) the experiential function of descriptions may be seen at work by making such objects appear under a fresh angle or by contributing to a ‘correct’ view. Although in these cases description does not provide experience, it may intensify it. Generally speaking, providing or intensifying as well as communicating and storing a quasi-sensory experience are facets of a very common, pragmatic function of everyday descriptions16. 16

Other facets of the representational function of description are less common, the extremest form perhaps being conjuring up. This may, e. g., apply to a mythical being which is evoked through mentioning its qualities so that the descriptor can use its power or gain power over it. Although such uses may today be obsolete to a large ex-

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

15

This leads us to the question as to whether description, in everyday use, is also opposed to explanation or interpretation as in the sciences. I would say, yes, at least in principle – and in this the descriptive as a mode of representation differs again from narrative: the elements of all typical stories, unlike elements of a description, must be linked to each other logically, in particular through causality and teleology; this gives meaning to them, often of an explanatory kind, at least within the story, and each ‘good’ story must in addition have a point. Such a ‘point’ can consist in broadening our knowledge of what is possible, usually in spite of contrary expectations (in stories of the type “imagine what happened to me...”), or it can consist in an illustration of some general idea or in the explanation, how a present state has come about. In all of these cases, narrating, the construction of meaning and indeed explanations are closely related. Stories do not only typically provide explanations for internal constituents (e. g. why someone has died) but also frequently serve as explanations of external issues or ‘points’. With descriptions this is less frequently the case: the point of a good description is not to explain something but to inform us about the existence of something and its specific appearance and quality, in short: to represent something vividly (anschaulich). To this extent, description is opposed to explanation and interpretation not only in the theory of science but in everyday use, too. Thus, the main functions of the descriptive as a means of representation in everyday discourse are quite similar to the previously summarized functions in science and philosophy: 1. to refer to phenomena and to permit their identification through the attribution of, in particular, sensory qualities; 2. to provide representations that permit us to imagine or to reexperience these phenomena; 3. to provide facts about these phenomena rather than interpretations. To what extent is what has been said about everyday descriptions relevant to descriptions in literature and other media, including rhetorical description, a field in which the earliest reflections on description are documented (see Adam 1993: 26-29; Halsall 1994)? My contention is that most of the basic functions just discussed are also tent, they nevertheless indicate that the representational function may be linked to further purposes.

16

Werner Wolf

relevant for this context, which is to a large extent an aesthetic one. However, the third function must be somewhat modified. In addition, when speaking of aesthetic and medial representations, we must take into account fictionality, which so far has not played a role in our reflections. Thus, the following general functions of the descriptive in literature and other media can be noted: 1. The referential function: the first function, which can easily be linked to what has been said about description in non-aesthetic contexts, is the referential function. It implies either the identification of a real phenomenon (in particular if it is well-known) or the construction of fictitious phenomena within artistic or medial possible worlds. Both tasks are achieved through the attribution of usually a plurality of qualities to concrete phenomena. This referential function includes mimesis but is not restricted to it, as clearly non-mimetic, e. g. fantastic fictional objects, can also be referred to in the mode of description. 2. The representational and experiential function: the second function, which can also be related to what has been detailed before, is the vivid representation (in classical rhetoric, a representation showing ‘energeia’ as well as ‘enargeia’17), e. g. the persuasive and convincing visualization of a phenomenon18. The experientiality implied in this vividness in many cases also elicits aesthetic illusion19: the impression of being re-centred in the space created by the described object and of experiencing it as a possible, even plausible world, in spite of the fact that one retains a residual consciousness of its being ‘made up’. 3. The pseudo-objectivizing and interpretive function: The third function which was mentioned for the contexts discussed above and which is also valid for many everyday descriptions, namely to 17

Both terms are frequently confused with each other but have slightly different meanings: while ‘energeia’ emphasizes rhetorical persuasio through Anschaulichkeit [‘vivid representation’], ‘enargeia’ focuses on visualization through a plethora of details (see Rippl 2005: 68 and 70, and Bernhart in this volume). 18

Visualization was already stressed by Cicero as an effect of descriptio (see Halsall 1994: 550); for the role of description (‘enargeia’/’energeia’ and ‘evidentia’) in classical rhetoric see Beaujour 1981: 28-33.

19

This is a consequence of a successful concretization of the object described (cf. also the article on description quoted above in Quotation 1 [Nünning, ed. 1998/2004: 60]); for more details on aesthetic illusion see Wolf 1993 and 2004a.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

17

provide more or less objective facts rather than interpretations, is debatable in the context of the arts and media. Of course, description here also informs the recipients about elements of the represented worlds, about things that appear ‘to be the case’ there. Yet what may furthermore be said about the ‘objectivity’ of descriptions in this context is at best that many of them not only strengthen the effect of aesthetic illusion as a quasi-experience of a reality, but elicit the impression that the possible world in question refers to the reality as we believe to know it. In other words, the aura of objectivity created by what must be termed the ‘pseudo-objectivizing function’ of many descriptions in the arts and media can trigger a referential sub-form of aesthetic illusion, namely a ‘reality effect’ (effet de réel, see Barthes 1968)20. Otherwise, the idea that description provides objective data would clearly be untenable with respect to literature and other medial representations. This is not only the case because of the general problematics of ‘objectivity’, which occur in other contexts as well21, but also, and in particular, since artefacts are usually considered to be meaningful constructs. Michael Riffaterre was most outspoken about this problem. He said with reference to “literary description” that its “primary function [...] is not to make the reader see something [...] not to present an external reality [...] but to dictate an interpretation” (1981: 125). While Riffaterre’s downgrading of “making the reader see something” is arguably too radical (not only because in English, the very term ‘seeing’ can also mean ‘understanding’, but also, and above all, since it runs counter to the experiential function of the descriptive), his idea is basically convincing. For the nature of artefacts and texts as intentional constructs renders it highly probable that even the descriptive construction or representation of the ‘givens’, for instance of a narrative possible world, is not an ‘innocent’ business but serves a purpose (like the narration of events) and that description has its 20

This effect, which Barthes (1968) – in the tradition of classical antiquity (see Halsall 1994: 552) – linked especially to description, may have something to do with the frequent focus of descriptions on natural phenomena (e. g. landscapes or physiognomies), which suggest a ‘just being objectively there’. 21

Cf. also the well-known findings of cognitive psychology that there is no perception without interpretive application of cognitive frames, which points to the fact that there is no rendering of perception in description without previous, if unwitting, interpretation either.

18

Werner Wolf

place in it – and is hence implicated in the construction of meaning of the artefact or text as a whole as well as in guiding various responses of the recipients22. We will come back to the functional issue of description not only as an information on seeming ‘facts’, but also as a contribution to the overall meaning of artefacts in the chapters dedicated to individual medial examples. 2.3. The location of the descriptive/description within a typology of semiotic macro-modes/macro-frames, media, genres and microlevel realizations For the time being, another problem must be discussed, namely the question of where to locate descriptions and the descriptive in a typology of genres, media and semiotic (macro-)modes. This problem is particularly thorny since the descriptive can inform an entire work or artefact but also only parts of one that may not be predominantly descriptive in itself and may contain other semiotic frames. Examples of the former case in the visual media would be still lives, genre scenes, land- or cityscapes (see, e. g., the cover illustration to this volume, a daguerreotype by Louis J. M. Daguerre of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris) or the rare case of a Bildbeschreibung (the description or ‘ekphrasis’ of an artefact as an independent text). Perhaps the best way to systematize what is under discussion here is to start from the open category of basic semiotic macro-modes or what one may call, with an eye to their top-level importance, ‘macroframes’. ‘The descriptive’ with its defining, gradable quality of descriptivity is on this abstract level opposed to ‘narrative’, ‘the argumentative’, etc. Fludernik, in an illuminating essay (2000), named this top level the level of “macrogenres” (282). These macro-modes are, however, highly abstract and require for their realization both media and systematic as well as historical genres (be they general genres or sub-genres). The fact that the descriptive, like all macro-frames, can be realized in more than one medium shows that these macro-frames are to a large extent mediaindependent (although, as we will see when comparing fiction, paint22

In the light of this well-known critical position it is hard to understand why Ronen insists on bashing theoreticians of description for maintaining a largely chimerical opposition of ‘non-meaningful description’ vs. ‘meaningful narration’ (see Ronen 1997: 280).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

19

ing and music with reference to their respective descriptive potentials, the conditions of each medium do have an influence). As for the genres, this level refers, firstly, to general genres (which sometimes overlap with media23) such as, within the verbal media, drama (as typically not narrator-transmitted) or narrations of the type novel, epic and short story (as typically narrator-transmitted) and within the pictorial media, for instance, religious painting, historical painting, still life, etc. As a rule, the macro-modes, or more precisely, their occurrence as a dominant, is a defining feature both of general genres and subgenres. Thus, narrative is dominant, within the verbal media, in the general genres novel and drama as well as in sub-genres such as gothic fiction or comedy, and within the pictorial media, this is to a certain extent true, for instance, of the genre history painting. Similarly, the argumentative prevails in verbal genres such as the philosophical essay, the scientific treatise, etc., and the descriptive is dominant in verbal Bildbeschreibung as well as in painterly still lives, the difference being here that still life forms a well-known general genre within the pictorial media, while Bildbeschreibung is much less frequent as a verbal genre of its own24. In fact, in the verbal media, the descriptive tends to occur not as a defining, dominant quality on the level of general genres or sub-genres but rather on the typologically lower micro-level of individual artefacts, where it often appears as a subdominant frame alongside other frames. This occurrence on a micro-level is exemplified in the above Quotation 3 from Hardy’s The Woodlanders, where an initial description is followed by a narrative passage. Both frames are here part of a novel, hence of a general genre in which narrative is the dominant frame (and therefore also dominant on the micro-level, where it is mixed with other frames such as the descriptive or the argumentative). In sum: the descriptive is a semiotic macro-mode or macro-frame that can be realized by several media and may occur, within individual media, in general genres as well as in sub-genres. In these genres, 23

See Fludernik 2000: 282, who subsumes under “genres/text types” “novel, drama, film”. 24

Nevertheless it is erroneous – and indicative of the pitfalls of an exclusively literature-centred approach to what is basically a transmedial phenomenon – to claim that description is not “an independent type of text [or rather a macro-frame that typically informs independent genres and text types], but rather an integrative component of the (usually narrative) text in which it appears” (Bal 1981/1982: 144).

20

Werner Wolf

it can be the dominant, then informing the macro-level of the genre or of the respective works. It can, however, also occur on the micro-level of texts and artefacts, in which case it may be only present as one subdominant frame among others. In this dual potential of being located on two different levels, on a higher, macro- as well as on a lower, micro-level, description in principle resembles other semiotic macro-modes, in particular narrative (although narrative occurs more frequently on the higher level). With reference to a typology of verbal texts, this potential recursivity of frames has already been proposed with particular clarity by Virtanen (1992)25 and in similar terms by Fludernik (2000). For our purpose of a transmedial typology these findings can be adapted and the resulting typological possibilities be visualized as in Figure 1 (cf. also Wolf 2003: 181); one should, however, emphasize that in Figure 1 all registers (1-5) show only examples and hence do not represent the full repertoire of options.

25

Virtanen, from a monomedial focus on verbal media, gives description the status of a “discourse type” or “text type” (according to its location on the primary or on the secondary level) together with narrative, instructive, expository and argumentative (1992: 299). In spite of the fact that Virtanen is not concerned with a transmedial typology of semiotic macro-modes but only with a text typology, his conceptualization can be adapted to fields beyond verbal texts.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

21

1) semiotic macro-modes (cognitive macroframes)

the descriptive

narrative

argumentative

other

2) media in which the macro-modes can be realized (examples)

verbal media, pictorial medium, film, music (?)

verbal media, pictorial medium, film, music (?)

verbal media, pictorial medium

…

3) examples of (sub-) genres in which the macro-modes/ -frames can be realized on the macro-level

still life, ekphrasis, …

soap opera, (sentimental) novel, …

philosophical essay, scientific treatise, …

…

4) examples of the use of macromodes/-frames on the micro- level of individual genres together with other frames (the sub-dominant modes in brackets)

5) verbal examples of macro-modes on the micro-level

the descr.

descriptive passages in an ekphrasis

(the arg.)

argumentative passages in an ekphrasis

narr.

(the descr.)

narrative passages in a novel

descriptions in a novel

(the arg.)

the arg.

(narr.)

narratorial explanations in a novel

the main argument in a treatise

narrative illustrations in a treaties

Figure 1: The descriptive in the context of a typology of semiotic macro-modes, media and genres

22

Werner Wolf

2.4. Content-related and formal/presentational characteristics and stimuli of the descriptive in literature and other media (exemplified with verbal texts) After the preceding introductory discussion of the descriptive in literature and other media in terms of its relationship to occurrences outside this medial field as well as in terms of basic general functions and its typological location in a matrix of semiotic macro-modes, media, genres and micro-level occurrences, it is now time to deal in more detail with the following questions: What are the typical content-related and formal or presentational features of descriptions as opposed to narrations or narrative elements within a given work? And by what means is the descriptive frame activated in the recipient’s mind? Since it would lead too far to treat these questions for all media and possible genres and since the theory of description is most advanced in narratology, these questions shall be discussed in the following predominantly with reference to literature, or at least to verbal texts. This applies, however, only to the extent that such texts contain general typical features of the descriptive (specific characteristics that are only relevant to verbal media will be treated in a separate sub-chapter). As mentioned earlier, the descriptive is a gradable quality; therefore a prototypical approach will be adopted in the outlining of its features. In that, I shall first focus on the most typical and central characteristics of descriptions (mostly in comparison with narrative as the nearest neighbouring frame), before discussing some more marginal features. An obvious possibility of approaching the characteristics of descriptions is answering the following question: are there typical contents or objects of description in literature and other media – in comparison to typical contents of narrations? There are two respects in which this question can immediately be answered with reference to literature as well as to other media: Firstly, objects of description, like the content of narratives, can be either real or fictional, and if fictional, as said above, mimetic or non-mimetic (e. g. fantastic) without any typical bias: a mythical non-mimetic object such as a gryphon can be described in a similar way as a real bird26.

26 In literature and other media, the fictional in fact forms a frequent extension of the realm of possible objects of description.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

23

Secondly, descriptions, again like narratives, focus on concrete phenomena rather than on abstract notions: thus, in literature, architecture as a discipline would not be a fit object of description, but an architect or a castle could well be one. In a third respect there is a perhaps natural tendency to further qualify typical objects of description as opposed to narrative. Seymour Chatman’s typology of “necessary components” (1978: 19) of narratives comes to mind here: He differentiates between dynamic “events” and static “existents”. ‘Existents’ comprise spatial and temporal ‘settings’ as well as ‘characters’, while ‘events’ comprise ‘actions’ (“in which an existent is the agent of the event”) and ‘happenings’ (“where the existent is the patient” [ibid.: 32]). Now, it seems natural to say that Chatman’s ‘existents’ seem to be ‘the proper stuff’ of description. One may even further claim that objects of descriptions are, of course, not only static but also spatial (cf. Genette 1969: 59), while contents of narratives are dynamic and temporal. At first sight, this appears to be largely acceptable, and many, in particular literary, scholars would no doubt agree. On further reflection, however, one must make important reservations. Static, spatial existents as the ‘proper stuff of description’ is at best a formula to account for the most frequent and to that extent prototypical cases in some media, in particular literature (where narrative is an alternative frame that covers most of dynamic, temporal events) and the pictorial medium (whose static signifiers unfolding in space rather than in time privilege static, spatial existents as their signifieds and referents). As a general claim, this qualification is, however, an oversimplification and must be rejected: for descriptions (even in verbal art) can also apply to acoustic phenomena, as will be discussed with reference to the question of descriptive music. Following Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laokoon (1766/1974) and his well-known discussion of a famous passage in Homer’s Iliad (book 18), one must moreover concede that dynamic processes cannot be excluded from the realm of description either, not even from literary description, for an epic can, for instance, follow the process of the forging of a shield (cf. also Chatman 1990: 31 and Giuliani 2003: 36). In addition, descriptions, e. g. in novels or films, can occur from the point of view of observing agencies in motion such as characters in cars, panning or travelling

24

Werner Wolf

cameras (cf. Bal 1981/1982: 132) and may be centred on dynamic phenomena, objects and characters that are equally in motion27. I would even like to radicalize these reservations concerning the ‘proper stuff of description’ and claim that one and the same object of representation can be involved in both a description and a narrative irrespective of its static and spatial or dynamic and temporal quality. A dynamic activity such as a journey is a case in point: one and the same trajectory can be rendered – and here the German terms are revealing – as a Reisebeschreibung (a ‘travel description’) or a Reisebericht (a narrative ‘travel report’)28 depending on what is in focus. Thus, the flight of a World War II bomber pilot from his base to a target city and back could be exclusively centred on the country he sees from above, with its landscape and already destroyed cities. Such a text focussing on the pilot’s perceptions including the effect of the bombs on the target city below – in Chatman’s terminology a ‘happening’ – would be a dynamic description. The same flight and the perception of the destroyed cities could, however, also become the basic situation of an inner conflict of the pilot whether he should obey his orders or save the lives of thousands of civilians. He may suddenly remember the tragic story of a friend who has just escaped an air raid himself, a thought that may motivate the pilot to drop all of his bombs onto open fields rather than onto a crowded city. This version of the flight with its transgression of an official order by a morally conscious hero would clearly be a narrative. So, the occurrence of dynamic content elements such as the movement of an aircraft is clearly not a criterion for distinguishing between description and narration, this criterion must be something else. This ‘something else’ may best be described as the presence or absence of the core elements of typical narratives: motivated actions that involve anthropomorphic agents, are interrelated not only by chronology but also by causality and teleology and lead to, or are consequences of, conscious acts or decisions, frequently as results of conflicts. Jeffrey Kittay is right when he says that descriptions typically refer to, and respect, “surface[s]” and bor27

Chatman, before referring to Homer’s “‘dramatized’ descriptions admired by Lessing” (1990: 32) emphasizes himself that “movement” does not “necessarily mark the end of description and the beginning of narrative” (31); cf. also Lopes 1995, who, however, does not distinguish neatly enough between objects of description and descriptive discourse: “[...] not all descriptions are static.” (23) 28 In English, ‘travelogue’ comprises both meanings (cf. Terrell et al. 1981: 542 [s. v. “Reisebeschreibung” and “Reisebericht”]).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

25

ders within possible worlds, while in narratives such borders (which can also be limits of the officially allowed as in our example) are usually being transgressed, which typically constitutes an action (see 1981: 228 and passim29). This is also why narratives usually raise expectations and create suspense, whereas descriptions, as stated above, cannot be suspenseful in themselves. Thus, even though, at closer inspection, “[a]ctional and descriptive discourse [...] form a polar rather than an ungradable contrast” (Sternberg 1981: 76), motivated action, notably the overcoming of an obstacle and the transgression of borders, moral and otherwise, is clearly outside the domain of the descriptive30. In this sense a castle would be a typical object of a description, while castle-building on a forbidden site would not. It is this absence of actantional events which appears to favour Chatman’s ‘existents’ as objects of descriptions while not excluding ‘events’, provided the focus is on the sensory appearance (on the ‘whatness’) rather than on narrative eventfulness. A further question concerning descriptive objects refers to their location, namely whether they are typically to be found in the external world of objects or in the internal world of the imagination, in the world of thoughts and dreams, in other words, whether a castle or a castle-in-the-air would be a more typical object of a description. This question is only partially related to the opposition ‘reality vs. fiction’, which has already been dealt with, for the imagination comprises both fictional and real objects. All in all, owing to the limitation of description to concrete objects, there is perhaps a slight tendency to favour actual outer objects and beings, but imaginary phenomena or beings can also become objects of descriptions – as long as they are not mere abstractions and are not involved in actions. Thus, for instance, physiognomies and even dynamic gestures may be descriptive objects, whether of real characters or of persons in dreams, but as soon as a gesture indicates that, e. g., a momentous decision has been made, it turns into an element of narrative. 29

Although Kittay does not refer to Lotman, his notion of what is typically narrative is remarkably close to Lotman’s definition of an eventful ‘sujet’, which involves the transgression of normative as well as usually spatial borders or limits (cf. Lotman 1970/1977: chap. 8.3). 30

Cf. Giuliani 2003: 36, who correctly states that, as opposed to narration, description, besides not being suspenseful in itself, does not focus on changes that lead to a teleological goal.

26

Werner Wolf

The inclusion of ‘internal’, mental objects into the field of potential objects of description raises another question, namely whether it comprises also psychic and bodily sensations such as emotions or pain. I would say, the answer is ‘yes, in principle’, but again one and the same phenomenon can be classified differently, depending on the point of view taken, namely either as description or as expression. For, as previously said, the descriptive as a mode of representation typically has a referential function. This does not only mean that the descriptive, in a general semiotic sense, points to something outside the semiotic system and hence is ‘hetero-referential’ as opposed to self-referential, but also that it fulfils a referential function in the narrower sense, as described in Roman Jakobson’s well-known theory of the functions of language (see 1960), namely the utterance or representation of facts, opinions, ideas (cf. also Crystal 1987/1997: 10). As such, the referential function, as typically fulfilled by descriptions, is to be differentiated from what Jakobson calls the emotive, that is, the expressive function (see 1960). Thus, ‘ouch’ as an exclamation of pain attributed to a character in a novel is a non-descriptive expression of pain, while the same character – or for that matter a narrator – could also be made to describe the same pain. In this case the emphasis would, for instance, be on the identification of the exact spot on the character’s body where he or she feels the pain together with the verbalization of the specific kind of pain. One should, however, not forget that Jakobson’s theory does not preclude the simultaneous presence of several functions in one and the same speech act (or semiotic act). In view of this, the theoretical distinction of description and expression should not obscure the fact either that in medial representations both phenomena are often closely connected. In fact, there is no such thing as an absolutely objective, object-centred referential description, since description, as mentioned above, always presupposes a subject, the descriptor, and his or her perspective (although the descriptor, as will be stressed later, need not necessarily be part of the descriptive representation). In practice, a descriptive act could therefore even be said to be tendentially bipolar: in it, a dominant referential, object-centred pole31 is opposed to a subdominant subject-centred pole, which determines the perspective of observation but also contains emotional reactions and evaluations. 31 It is dominant for without an object of description there would be no description at all.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

27

As we will see, it is through this subject-centred pole that attitudes enter media-transmitted descriptions that are theoretically opposed to it in the theory of science, namely interpretation and explanation, as well as subjective, perspectival ‘distortion’ and expression. Owing to one of the basic functions of description mentioned above, namely to create an impression of objectivity, descriptiveness may be said to be proportionate to the degree to which interpretation and at least idiosyncratic subjectivity are concealed32. Conversely, the foregrounding of these factors can lead to diminishing object-centred descriptivity while increasing the portrayal of subjective (perhaps even unreliable) perception and/or evaluation. As a last question, the problem of typical objects of description also involves the dominant sensory quality of such objects: are they typically acoustic, olfactory, tactile or visual? The answer seems simple. For most of the examples given so far have pointed in one direction, namely that objects of description are mostly visual. Yet again, a modification must be made, for irrespective of medial restrictions there is no reason for excluding objects addressing other senses, as the last example (the description of pain) shows. It may only be the predominance of the visual, be it anthropological or cultural, that leads to privileging the visual even in media such as narrative fiction, which can extend to other sensory objects as well33. After the foregoing remarks one can now see how it is that, at least in literature and in the pictorial medium, there is a tendency (but no more than that) to privilege certain objects of description as typical, namely concrete, static and spatial objects of outer reality that can be visualized and are not merely the subject of emotional expression. However, in principle, that is, irrespective of medial constraints, it is impossible to exclude any non-abstract phenomenon as such from the possibility of becoming an object of description. This includes acoustic phenomena and even happenings (e. g. the destruction of a house by a bomb, which can in fact be described rather than narrated) – as long as no narrative connections are made and a mere (seeming) fact 32

This is, however, not to say that a probable and life-like perspective employed in description, e. g. when following the gaze of a ‘focalizer’ in fiction or film, could not also enhance descriptivity.

33

With reference to verbal texts it is therefore an oversimplification to claim, as does Mieke Bal in her otherwise highly differentiated theory of description, that “every description is a depiction in words of our vision of an object” (1981/1982: 134, my emphasis).

28

Werner Wolf

is in focus. A further major difference between narrativity and descriptivity emerges from this consideration: stories depend on the combination of certain constitutive content elements, and narrative is therefore a complex frame; there is no narrativity without at least one character, nor without events and at least an implied spatial and temporal setting. Description, on the contrary, is a less complex frame, as it can use each of these constitutive ‘building blocks’ of narratives individually: settings, the physiognomies of characters, and details of actions and happenings – all of these can in fact become objects of a description. Consequently, even though descriptions may privilege ‘existents’ in Chatman’s sense, one may say that in principle the descriptive is much more content-indifferent than the frame ‘narrative’. In other words: descriptiveness seems to be much less a matter of content than a matter of presentation and transmission, in narratological terms: a matter of discursivation (cf. already Bal 1980: 10034). What then are the typical modes of descriptive presentation? The most important mode directly results from what has been said and at the same time forms perhaps the most powerful stimulus to applying a descriptive frame: it is the discursive emphasis on ‘surface’ appearances and hence sense data/impressions, even if they are erroneous or imaginary. Owing to this emphasis on the ‘whatness’ of a phenomenon, descriptive objects can appear as more or less isolated givens of a possible world – irrespective of their narrative concatenation to other elements of this world. In this essential aspect of the discursive presentation we re-encounter, in slightly altered form, the emphasis on description as an ‘objective’ rendering of sense data rather than on explanations which we have encountered in the use of the notion ‘description’ in philosophy, the theory of science and in the natural sciences. Seen against this dominant feature of a descriptive discourse, another issue of transmission that has troubled narratology for decades and that may be transferred to the identification of descriptions can be 34 Criticizing former theories of description Bal aptly summarizes: “L’objection la plus importante qu’on peut leur faire est qu’ils sont fondés sur une distinction entre les différents objets du texte, et non sur le texte même.” (1980: 100) It is also noteworthy that at least in his differentiation between “[p]rocess statement[s]” and “stasis statement[s]” (1978: 32) Chatman actually does not present the difference between ‘events’ and ‘existents’ as an essentialistic one but as the effect of a discursive presentation.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

29

dismissed without much ado, namely the vexed question of whether descriptions require an intracompositional descriptive agency, a ‘descriptor’, who would be analogous to a narrator. From a transgeneric and transmedial point of view, the answer is clearly ‘no’. The existence of an intracompositional transmittor is neither a criterion of narrativity (for it also applies to drama) nor of the descriptive. Descriptions in literature and other media can in fact be transmitted by an overt descriptor or by a covert one or even by no fictional descriptor at all. Thus, descriptions, in nineteenth-century realist novels, are typically transmitted by an overt narrator/descriptor, in modernist fiction frequently through the eyes of ‘focalizers’ while the narrators/ descriptors remain ‘covert’, and in descriptive paintings it would not even make sense to speak of a covert descriptive agency at all, unless one meant the painter him- or herself (but the painter is not an intracompositional agency). All this, of course, does not mean that it does not matter whether there is an overt intracompositional descriptor or not, for – as in narratives – this has important consequences, e. g. for the discernibility of objectivity or subjectivity, but this would require a more detailed discussion. One of the most difficult questions concerning the discursive transmission of descriptions refers to the possibility of identifying a descriptive discourse or representation formally, owing in particular to specific modes of internal organization35. Mieke Bal has emphasized that the principal semantic operation of description is attribution (see 1980/1985: 130, and 1981/1982: 104). As a consequence, any representation in which linking qualities to objects is dominant and, for instance, more important than constructing objects as agents or patients of action, should qualify as a description. While the predominance of attribution is indeed perhaps the most important and typical formal feature of description, there are others that should also be taken into consideration. One of them derives from vivid representation (which often, albeit not always, equals vivid visualization) as one of the principal functions of the descriptive. This consists in the tendency of descriptions to contain seemingly superfluous details that are rendered in similar terms (in language: syno35

In language, there would be additional facets, e. g. the use of certain verb forms (tendentially non-finite forms and non-actantional aspects), yet such specific features would hardly be characteristics of the descriptive if considered in a wider, intermedial context.

30

Werner Wolf

nyms) or belong to the same semantic class and are thus more predictable than the individual signs employed for the transmission of narratives (cf. Bal 1981/1982: 10436). The relative predictability and apparent superfluousness of a plurality of ‘graphic’ details – ‘superfluous’ if seen from the perspective of narrative relevance37 – is at the same time a stimulus which contributes to triggering the frame ‘description’ in the recipient’s mind. Although the number of details, can, of course, vary considerably38, the fact that such details typically exist in descriptions at least to some extent, helps to differentiate description from mere reference but also from simple enactment. Thus, the mere adumbration of a human figure by means of a circle and some lines denoting a body, legs and arms is no more a genuine description of a person than having a character simply cross the stage in some kind of neutral, ‘nondescript’ costume as a part of a larger group denoting, for instance, the population of a city. In contrast to this, the rendering of the particular shape, colour and aspect of an individual human face with wrinkles, scars, hair etc. would certainly be perceived as a ‘depiction’, and the same would apply to a dramatic character who is sent on stage in a historical costume produced with a visible love for period details. A further typical feature of the internal organization of descriptions, which is related to the aforementioned relative predictability of descriptive details, is the following one: in descriptions, the absence of narrative constraints leads to a privileging of a paradigmatic discursive organization (as opposed to a predominantly syntagmatic

36

With a view to literary descriptions Bal opposes “lexical predictability” as typical of descriptions to “logical predictability” as typical of narratives (1981/1982: 104). 37

Among inexperienced or merely plot-centred readers (as I was when, as a boy, I devoured the novels of Karl May) this apparent redundancy – together with an unwelcome interruption of the action – often leads to skipping descriptions. 38

In his contribution to this volume, Ansgar Nünning differentiates between “bottom-up, data-driven description” and “top-down, frame-driven description” (99). Obviously, the former variant is the one in which details are more numerous, as the latter one can reduce the number of given details, because it relies more heavily on the recipient’s cultural competence to recognize the object referred to along with its typical qualities. It is clear that there are no descriptions in literature that do not, to a certain extent, activate pre-established schemata. My point here is that description is typically more than a mere reference to such schemata, as this could be achieved by a single word without further attributions.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

31

organization in narratives39). If, therefore, causal and teleological concatenation of different and ever new actantional elements is typical of narratives, the typical mode of organization in descriptions is the metonymic juxtaposition of qualities (see Pflugmacher 2005: 101) that are attributed to individual objects (e. g. flowers in a verbal description of a meadow or trees in the representation of a forest linked by “here” and “there” or “and” rather than by “because”, “suddenly” or “finally”). Apart from that, the internal organization of descriptions is heavily dependent on the medium chosen. This can be seen in the application of descriptive iconicity. Static and spatial objects, spatial media and in particular the pictorial medium seem privileged in following the ‘natural’ contours of the objects described by means of ‘perceptual’ or ‘imagic’ iconicity. A temporal medium such as verbal fiction is on the other hand better suited to rendering dynamic objects of description, whose consecutive stages can be represented in a discursive sequence showing ‘diagrammatic’ iconicity as a kind of ‘conceptual’ iconicity40. In sum, the descriptive – similar to the frame ‘narrative’ – is a multifactorial cognitive frame. It consists of a number of ‘descriptemes’ which may be realized to a higher or lesser extent in individual artefacts41. These descriptemes can be arranged, as shown in the following overview, according to the previously used criteria of function, content and form/mode of presentation; one may furthermore differentiate according to primary descriptemes, which belong to the core of prototypical descriptions (and can therefore form ‘stimuli’ that trigger the corresponding frame in the recipient’s mind [in the overview in bold type]), and secondary descriptemes (single underlined), which are characteristic of prototypical, albeit not all cases of description and generally play a role, in particular when it comes to discussing degrees of descriptiveness: 39

Cf. also Lopes 1995: 5: “[...] descriptions prove to be far more pliable and versatile than narrations, since, unlike the latter, they are free from the constraints of logic and narrative grammar.” This is, however, only a tendency, as paradigmatic forms of organization can also inform comedy (see Warning 1976) and certain other forms of narratives (see Warning 2001). 40 41

For the different kinds of iconicity see Fischer/Nänny 1999.

For an analogous conceptualization of the frame ‘narrative’ through ‘narratemes’ see Wolf 2002c, 2003 and 2004b.

32

Werner Wolf

1. Functional descriptemes 1.1. referentiality (the hetero-referential quality of descriptions, which is qualified by the following descriptemes no.s 1.2-2.4); 1.2. representationality (the representational quality of the reference) and experientiality (which is linked to vividness of the representation eliciting, or enhancing aesthetic illusion); 1.3. the pseudo-objectivizing function of descriptions (their suggestion of objectivity) while they at the same time fulfil an interpretive function (they contribute to, or constitute, an interpretation of the object described or of the text/artefact in which they occur). 2. Content-related descriptemes 2.1. concrete phenomena as objects of the description (whether real or imaginary) rather than abstractions; 2.2. ‘existential’ phenomena as objects of description rather than actantional ones (with a slight tendency towards spatial rather than temporal and static rather than dynamic objects, although these alternatives are also frequent); 2.3. a tendency towards external rather than internal (mental) objects, although, again, these alternatives cannot be excluded from the field of the descriptive; 2.4. a tendency towards the visual/visual objects rather than towards other sensory aspects/other objects, which, however, also occur as objects of descriptions. 3. Presentational/formal descriptemes 3.1. an emphasis on sensory appearance/impressions in the qualities attributed to the objects of description (a focus on their ‘surface’); 3.2. multiple, paradigmatic attributions of qualities to the object of description as a basic semiotic operation that goes beyond mere reference (as identification), leading to a tendency towards a multiplicity of (predictable) details.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

33

2.5. Description and related notions in the context of literature and other media The foregoing discussion allows us to differentiate, in a survey, descriptions and the descriptive as used in literature and other media from related notions, in particular from (hetero-)reference, narrative and expression: a. Description and (hetero-)reference: The descriptive, as a semiotic macro-mode, always implies (hetero-)reference in a general, semiotic sense (as opposed to self-reference42), namely as any relation that exists, for communicational purposes, between a sign and a meaning that is (thought to be) located outside the sign system, i. e. in a possible world. The kind of ‘reference’ implicated in description must, however, still be further clarified, for reference can functionally be restricted to mere identification, but description, as we have seen, always implies more than that. Thus, in a novel, a simple noun, e. g. a name, would be an identifying reference43, but not a description, while the addition of an adjective to the same noun can be a mini-description44. However, this would not as yet be regarded as the typical referentiality of descriptions either, for typical descriptions tend to attribute a plurality of qualities and details to the phenomena referred to. Thus, description not only partakes in general hetero-referentiality and the referential function but uses it repeatedly for one and the same object. b. The descriptive as opposed to narrative: Both phenomena are cognitive frames, in particular semiotic macro-modes that serve to organize representations and imply hetero-reference. Yet, this is done along different lines: while narrative consists of actantional representations implying motivated and (e. g. causally and teleologically) meaningful changes of situations, the descriptive focusses

42

For the various kinds of self-reference see Wolf 2007a, and 2007b (forthcoming).

43

This applies to verbal reference. As opposed to this, representational reference in the visual arts always implies some degree of descriptiveness (see below, chap. 3.1.). 44

Of course, the difference between simple reference and description is not an absolute one but can be gradual. The relation between the two concepts is further complicated by the fact that sometimes description is a first step towards defining an object, such as a newly found plant, which then can be referred to by a simple, not necessarily descriptive sign.

34

Werner Wolf

on ‘existential’ phenomena45: while the typical suggestion of narrative is that ‘something happened because of something else and led to a certain end’, the typical suggestion of description is simply that ‘something is there and like that’46. c. Description as opposed to expression: Both notions can be subsumed under ‘reference’ in the aforementioned very general, semiotic sense, yet apart from that they are located on different logical levels: a description is the realization of a semiotic macro-mode which implies an intensified referential function and a specific organization of signs, while expression, according to Jakobson (see 1960), is a basic linguistic or semiotic function in itself; it can be found (independently of the medium employed) in narratives and descriptions as well as in other semiotic macro-modes. 2.6. Intermediate summary: definition of the descriptive in literature and other media The amount of commentary which has been used in this Essay in order to explain description shows that it is a particularly elusive phenomenon. Yet, it would no doubt be unsatisfactory if this elusiveness and the concomitant difficulties in handling description as a concept led to what has been claimed in research, namely that description cannot be defined at all47. For if we have a notion of the descriptive, if we are able to apply this frame when we perceive a description, it should also be possible to account for it in more than negative terms. Therefore, by way of intermediate summary of the above reflections, a tentative definition of description shall be given that sums up what has been said so far: The descriptive – like narrative – is a cognitive (macro-)frame. In semiotic terms, it can be said to constitute a transmedial and transgeneric semiotic macro-mode of organizing 45

This ‘existential focus’ should not be confused with Chatman’s static spatial ‘existents’ (see 1978: chap. 3), which are components of narratives. It simply denotes an emphasis on the ‘whatness’ of a phenomenon, object, person, etc. irrespective of its involvement in a story. 46 The (seeming) referentiality of both narrative and description must be emphasized in opposition to Ronen’s claim (see 1997: 279) that reference is usually attributed to description only. 47

Cf. Bal (1980/1985: 129), “Problems arise, [...] as soon as one attempts to define exactly what description is”, and Lopes’ view that “[...] unlike narration, description seems to elude any attempts at being defined in a systematic way” (Lopes 1995: 7).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

35

signs in representations which can inform the macro-level of certain works (and thus become the dominant frame of entire texts and artefacts). It can, however, also occur on a micro-level (thus forming descriptive parts of individual texts and artefacts). In contrast to narrative, which typically consists of meaningful actantional representations, the descriptive provides ‘existential’ representations. This is why descriptions do not require changes of situations as necessary constituents and cannot be suspenseful in themselves (although they can contribute to narrative suspense) nor do they teleologically lead to a certain goal. In literature and other media, the objects of descriptions are concrete phenomena that can be fictitious or real, but are all represented with a noticeable emphasis on their sensory appearance. They are frequently static (spatial) and visual, but dynamic (temporal) objects and other sensory qualities can also be relevant. The main purpose of descriptions is not the mere identification of such concrete phenomena but their vivid representation through the paradigmatic attribution of qualities. This leads to a particular experientiality, and often descriptions also elicit, or reinforce, aesthetic illusion. Another important function of descriptions is the often covert contribution to the overall meaning and interpretation of the artefacts in which they occur. The stimuli that activate the frame ‘description’ in the recipient’s mind are taken from the features that characterize the descriptive. Most important is a representational use of signs that highlights the physical ‘whatness’ of a concrete object through detailed attributions. A discernible emphasis on paradigmatically transmitted perceptual details (‘surface’ details) is a related marker of descriptiveness. If the description occurs in the larger context of a narrative, an additional stimulus is the feeling that the narrative progress is interrupted or temporarily suspended. 2.7. The concretization of descriptive objects in the recipient’s mind Stimuli given by a descriptive artefact or text are only part of what must be taken into account when the frame ‘description’ is activated in a recipient with reference to a concrete object. As with all frames, stimuli that reside in the object perceived (in our case notably the aforementioned ‘descriptemes’) can only be successful if the recipient cooperates, for it is in his or her mind that the medially transmitted descriptions must be realized in order to be efficient in the first place

36

Werner Wolf

(see Walter Bernhart’s contribution to this volume). What Gombrich called, and discussed as, “the beholder’s share” in the ‘reading’ of pictures (see 1960/1977: 154-244) can in fact be generalized and applied to the decipherment of all kinds of descriptions. Together with the recipients and the ‘world knowledge’ at their disposal, the context, in particular the cultural context and the cognitive frames provided by it, must be mentioned as further important factors in the workings of descriptions. As Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this volume deals extensively with this aspect, some brief remarks will suffice here. The “beholder’s share” has a basic, general implication which must be actualized independently of the medium employed when it comes to a successful reception of a description: it consists in the recipient’s ability and willingness to apply the frame ‘description’ in the first place (the recipient’s knowledge of reality but also of cultural artefacts and texts has a large share in determining to what extent the elements contained in a description will elicit vivid ideas and imaginations). Yet, as the descriptive is a representational macro-mode, there is also a share that varies according to the medium or kind of representation employed. This variable share concerns the transfer from the materiality of the medial or textual representation to what Roman Ingarden called the ‘concretization’ of the objects described in the recipient’s mind (see Ingarden 1937/1968: 49-55). For, as already said, it is indeed in the recipient’s mind, in his or her imagination, that the signs of a text or representation have to coalesce into something that can be identified and experienced in analogy to the real-life phenomena referred to in the respective description. In this process, media-specific gaps, or, to use another one of Ingarden’s terms, “Unbestimmtheitsstellen” (‘areas of indeterminacy’, 1931/1965: 261-270, and 1937/1968: 50), must be taken into account. Apart from the recipient’s ability to fill in gaps (which is always required to a greater or lesser extent, as all medial representation includes areas of indeterminacy), it is indeed to a large extent these Unbestimmtheitsstellen which determine the descriptive potential and limits of individual media as well as the nature and extension of the recipient’s share in the process of concretization. These media-specific issues shall be discussed in the following with reference to select individual media.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

37

3. Descriptive potentials and limits of individual media As stated in the previous chapter, the concretization of descriptions depends, among other factors, on the medium employed48. This is why the focus of the individual contributions to this volume will be on specific media. In the following, no anticipation of these individual explorations is intended; the purpose of the next three sub-chapters is rather to give some general idea of the extent to which media can in fact influence the realization of the frame ‘description’. By way of example, three media will be selected that are particularly important, as they can provide insights also into other media as well as into the extent of the descriptive field as a whole, namely the pictorial medium as epitomized in paintings (which also covers elements that are relevant, e. g., to photography), narrative fiction as a representative of verbal media (many descriptive aspects of fiction may also be found to be applicable to other verbal media such as drama or film), and instrumental music as an apparently problematic case at the margins of the descriptive field. The sequence of the discussion will follow the degrees to which these three media, at first sight, appear to have affinities to the descriptive, starting with the seemingly most descriptive medium. This hierarchy of descriptive potentials will, however, be questioned in the end. In order to facilitate comparison, one typical object of description will be in focus, namely landscapes in which mountains or hills play a role. As a basis of comparison among the three media chosen, the following guiding questions will be asked each time (albeit not always in identical sequence): 1. What is the predominant semiotic nature of the signs employed in each case49? This question refers to a central aspect of the specific medial nature of the medium in question. 2. How does this semiotic nature influence the descriptive potential of the medium under scrutiny? In particular: what consequences 48

Cf. Chatman 1990: 38: “Though each text-type can be actualized in any communicative medium [...] each medium privileges certain ways of doing so.” (However, Chatman, speaks, with reference to description, of “text-type[s]” and does not distinguish, like Virtanen, between ‘discourse types’ and ‘text types’ [see above, note 25] nor employs the term ‘cognitive frame’ in this context).

49 This implies that apart from predominant or typical signs there are also others, yet it is the dominant ones that determine the descriptive potential of a given medium.

38

Werner Wolf

does the dominant quality of signs have on the recipient’s share in ‘deciphering’ descriptions, what problems may arise, and to what extent is the frame ‘description’ applicable to the given medium in the first place? 3. What is the relation between the two representational macroframes description and its ‘other’, narration, within the medium in question, and how is description marked as a frame of its own, if it occurs alongside narration? 4. What specific functions can be attributed to description within the medium under scrutiny? A fifth question could refer to the history of description in each medium. Yet, answering that would lead too far in the present context and would in some cases anticipate the contributions to this volume that are dedicated to individual media. Therefore, it must suffice here to generally emphasize the importance of the historical dimension in order to complete our enquiry into the descriptive; details will to some extent emerge from the other essays in this book, will be found in previous research, or must be relegated to further research. 3.1. Description in a pictorial medium: painting The first medium under scrutiny is painting as a representative of the pictorial media (in this essay also addressed as ‘the pictorial medium’). From an etymological point of view, ‘description’ does not seem to be an appropriate term for a pictorial medium as part of the visual media, since these media do not ‘describe’ but ‘depict’. However, it is arguably not by chance that descriptio was for centuries a received term used for both verbal texts informing readers about, e. g., foreign countries (such as in Helvetiae descriptio by Henricus Glareanus, 1519) and for maps (to remain within a Swiss context, cf., for instance, a map of the territory of Zurich from 1750 entitled Nova descriptio ditionis Tigurinae, regionumq[ue] finitimarum)50. Clearly, the features of the descriptive frame outlined above (identification of objects through characteristic attribution, communicating sense data about them and rendering them in a [seemingly] objective way) can be applied to both verbal and visual representations. Therefore, it makes sense (and not only with an eye to historical usage) to apply the term ‘description’ to the pictorial medium as well and to compare its de50

See also above, note 1.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

39

scriptive potential to other media according to the aforementioned criteria and guiding questions. As for the first guiding question, it is easily answered with reference to the pictorial medium in focus. The typical class of signs employed here are iconic visual signs that are usually referential. In the kind of pictorial medium that will be discussed in the following, namely single pictures (and not ‘movies’), these signs are in addition static. Considering the tendency that many objects of description (some would even say typical objects of description) are static and spatial and additionally appeal the to sense of vision, a pictorial medium such as painting appears to have a very high descriptive potential. This is all the more so since pictures, as opposed to, e. g., verbal narratives or films, do not have a beginning, a middle and an end but, so to speak, only a middle and (optionally) a frame, which, according to Luca Giuliani (see 2003: 286), favours description as implying a focus on a specific object. Moreover, the iconic quality of the overwhelming majority of pictorial signs with their reference to form and colour seems to create a natural closeness to a maximum of possible objects of the kind mentioned. “Rather than merely imagining” to perceive something, as when reading verbal descriptions with their symbolic signs, in looking at pictures, as Kendall L. Walton pertinently remarks (1990: 301), “one imagines one’s seeing the canvas to be a seeing of the [object described]” (or, in Walton’s terminology, the object ‘depicted’). As a consequence, one is tempted to claim that this medium requires only a relatively low degree of recipients’ share in the concretization of depicted objects, since it permits the beholder to experience these objects in a way that is much closer to real-life perception than is the case, e. g., in written literature51. The affinity between the pictorial medium and description indeed seems to be so intimate52 that the second guiding question, namely to what extent the 51

This, of course, does not imply a denial of the fact, emphasized e. g. by Gombrich (1960/1977: 251), that how to ‘read’ paintings has to be learnt just like other cultural techniques and that consequently there is no “innocent eye”. The “relatively low degree of the recipient’s share” only refers to the comparison with symbolic sign systems such as written texts and in addition to ‘concretization’ as the early stage of reception (the understanding of what is described in the first place), before subsequent interpretation sets in. 52

Cf. also Alpers 1983: xxi, who uses the conventional impression “that painting by its very nature is descriptive” as the starting point of her interesting historical discus-

40

Werner Wolf

frame ‘description’ is applicable here, sounds banal and should therefore rather be reformulated: are there pictures at all that are not descriptive? Even if at first sight the answer seems to be, ‘of course there aren’t any’, on second thoughts, this reformulated question must get a more nuanced response. For, besides the fact that there are paintings that appear to be narrative rather than descriptive53, there are in fact nondescriptive paintings, notably of an abstract nature as epitomized by some works of Wassily Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian’s “Composition” (1930, see Illustration 2).

Illustration 2: Piet Mondrian. “Komposition” (“Composition”, 1930)

The non-descriptiveness of such abstract works of art clearly resides in the simple fact that they do not employ pictorial signs in a referential way. They therefore do not conform to one of the principal functions of the frame ‘description’, namely to representationality, let alone to life-like experientiality, nor do they create aesthetic illusion. sion of the emphatically descriptive Dutch art of the seventeenth century as opposed to what she considers the mainly narrative art of the Italian Renaissance. 53

For the relationship between these two frames in painting see below.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

41

Yet, ‘abstraction’ is not a monolithic category. Rather, there are degrees of abstraction, of distinctness of representation and, in connection with this, of intensity of illusion. In connection with this, there are also degrees of painterly descriptivity. It is, for instance, well known that referential art unfolds between poles which Gombrich called efficient “making” and convincing “matching” (1960/ 1977: 121). Art that is typologically located near the former pole concentrates on providing easily readable schemata (which tend more towards abstraction), while art that is closer to the opposite pole focusses more on lifelikeness and less on abstraction and can therefore elicit aesthetic illusion more easily. In terms of descriptiveness, the former type tends to a relatively low degree: references are established for which “the merest schema will suffice, provided it retains [an] efficacious nature” (Gombrich 1960/1969: 94). An example of this procedure is the treatment of the mountains and forests in Giotto’s fresco “La Fuga in Egitto” (Illustration 3).

Illustration 3: Giotto. “La Fuga in Egitto” (“The Flight into Egypt”, 1304-1306, Padua, Chapel of the Scrovegni)

42

Werner Wolf

Clearly, the outer aspect of ‘real’ mountains and mountain forests – as opposed to the appearance of clothes – is not among the main interests of our painter. As for the forests, Giotto reduces them in what is termed in art history ‘Topothesie’ (see Schneider 1999: 15): a forest is here represented schematically by no more than six individual trees. In this painterly metonymy, or pars pro toto, these six trees and the two bare peaks adumbrate, rather than vividly describe, a mountain scene54. As opposed to Giotto’s schematic, low-degree landscape description there is, at the other extreme, nineteenth-century realism, as represented by Karl Haider’s painting “Die Mühlsturzhörner”, a mountain group near Berchtesgaden/Bavaria (1901, see Illustration 4). This painting attempts to ‘describe’ the view of specific mountains with many clearly identifiable, realistic details such as the postglacial boulders in the meadow, the shrubbery, the fir trees and spruces in the middle ground, and the topographically accurate rock formations in the background. The most important difference from Giotto’s mountain scene, however, is the general impression conveyed by Haider’s painting that here the scenery is rendered in imitation of a real-life perspective, as it would appear from a point of view within the depicted world. Paintings like this one show to what extent the pictorial medium is in fact ideal for the description of spatial, visual objects such as landscapes. Owing to the constraints of painting as a spatial, visual medium, there are, however obvious limitations, as soon as the object described is not visual, spatial or in movement. In order to represent an avalanche, for instance, with a maximum of descriptivity, film would clearly be the better medium. If paintings still attempt such descriptions, they must resort to specific triggers which help the viewer to transcend the ‘frozen moment’ depicted. This is usually done by employing pictorial signs in a heavily indexical way, e. g. by representing figures whose bodies betray the movement of flight (see the historical woodcut reproduced in Illustration 5). 54 In view of pictures like this one, one is tempted to consider the quantity of details given in a (pictorial) representation as a criterion of descriptivity. While this is tenable to the extent that schematic representations which have a low degree of descriptivity typically provide few details, one must add that there are other, and perhaps more important criteria (e. g. the lifelikeness of colour, form, texture, etc.), which contribute to ‘convincing matching’ in Gombrich’s sense and hence to a higher degree of descriptivity.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

43

Illustration 4: Karl Haider. “Die Mühlsturzhörner” (“The Muehlsturzhoerner”, 1901)

Illustration 5: Johannes Weber. “Staublawine über die mittlere Entschigtal-Galerie der Gotthardbahn bei der Station Wassen (Uri) am 15. Februar 1888, Blick nach Norden zum Witenstock” (“Dry avalanche across the Gotthardbahn’s middle Entschigtal Gallery at the Wassen station [Uri] on February 15, 1888, when looking north towards the Witenstock”, 1888)

44

Werner Wolf

In cases like this dynamic scene, the painterly medium must rely on a particularly large share of the recipients’ imaginary activity. For the same reason – medial limitations – paintings also have obvious difficulties in representing, for instance, language and other acoustic phenomena as well as in realizing the temporal frame of representation par excellence, namely narratives55. This leads us to the third guiding question, namely how descriptivity and narrativity are related in paintings and whether the descriptive can be singled out as an independent frame. We are not concerned here with the question, which I have treated elsewhere (see Wolf 2002c, 2003, 2004b), of whether pictures can be narrative in the first place. Suffice it to say that this medium can in fact be narrative to a certain extent, provided representations imply or indicate a temporal and actantional dimension. The relative rarity of genuine narrativity and the extreme frequency of the descriptive in pictures reverses the problem of marking: it is not so much the frame ‘description’ that requires marking in pictures, as it seems to be the default option in this medium anyway (at least as long as it is used as a representational medium), but rather the exceptional frame narrative. In individual, so-called ‘monophase’ pictures, narrativity is frequently signalled by an intermedial reference to a verbal story, as is the case in Giotto’s representation of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, which illustrates a narrative episode of the Gospel according to St. Matthew (2.13-15). Generally, the most important marker of narrativity is the existence, or at a least suggestion of, both a temporal and actantional dimension (which are not requisite in description). Both elements are adumbrated in Giotto’s painting by the gesture of the angel pointing to the right and by the direction of the little procession which also moves from left to right, for a reason and with a goal that are both implied in the biblical text to which the iconography and the title of the picture refer. As for the relation between narrativity and descriptivity in paintings, two general remarks may be sufficient for our purpose of a cursory medial comparison: The first holds true for all potentially narrative media and consists in the simple fact that descriptions can, of course, contribute to the illusionist experientiality and the meaning of stories. Description can, for instance, constitute background information on the characters of a story, just as the way characters are dressed 55

This is, of course, not to say that pictures cannot evoke narratives.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

45

can indicate their social status, their love of luxury or thrift etc. Generally speaking, description often serves to create the ground (in particular the setting) on which the figures or characters of a narrative can be seen to act. It is with an eye to this figure/ground relation that description can be called in many – albeit not in all – cases “ancilla narrationis” (Genette 1969: 57, see also below). The second remark refers to a specificity of the painterly medium. As pertinently stated by Luca Giuliani, a pictorial representation can in its overall effect, i. e. in the triggering of a semiotic macro-frame on the macro-level, only be either descriptive or narrative (see 2003: 36)56. On the micro-level, this is, however, different, and it is here that a remarkable specificity of the medium appears: while paintings can be exclusively descriptive and non-narrative, they cannot be totally narrative without descriptivity (see ibid.: 285) and in this differ from verbal narratives which do not absolutely require descriptions. In painting (as in film), there is in fact no narrativity without at least a minimum of descriptivity. Each pictorial (hetero-)reference, as opposed to a verbal one, can be regarded as a minimally descriptive gesture, for pictures cannot refer to concrete phenomena without giving at least some details. In contrast to this, a verbal medium, owing to the symbolic nature of language, can remain within the field of unspecified and abstract concepts (such as ‘tree’ or ‘forest’). Painting can only refer to concepts by specifying them iconically to some extent (even if it can be more or less schematic): it must opt for one rather than another quality of the referent57 (e. g. for a tree resembling a fir tree or a deciduous tree, a tree with brown rather than green leaves, etc.). Therefore, all painterly references to essential narrative building blocks, notably persons, settings and actions, are also at least minimally descriptive, as can be seen in Giotto’s fresco58. 56

Other general frames such as argumentation are here out of the question.

57

Chatman (1990: 40-41) makes the same point about cinema, which “cannot help describing” (40), but this only refers to implicit (“tacit” [38 and passim]) cinematic descriptions, from which he distinguishes “explicit” (ibid.) descriptions. The inescapability of a relatively detailed descriptiveness in cinema is even more radical than in painting (“film cannot be vague” [ibid.: 41])], as the option of merely schematic mimesis is here not usually given, let alone an analogy to abstract painting. 58

According to Alpers, a third general remark could be made with reference to the actualization of the frames ‘description’ and ‘narration’ in painting: “There seems to be an inverse proportion between attentive description and action: attention to the surface of the world described is achieved at the expense of the representation of narra-

46

Werner Wolf

The fact that all pictorial narratives include description does not invalidate the general opposition ‘description vs. narration’ in the visual media, since the reverse does not hold true, for, as e. g. most still lives show, not all descriptions imply narrations. Yet, this same fact nevertheless constitutes a problem for the usefulness of the application of the transmedial notion of the descriptive to visual media: for if most (representational) paintings are more or less descriptive, the notion of descriptiveness does not seem to be very helpful any longer. A solution to the problem may reside in the notion of ‘more or less’: the degree of descriptiveness as such may be a useful category of pictorial analysis, and in some cases it may even be useful to reserve the notion of ‘descriptive painting’ to works displaying a particularly high degree of descriptivity and interest in the surface appearance of the objects represented, as claimed by Svetlana Alpers for seventeenth-century Dutch art (see Alpers 1983). In addition, ‘the descriptive’ may be a helpful notion if one wants to differentiate, in one and the same picture, e. g. between a narrative whole and a predominantly descriptive part (in which, as said above, maybe the setting of a narrative scene is detailed) or between parts that differ according to the predominance of descriptivity or a mixed descriptive-narrative mode. As for specific functions of the descriptive in paintings, or to be more precise, of a high degree of descriptiveness, one may, for instance, mention the (meta-aesthetic) displaying of painterly skills as is the case in many still lives59. Other, perhaps more important functions include the employment of descriptive painterly representation as a topographical recording medium and precursor of photography up to the nineteenth century, and generally the creation or intensification of aesthetic illusion. In all cases of emphatic descriptiveness, the promotion or the satisfaction of a heightened interest in the outer, physical appearance of concrete phenomena are no doubt further functions. These functions also contribute to explaining the historical development of painterly descriptivity. It is no coincidence that in posttive action” (1983: xxi). I am, hoverer, not quite sure whether this is really tenable, since, for instance, the intense narrativity of Hogarth’s picture series (such as “A Rake’s Progress”) depends on minute descriptive details rather than being antagonistic to description. 59 Stoichita has convincingly emphasized this metapictorial function of the still life as an eminently descriptive painterly genre (see 1993/1998: 33).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

47

classical times descriptive painting reached a hitherto unknown degree in the Renaissance and in the seventeenth century in Dutch art, that is, in periods of renewed interest in the physical (rather than the spiritual) world. In many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape paintings, which moreover frequently celebrate nature in the Romantic tradition, intended functions of painterly description are clarified by resorting to what one may call ‘reception figures’. These are people who are represented alongside the described objects and through whose attitudes, emotionally expressive gestures and other responses the objects described receive a particular colouring. Reception figures thus represent the subjective pole of the descriptive act within the artefact itself and so become an important means of influencing the real recipient by providing relevant frames of interpretation. This is, for instance, the case in Johann Heinrich Wüest’s oil painting “Der Rhônegletscher (Wallis) Blick nach Nordosten” (1772/1773, see Illustrations 6 and 6a).

Illustration 6: Detail from Johann Heinrich Wüest. “Der Rhônegletscher (Wallis) Blick nach Nordosten” (“The Rhône Glacier [Wallis] when looking north-east”, 1772/1773, cf. Illustration 6a)

In this painting no less than three contemporary frames are referred to by the reception figures: the tiny human figures in the central foreground point to the glacier as if to a theatrical performance – nature, through this emotional gesture, is construed in terms of the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the sublime, while the little dog, most presumably a pet, points to the emergent frame of nature as a tourist attraction visited for the sake of entertainment. The group of recipient

48

Werner Wolf

figures which is located somewhat to centre right and contains a landscape painter mis en abyme provides yet another contemporary frame: namely nature as a ‘picturesque’ object of aesthetic representation – and this is arguably the frame through which the real spectator is himself principally meant to view Wüest’s painting.

Illustration 6a: Johann Heinrich Wüest. “The Rhône Glacier”

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

49

3.2. Description in the verbal media: narrative fiction At first sight, the second medium under scrutiny here, namely verbal fiction as a representative of (exclusively) verbal media (here also called ‘the verbal medium’), seems to have less descriptive potential than painting, at least with regard to objects of description from the field of concrete spatial and visual phenomena. The obvious reason for this ‘Laokoon-problem’ rests in the nature of the verbal medium itself: although it is typically as referential as the pictorial medium, it is a temporal and dynamic medium, that is, it unfolds in a sequence of text and not, as painting, in the simultaneousness of a canvas. In addition, the dominant type of signs employed is symbolic and not iconic, which makes an extra demand on the recipient’s activity. Verbal texts do not permit a life-like reconstruction of objects through the perception of iconic signs. Rather, the work of concretization is here exclusively the recipient’s share. And yet, the frame ‘description’ looms large in almost all works of literature, and the very term ‘descriptio’ already points to the close connection of literature as writing or ‘scriptio’, and description. One of the great advantages of a verbal medium is its referential flexibility: there is in fact hardly a conceivable phenomenon that cannot be referred to in language, and there are virtually no concrete objects, including artefacts and works of art, that cannot be described to some extent with words60. However, when it comes to vivid representation or imitation, language, since it unfolds in time, is admittedly, fitter to ‘imitate’ temporal objects (including most notably language itself) and has difficulties in imitating spatial phenomena. With spatial objects it can hardly avoid creating a remarkably high number of areas of indeterminacy or Unbestimmtheitsstellen in Ingarden’s sense. Yet, as mentioned above with reference to G. E. Lessing’s Laokoon, this problem is not as fundamental as it may seem, for in many cases there are ways and means to ‘dynamize’ the description of spatial objects, e. g. as a process of production. Another means, made use of since the late eighteenth century, are intermedial borrowings 60

For literary descriptions of visual works of art as well as for works of music there are even special terms: ‘ekphrasis’ (which could even lead to an intermedial mise en abyme of description, if the visual artefact verbally described is in itself decriptive) and ‘verbal music’ (for the latter form see Scher 1970 and Wolf 1999: 59-62); both variants of intermedial reference aim at triggering an imaginary perception of the works or media referred to.

50

Werner Wolf

from, or rather references to, the descriptive medium of spatial representation par excellence, namely painting61. So the real problem encountered in the verbal media is not the question of whether the frame ‘description’ can be realized in it at all (it can), but rather how to organize the descriptive discourse. This problem is inextricably linked to another one, which is of particular relevance to verbal media, namely the relation between description and narration. In literature – as opposed to, e. g., paintings such as still lives – description rarely informs an entire work, nor does it usually form an independent genre except for some kinds of lyric poetry (e. g. the Dinggedicht). In narrative fiction at any rate, description usually constitutes a subordinate frame that operates under the auspices of the dominant frame ‘narrative’ and usually helps prepare the ground on which the characters act. Genette therefore called description the handmaiden of narrative (“ancilla narrationis” [1969: 57]), but also claimed, on the other hand, that in spite of this hierarchy, there is no narration without description (see ibid.62). Riffaterre (1986) criticized this claim and even inverted Genette’s alleged hierarchy between narration and description, which for him becomes “mater narrationis” (293). This is, however, overstating the case, for in theory, verbal narratives can do without Anschaulichkeit (‘graphic representation’) and descriptions – although they would perhaps not be very good narratives. At any rate, both frames are in principle more independent from each other in verbal texts than in the pictorial medium, where Genette’s claim is more appropriate, namely that narration – where it occurs – cannot do without description. As for the internal organization of descriptive discourse, verbal texts show a variety of solutions to this problem, covering a whole range of degrees between a very loose and a rigid, artificial structure. All in all, their organization gives the impression of much more flexibility and perhaps even arbitrariness than is, for instance, the case in narrative texts or passages. There is even the danger that verbal de61

The supplementarity of the pictorial medium is, for instance, explicitly thematized (and illustrated by the inclusion of pictures) in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in the reference to the ‘gryphon’ quoted at the beginning of this essay. As Lopes rightly remarks, similar intermedial references could also lead to metamedial selfreflexivity that deals with the limits and possibilities of painting and literature (see 1995: 149). 62 “[...] la narration [...] ne peut exister sans description, mais cette dépendance ne l’empêche pas de jouer constamment le premier rôle.” (Genette 1969: 57).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

51

scriptions, in the terms of Evelyn Cobley, “turn into lists of items which are not only randomly successive but also indefinitely extendible” (1986: 399). Cobley highlights two crucial structural problems of descriptive discourse, namely where to fix the just amount of descriptive details as well as where and how to end a description. As Cobley’s statement implies, the beginnings of verbal descriptions seem to present fewer problems. There are in fact a number of conventions that help to signal such beginnings. The opening of descriptions as well as their endings are thus related to the marking of the frame ‘description’. One of the most obvious conventions, at least in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, is the initial position of descriptions either with reference to the entire text or to major segments, in particular those that are marked by a change of scenery. Another convention used in order to set off descriptions from surrounding narrative passages on the micro-level is to lead the story to a pause in its dynamic unfolding, e. g. when a traveller takes a rest and has leisure time to gaze at the surrounding landscape, for it is at this point that usually dynamic, actantual verbs will be followed by predominantly existential ones (we will come back to this switching from narration to description in the context of the motivation for description). In all of these cases the ‘theme’ of the description is, as a rule, mentioned in the first few lines63. This naming together with the use of paradigmatic attribution rather than syntagmatic narration is a powerful additional marker of descriptive beginnings. In contrast to descriptive openings, the endings of verbal descriptions tend to present major problems of organization, marking and motivation. As opposed to narratives, in which the ending, as a rule, is the logical or otherwise motivated result of a foregoing development, the ending of descriptions is more or less arbitrary: it can happen at any time, notably when the descriptor feels that a sufficiently clear and vivid idea of the object described has been given. Yet, it is usually difficult to see why this should happen at one specific point rather than another. Therefore, descriptions are in principle “indefinitely extendible” (Cobley 1986: 399), and, as Philippe Hamon justly remarks, their endings are far less predictable than the endings of narratives (1975: 510). However, Hamon has shown that there are possibilities not only to signal the beginnings but also the endings of descriptions (see 1975: 510-513). If authors do not want to resort to 63

Otherwise, the description can become a riddle, a “devinette” (Hamon 1975: 511).

52

Werner Wolf

the simple device of metatextually thematizing the imminent end, the exhaustion of a previously announced descriptive pattern (e. g. the four points of the compass in a landscape description) is an alternative possibility. Another one is to come to the end of a ‘technological procedure’ motivated, e. g., by the logical or usual steps in the construction of a building (ending with the interior decoration). Yet another alternative would be to take up the situation motivating the description in the first place, thus creating a ‘framing’ effect of closure64. As for the problem of how to internally organize verbal descriptions in between the beginnings and endings, which equally implies the question (also mentioned by Cobley) concerning the just amount of descriptive details, one must remember a general fact about descriptions, namely that they all leave Unbestimmtheitsstellen and that such areas of descriptive indeterminacy are more or less discernible according to the nature of the medium employed. They are less so where the medium harmonizes with qualities of the objects described. In the verbal medium fiction, this applies to two fields: firstly, when this medium is used to represent processes, and secondly, when it serves to render that phenomenon in which language is at its mimetic best: namely language itself. Yet, where a medium ‘goes against the grain’ of the objects described, areas of indeterminacy are more conspicuous. In verbal fiction, this is the case with static spatial objects. Attempts at reducing these areas through ever more details (or, as shown with reference to photography in Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic film Blow-Up [1966]) can even result in laying bare the medium as such – a metafictional effect that is exploited on purpose in the endless descriptions, or rather metadescriptions, of the French nouveau roman65. It is also in such cases that the problems of plausibly organizing the descriptive discourse become most discernible. 64 Hamon (see 1975: 520-521) also mentions formal devices, e. g. the use of phonetic and semantic markers of closure as in terminal parallelisms – yet this way of organizing endings is more frequently found in lyric poetry than in narrative fiction. 65 Here, the overdoing of description reveals the fact that the literary discourse is centred on a verbal creation (resulting in a “description creátrice” [Ricardou 1967: 95]) rather than on the mimetic rendering of a seemingly pre-existing reality and ultimately turns description into “une machine à désorienter [l]a vision” (Ricardou 1967: 19; cf. also Ricardou 1978: 124-130). For the excessive use of description in the nouveau roman (e. g. in Robbe-Grillet’s Le Voyeur [1955]) as a device counteracting narrativity and undermining aesthetic illusion see moreover Wolf 1993: 428-433 and, recently, Rippl 2005: 87-96, who also discusses texts in English. On ‘metadescrip-

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

53

One possibility of ordering a descriptive text, even if it refers to a static spatial object, is what has already been mentioned in the context of marking descriptive endings, namely to follow or invent a process that can plausibly be related to the object described, e. g. its construction (this is the famous Homeric device applied in the description of Achilles’s shield in book 18 of the Iliad). A second possibility is to attempt some descriptive iconicity by discursively following some order inherent in the described phenomenon itself or in its perception. As for the object itself, a ‘natural’, iconic rendering in a dynamic verbal medium is, however, restricted to the diagrammatic iconicity imitating processes that go on in the world described (e. g. a sunrise)66 and thus would not apply to static spatial phenomena. Another kind of diagrammatic iconicity could, however, apply, namely “experiential iconicity”: as I have detailed elsewhere (Wolf 2001; cf. also Cobley 1986), the organization of a descriptive verbal discourse can imitate a process of perception, and this could even apply to static objects, e. g. when the description of a landscape follows a dynamic gaze which firstly surveys the foreground, then the middle ground, and lastly the horizon67. tions’ see Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this volume. It should be clear that description – as any other semiotic macro-form – is open to metatextuality and that metadescriptive elements are therefore as little confined to the twentieth or the twenty-first centuries as ‘metanarrative’ ones, but can, for instance, already be seen, in the mock-heroic description of the angered Joseph Andrews in chapter III/6 of Henry Fielding’s novel of the same title (1742) or in E. A. Poe’s short narrative “The Domain of Arnheim” (1847), where the narrator “despair[s] of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the [landscape] marvels which [his] friend did accomplish”; the narrator continues with an interesting reflection on the problem of organizing a descriptive discourse: “I [...] hesitate between detail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite the two in their extremes” (Poe 1847/1908: 39). 66

A descriptive discourse following the sequence of a process would be similar to the diagrammatic iconicity underlying the ordo naturalis of many narrations. 67

Thus, object- and culture-dependent hierarchical relations between foreground and background (salient and non-salient elements) can be imitated in the sequence of the descriptive discourse with the salient foreground coming first; something similar applies to processes of perspectival perception (the discourse following a focalizer’s gaze). Although the occurrence of such iconicity is not very frequent in fiction, its existence must be stressed in the face of contrary statements such as Cobley’s (see 1986: 398f.) and Bal’s, for whom only “[n]arrative fragments are iconic” (1981/1982: 108). Such a denial of the possibility of descriptive iconicity is not only erroneous with reference to literature, but even more so with reference to what escapes an exclusively literary theory of description, namely a non-literary medium such as painting.

54

Werner Wolf

Yet, Meir Sternberg, in one of the best discussions of the ordering principles of verbal description, aptly entitled “Ordering the Unordered” (1981), rightly pointed out that for many objects of description such iconic ordering is difficult or impossible and that therefore the “linear progress is intrinsically unordered” (61; cf. also Cobley 1986: 398f.). Consequently, extrinsic alternatives should be found. One noniconic, ‘symbolic’ alternative would be to follow a logical or conceptual order dictated by cultural conventions, e. g., in Western culture, describing objects from left to right, or, even more importantly, starting with the general and then going into particulars (see Sternberg 1981: 70). The latter sequence corresponds to the logical steps which Jean-Michel Adam sees at work in verbal descriptions but which in effect may also shape their internal organization: the first, general step is what he calls “ancrage”, the ‘anchoring’ of the description in cultural knowledge; this is followed by the unfolding of particular aspects of the object (“aspectualisation”), which, in a third step, are related to each other and to other objects (“mise en relation” [Adam 1993: 104-113, cf. also Adam 1997/2005: 81-95]). Another option could be to adopt a “medium-oriented ordering” (Sternberg 1980: 87) such as following an “idiomatic sequence in verbal discourse” (ibid.: 87) or a “phonic” and “morphological” pattern of language (ibid.: 65). We must now come back to yet another problem which is of particular relevance to verbal media and which has already been mentioned in the discussion of descriptive markers, namely the problem of motivating descriptions within larger narrative wholes. In verbal media, description, as already stated, is usually a sub-frame occurring alongside other frames on the micro-level. Therefore, the question of the motivation for descriptions is here much more pressing than in the pictorial medium. This is all the more so as descriptions, and in particular extensive ones, tend to interrupt the story-line and are therefore not infrequently skipped by the impatient reader, eager for action and adventures. Fiction has handled the problem of motivation68 differently throughout history. The easiest way was relegating the motivation to mere convention: up to the nineteenth century it was, for example, a standard practice that main characters received an en-bloc description 68

For a theoretical discussion of the motivation of descriptions in fiction drawing on Hamon 1972 see Bal 1981/1982: 105-110; Bal distinguishes “three types of [character-centred] motivation”: “looking, speaking, or acting” (108).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

55

by the narrator at their first appearance in the storyworld, and something analogous became almost a rule in nineteenth-century fiction with reference to the description of settings. A more ‘advanced’ motivation, which was also frequently used in nineteenth-century fiction as well as later on, in particular in modernism, was linking descriptions to the internal perspective of focalizers or ‘reception figures’. Characters looking out of a window, men gazing at themselves while shaving in front of a mirror, tourists admiring a scenic landscape, all of this can serve as a justification for a plausible insertion of a description into a narrative whole. Thomas Hardy, for instance, likes to introduce anonymous visitors as focalizers69, whose gazes serve as pretexts for extensive initial descriptions of relevant settings where the main characters have not yet been introduced. Such a visitor or “rambler” occurs, for instance, in the extract from the opening lines of his novel The Woodlanders quoted above, in chapter 2.1. Interestingly, Hardy’s reception figure – through a tiny detail in the discourse – may at the same time be seen to provide a motivation for the readers to visit, in their imagination, such a “forsaken” stretch of land, for he is said to “trace the forsaken coach-road” “for old association’s sake” (Hardy 1887/1998: 5). The very first line of Hardy’s novel thus betrays, as motivating part of the following landscape description, something of the nostalgia with which the vanishing rural life of what Hardy called his native ‘Wessex’ was perceived in his fiction. This obviously leads to the question of the specific functions of descriptions in fiction. Although descriptions are often perceived as mere ornaments of narratives – and even narratologists such as Genette have held this view70 – they are clearly not ‘superfluous’ elements nor mere backgrounds to narration that simply give heteroreferential information on the setting as a stage for the characters and the action; rather, descriptions fulfil a number of further and more important functions, depending on historical conventions and worldviews. The most obvious among these functions is certainly – in continuation of the use of description in classical rhetoric – to enrich the perceptual appeal of a narrative text and thus to enhance its experiential as well as persuasive quality. Descriptions thus provide, so to speak, food for the recipient’s imagination and serve an important reader69

For the employment of such ‘hypothetical focalization’ see Herman 2002: chap. 8.

70

See Genette 1969: 58, where he speaks of a ‘decorative’ function of description.

56

Werner Wolf

response function. As mentioned above, owing to the conceptual flexibility of the medium narrative fiction, all sensory domains can in principle be addressed by verbal descriptions. However, there seems to be a ‘natural’, perhaps anthropological tendency to privilege what the term ‘imagination’ already implies, namely the visual. The extract from The Woodlanders bears witness to this, but the general frequency of detailed visual descriptions in Hardy and other nineteenthcentury novelists also show a cultural-historical trend at work: the general tendency towards enhanced visualization and maximally intensified (visual) aesthetic illusion which can be observed not only in the fiction of this period. In Hardy’s Wessex novels (to which The Woodlanders belongs) but also in Scott’s Scottish novels, the loving care of descriptive detail frequently served an additional purpose, in particular when referring to traditional rural or regional phenomena: namely preserving something at least in fiction that was felt to be endangered by the progress of modernization in reality. The informative function of description is thus here tinged with a certain nostalgia and receives additional weight through it. The experiential enhancement which goes along with descriptions, the fact that they generally interrupt the narrative flow, as well as the tendency that they do not occur at random in a text but at certain characteristic points gesture towards yet another function, which one may call relief-giving or ‘architectural’ function: descriptions can also be used to structure a narrative by setting off important scenes presented in the mode of ‘showing’ (which are the ones readers tend to remember) as opposed to summaries, which mostly deal with less important material and are transmitted in the mode of ‘telling’. Descriptions also serve the purpose of contributing to the explanation of story elements71. This was particularly important in realism, for the setting, be it natural or social, was conceived of as determining the characters and their lives to a large extent. Informing the reader about the details of the milieu in which the characters lived therefore was tantamount to explaining them. This explanatory function of description in realism, however, is only one possible realization of what 71

Cf. Genette 1969: 58: “La seconde grande fonction de la description [...] est d’ordre à la fois explicatif et symbolique”, and Hamon 1972: 483, who speaks of description as ‘unveiling’ the character of fictional persons; for the relationship between physiognomic description and ‘character-reading’ see also Wolf 2002a and 2002d.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

57

is arguably the most important function of descriptions in narrative fiction anyway: they are privileged places for conveying comments on, and interpretations of, the story with its setting, action and characters (cf. Ricardou 1967: 19; Riffaterre 1981: 125) and can generally be said to enhance textual meaning72. This can, for instance, be seen in the following excerpt from a nineteenth-century Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), in which an embedded story about an innocent young woman named Immalee/Isidora is quoted. This woman is on her way to marry the eponymous hero, an undead evil man who is doomed to wander on earth for 150 years in search of a victim who is ready to sell his or her soul to him. They were now in the open country, – a region far wilder to Isidora than the flowery paths of that untrodden isle [her former dwelling place], where she had no enemy. Now in every breeze she heard a menacing voice [...] she gazed around her, and tried to distinguish the objects near; but the intense darkness of the night rendered this almost impossible […] They seemed to be walking on a narrow and precipitous path close by a shallow stream, as they could guess by the hoarse and rugged sound of its waters, as they fought with every pebble to win their way. This path was edged on the other side by a few trees, whose stunted growth, and branches tossing wild and wide to the blast that now began to whisper mournfully among them, seemed to banish every image of a summer night from the senses [...] ‘[...] are these indeed the winds of heaven that sigh around me? [...]’ she exclaimed, as Melmoth, apparently disturbed by these words, attempted to hurry her on [...] her fears increasing, she wildly exclaimed, ‘Where is the priest to bless our union? [...]’ (Maturin 1820/1977: 506-508 [my underlinings]).

This scene of wild nature illustrates many technical features of descriptions, e. g. the emphasis on a plurality of metonymic details, as well as typically verbal ones, e. g. its dynamic quality, which conforms to the conditions of the verbal medium used. It also illustrates several typical functions of literary descriptions. For instance, it ‘paints’ an interesting setting (at least for contemporary readers), creates a weird, ‘gothic’ atmosphere, contributes to the suspense triggered by the framing action, and generally enhances the aesthetic illusion or ‘immersion’ of the reader. Yet it would be unsatisfactory to functionally restrict this description to just these facets of reader response. What is most important in our context is the fact that it establishes one of those correspondences between landscape and psychological states (Korrespondenzlandschaften) which have become a 72

It is, however, exaggerated and one-sided to reduce such meaning, as Beaujour (1981) has done, to an affinity between description and allegory (see 42), nor is it tenable to claim that “Western description always points to transcendent meanings” (54).

58

Werner Wolf

staple in fiction (as well as in lyric poetry) since Romanticism and have been taken over by other media, notably film. The correspondence is here between the seeming agitation of outer nature (see underlined phrases) and the alarmed heroine’s psyche73, but the description also serves as a correlative of fate’s or God’s warning to Isidora not to marry Melmoth, the evil wanderer. Thus, rather than merely describing visual and in this case predominantly acoustic phenomena, the description gives an interpretation of the planned wedding as something dangerous which displeases heaven and so foreshadows part of the ensuing action: Isidora becomes extremely unhappy, gives birth to Melmoth’s baby (which dies after a short time), falls victim to the Inquisition and finally dies herself. In sum, as the manifold (informative, experiential, ‘architectural’, explanatory and generally interpretive) functions enumerated above imply – and this list is not at all complete74 –, descriptions are crucial elements of verbal narratives. They do not only merit critical attention, and perhaps more so than has been bestowed on them so far, but should also be more focussed upon in the teaching of literature – as passages that should not be skipped but often yield important clues for the meaning, the cultural and historical position of a text. 3.3. Description in (instrumental) music75 Among the classical sister arts, poetry, painting and music, the latter, and in particular instrumental music, generally seems to be the least descriptive, as is evident in the lexicon of the English language: while verbs such as ‘to depict’ and ‘to describe’ point to an apparently in73 Maturin’s narrator is himself explicit about this correspondence when he states on another occasion: “[...] we love to connect the agitation of the elements with the agitated life of man [...].” (Maturin 1820/1977: 108) 74 Besides the functions mentioned here (information on story-world elements, interpreting the setting, characters and action, contributing to the structure or ‘architecture’ of the text, influencing various reader responses) a more systematic list should also provide slots for the fact that descriptions can, for instance, also fulfil a metatextual function (as in the above-mentioned nouveau roman) and contribute to the implied norms and worldview (for – albeit also unsystematic – functional surveys see Th. Kullmann 1995: 469 and D. Kullmann 2004: 687-689). 75

This chapter is a revised version of Wolf 2007c forthcoming. My thanks are due to my colleague from the musicological department of the University of Graz, Michael Walter, for valuable suggestions, in particular on Richard Strauss.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

59

herent descriptive potential of the pictorial medium as well as the verbal media (in particular those using writing), there is no equivalent referring to music, no expression like ‘to desound’. In fact, owing to its medial quality, music has intrinsic difficulties with the frame ‘description’, at first sight one is even inclined to say more so than with ‘narrative’ and, at any rate, more than the verbal media. For it is not only the Laokoon-problem (the alleged incompatibility between temporal, ‘dynamic’ media and description conceived of as centred on static objects) that in this respect besets music, since this problem also applies to verbal art, which has been shown to have a high descriptive potential nevertheless. Instrumental music has yet another and more fundamental problem with description: it is a problem that goes beyond music’s temporal medial nature. Music resists the frame ‘description’ (as well as the frame ‘narrative’) because it is the most abstract and non-referential medium of all the arts and media, and it is therefore sometimes claimed that a piece of music does not consist of signs at all, in other words that music has no semiotic quality like verbal language (see Harweg et al. 1967: 394). One should, however, be more precise, for music can be said to be ‘referential’, but mainly in the sense of ‘self-referential’ rather than of ‘heteroreferential’. The reason for this is that music consists mainly of signs whose signification resides in their ability to point to other signifiers within the same system, usually by iconically imitating or repeating them (but also by forming contrasts to them). Indeed, the occurrences of the theme in the individual voices of a fugue or the transformations of a theme in a composition ‘theme with variations’ are selfreferentially related to each other76 through such iconic aural similarity, but what can a fugue or a theme with variations describe? The very question seems beside the point. And yet, there are compositions, particularly in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western art music, that purport to be descriptive and, for instance, are called ‘symphonic poems’, thus pointing by their very name not only to lyrical expressivity but also to lyrical descriptiveness. In 1911 Michel Brenet published an essay with the revealing title “Essai sur les origines de la musique descriptive” (Brenet 1911), and his contemporary Richard Strauss was firmly convinced that one can, ‘of course, paint with tones and sounds’. Strauss 76 The same is true of the many ‘verbatim’ repetitions which abound in music and do not have a counterpart in the visual arts or in literature (except for lyrical refrains).

60

Werner Wolf

is even said to have claimed that a genuine musician ought to be able to compose a restaurant menu (see Krause 1963/1979: 216f.). While this latter claim may not necessarily be taken seriously, the conviction which Strauss in fact shared or shares with many other composers and listeners, namely that music can in fact be descriptive, cannot so easily be disregarded. Some conditions, of course, apply – and in music there are certainly more conditions and restrictions than in most other media. A first condition which one may think of immediately must be mentioned, but only in order to be instantly dismissed: it is the idea that musical descriptiveness depends on a heavy use of a potential in which music is often considered to excel, namely emotional expressivity. Franz Liszt, one of the principal proponents of both the ‘symphonic poem’ (see Altenburg 1998) and ‘programme music’ and indeed the inventor of both terms, is known – to quote from the renowned New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians – not to have “regard[ed] music as a direct means of describing objects; rather he thought that music could put the listener in the same frame of mind as could the objects themselves. In this way, by suggesting the emotional reality of things, music could indirectly represent them” (Scruton 2001: 396). This view is intriguing, and one may concede that musical expressivity may, under certain circumstances, indeed contribute to description by evoking typical, culturally coded moods, atmospheres, etc. which may be attached to descriptive objects such as a ‘peaceful’ pastoral landscapes or a ‘sublime’ mountain scene. Yet, ultimately Liszt’s view rests on a confusion, or rather a short-circuiting, of subjectcentred responses and object-centred reference. If a verbal text or a musical composition for that matter is to describe anything at all, the expression of an emotional response to the object described can only be an addition to a description but can never replace a reference to the object itself – for how could the recipient otherwise know what object has elicited the emotional reaction expressed77? In fact, as 77 See Scruton 2001 in his excellent article on “Programme music”; Scruton also insists on the distinction between (descriptive) reference and expression by rightly pointing out that “description may or may not be accompanied by an expression of feeling” and that “there can be expressions of emotion that are not accompanied by representation” (397). In terms of Jakobson’s functions of language (see 1960) the same differentiation can be made by referring to the ‘referential function’ as necessary for description, while the ‘emotive function’ is a merely optional addition.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

61

stated above, in chapter 2.4, in all descriptions, and this includes musical ones, an object-centred reference is dominant and indispensable, while subject-centred expression is subdominant and need not be explicit78. The principal (pre-)condition of musical descriptiveness is thus the fulfilment of an essential feature of all descriptions, namely that music should be able to refer to phenomena other than itself, in other words that it can be ‘hetero-referential’. Now, most scholars agree that hetero-referentiality is very untypical of music. Nevertheless, music does have some possibilities of pointing to extra-musical objects – independently of expressivity (which may be regarded as an indexical use of signs). This is a complex and frequently discussed problem of musical semiotics, which cannot be retraced here in all its intricacies79. I will therefore limit my remarks to some general variants of musical hetero-referentiality that are particularly relevant to description. What comes to mind here first is what has traditionally been called in German Tonmalerei, ‘sound painting’. However, the term covers a plurality of aspects (see Altenburg 1997: 1827) so that some specifications are necessary. Its most common denotation refers to suggestions of musical iconicity of various kinds80, degrees of intensity, extension and directness. In its potential to signify through iconicity 78

The importance of such object-centred reference can even be corroborated by a famous statement of Beethoven’s, although this may not be obvious at first sight. For Beethoven, who with his sixth symphony is generally considered to be one of the outstanding precursors of intensely descriptive music, emphasized expression when he claimed that his symphony was ‘more the expression of emotions than a painting’ (“mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Mahlerey” [quoted from Kloiber 1964: 89]). Significantly, the wording of this statement does not deny the presence of descriptive ‘Malerei’ altogether.

79

For more details concerning the semiotic problem of whether music is a language, is only similar to verbal language or is no language at all, see, among other works, Dahlhaus 1979; Kleeman 1985; Nattiez 1987/1990; Kaden/Brachmann/Giese 1998; Wolf 1999: chap. 2.3. 80

For the different kinds of iconicity (sensory or ‘imagic’, diagrammatic, and metaphorical or ‘semantic’) see Fischer/Nänny 1999 (their typology was, however, devised with reference to verbal language, but can also be transferred to music). It should be noted that musical iconicity – as iconicity in general for that matter – is a classification of signs that centres on the most obvious ‘surface’ use of signifiers and does not exclude that they at the same time show covert affiliations to indexical or symbolic signs.

62

Werner Wolf

music is similar to painting and dissimilar to verbal media (this is also why Walton 1990: 333-337 speaks of “Musical depictions”). As music is an aural phenomenon, the obvious and most direct actualization of such iconicity, which is said to have existed in the music of all times and forms (see Kloiber 1967: 1), is a variant of sensory iconicity, namely the imitation of extramusical sounds by musical means. The resulting “aural mimicry”, to use a term coined by Carolyn Abbate (1991: 33), is – on the basis of cultural knowledge which is responsible for additional symbolic and indexical shades of meaning of the musical signs in question – often seemingly selfexplanatory and does not require the clarifying aid of words. This applies, for example, to bird song, animal cries, thunderstorms and similar sounds, some of which have been incorporated, for example, in the description of a pastoral scene in Beethoven’s sixth symphony, entitled ‘Pastorale’81. ‘Aural mimicry’ can also evoke space as a basic dimension of many objects of descriptions: in performances, the actual location of instruments can thus be used to denote ‘stereophonic’ left-right and ‘dolby-surround’ (foreground–background or ‘echo’) effects (as exemplified in the ‘dialogue’ of two ‘pastoral’ wood instruments in the third movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique)82. Tonmalerei can also go beyond a more or less direct imitation of sensory phenomena and employ more indirect kinds of similarity (iconicity). One possibility is to arrange musical signifiers so that their sequence mimes the sequence of the phenomena referred to. This ‘diagrammatic iconicity’ can be used, for instance, to illustrate a sunrise by melodies and harmonies that gradually ‘rise’ from initial ‘dark’ and ‘low’ sounds to ‘higher’ and ‘clearer’ ones till they reach a 81

The imitation of the call of a cuckoo in Beethoven’s composition is a good example of the semiotic complexity involved in this kind of musical hetero-reference: while on the surface it is, of course, a form of aural iconicity, it at the same time implies indexicality (the call suggests the imaginary presence of the bird) but also – through connotations – a symbolic use of signs, for the cuckoo implies the culturally codified connotations of spring and/or rural scenery, which are central to Beethoven’s descriptive and expressive purpose. 82

A more indirect form of musical reference through Tonmalerei is visual iconicity or Augenmusik (music for the eye). In this variant, which is, however, not very important for musical description, a relation of similarity is established not between an object and music as an acoustic phenomenon, but as a written code. A famous example is Johann Sebastian Bach’s repeated employment of a sharp – in German Kreuz (cross) – as a reference to Christ’s cross.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

63

‘bright’ climax in a fortissimo major chord (see Michael Walter’s contribution to this volume). As can be seen from the many terms put in inverted commas in the example of musically describing a sunrise, diagrammatic iconicity as well as other kinds of using music in a referential way is often combined with, or based on, what are actually metaphors attached to sounds: conventional semantic valeurs, such as ‘low’ and ‘high’, ‘slow’ and ‘fast’, ‘dull’ and ‘clear’, etc. that are attributed to what after all are mere physical qualities of melody, harmony, speed, rhythm, loudness and timbre which could be described in quite different terms (such as wavelength, frequency and intensity). The resulting metaphoric illustration is actually a kind of ‘metaphoric iconicity’, that is, of using iconic similarities between a conventionalized vehicle that is linked to an extra-musical tenor owing to some common denominator or tertium comparationis and permits a reference to an extra-musical object. An example of such metaphoric illustration that refers to conventions connected with certain musical phenomena is the description of running water (e. g. a brook) by ‘fast’, ‘wavy’ melodical lines (using the spatial metaphor of ‘rising’ and ‘falling’ melodies); another one is the illustration of spatial effects of distance (or echo), which can also be achieved independently of an actual remote position of the echo-instrument by simply repeating or ‘answering’ (another of the many ‘sunk’ metaphors used in the verbalization of music) with a markedly reduced loudness. While in some cases the referentiality is clear, owing to well-known cultural conventions, others will be less obvious than in “aural mimicry”, and therefore metaphorical iconicity tends to occur more frequently in vocal than in instrumental music. Thus, in Bach’s cantatas and passions, falling single notes in the accompaniment can refer to falling tears83, a racing sequence of notes may evoke the idea of running, and twisting melodies can point to a snake, frequently as a symbol of the devil84. In such illustrations music and words cooperate in a more or less parallel way, which could even be said to result in a certain redundancy if it 83

The conventionality on which metaphorical illustration usually rests can here be seen in the fact that the spatialization of ‘high’ vs. ‘low’ sounds, and consequently the fall of a melody is an at least partially arbitrary imposition on acoustic phenomena which is in itself already metaphorical.

84

For a classic discussion of Bach’s musical descriptiveness see Schweitzer 1908/ 1972: chap. XX “Dichterische und malerische Musik”, as well as chaps. XXIXXXIII.

64

Werner Wolf

were not that the musical illustration added a concrete dimension to the more abstract verbal reference85. A yet remoter, even more conventional means of eliciting referentiality in music that can also contribute to descriptions is the employment of acoustic connotations through the use of the musical equivalent to ‘intertextuality’: ‘intermusicality’. Descriptive ‘intermusicality’ (which is a special kind of iconicity, since it imitates music in music) can function by means of evoking individual compositions or, more frequently, typical genres or kinds of music86. Thus situations, ‘scripts’ or cognitive frames can be referred to which are conventionally associated with certain sounds, musical instruments and forms. For example, in a nineteenth-century symphony the sound of horns (a generic imitation of a particular real-life use of specific musical instruments) may evoke a hunting scene through an association of ideas (as in the third movement of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony); a Ländler played by an orchestra including a clarinet may recall a rural scene (a form of generic intermusical reference that occurs in the third movement, Allegro/“Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute” of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony). And a hymn (an imitation of real-life vocal music) can elicit the frame ‘church service’ (as in the fourth movement of Schumann’s Rheinische[r] Symphonie [Rhenish Symphony]); sometimes the quotation of the melody of a vocal composition can also, through ‘intermedial association’, evoke the corresponding words87, thus introducing yet another dimension of signification into an instrumental composition. Even though such acoustic connotations are usually also based on ‘aural mimicry’ they 85

For a recent, more extended discussion of musical reference by means of iconicity see Georis 2005. 86

The categories of ‘individual intermusical reference’ as opposed to ‘generic intermusical reference’ correspond to equivalent notions in literary intertextuality theory (see Broich/Pfister, eds. 1985). In either case the hetero-referentiality potentially resulting indirectly from such basically intra-medial self-reference can emerge from cultural connotations (and hence a symbolic use of signs) that are attached to the musical pretext and are ‘imported’ into the ‘quoting’ composition alongside the intermusical reference. 87

This device (in technical terms, a ‘partial reproduction’ of a work transmitted in another [sub-]medium or genre) is restricted to individual references and is a reciprocal equivalent of the “evocation of vocal music through associative [verbal] quotation” which I have used elsewhere in the context of devices that are conducive to a ‘musicalization of fiction’ (Wolf 1999: chap. 4.5.).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

65

go beyond the mere identification or illustration of a given phenomenon. Like painterly topothesia they rather operate on the principle of metonymic pars pro toto: the imitation of individual acoustic elements of the phenomena described are meant to trigger entire scripts or cognitive frames88. Thus, a popular melody occurring in a symphony, may, for instance, not principally be meant to imitate a specific song but to point to the context in which such a song is conventionally supposed to occur89. Considering these various devices of musical hetero-reference, music, including instrumental music, can certainly not be said to be entirely incapable of pointing beyond itself. Yet, are these devices of reference per se already descriptive? In spite of what the term Tonmalerei – literally ‘sound painting’ – may imply, I would like to contend that this is not the case. A repeated imitation of the call of a cuckoo in eighteenth-century harpsichord music is, for instance, not a description of this bird but a mere reference to it. For according to what has been said above, description implies reference but also requires attributions that specify some concrete object and go beyond mere identification. Nonetheless, all of the devices just mentioned may contribute to what may in fact be termed musical descriptiveness, provided they establish such attributions, preferably multiple, varied and complex ones. It is clear that this conception of musical description substantially restricts the historical range of its occurrence and excludes many pre-nineteenth-century extramusical references that identify, but do not describe, extramusical phenomena. Yet, all of this does not banish instrumental music from the realm of the descriptive altogether. For, in particular in nineteenth- and twentieth-century programme music (including symphonic poems), there are several examples of an extended use of musical hetero-reference that may indeed be said to form musical descriptions. A case in point is Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), first performed in 1915. This 50-minute composition, 88

This is also a process that is typical of the reception of descriptions in general (see Nünning’s contribution to this volume). 89

The descriptive potential of such musical connotations, for which once again Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (in the third movement, Allegro “Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute”) provides an example, is based on cultural competence (one must be able, for example, to identify the popular character of the music) and on the recipient’s imagination – and this to a far greater extent than other devices of musical hetero-reference.

66

Werner Wolf

which requires a gigantic orchestra of more than 120 instruments, including organ, wind machines and cow bells, follows a vaguely narrative programme and thus constitutes an example of programme music90: we seem to follow the stream of consciousness of an anonymous agency, whose several activities, impressions and expressive reactions to his or her experiences are rendered by musical means91. The programme consists in the ascent of a mountain with a climactic reaching of the summit followed by a descent. This simple narrative outline is the framework into which several descriptive scenes are set, and this illustrates a typical relation between narrative and description familiar from fiction and other narrative media, namely the subordination of description to the narrative. Among these scenes there is also a section entitled “Auf der Alm” (‘On the mountain pasture’), on which I would like to concentrate briefly. As one can hear in particular in the first minute and a half of this ‘scene’, Strauss here combines two devices of suggesting musical hetero-reference. There is, firstly, aural mimicry of various kinds (the imitation of natural phenomena and, by means of generic intermusicality, the imitative reference to instrumental as well as to vocal music): we hear bird song, cow bells, a yodel (‘Jodler’) and a Ländler. And there is, secondly, the suggestion of rural peace by means of (symbolic) connotations: this concerns the evocation of a rustic milieu through all of the items of aural mimicry and generic intermusical reference just mentioned, but above all the generally peaceful atmosphere of the passage produced by appropriate dynamic, melodic, rhythmic and harmonic means. As opposed to the isolated references to extra-musical phenomena sometimes encountered in older music, we are thus confronted here with a relatively complex sequence of referential attributions (the presence of birds, cows, and farmers together with a certain atmosphere) that coalesce into the evocation of a natural scenery, hence an external reality, and thus appear indeed to be eligible as a musical description. 90

If one calls the composition ‘programme music’, one employs the term in a broad sense and includes also non-literary programmes (for this broad meaning see Altenburg 1997: 1822, for whom the term suffers from a ‘babylonian confusion of language’ [1821]); for a classification as a symphonic poem or a Tondichtung see Kloiber 1967: 189 and Walter 2000: 150. On the problematics of the term ‘programme music’ in general, see below, note 96. 91

Part of these means is the employment of Wagnerian leitmotifs.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

67

Yet, if description is a cognitive frame that needs to be activated, what is it that triggers the idea of description here in the first place? This question implies the further question of how to recognize a musical description when being confronted with one, in other words to the issue of ‘markers of musical description’. This is a problem which has not as yet received sufficient critical attention. With reference to fiction as well as to the visual media, it is perhaps not obvious as a problem at all, for in both kinds of media the presence of description appears to be self-explanatory and ‘self-signalling’. Yet, even there, markers or at least clear symptoms are common. These include, for instance, the frequent device of building a moment of rest into a narrative (a character’s gaze during a pause in a travelogue, a view from a mountain top or through a window, etc.) which motivates the interruption occurring by the ensuing description, or the change from the syntagmatic narration of ever new elements to a typically descriptive multiplicity of paradigmatic attributions that are all centred on one and the same object. In music, where description is certainly less self-explanatory, such markers appear to be even more important and deserve special attention. This is all the more so as there is always the ‘danger’ of ‘misreading’ descriptive passages as (parts of) a purely abstract, non-referential and hence non-descriptive musical composition. In view of this ‘danger’ an important means of signalling descriptive referentiality consists in urging the recipient to abandon the default option ‘music follows its own logic’ by simply denying such musical logic. This can be done by departing from established musical forms in a seemingly ‘inexplicable’ way or by not adopting any received form, including the usual musical self-referentiality, in the first place, thus barring a traditional access to music92. This is largely the case in Eine Alpensinfonie, for in spite of the title and the employ92

Strauss, however, would not have agreed with this, since, as Dahlhaus reports (see 1978: 137), he opposed the idea that programme music was formless if it did not follow schematic forms and insisted on the fact that a ‘poetic programme’ can lead to new forms. Dahlhaus himself seems to adopt this view (see 2002: 694f.). Yet, the mere existence of some kind of form even in heavily descriptive or narrative music is not the point: it is the nature of this form which counts, for it is mainly ‘schematic’, that is, pre-existing and well-known forms (and not new ones) that can function as an orientation for recipients to navigate through a composition, while newly devised forms do not support this orientational function with the same ease, and this seems to be the case with Strauss.

68

Werner Wolf

ment of themes and motives, the composition does not show symphonic form, let alone sonata form, nor any other conventional form. As a result, the listener is challenged to find an alternative principle of coherence – which the narrative and descriptive programme in fact offers. It is, however, clear that such a procedure is not without its problems, for the absence of traditional musical form – if it is perceived at all by the average listener – need not necessarily point to an extra-musical reference but could just be regarded as unconventional or experimental and perhaps even notably self-referential music. In addition, the lack of conventional intramusical form alone would not suffice to point to certain descriptive rather than, for instance, narrative contents93. This problem of enabling the listener to correctly ‘decode’ a given passage is all the more difficult as descriptive passages are sometimes, if less frequently than in narrative fiction (in Eine Alpensinfonie but also in Smetana’s “Die Moldau”/“Vlatva” from Má vlast/Mein Vaterland), set into an overall narrative frame. Thus, it is almost inevitable that in music descriptive reference resorts to the verbal medium, in particular if the composer wants the recipient to ‘hear’ specific objects described. Explanatory words can help here in two distinct ways. The first is the integration of words into the composition itself, as in the lied, in opera and other kinds of vocal music. Where this option is not given, as is typically the case in nineteenth-century instrumental programme music, a second option may apply: it consists in using the medium of words in the ‘framing’ of the composition. This can be done, minimally, in its title (as exemplified by Eine Alpensinfonie94), but also in more remote ‘paratexts’, e. g. explanatory essays in concert programmes or other publications. Thus, Richard Strauss had the titles of the individual sections of his Alpensinfonie printed in the concert programme of the first perfor93

The ‘deviation argument’ (deviation from formal musical conventions as a symptom of [intended] musical referentiality) has in fact been used in the context of potential incentives for listeners to apply the frame ‘narrative’; see Walter 2000: 151, and Micznik 2001: 246, 248. 94 Genette (1999) calls such evocative titles, by which music signals a thematic attempt at ‘becoming text’ (“se faire texte elle-même” [116]), “titres thématiques” (111). Cf., for the use of such ‘thematic’ (rather than ‘rhematic’) titels also, e. g., Mussorgsky’s Pictures of an Exhibition, whose title suggests that this composition is a special case of musical description, namely a series of musical equivalents to ‘ekphrasis’; the titles of the individual segments (such as “Il vecchio castello” or “Catacombs”) form further markers of intended descriptivity.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

69

mance (Dresden, Oct. 28, 1915), which also included an essay by his friend Max Steinitzer entitled “Thematische Einführung” (‘Thematic Introduction’, see Walter 2000: 148). In addition to these markers, a descriptive gesture in music can, of course, also be signalled if any of the afore-mentioned devices of musical hetero-referentiality is employed with a salient frequency or if such devices occur in combination with each other and thus also reach a salient, unusual quantity. For, as already said, a certain amount of details is one of the typical features of descriptions. Yet, the difficulty presented by this marker, as well as by others, is again the possibility of pointing to musical narrativity rather than to descriptiveness. This once again raises the problem of the relationship between description and narrative. In music, this problem is at least as thorny as the question of musical hetero-referentiality – the difference being that this problem is not even recognized as such in most musicological research, in which the terms ‘description’ and ‘narration’ are frequently used indiscriminately (including the relevant articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, cf. also Scruton 2001 and Macdonald 200195). One motivation for blurring the two frames may be their frequent co-occurrence not only in fiction and other media but also in music. This points to an important facet of the problem of distinguishing between musical narrativity and descriptivity, namely the question of whether both frames can occur independently of each other or only simultaneously in one and the same composition. From a historical perspective it seems that in music, as opposed to the painterly medium, both frames can in fact occur independently. Yet, there are no musical compositions that are predominantly descriptive, let alone entirely so, before the emergence of the symphonic poem towards the mid-nineteenth century. All earlier occurrences of Tonmalerei were restricted to isolated pockets within larger compositions, usually non-narrative ones, as in the cases of musical illustration in the Baroque age. In instrumental music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries musical description tends to appear in combination with musical narrativity. Musical descriptions were then frequently integrated into compositions that attempted to realize a 95

Cf. also Genette 1999, who in his discussion of musical references to, and imitations of, literature does not distinguish between (narrative) “romances sans paroles” (title of his essay) and “poèmes sans paroles” (116) either.

70

Werner Wolf

larger narrative frame. Narrative ‘programme music’96 deserves to be mentioned in particular, as in Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (which enacts the biography of an artist) or in Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie (which, as said above, recounts the ascent of a mountain). With a view to the pre-nineteenth-century examples it is, however, necessary to repeat that in principle musical description can occur independently of both the symphonic poem and programme music forms, in which musical description has found its most extensive and intense development in history to date. These formal and historical considerations do, however, not yet clarify the difficult identification of musical descriptiveness as opposed to musical narrativity from a theoretical, systematic point of view. This identification is all the more difficult, as the temporal nature of music tends to favour temporal objects of description, and the presence of a temporal dimension is at the same time a sine qua non of narrative97. I would like to propose two hopefully helpful criteria of differentiation (which, of course, are only meaningful on the basis of hetero-referential gestures in a given piece of instrumental music). The first is the question of whether a given composition suggests or does not suggest the presence of interacting characters or, minimally, of one experiencing character in an intracompositional possible world. While narrative necessitates such a presence, descriptions – as mentioned above – can dispense with such agencies, even without a describing consciousness as a part of the possible world described. The second criterion refers to the question of whether a given composition shows the presence of a teleological, goal-oriented trajectory and, in connection with this, a motivated ending. The ending of a story must somehow be connected to, and motivated by, a 96

There is no common agreement on the definition of ‘programme music’. The term has been applied in a broad sense to all kinds of intensely descriptive extra-musical references and has thus become similar to ‘symphonic poem’. In a narrower sense the term is opposed to ‘symphonic poem’ in that it denotes a reference to a literary text (see Kloiber 1967, who speaks of a “dichterische Vorlage” [‘poetic model’, 1] and Scruton [2001: 307], who applies it to music following an extra-musical, usually literary “narrative or descriptive [concept] which [is] essential to the understanding”). If ‘programme music’ is restricted to translating a literary text into music or at least to referring to it, it becomes an intermedial phenomenon, which can cover the fields of intermedial transposition and imitative intermedial reference. 97

In verbal art, the same temporal nature does not lead to a confusion, as the semantic surface of a text frequently is enough to differentiate between the two frames.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

71

previous teleological development and thus is typically a logical result, while the ending of a description can occur when its object has been represented in a sufficiently vivid way. As ‘sufficiently vivid’ is a highly debatable notion, the endings of descriptions tend to appear as a-logical and arbitrary. In music, the ending of a description would at best be motivated by aesthetic, compositional criteria but not referentially. Compositions or parts of compositions that betray extramusical reference but imply neither a story-like trajectory nor interacting characters can therefore not be regarded as narrative and may by default qualify as descriptive. The negative quality of these criteria – the absence of a story-line and of character correlatives – again highlights what we could repeatedly observe about descriptions in general, namely their relatively loose internal organization. Descriptions do not typically show suspenseful developments towards conflicts nor do they have climaxes and resolutions that lead to an ending98. Nevertheless, the presence (or rather absence) of the aforementioned markers and a specific musical texture permits us in fact to consider scenes like “Auf der Alm” as an instance of musical description rather than narration (this scene is full of hetero-referential gestures, but does not suggest interacting characters nor a teleological trajectory). This enables us to compare this example with the descriptive extract from Melmoth the Wanderer quoted in the previous chapter and also to comment on the descriptive potentials and limitations of instrumental music in general. In the musical as well as in the literary example a landscape is in focus and arguably identified through multiple attributions. However, as is to be expected, both the motivation for the description and the identification of the scenery are much more precise in the literary example than in the musical one. As for the motivation, the literary text provides a plausible and conventional reason for the insertion of the description at least in the earlier part of the excerpt, namely by linking the description to the focalizer Isidora, who has an obvious interest to learn where her would-be husband is leading her. In contrast to this, the musical example, as expected, does not provide any motivation at all, and so a 98

In literature, the same holds true for lyric poetry, although much of poetry can be said to render the stream of consciousness of a human agent like stream-of-consciousness fiction, but in the absence of events the content of lyric streams of consciousness is usually different from that of narrative ones.

72

Werner Wolf

potential ‘rest’ of the wandering persona is at best a probabilistic guess by the recipient. As for the precision of the description, the differences are no less obvious: while in the literary case the description refers to a (seemingly) specific geographical region, in the musical case such specificity is impossible. If one disregards the verbal framing of the musical example, it would, strictly speaking, even be doubtful whether the scene is really set in the mountains, for cow bells and bird song can be heard, for instance, in the Bavarian lowlands too, which is basically also true of yodels (although the cultural connotations may imply something different). This points to a general feature of music as a potentially descriptive medium: owing to the medium-specific limitations concerning hetero-referentiality (which excludes symbolic signification, at least as far as denotation is concerned, and privileges iconicity99) the scope of potential objects of description in music is much more restricted than in a verbal medium, where the flexibility of symbolic signification opens possibilities for the description of a practically unlimited range of objects. As for the vividness of the descriptive representation, one may argue that the verbal example, even if read independently of its narrative context, is apt to convey experientiality and perhaps also elicits mental images that create a feeling of immersion and hence of aesthetic illusion in the recipient. Even if it may be conceded that the musical example can also convey a certain atmosphere (and, since atmosphere is largely a matter of emotion, does so more efficiently than the verbal text), it is again doubtful whether Strauss’s musical description can really elicit aesthetic illusion. If it triggers something like immersion at all, there seems to be a noteworthy difference in the recipient’s share in this process as compared to fiction. While all aesthetic illusion requires the cooperation of the recipient and some experiential reservoir (some scripts that a text or artefact may actualize), the literary text guides the process of illusion with more authority than music. Strauss’s description in fact requires much more imaginative reconstruction or construction on the part of the recipient 99

Strictly speaking, one could argue that one ought therefore not to use the term ‘to describe’ for most of musical ‘depiction’; however, ‘description’ is so much a received term for the transmedial frame under discussion that it would make little sense to resort to another term such as ‘depiction’, which in turn could be criticized as a misleading metaphor, since, again strictly speaking, music does not ‘paint’ either.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

73

than Maturin’s. And arguably the results in individual recipients will differ much more widely than the impression triggered by the literary counterpart. For the very general stimuli of the music permit a wider scope of variation than the more precise indications provided by the verbal text. The difference between the two media is even greater with reference to another general function of descriptions, namely to contribute to the construction of the meaning of the artefact as a whole. In Strauss’s case the meaning of the scene on the alpine meadows is restricted to conveying the idea of peacefulness and joy as a contrast to the ensuing excitement when reaching the summit and experiencing a subsequent thunderstorm. Considering the period of composition, namely World War I, this peacefulness may also have a contrastive if not compensatory reference to the cultural-historical context, but this is already a mere guess. Maturin’s description, again, conveys meaning in a more precise way, as explained in the previous chapter. As has become clear, description is a potential of instrumental music, albeit not a natural one. If this is so, one may ask what the advantages of description are which made instrumental music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries venture into this problematic realm in the first place. There are several possible answers to this question of the functional history (Funktionsgeschichte) of descriptive music100 (which in this respect is closely connected to programme music). One of the answers arguably lies in the looseness of organization which is characteristic of description and which distinguishes it both from narrative and even more so from the formal organization of traditional musical genres. From a sociological perspective this looseness may indeed be thought to have not least contributed to the attractiveness of the symphonic poem and other genres of programme music in the nineteenth century. For the reception of instrumental music gained a hitherto unparalleled popularity in that period, and music appreciation was expanded from a restricted and more or less elitist public to a larger, middle-class audience. Among this expanded public the specialists formed a considerably smaller fraction than in earlier times. This means that a larger part of the audience must have had increasing 100

As with questions of possible functions of works of art in general, one should, however, bear in mind that answers in this field tend to be more or less convincing theses rather than demonstrable (historical) facts.

74

Werner Wolf

difficulties in finding a purely formal or abstract access to music. In addition, the public performance of instrumental music, formerly predominantly motivated by pragmatic purposes (such as contributing to a religious service, or providing a ‘divertimento’ during a feast for aristocrats), now increasingly took place in the de-pragmatized frame of the concert hall (and could last several hours). The shift of the burden of musical appreciation from intramusical, formal criteria that required a specialist’s knowledge of genres and compositional devices to more easily understandable extramusical ideas or ‘programmes’ (including nationalist ones as in Smetana’s Má vlast [see Altenburg 1998: 162]) may consequently have been regarded as a welcome development. Rendering instrumental music more transparent for an expanded public of non-specialists and thus forming what could be termed ‘music lite’ was arguably one of the functions of musical descriptiveness in the nineteenth century. Yet, descriptive music can enhance the emotional and aesthetic effect of highly sophisticated works, too, and is by far not restricted to ‘naive’ or ‘middle-brow’ compositions. After all, the readability of musical reference, owing to the resistance of the medium, is in itself not always easy, and in many cases even the deciphering of Tonmalerei presupposes considerable listening competence. It can therefore be held that at least with reference to nineteenth-century programme music, the emphasis on musical description can also be explained with reference not only to the wishes of the less competent listeners but also to those of the connoisseurs. For to them it may have been not so much the wish to get an easier access to music but rather the impression that traditional musical genres such as the symphony and the concerto with their eternal sonata forms, tri-partite lied patterns or rondos had been exhausted. This may have increased the desire for something new. In this context the development towards programmatically descriptive music must have appeared as a welcome and aesthetically satisfying alternative. Another cultural factor one may think of in order to account for the acceptability of descriptive music with the ‘highbrow’ culture, in particular in the historical situation of the aftermath of Romanticism, is the influential Romantic ideal of a ‘poeticized’ music, since it can more easily be connected with the descriptive in music than the rivalling ideal of ‘absolute music’. Yet, Dahlhaus (see 1978: 128f.) has pointed out with reference to nineteenth-century programme music that the Romantic aesthetic of the poetic in music is not simply tan-

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

75

tamount to any kind of ‘literarization’ of music, for the poetic in Romantic terms privileges the ‘marvellous’ and to that extent only descriptions of such subjects would fall into the realm of Romantic influence. However, in another publication Dahlhaus (see 1976: 8994) provides an interesting alternative solution. He convincingly argues that the old privileging of vocal music over instrumental music persisted well into the mid-nineteenth century (even though, one should add, instrumental music had attained a hitherto unequalled popularity). In addition, the educated middle class, which provided the core of nineteenth-century musical amateurs, was largely literature-oriented; Dahlhaus even speaks of a cultural predominance of literature (“Vorherrschaft der Literatur” [ibid.: 93]). In this context, the ‘literarization’ of programme music, including the employment of description in music, could (as was the fact with Franz Liszt) function not only as a means of meeting the audience’s taste and enculturation in this respect101 but also as a means of nobilitating instrumental music through placing it in the vicinity of noble ‘poesy’ (“ein Mittel, die Würde der Instrumentalmusik – den Anspruch, ‘Kultur’ und nicht bloß [...] ‘Genuß’ zu sein – zu fundieren” [ibid.]102). Be that as it may, the fact remains that descriptive music presented an alternative to ‘absolute’ music that had – and has – an amazing appeal and produced an equally remarkable body of compositions103. Over and above historical considerations this at least testifies to an important theoretical fact: namely that description is indeed a transmedial phenomenon in which both words and music participate, albeit in different ways and to different degrees. Music’s potential in this respect even seems to be greater than its narrative potential, since the descriptive, in order to be discernible as a hetero-referential gesture in music, requires less than narrative. This is possibly the reason why musical description has occurred more frequently, at least in isolated

101

See also, with reference to the symphonic poem, Altenburg 1998: 157.

102

“[...] a means of giving a basis to the nobility of instrumental music, to the claim that it is ‘culture’ and not [...] merely ‘pleasurable entertainment’.” [My translation] 103

An idea of the extent to which description has in fact been employed can be derived from Klaus Schneider’s Lexikon Programmusik: Stoffe und Motive (1999), even though not all of his collection of hetero-referential musical subjects and motives in programme music is relevant to musical description in the sense used in the present essay.

76

Werner Wolf

elements, throughout history104 than musical narrativity. It even continues to thrive in contemporary film music so that the descriptive in music appears as a critical subject which will require further attention both from a theoretical and a historical perspective.

4. Conclusion To recapitulate and conclude: Description is obviously a notion that is used in several contexts. In the context which is relevant to the present volume, namely literature and other media, the descriptive is a particular cognitive frame that is destined to vividly represent settings, characters and other concrete objects with an emphasis on their perceptual appearance, on their specific being, the attributes of their So-Sein. As long as one remains within the scope of the concrete, this emphasis, which is a product of transmission or ‘discourse’, is much more important than the selection of the object represented. Descriptiveness is thus largely a ‘discursive’ phenomenon – arguably more so than narrativity. Therefore, also the ‘substance’ of all discursive transmission, the medium, plays an especially important role in descriptions. As with narrativity, different media have different descriptive potentials in realizing the frame ‘description’. The term ‘potential’ can in retrospect be seen to consist actually of two dimensions: the scope of describable phenomena and specific areas of descriptive strength or excellence. In both respects media vary, depending on the signs predominantly employed by them, their representational faculties and their mainly spatial or temporal nature. Consequently, the recipient’s share in ‘reading’ the objects described also varies105.

104

For the history and pre-history of ‘programme music’ see Altenburg 1997: 18331843, and Scruton 2001: 397-399; for the history and extension of the sub-genre of the symphonic poem see in addition Macdonald 2001 and Altenburg 1998: 160-167. It should, however, be noted that ‘programme music’ is not co-extensive with musical description. Altenburg even goes so far as to claim that Tonmalerei – the most important device of descriptive musical hetero-referentiality – is not a necessary part of programme music (see 1997: 1827). 105

This variation, however, excludes a degree zero (since there is no perception without the recipient’s cooperation) and 100% (for this would point to an absence or irrelevance of an artefact as a stimulus of description).

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

77

As for the scope, music is certainly most limited here, as it can only vaguely describe some phenomena that all must have at least some kind of relationship to aural impressions. Pictorial description is also limited, albeit less so than music, as it can in principle embrace the entire range of visual phenomena; in addition, it can at least refer to non-visual phenomena by showing their visual results (e. g. wind through the representation of an extinguished candle or a bad smell by the grimace of a person) – although this is not exactly describing but only indexically alluding to a phenomenon. Among the three media discussed, fiction as a representative of the verbal media, owing to the symbolic flexibility of its signs, certainly has the greatest range of potential descriptive objects. Indeed, its scope is in principle unlimited, as it can give detailed information on all sorts of describable objects. If in looking back we therefore want to assess the general descriptive potential of the three media compared in terms of scope, that is, regardless of their specific strengths in some fields, we ought perhaps to rearrange the sequence and attribute the maximum of descriptive capability not to the pictorial medium but to the verbal one106. However, the superior position of the verbal medium in one descriptive field does not entail that it equally excels in all others, too. Thus, the undoubted representational faculty of the pictorial medium with its static visual signifiers is best employed when depicting static spatial objects. This is a field in which verbal literature cannot compete with pictures. On the other hand, literature, a no less clearly representational and hetero-referential albeit temporal medium, is better able to describe processes and, of course, language itself. It is indeed here (and this also applies to fiction as a literary sub-medium) that it is at its best as to precision and potential reduction of areas of indeterminacy107. In these respective areas of descriptive excellence, the recipient’s share will be smaller than in other areas. In contrast to this, owing to its inherent difficulty concerning hetero-referential representation, instrumental music must resort to a maximum of recipients’ contribution even in its aural ‘home domain’ if it purports to be de106

This, of course, does not imply that, for instance, film – which has not been discussed in the present essay – owing to its combination of images, words, music and sound, would not surpass an exclusively verbal medium in terms of descriptive scope. 107

One should, however, repeat that no medium is able to completely abolish such areas of indeterminacy and that consequently medial comparison can only refer to degrees of indeterminacy.

78

Werner Wolf

scriptive at all. One must, however, repeat that this is not to deny a basic, albeit restricted descriptive potential of music. Obviously, music has a natural advantage when it comes to describing realities in which acoustic phenomena predominate. It is here also that music can achieve a degree of particularity that is denied to either fiction or the pictorial medium, while the pictorial medium can obtain a descriptive precision with reference to visual objects that cannot be paralleled by either music or literature. An overview of the general descriptive potential of the three media discussed is schematically presented in Figure 2. MEDIUM

WRITTEN VERBAL MEDIUM (FICTION)

PICTORIAL MEDIUM (PAINTING)

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

PREDOMINANT NATURE OF SIGNS

hetero-referential, symbolic, dynamic

hetero-referential, iconic (visual), static

self-referential, iconic (aural), dynamic

GENERAL DESCRIPTIVE SCOPE

in principle unlimited

limited

extremely limited

AREAS OF RELATIVE DESCRIPTIVE EXCELLENCE

language, processes static, visual phenomena

RECIPIENTS’ SHARE IN DESCRIPTIONS

relatively low for language and processes; relatively high for all other objects

relatively low for static, visual phenomena; relatively high for all other objects

aural phenomena

extremely high, even with reference to aural phenomena

Figure 2: Descriptive potentials of select media – overview

A major result of the foregoing reflections on descriptions was that description is a transmedial phenomenon. In this quality it resembles narrativity. One may even say that it surpasses narrativity in this respect, for the transmedial scope of the frame ‘narrative’ is somewhat limited owing to its higher structural demands. This is also why one would perhaps be more hesitant to apply the frame ‘narrative’ to instrumental music, even to special kinds of instrumental music, than the frame ‘description’. While there is no received instrumental genre that would per se point to narrativity, descriptivity is for instance implied in the very genre of the symphonic poem with its Tonmalerei108. 108

It is also revealing that there is no correspondent term ‘Tonerzählung’.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

79

Generally, the transmedial quality of description is a challenge to scholars that has hardly been answered in kind, that is, from an interdisciplinary perspective. The present volume is one of the first attempts to remedy this neglect. Although individual contributors will focus on their ‘own’ media, the synopsis of the book as a whole will, hopefully, reveal to what extent an inter- or at least multidisciplinary approach to description is fruitful. The foregoing theoretical considerations as well as the survey of some key media are meant to prepare the ground for this larger enterprise for which the present volume is a first exploration. May further expeditions in the fascinating interdisciplinary field of a transmedial perspective on description follow109.

References Abbate, Carolyn (1991). Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Adam, Jean-Michel (1993). La Description. Que sais-je? 2783. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. — (1997/2005). Les Textes, types et prototypes: Récit, description, argumentation, explication et dialogue. Paris: Nathan. Alpers, Svetlana (1983). The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. London: John Murray. Altenburg, Detlef (1997). “Programmusik”. Ludwig Finscher, ed. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Second ed. Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler. Vol. 7. 1821-1844. — (1998). “Symphonische Dichtung”. Ludwig Finscher, ed. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Second ed. Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler. Vol. 9. 153-168.

109

An obvious candidate for such further research would be drama which, in spite of the exceptionally wide range of arts and media covered in this volume, is not represented by a contribution. The relationship between drama and description as represented by painting seems to be especially close in the eighteenth-century convention of ‘freezing’ dramatic narrative action into descriptive ‘tableaus’, in particular at emotional climaxes of sentimental plays. Other possibilities of continuing descriptive studies from a transmedial point of view into hitherto unexplored media and genres would be opera, comic strips and possibly also sculpture.

80

Werner Wolf

Bal, Mieke (1980). “Descriptions: Etude du discours descriptif dans le texte narratif ”. Lalies. Actes des sessions de linguistique et de littérature 1. Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure. 99-129. — (1980/1985). De theorie van vertellen en verhalen/Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Transl. Christine van Boheemen. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. — (1981/1982). “On Meanings and Descriptions”. Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 6/1-2: 100-147. Barthes, Roland (1968). “L’Effet de réel”. Communications 11: 8489. Beaujour, Michel (1981). “Some Paradoxes of Description”. Yale French Studies 61: 27-59. Beck, Rudolf, Hildegard Kuester, Martin Kuester (1998). Terminologie der Literaturwissenschaft: Ein Handbuch für das Anglistikstudium. Ismaning: Hueber. Brenet, Michel (1911). “Essai sur les origines de la musique descriptive”. Michel Brenet. Musique et musiciens de la vieille France. Paris: F. Alcan. 83-197. Broich, Ulrich, Manfred Pfister, eds. (1985). Intertextualität: Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien. Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 35. Munich: Niemeyer. Carroll, Lewis (1865/1970). The Annotated Alice. Ed. Martin Gardner. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. — (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. Cobley, Evelyn (1986). “Description in Realist Discourse: The War Novel”. Style 20/3: 395-410. Crystal, David (1987/1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Cuddon, J. A. (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dahlhaus, Carl (1976). Musikästhetik. Musik-Taschen-Bücher: Theoretica 8. Cologne: Hans Gerig. — (1978). Die Idee der absoluten Musik. Kassel/Munich: Bärenreiter/ dtv. — (1979). “Musik als Text”. Günter Schnitzler, ed. Dichtung und Musik: Kaleidoskop ihrer Beziehungen. Stuttgart: Klett. 11-28.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

81

— (2002) “Absolute Musik”. Sabine Ehrmann-Herfort, Ludwig Finscher, Giselher Schubert, eds. Europäische Musikgeschichte. Vol. 2. Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler. 679-704. Danneberg, Lutz (1996). “Beschreibungen in den textinterpretierenden Wissenschaften”. Rüdiger Inhetveen, Rudolf Kötter, eds. Betrachten – Beobachten – Beschreiben: Beschreibungen in Kulturund Naturwissenschaften. Erlanger Beiträge zur Wissenschaftsforschung. Munich: Fink. 193-224. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe CD 2000. CD-Rom. Fischer, Olga, Max Nänny (1999). “Introduction: Iconicity as a Creative Force in Language Use”. Max Nänny, Olga Fischer, eds. Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xv-xxxvi. Fludernik, Monika (2000). “Genres, Text Types, or Discourse Modes? Narrative Modalities and Generic Categorization”. Style 34/1: 274-292. — (2006). Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York, NY.: Basic Books. Genette, Gérard (1969). Figures II: Essais. Collection ‘Tel Quel’. Paris: Seuil. — (1999). “Romances sans paroles”. Gérard Genette. Figures IV. Collection Poétique. Paris: Seuil. 109-18. Georis, Christophe (2005). “Iconic Strategies in Monteverdi’s Madrigali Guerrieri ed Amorosi”. Costatino Maeder, Olga Fischer, William J. Herlofsky, eds. Outside-In – Inside-Out. Iconicity in Language and Literature 4. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 217-237. Giuliani, Luca (2003). Bild und Mythos: Geschichte der Bilderzählung in der griechischen Kunst. Munich: Beck. Gombrich, Ernst H. (1960/1977). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Halsall, Albert W. (1994). “Descriptio”. Transl. Lisa Gondos. Gert Ueding, ed. Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Vol. 2. 549-553. Hamon, Philippe (1972). “Qu’est-ce qu’une description?”. Poétique 9: 465-485. — (1975). “Clausules”. Poétique 6: 495-526. Hardy, Thomas (1887/1998). The Woodlanders. Penguin Classics. Ed. Patricia Ingham. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

82

Werner Wolf

Harweg, Roland, Ulrich Suerbaum, Heinz Becker (1967). “Sprache und Musik. Diskussion über eine These”. Poetica 1: 390-414. Hawthorn, Jeremy (1994). A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory. Second ed. London: Arnold. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln, NE.: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Ingarden, Roman (1931/1965). Das literarische Kunstwerk. Mit einem Anhang von den Funktionen der Sprache im Theaterschauspiel. Tübingen: Niemeyer. — (1937/1968). Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Jakobson, Roman (1960). “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Style in Language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. 350-377. Kaden, Christian, Jan Brachmann, Detlef Giese (1998). “Zeichen”. Ludwig Finscher, ed. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Second ed. Kassel, Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler. Vol. 9. 21492220. Kindt, Tom, Hans-Harald Müller (2003). “Wieviel Interpretation enthalten Beschreibungen? Überlegungen zu einer umstrittenen Unterscheidung am Beispiel der Narratologie”. Fotis Jannidis, Gerhard Lauer, Matías Martínez, Simone Winko, eds. Regeln der Bedeutung: Zur Theorie der Bedeutung literarischer Texte. Revisionen: Grundbegriffe der Literaturtheorie 1. Berlin/New York, NY: de Gruyter. 286-304. Kittay, Jeffrey (1981). “Descriptive Limits”. Yale French Studies 61: 225-243. Kleeman, Janice E. (1985). “The Parameters of Musical Transmission”. The Journal of Musicology 4: 1-22. Kloiber, Rudolf (1964). Handbuch der klassischen und romantischen Symphonie. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. — (1967). Handbuch der symphonischen Dichtung. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. Kötter, Rudolf, Rüdiger Inhetveen (1996). “Beschreibungen in Kultur- und Naturwissenschaften”. Rüdiger Inhetveen, Rudolf Kötter, eds. Betrachten – Beobachten – Beschreiben: Beschreibungen in Kultur- und Naturwissenschaften. Erlanger Beiträge zur Wissenschaftsforschung. Munich: Fink. 7-14. Krause, Ernst (1963/1979). Richard Strauss: Der letzte Romantiker. Munich: Heyne.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

83

Kullmann, Dorothea (2004). Description: Theorie und Praxis der Beschreibung im französischen Roman von Chateaubriand bis Zola. Heidelberg: Winter. Kullmann, Thomas (1995). Vermenschlichte Natur. Zur Bedeutung von Landschaft und Wetter im englischen Roman von Ann Radcliffe bis Thomas Hardy. Buchreihe der Anglia 33. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1766/1974). Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Werke. Ed. Herbert G. Göpfert. Vol. 6. Kunsttheoretische und kunsthistorische Schriften. Ed. Albert v. Schirnding. Munich: Hanser. 7-187. Lopes, José Manuel (1995). Foregrounded Description in Prose Fiction: Five Cross-Literary Studies. Theory/Culture. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. Lotman, Jurij (1970/1977). Struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Michigan Slavic Contributions 7. Transl. Gail Lenhoff, Ronald Vroon. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press. Macdonald, Hugh (2001). “Symphonic Poem”. Stanely Sadie, John Tyrrell, eds. The New Grove Dictionary of Music. London: Macmillan. Vol. 24. 802-807. Maturin, Charles (1820/1977). Melmoth the Wanderer. Ed. Alethea Hayter. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Micznik, Vera (2001). “Music and Narrative Revisited: Degrees of Narrativity in Beethoven and Mahler”. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 126: 193-249. Murfin, Ross, Supryia M. Ray (2003). The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Second ed. Boston, MA: Bedford. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1987/1990). Musicologie générale et sémiologie. Paris: Christian Bourgeois. Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Transl. Carolyn Abbate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Nobis, H. M., F. Kaulbach (1971). “Beschreibung I”/“Beschreibung II”. Joachim Ritter, ed. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe. Vol. 1: A-C. 838-842, 842-846. Nünning, Ansgar, Vera Nünning, eds. (2002). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. WVT-Handbücher zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium 5. Trier: WVT.

84

Werner Wolf

Nünning, Ansgar, ed. (1998/2004). Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: Metzler. Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998). The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford: Clarendon. Pflugmacher, Torsten (2005). “Description”. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan, eds. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge. 101-102. Poe, Edgar Allan (1847/1905). “The Domain of Arnheim”. E. A. Poe. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Ed. Padraic Colum. London: Dent. 31-44. Preminger, Alex, T. V. F. Brogan, eds. (1993). The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Rajewsky, Irina (2000/2003). Intermediales Erzählen in der italienischen Literatur der Postmoderne: Von den giovani scrittori der 80er zum pulp der 90er Jahre. Tübingen: Narr (Berlin dissertation 2000). — (2002). Intermedialität. UTB 2261. Tübingen: Francke. Rasmo, Nicolò, et al. (1981). Die Alpen in der Malerei. Rosenheim: Rosenheimer. Ricardou, Jean (1967). Problèmes du nouveau roman. Collection ‘Tel Quel’. Paris: Seuil. — (1973/1978). Le Nouveau roman. Ecrivains de toujours. Paris: Seuil. Riffaterre, Michael (1981). “Descriptive Imagery”. Yale French Studies 61: 107-125. — (1986). “On the Diegetic Functions of the Descriptive”. Style 20/3: 281-294. Rippl, Gabriele (2005). Beschreibungs-Kunst: Zur intermedialen Poetik angloamerikanischer Ikontexte (1880-2000). Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der schönen Künste 110. Munich: Fink. Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative and Representation”. Narrative 5/3: 274-286. Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed. (2004). Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Scher, Steven Paul (1970). “Notes Toward a Theory of Verbal Music”. Comparative Literature 22: 52-56. Schmidt, Heinrich, Georgi Schischkoff (1974). Philosophisches Wörterbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

85

Schneider, Klaus (1999). Lexikon Programmusik: Stoffe und Motive. Kassel: Bärenreiter. Schneider, Norbert (1999). Geschichte der Landschaftsmalerei: Vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Romantik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schweitzer, Albert (1908/1972). J. S. Bach. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. Scruton, Roger (2001). “Programme Music”. Stanely Sadie, John Tyrrell, eds. The New Grove Dictionary of Music. London: Macmillan. Vol. 20. 396-400. Sternberg, Meir (1981). “Ordering the Unordered: Time, Space, and Descriptive Coherence”. Yale French Studies 61: 60-88. Stoichita, Victor. I. (1993/1998). L’Instauration du tableau. Librairie des Méridiens. Paris: Klincksieck. Das selbstbewußte Bild: Vom Ursprung der Metamalerei. Bild und Text. Transl. Heinz Jatho. Munich: Fink. Telefonbuch Steiermark: Graz/Graz Umgebung (2005/2006). Mödling: Herold. Terrell, Peter, et al., eds. (1981). Collins German-English, EnglishGerman Dictionary/Pons Collins Deutsch-Englisch, EnglischDeutsch. London/Stuttgart: Collins/Klett. Virtanen, Tuija (1992). “Issues of Text Typology: Narrative – a ‘Basic’ Type of Text?”. Text 12: 293-310. Walter, Michael (2000). “Don Juan und die Moderne”. Michael Walter. Richard Strauss und seine Zeit: Große Komponisten und ihre Zeit. Laaber: Laaber. 119-157. Walton, Kendall L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundation of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Warning, Rainer (1976). “Elemente einer Pragmasemiotik der Komödie”. Wolfgang Preisendanz, Rainer Warning, eds. Das Komische. Poetik und Hermeneutik 7. Munich: Fink. 279-333. — (2001). “Erzählen im Paradigma: Kontingenzbewältigung und Kontingenzexposition”. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 52: 176-209. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953/1968). Philosophische Untersuchungen/ Philosophical Investigations. Transl. G. E. M. Anscombe. Second ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst: Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwer-

86

Werner Wolf

punkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Buchreihe der Anglia 32. Tübingen: Niemeyer. — (1999). The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 35. Amsterdam: Rodopi. — (2001). “The Emergence of Experiential Iconicity and Spatial Perspective in Landscape Descriptions in English Fiction”. Max Nänny, Olga Fischer, eds. The Motivated Sign: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Iconicity, Amsterdam 1999. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 323-350. — (2002a). “Gesichter in der Erzählkunst: Zur Wahrnehmung von Physiognomien und Metawahrnehmung von Physiognomiebeschreibungen aus theoretischer und historischer Sicht am Beispiel englischsprachiger Texte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts”. Sprachkunst 33: 301-325. — (2002b). “Intermediality Revisited: Reflections on Word and Music Relations in the Context of a General Typology of Intermediality”. Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden, Walter Bernhart, eds. Word and Music Studies: Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage. Word and Music Studies 4. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 13-34. — (2002c). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie”. Ansgar Nünning, Vera Nünning, eds. Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. WVT-Handbücher zum literaturwissenscahftlichen Studium 5. Trier: WVT. 23-104. — (2002d). “‘Speaking faces’? – Zur epistemologischen Lesbarkeit von Physiognomie-Beschreibungen im englischen Erzählen des Modernismus”. Poetica 34: 389-426. — (2003). “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and its Applicability to the Visual Arts”. Word & Image 19: 180-197. — (2004a). “Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction”. Style 48/3: 325-351. — (2004b). “‘Cross the Border – Close that Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology”. European Journal of English Studies (EJES) 8/1 (Beyond Narratology): 81-103. — (2007a). “Metaisierung als transgenerisches und transmediales Phänomen: Ein Systematisierungsversuch metareferentieller

Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation

87

Formen und Begriffe in Literatur und anderen Medien”. Janine Hauthal, Julijana Nadj, Ansgar Nünning, Henning Peters, eds. Metaisierung in Literatur und anderen Medien: Theoretische Grundlagen – Historische Perspektiven – Metagattungen – Funktionen. Berlin: de Gruyter. 25-64. — (2007b, forthcoming). “Instrumental Metamusic as an Analogy to Literary Metafiction? – An Exploration of the Limits of the Transmedial Field ‘Meta-Referentiality’”. Winfried Nöth, Nina Bishara, eds. Self-Reference in the Media. Berlin: de Gruyter. — (2007c, forthcoming). “Description – a Common Potential of Words and Music?”. David Francis Urrows, ed. Word/Music Adaptations. Word and Music Studies 9. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction Ansgar Nünning While the importance of the concept of description has been widely recognized since the 1980s, the differences between various kinds of descriptions and the changing historical functions they have fulfilled have generally been overlooked. This paper addresses some of the theoretical and typological issues pertaining to the concept of description, providing a typological classification of different kinds of descriptions as well as an outline of the functions they can fulfil in fictional narratives. The first two parts of the paper are devoted to the introduction and definition of the notion of description and to the discussion of some of the problems surrounding it. Section three develops a set of categories for the analysis of, and typological distinction between, different kinds of descriptions. The fourth section provides a brief historical overview of the functions that descriptions have fulfilled in British novels from the end of the seventeenth century to the present. The final section gives a brief summary and suggests that much more work needs to be done.

1. Introducing descriptions and meta-descriptions The neglect it has suffered from both critical theory and narratology notwithstanding, description has been one of the constitutive elements of the ‘rhetoric of fiction’ (sensu W. C. Booth) since the beginnings of the novel. Moreover, descriptions are an integral component of everyday narration as well as of anecdotes, urban legends, and a wide range of literary genres. Many literary narrative texts feature a wide range of different kinds of description, which have as yet not been properly distinguished, mapped, and analyzed. Most readers are likely to intuitively recognize and identify instances of description, ascribing their descriptive quality to features typically associated with the text-type designated description: “an anonymous observer, almost no verbs of action, predicates of state, present tense, a constructed simultaneity” (Ronen 1997: 274). Given the fact that one could produce an endless list of quotations of descriptions, it is striking that narrative theory has accorded only comparatively little attention to these features of narratives, despite their ubiquity in novels, short stories,

92

Ansgar Nünning

and other kinds of narrative: in spite of its indulgence in theory and terminology, narratology, with only relatively few laudable exceptions1, has not devoted much systematic attention to the forms and functions of descriptions. The three underlying theses of this essay – that we need a more sophisticated and differentiated analytical framework if we want to come to terms with descriptions, that we should distinguish between different kinds of description, and that the forms and functions of description should be historicized by a diachronically oriented narrative theory – are actually confirmed by the few studies that are devoted to this topic: though many attempts have been made to define the phenomenon of description, only few narratologists have tried to distinguish between different kinds of description2. And though quite a number of narrative theorists have become more concerned with many aspects of, and issues involved in, descriptions since the 1980s, there is still a surprising lack of studies examining the use of different forms of description in the works of individual authors, in different genres or in given periods of literary history. Some theorists have mentioned in passing that “texts describe differently in different poetic periods” (Ronen 1997: 275), but little sustained effort has been made to consider such questions as which historical changes in the use of descriptions can be observed and which functions descriptive statements could fulfil in individual cases3. This comparative neglect description has suffered is the starting point of this essay, which will try to bridge the gap by staking out three aims: First of all some theoretical issues involved in coming to grips with description will be introduced and discussed (section 2). Then some steps towards developing an analytical framework, a typology and a poetics of different kinds of description will be presented (section 3), which can then serve as a basis for a survey of the changing functions of descriptions in English novels from the seventeenth to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century (section 4). A short 1

Cf. Chatman (1990: 38-55), who has devoted one chapter (tellingly entitled “Description Is No Textual Handmaiden”) to the phenomenon, as well as Fludernik’s concise, but pioneering observations (Fludernik 1996: 150f., 293, 329, 348). See also the titles listed in the bibliography below.

2 3

Cf. e. g. the typologies offered by Lodge (1977) and Bal (1981-1982).

For one of the few exceptions to this rule, cf. Ibsch (1982), who was one of the first theorists to reflect on the functions of descriptions.

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

93

summary and a brief look at some of the points that future research might explore will complete this article (section 5).

2. Coming to terms with descriptions and the ways in which they are naturalized Although the term ‘description’ has been used in a great number of studies, having become a common and widespread category of literary studies as well as a household word of narrative theory, only few narratologists have analyzed the subject in great detail4. There are arguably two main reasons for this: Firstly, the term ‘description’ is so widely used in English that it seems to be largely self-explanatory, the more so because readers are believed to recognize descriptions intuitively5. Secondly, narrative theory for a long time displayed a strong normative bias towards narrative, regarding description as merely ornamental and relegating it to the margins of scholarly enquiry. Narratological research concerned with description has so far focused on the distinction between narration and description, on some key issues of the theory of description and on structural aspects of its internal organization. In contrast, both the questions of different kinds of description and of historical changes of the functions of description in literary texts (cf. Ibsch 1982) have received scant attention. The same holds true for the question of the role of the reader and the frameworks he or she draws on when naturalizing a text. Though quite a few narrative theorists are by now agreed that descriptive statements can fulfil a variety of textual functions and that the reader plays an important role in filling in the gaps, neither the functions nor the role of the reader have been sufficiently explored. One of the main reasons for the comparative neglect of these two issues is that most of the scholarly work on description has focused on the intricate issue of defining description and of gauging the complex relation that pertains

4

See the titles listed in the bibliography. For short definitions of the term, cf. Prince (1987: 19), Nünning (1998/2004: 60), and Pflugmacher (2005: 101-102).

5

Cf. e. g. Hamon (1972: 465): “Le lecteur reconnaît et identifie sans hésiter une description.” Bal (1981-1982: 105): “We recognize them [descriptions] intuitively.”

94

Ansgar Nünning

between narrative and description6. Though some scholars have convincingly argued that a “clear distinction between narration and description is, of course, untenable” (Cobley 1986: 397)7, many theorists have been preoccupied by the attempt to establish such a clearcut borderline. Since I will therefore focus on other issues that have hitherto been comparatively neglected, two quotations from the entries in the two specialist encyclopaedias of narratology may suffice to recall how the key term of this lecture is generally defined: description. The representation of objects, beings, situations, or […] happenings in their spatial rather than temporal existence, their topological rather than chronological functioning, their simultaneity rather than succession. It is traditionally distinguished from NARRATION and from COMMENTARY. (Prince 1987: 19) Description is a *text-type which identifies the properties of places, objects, or persons (see EXISTENTS). Classical narratology defines description as a narrative pause interrupting the presentation of the chain of *events. (Pflugmacher 2005: 101)

Since Werner Wolf, in his contribution to this volume, not only deals with the problems involved in defining description exhaustively, but also clarifies a broad range of theoretical issues surrounding the concept, it may suffice to briefly recapitulate some of the areas he covers. As Wolf convincingly argues, though description may be a particularly elusive phenomenon, it would be erroneous to assume that it cannot be defined at all. Conceptualizing the descriptive as a cognitive frame and locating it within a sophisticated typology of basic semiotic macro- and micro-modes, genres and media, Wolf provides us with the most wide-ranging discussion of the formal and functional characteristics of it to date. Moreover, he also briefly explores the intricate question of the concretization of descriptive objects in the recipient’s mind (cf. above: chap. 2.7), emphasizing that mediaspecific gaps as well as areas of indeterminacy must be taken into account. What is arguably at least as important as defining and locating description, however, is dealing with other key issues of coming to terms with this seemingly ‘natural’ and self-explanatory, yet curiously complex and elusive theoretical concept. Wolf’s eminently helpful 6

See e. g. Genette (1969), Hamon (1972, 1982), Bal (1981-1982), and Mosher (1991).

7

See e. g. Kittay (1981), Sternberg (1981), Mosher (1991), and Ronen (1997). Only few theorists have gone so far as Ronen, however, who argues that “the opposition description-narrative […] should be given up” (ibid.: 284).

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

95

terminological distinctions and suggestions shall therefore be augmented by a set of further questions and categories of analysis. First, the role of the reader as well as that of the context, conventions, and frameworks involved in naturalizing descriptions merits some attention; second, the variety of forms in which description can occur have to be taken into account; and third, the question of which functions different forms of description can fulfil has to be addressed. Though an exhaustive account of all the features that contribute to the concretization of descriptive objects in the reader’s mind is an extensive task that is well beyond the scope of this essay, a brief outline of the main factors involved in the process and of the most important concepts that can illuminate it may at least be given. The insights provided by cognitive narratology and “psychonarratology” (Bortolussi/ Dixon 2003) can arguably throw more light on the ways in which descriptions are naturalized in the reading process and in which textual data, conventions, cognitive frameworks and schemata interact. It is worth recalling how the logic of description works. As theorists such as Hamon (1972) and Chatman (1990: 24) have rightly emphasized, the logic and coherence of description are based on metonymy and contiguity: “The metonymic structure may entail the relation of objects to each other as they occur in the world or in the imagination, but also the relation of objects to their own qualities” (Chatman 1990: 24). The description of a house, for instance, tends to presuppose or entail the mentioning of its size, colour, and number of rooms as well as such properties as doors, windows, rooms, etc. which constitute the house. The principles of metonymy and contiguity enable readers or listeners to infer and project the constitutive features that belong to a described object even if these are not enumerated in a description. In addition, conventions, frames, and “quasi-mimetic schemata” (Sternberg 1981: 66) ensure that the reader’s world-knowledge will fill many of the gaps that every description is bound to leave. It is the “quasi-mimetic logic, anchored in reality-models and object-schemata” (ibid.: 68), that enables the reader to infer and predict the presence of certain descriptive elements from the explicit mention of others. Michael Riffaterre has introduced a theoretically and heuristically useful concept which enhances our understanding of the logic of description, viz. the notion of ‘descriptive systems’, which he defines as follows: […] descriptive systems are more complex than the presupposition network, but in their simpler form they are very close to the dictionary definition of their kernel

96

Ansgar Nünning

words. The descriptive system is a network of words associated with one another around a kernel word, in accordance with the sememe of that nucleus. Each component of the system functions as a metonym of the nucleus. So strong are these relationships that any such metonym can serve as a metaphor for the ensemble, and at any point in the text where the system is made implicit, the reader can fill in gaps in an orderly way and reconstitute the whole representation from that metonym in conformity with the grammar of the pertinent stereotypes. (Riffaterre 1978: 39-40)

Due to the metonymic logic of descriptive systems, descriptions of places, persons, and objects inevitably cue readers to activate the appropriate real-world contextual frames8. From the point of view of the dynamics of the reading process, descriptions do not represent givens but constructs, relying on a wide range of inferences by the reader9. The way in which readers fill in gaps very much depends on the coherence implied in, or provided by, frames, schemata, and other prefabricated codes (e. g. clichés, commonplaces, stereotypes), i. e. on cognitive “knowledge representations that store specific configurations” (Herman 2002: 270) of, e. g., places, objects, or participants in a given situation. These frames and knowledge representations not only shape the ways in which readers actualize and concretize descriptive objects in analogy to the respective real-life phenomena, they also constrain the ways in which a description can be plausibly naturalized. Evelyn Cobley has succinctly summarized what is involved here: On the most basic level […], the verbal description takes its organization first of all from the ways in which objects are organized in the real world. This referential motivation imposes an order on description that appears to be natural and inevitable. […] description models itself on principles of coherence that have already been organized by our culture. […] Every description thus appeals more or less explicitly to orders of knowledge that organize our everyday world. (Cobley 1986: 401-402)

In addition to these referential constraints, however, there are also other codes and conventions which influence the selection of descriptive elements, the overall coherence of a description, and the ways in which readers fill in gaps and naturalize descriptions. One of these 8

For the notion of ‘contextual frames’, cf. Emmott (1997). For detailed investigations of naturalizing strategies, cf. Fludernik (1996), Herman (2002) and Bortolussi/ Dixon (2003).

9

Cf. Sternberg (1981: 73): “As such, action and description form not givens but inferences, constructs”. Cf. also Herman (2002: 265f., 269f., 297f.) and Bortolussi/ Dixon (2003: 186-190).

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

97

conventions is “that of realism or verisimilitude” (Chatman 1990: 25). Though these frames also depend on the referentiality of the text, i. e. on the assumption that the text refers to, or is at least compatible with, the so-called real world, they not only activate the reader’s general world-knowledge but also his or her knowledge of literary conventions. Therefore, another contextual framework relevant to the naturalization of descriptions involves a number of specifically literary frames of reference. These include, for example, general literary conventions, conventions and models of literary genres, and stereotyped models of ‘flat’ characters such as the picaro, the miles gloriosus, but also elements from complex, ‘round’ characters (cf. Chatman 1990: 25f.). It is very important not to forget these specifically literary or generic considerations if one wants to account for the ways in which readers concretize or project descriptions in the reading process, the more so because the use of description varies a great deal from one genre to the other – an often neglected issue that we will return to later. Cognitive approaches to narrative can further illuminate the ways in which readers construct mental models, i. e. the process of cognitive mapping that assigns referents both a position in the storyworld and certain properties (cf. Herman 2002). In their Psychonarratology, Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon (2003) have developed three useful categories that can throw more light on the internal logic of descriptions, on the ways the latter are naturalized in the reading process, and on the constraints involved therein: “These categories are descriptive reference frames, positional constraints, and perceptual attributions” (ibid.: 186). Bortolussi and Dixon convincingly argue that there “can be no description of anything that does not have implications for spatial vantage point” (ibid.). Whenever a description is rendered in a novel, there are various textual clues that indicate spatial positioning. The notion of descriptive reference frames refers to “a set of axes that determine how spatial and relational information in a perceptual description is conveyed” (ibid.) and that enable the reader to infer the “‘descriptive position’” (ibid.: 187) or location from which the description presumably originates. They argue that texts usually contain linguistic features that constrain the projection of such a descriptive position: “Typically, perceptually salient descriptions imply some constraint on the location of the agent who might have perceived the information.” (Ibid.: 188) In the process of naturalizing a description, readers tend to construct a mental represen-

98

Ansgar Nünning

tation of the scenario, including the object described, the perceiver and his or her putative location or position in the scene. Representing a rendering of perceptual information, descriptions project “perceptual knowledge that may also be attributed to characters in the story world” (ibid.). Bortolussi and Dixon “refer to the cues that support such inferences as perceptual attribution features.” (Ibid.) In sum, from the perspective of cognitive narratology and psychonarratology, descriptions are anything but a neutral representation of places, characters, and objects in a narrative that are primarily determined by textual data. In addition to the information and stimuli provided by the text itself, the reader also draws on extratextual frames of reference in the attempt to construct mental representations of the objects that are described. The naturalization of description thus depends, for instance, on the cultural models, conceptual frameworks and prior knowledge of literary conventions that readers bring to the text and that they use to impose coherence and meaning on descriptions. One can even go so far as to argue that description “only reactivates the reader’s memory of something he or she already knows, or it adds previously unknown information to an existing stock of knowledge” (Cobley 1986: 398). The concepts of cognitive mapping, contextual frames, descriptive systems, descriptive reference frames, positional constraints, and perceptual attributions can provide more insight into the key elements involved in the naturalization of descriptions. Two examples from the class of ‘metadescription’, which will be more fully explained later on, may serve to illustrate some of these rather abstract considerations. Instead of providing a description himself, the narrator in P. G. Wodehouse’s comic novel Pigs Have Wings merely refers the reader back to other descriptions of similar scenes, thus cueing him or her to activate the appropriate frame. The authorial narrator in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello confines himself to enumerating some stereotypical features of the main character’s outward appearance, openly referring to them as “signs of moderate realism”, and appeals to the reader or narratee to “supply the particulars”. He even goes so far as to mention the name of the author who pioneered the narrative procedures known as “formal realism” (Watt 1957/1972: 34-35), thereby not only breaking the aesthetic illusion but at the same time also laying bare the conventionality, artificiality and contingency of description itself:

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

99

The reader will be able to picture the scene if he throws his mind back to descriptions he has read of the sort of thing that used to go on in those salons of the eighteenth century. (Wodehouse 1952/1957: 191) The blue costume, the greasy hair, are details, signs of moderate realism. Supply the particulars, allow the significations to emerge of themselves. A procedure pioneered by Daniel Defoe. (Coetzee 2003/2004: 4)

As these two examples underscore, textual data and the reader’s world-knowledge always interact in the reading process. A writer can give a detailed view of a place, scene or character by listing as many descriptive elements as s/he deems necessary or appropriate, a procedure pioneered by Defoe and Richardson and brought to perfection by the great tradition of realist novelists in the nineteenth century. But s/he can just as well dispense with providing the particulars of the object of description, relying on the internal logic of descriptive systems and the reader’s memory and merely cueing the reader to activate the appropriate contextual frames. By appealing to the reader to complete the picture and work it out for him- or herself, novelists like Wodehouse and Coetzee foreground both “the arbitrary process of selection and arrangement which descriptions usually try to conceal” (Cobley 1986: 400) and the processes involved in the reader’s concretization of described objects and in the concomitant construction of mental representations. One can therefore posit a graded scale between the poles of bottom-up, data-driven description on the one hand and top-down, frame-driven descriptions on the other. The type designated as bottom-up, data-driven description is characterized by a plenitude of details and descriptive elements about the object in question. By contrast, top-down, frame-driven descriptions rely much more heavily on the metonymic logic of descriptive systems and contextual frames, merely cueing readers to activate the appropriate contextual frames by providing only so much information about the phenomenon in question as to enable readers to identify the respective real-life object. Theories of description should therefore be reconceptualized in a cognitive and pragmatic framework that takes into consideration both the world-model and knowledge in the mind of the reader and the interplay between textual and extratextual information. One of the main problems of most of the theories of, and research on, description currently available is that they tend to be mostly concerned with description in general, i. e. with “the text-type Description” (Chatman 1990: 30), rather than with the actual plethora of

100

Ansgar Nünning

different kinds and historical manifestations of the text-type and narrative mode (cf. Bonheim 1982, 1990) usually subsumed under this wide, arguably all-too-wide, umbrella term. The main reason for this may be traced back to the preferences of structuralist narratology, especially its interest in, and search for, general or even universal rules of narrative, which has served to suppress interest in historical differences (cf. Ronen 1997: 277). While many narrative theorists have hazarded generalized observations on the structural properties of description and the opposition between narration and description, only very few have bothered to examine the actual multiplicity and variety of different kinds of description. In one of the best articles on the subject, Ronen (1997: 276), for instance, observes in passing “that there is a whole range of ways to describe with very little ground in common”, but neither she nor most other narrative theorists who have written on the subject have outlined distinctions between different types of descriptions or developed an analytical framework for coming to terms with them. There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule, most notably Gerald Prince, Mieke Bal and José Manuel Lopes. Prince (1987: 19) merely provides a more or less random and open list of various types of description without making any attempt to systematize them or to elaborate on the heterogeneous criteria: “A description can be more or less detailed and precise; objective or subjective; typical and stylized or, on the contrary, individualizing; decorative or explanatory/functional”. Integrating earlier models by Hamon (1972), Lodge (1977) and Maarten van Buuren, and developing them further, Bal (19811982) somewhat more systematically differentiates between six types of description, for which she has coined fairly self-explanatory terms, viz. “The Referential, Encyclopedic Description”, “The ReferentialRhetoric Description”, “Metaphoric Contiguity”, “The Systematized Metaphor”, “The Contiguous Metaphor”, and “The Series of Metaphors” (Bal 1981-1982: 122-123). By contrast, in his pioneering monograph Foregrounded Description in Prose Fiction, Lopes (1995) outlines an analytical framework for investigating different kinds of description, proposing a heuristically fruitful distinction between three main levels of inquiry: […] a stylistic level, where description is analysed at a micro-sentence level; a discursive level, where analysis focuses on the internal organization of larger descriptive segments/blocks; and a functional level, where […] we can focus on the functions description might fulfil in the context of a given work. (Lopes 1995: 20)

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

101

Though he readily admits that these “levels are bound to be closely intertwined” (ibid.), he convincingly demonstrates how productive his framework is as a theoretical and heuristic device. Taking my cue, or indeed cues, from Prince, Bal and Lopes, as well as from Fludernik, Ronen, and Wolf, I should like to suggest that in order to come to terms with the variety of descriptions we encounter in literary narratives from different periods, what we need is an even more refined framework of analytical categories which allows us to distinguish between different kinds of descriptions. Instead of being more or less identical or similar tokens of one prototype, the forms and functions of descriptions arguably vary a lot across different genres and periods. In order to be able to distinguish different forms of description, we need an analytical and terminological framework, which I will try to outline in the next section.

3. An outline of an analytical framework: steps towards a typology, poetics, and history of different forms of description The following distinctions between different forms of description are based on a number of criteria mostly adapted from Wolf’s (1993: esp. 220-259) groundbreaking study Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst, in which Wolf develops a typology of narrative self-referentiality which helps to differentiate between various types of metafiction and the potential effect of each. Wolf’s typology is based on three parameters: the form of mediation, contextual relation, and contents value (cf. ibid.: 230). The first criterion, form of mediation, refers to the level of narration the speaker engaged in metafictional reflections can be situated on. According to the second criterion, contextual relation, different forms of metafiction can be distinguished depending on whether they appear in a central or marginal position within the text under discussion, on how deeply they are interrelated with the narrated story, on whether they appear only in singular instances or in clusters, and on how clearly the metafictional aspects of the comment are marked. Using Wolf’s third criterion, contents value, one can differentiate between various forms of explicit metafiction, i. e. according to the questions whether metafiction refers to the ‘fictio or the fictum status’ (cf. ibid.: 231) of a passage (the medial nature of a text or its reference/non-reference to

102

Ansgar Nünning

reality), if it contains comments on the entire text or only on parts of it, if the commentary is on the text itself, on literature in general, or on another text, and if the discussion of the aesthetic subject takes a rather critical view of it or not. The detailed typology that Wolf (ibid.: 220-265.) develops on the basis of these criteria does not only fill a gap in research on metafiction but can also be applied to the field of description, provided some modifications and additions are made. While Wolf is primarily concerned with determining the potential destruction of aesthetic illusion through various forms of explicit metafiction, the main aim of the following considerations is to develop a set of descriptive, or rather meta-descriptive, categories for analyzing descriptions in literary narratives as well as for differentiating between various types of description. Out of the large range of criteria that might be relevant for a typological differentiation of various types of description, it is primarily the following which are particularly productive and relevant. Using Wolf’s criteria and Lopes’ fruitful distinction between different levels of analyses as starting points, one can distinguish between different kinds of description on at least five levels of inquiry: (a) a communicative or discursive level, which focuses on the structure of narrative mediation; (b) a stylistic level, where descriptions are analysed from a linguistic point of view; (c) a structural or syntagmatic level, where analysis focuses on the internal organization of descriptions and on their relations with non-descriptive parts of a narrative; (d) a thematic and paradigmatic level; (e) a receptionoriented and functional level. This allows us to distinguish between dominantly formal, stylistic, structural, and content-related subcategories of description. These can then be augmented and differentiated by reception-oriented and functional criteria. 1. In terms of form and narrative mediation, various narratological types of description can be differentiated according to the communication level on which the descriptor10, i. e., the descriptive agent or textual speaker who provides a given description, is situated. Using the communication level of the speaker as a starting point, the resulting difference is between dominantly diegetic and dominantly extradiegetic forms of description. In the first case, the description can be attributed to one of the characters of the 10

For the use of the technical term ‘descriptor’, cf. Wolf (2005: 19, 21).

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

103

narrated world; in the second, descriptive statements come from a narrator who describes the setting, characters, or existents of the storyworld from a higher vantage-point on the communication level of narrative transmission. Theoretically, descriptions can also be given on a hypo- and a metadiegetic level of communication. Although characters on the intradiegetic communication level of the story frequently describe other characters, places or objects, it is particularly the extradiegetic level of discourse, which is of central importance in the present context. A second distinction, which is closely related to the first, is the one between character-oriented and narratee-oriented types of descriptions. The question here is whether one of the characters on the diegetic level of the story is the addressee of a description or whether it is primarily addressed to the narratee, i. e. the narrator’s counterpart on the extradiegetic level of communication. Though every description is, of course, ultimately directed at the real reader, it does make a difference whether and which characters are aware of the information provided by a given description. A third formal criterion which can serve to distinguish between different narratological types of description is the question of whether descriptions emanate from a heterodiegetic, covert narrator situated outside of the level of the characters or whether they are focalized from the point of view of one of the characters whose sense perceptions they represent. On the basis of this criterion one can posit a distinction between externally and internally focalized types of descriptions. Whereas the former is typically associated with conveying potentially objective or at least reliable information about the existents and facts of the fictional world, the latter kind of description, which becomes predominant in the Victorian fin de siècle and the modernist novel, tends to be much more tinged with a subjective bias and potential unreliability. The main reason for this is that what internally focalized descriptions represent are not factually objective pieces of information about the textual actual world, but rather the character-focalizer’s subjective perceptions and impressions, i. e. something occurring in his or her consciousness or mind. In order to determine whether a given description is externally or internally focalized, the reader needs to gauge whether it is possible and plausible to anchor the described object as well as the order in which the descriptive elements are rendered in some character’s or observer’s point of view (cf.

104

Ansgar Nünning

Sternberg 1981: 85). The representations provided via internally focalized descriptions often tend to “reflect little more than the fallibility and fantasies of the mediating perspective” (ibid.: 86). A similar effect to that resulting from descriptions from the point of view of an unreliable focalizer or ‘flawed filter’ is achieved when unreliable narrators provide descriptions. Fourthly, and closely related to the two previous criteria, monoperspective forms of description can and should be distinguished from multi-perspective descriptions. Lopes (1995: 22) explains what is involved here: Generally speaking, nineteenth-century descriptions are constructed as monoperspective, cohesive, and coherent blocks that contribute, at times, to an effect of visualization.

By contrast, like many instances of internally focalized descriptions or descriptions given by an unreliable narrator, the kind designated as multi-perspective also serves to redirect the reader’s attention from the objects and facts of the story to the problems of observation, representation, mediation and narration. Even if narrators do not explicitly thematize the process of description and narration, which they can do in different ways, intensity, and detail, they can still foreground problems of description by resorting to multi-perspective descriptions. This is usually particularly effective when the perspectives offered on a given character, place or object fail to add up to a coherent image or representation: “This usually occurs whenever, in a descriptive block, the ‘descriptive voice’ opts for conveying a multiplicity of visual perspectives of the same object(s)” (Lopes 1995: 22). 2. On a second level of inquiry one can distinguish types of description on the basis of linguistic and stylistic criteria11. First, explicit types of description have to be distinguished from implicit or implied forms, a distinction for which the linguistic mode of mediation can serve as a criterion. Chatman (1990: 28) argues that we can distinguish at least three ways in which Description may be rendered by a text’s surface: (1) Assertions […]. (2) Nonassertive mentions or inclusions […]. (3) Elliptical implications. 11

For a discussion of some aspects on the stylistic level, cf. Lopes (1995: 20-22), who gives a brief overview of the aspects that can be analyzed on this level and to whom I am indebted for the distinction between the stylistic, discursive and functional levels of inquiry.

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

105

Whereas direct assertions are characteristic of the explicit type of description, implicit varieties tend to be non-assertive, relying rather on implications or inferences that the reader has to draw on the basis of his world-knowledge. A second linguistic, or rather stylistic, criterion for differentiation is the linguistic form in which descriptions are realized. According to this criterion, metaphoric and non-metaphoric forms of description can be distinguished12. Classical examples of metaphoric descriptions of characters are the great many instances of animal imagery that English novelists from Dickens to P. G. Wodehouse are so famous for. In non-metaphoric description, conversely, characters, places and objects are referred to directly and literally. 3. In addition to the discursive and linguistic types of description discussed so far, yet other kinds can be distinguished on a third level of inquiry, i. e. a structural or syntagmatic level. In order to differentiate between various types of description, structural criteria referring to the relation between the descriptive passages of a novel and its other parts have to be considered13. In this context, the position, frequency, and structural integration of descriptive segments are relevant. Structurally determined types of description can on the one hand be distinguished according to the quantitative relations of the descriptive and the non-descriptive parts. On the other hand, qualitative criteria like the syntagmatic and semantic integration of descriptions in the narrated story can serve as criteria for a further typological differentiation and meta-description of the various forms of description. Therefore, the first question to be asked concerning structural forms of description is in which position descriptions appear in a novel. With the help of this criterion marginal forms of description can be differentiated from central ones. Marginal varieties include those which are located at the beginning or at the end of a text, a form which has been common since the beginnings of the novel in the Renaissance. Conversely, descriptions located in more central 12 13

For a detailed analysis of this issue, cf. Bal (1982).

Cf. Wolf (1993: 239-247), who refers to these structurally defined forms as ‘contextually determined types of explicit metafiction’ and who differentiates between various types of metafictional comments, which will be adapted and modified in the following.

106

Ansgar Nünning

positions can be found within an ongoing story. Examples of works in which descriptions occur primarily in marginal positions are most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English novels, e. g. Aphra Behn’s and Daniel Defoe’s. From the nineteenth-century realist novel onwards, description is also used repeatedly and more frequently in more central positions throughout the narrative. The descriptive dimension thus plays a much greater role in the nineteenth-century realist novel on account of the central position of the descriptions, an effect that is enhanced by the following features. Secondly, block descriptions can be distinguished from distributed descriptions. The underlying criterion here is whether descriptive information is given in one piece or rather disseminated throughout a narrative text. Whereas block descriptions were the dominant mode of introducing characters and places in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel, such “set pieces of description went out of fashion with the Modernist novel” (Chatman 1990: 26). As Wolf (in his contribution to this volume: 54) points out, up to the nineteenth century it was standard practice “that main characters received an en-bloc description by the narrator at their first appearance in the storyworld”. Later on, as a result of modernist novelists’ preference for internally focalized descriptions, descriptive segments tend to be distributed throughout the text (cf. Mosher 1991: 436). Third, the quantitative criteria of frequency of descriptions and of their extent compared to the narrative proper can help to distinguish between novels in which description only occurs rarely and in points, and those which feature frequent and extensive forms of description. Whereas ‘frequency’ refers to the number and regularity of descriptive passages in a given novel, ‘extent’ refers to the question of how long they are and what amount of space descriptions tend to occupy. Although both criteria can be differentiated in theory, they tend to be intrinsically connected in practice. This is mainly due to the fact that increasing frequency and increasing extent or length result in a higher degree of importance of the descriptive dimension. Novels in which a limited number of descriptions can only be found sporadically include most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century novels, especially e. g. the picaresque novel, which focus on the plot and the adventures of the protagonist. From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, how-

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

107

ever, descriptions occur much more frequently and extensively, not only in nineteenth-century realist novels and works belonging to the naturalist school (e. g. Gissing’s novels) but also in Gothic novels and historical novels, all of which can be considered as typical examples of extensive and marked forms of description. However, their functions may differ significantly, an issue to which we will return later. It may be mentioned in passing that the criteria of frequency and extent of descriptions also serve to highlight the significant differences in these respects between various narrative genres. In contrast to other genres and media, in novels description never informs an entire work, not even in the French nouveau roman, though the frequency and length of descriptions can vary a great deal. According to different degrees of frequency, intensity and extent of description, narrative genres could be graded on a scale in which the poles represent e. g. the fairytale and the nouveau roman. As Max Lüthi (1984/1987: 20) has shown in his seminal book, “the compulsion to describe is alien to” the fairy tale; beauty, for instance, “is almost never made specific”. The overall effect is therefore one of a lack of specificity and a comparatively low degree of individualization. In the case of the nouveau roman, on the other hand, descriptions are so frequent and extensive that they virtually seem to inform almost the entire novel. And yet, as theorists like Sternberg (1981) and Lopes (1995) have rightly pointed out, the nouveau roman also challenges the traditional distinction between narration and description. Other genres in which description tends to figure prominently, often being the overriding text-type, include industrial and social novels, travelogues, travel guides and lyric poems14. A fourth structural criterion to differentiate between various structurally defined types of description is the degree of structural, as well as semantic, integration or isolation of the descriptive segments vis-à-vis the narrated story. In the case of integrated forms of description, there is a close syntagmatic connection between the descriptive passages of a text and its other parts, whereas isolated forms are characterized by a clear-cut division between descriptive and non-descriptive passages. Any number of typical examples of the non-integrated type can be found in the kind of “identifiable 14

Cf. e. g. Sternberg (1981: 73) and Chatman (1990: 23).

108

Ansgar Nünning

textual blocks” (Lopes 1995: 22) providing descriptions of characters and settings that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realist novels abound in. In contradistinction to this clear separation of actual plot and description, the extensive descriptions one encounters in modernist novels tend to be “disseminated throughout the text” (ibid.) and inextricably bound up with the discourse as well as with the story. Closely linked to the question of the degree of syntagmatic connection is a fifth structural criterion, i. e. the degree of contextual plausibility to which descriptions can be linked up with, or derived from, the narrated story. By means of this criterion, motivated or functional and unmotivated forms of description can be distinguished. While in the case of motivated description, the action or the discourse itself provide a plausible reason for the fact that a descriptive segment is introduced, the concept of largely unmotivated forms of description applies when characters or narrators give descriptions without any obvious connection between the latter and the events of the story. Descriptions tend to be apparently realistically (e. g. psychologically) motivated mainly in those novels in which they are either focalized through one of the characters or closely tied up with the experiences made by the narrator – for example in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) or Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), respectively. In contrast to these examples, there are cases of predominantly unmotivated and isolated descriptions in which the reader needs to establish the connection between these segments and the narrated story him- or herself. A case in point are many of the authorial narrator’s intrusions in novels like John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) and John Berger’s G. (1972), in which the heterodiegetic narrators repeatedly break the primary illusion of characters and events by providing descriptions as well as metafictional and metanarrative comments. Concerning the differentiation between motivated and unmotivated forms of description, there are general differences between both homo- and heterodiegetic narration, and internally and externally focalized types of description as well. Since a homodiegetic narrator by definition tells a story in which she or he plays a (more or less) central role, the descriptive expressions can always be set in relation to the narrated character due to the identity between the narrating I and the experiencing I in homodiegetic narration.

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

109

Therefore, not only is the narrative process of a first-person narrator a part of the fictitious world of the characters, but his/her narration as well as his/her descriptions tend to be more or less clearly motivated in the story world. The same holds true for internally focalized descriptions. Heterodiegetic narrators, in contrast, report the fictitious story from an outsider’s perspective. Since the direct connection to the story level is missing here, descriptions given by heterodiegetic narrators and external focalizers tend to be less strongly motivated than those of first-person narrators and character focalizers. 4. Formal, stylistic and structural differentiations can be supplemented by content-related forms of description: here, the criterion for differentiation is the object to which the description refers. The wide variations of content may help determine the different possibilities of functionalizing descriptions in a given novel. As the preceding discussion has hopefully served to show, Wolf’s criteria for a taxonomic classification of explicit metafiction also provide useful clues for a systematization of different kinds or types of description. But to do justice to the particular contents of descriptive segments, other categories concerning the objects of description and related problems have to be included as well. Depending on the subject area and on the selection of the objects that are typically described in fiction, various content-related forms of description can be distinguished. It is obvious, however, that in terms of possible referents of descriptions, the possibilities of differentiation are almost endless. Therefore, this area resists systematization and classification, not least because all aspects or existents of the storyworld can potentially become the object of a description. These include not only places, characters and objects, but also dreams, projects, ideas, as well as other phenomena belonging to the internal world of consciousness and the imagination. Identifying typical objects of description, Wolf, in his contribution to this volume (see 25), points out that descriptions tend to focus on concrete, static, and spatial phenomena, e. g. places, characters, physiognomies, and objects, rather than on abstract notions, feelings, or bodily sensations, though the latter cannot be excluded from the possible objects of description. First, content-related types of description can be distinguished according to the scope of the descriptive references and details, ranging from selective to comprehensive description. Crucial

110

Ansgar Nünning

points here are the thematic breadth of references and the question of in how detailed a manner the respective objects are described. Selective types are characterized by their limitation to one or just a few significant details. In contrast to this, comprehensive or detailed descriptions attempt to identify and enumerate the largest possible spectrum of properties of the place, object or character to be described. A second content-related criterion is the question of which level or aspect of a narrative descriptions refer to. In this context, one can differentiate between story-oriented and discourse-oriented description. In the case of the story-oriented variety, descriptions focus on phenomena of the narrated story. Conversely, discourse-oriented description can be found in those comments which refer to phenomena on the level of narrative transmission, including descriptions of the narrator, the narratee, and aspects of the narrative process. On the basis of this criterion, one can distinguish between speaker-oriented or expressive types of description, and reader-oriented or appellative varieties. Whereas in the case of expressive forms (which can be found aplenty in Henry Fielding’s novels) such self-reflexive comments refer primarily to the narrator, phatic and appellative varieties focus on keeping the appellative channel up or on addressing or describing the narratee, respectively. Countless examples of reader-oriented or appellative forms of description can be found in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67) and Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper (1936). Third, another content-related distinction can be made between intratextual and intertextual or intermedial description, depending on whether a descriptive remark refers to other elements of the same text or to other texts. Though descriptions typically refer to phenomena of the text in which they occur, there is no need why this should be so. As the plethora of examples of ekphrasis, for instance, serves to illustrate, they can just as well describe objects that do not play a central role in the novel of which they are a part. A fourth content-related distinction can be made on the basis of varying degrees of self-reflexivity with which descriptions are given. This can serve to distinguish between unselfconscious and self-reflexive forms of description. Although descriptions generally tend to result in momentary digressions from the narrated story, both the degree of digression and the degree of selfconsciousness with which the latter is thematized or foregrounded

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

111

can vary considerably. In contrast to the widespread equation of description with neutral or even objective representation, what needs to be emphasized is that this is, of course, merely a convention. Lanser (1981: 176) uses the category “narrative selfconsciousness” in the sense of narrative self-reflexivity or description: “We can posit a succeeding continuum of diminishing selfconsciousness of the narrative act.” (Ibid.: 177) According to the model she puts forward, different levels of intensity of narrative, and, one might add, self-reflexivity, with regards to description can be graded on a scale in which the poles represent a welldefined level of “narrative self-consciousness” and “narrative unconsciousness” (which she defines as “narrators who show not the slightest awareness of a narratee or a communicative context”; ibid.), respectively. If description itself becomes the subject of a self-reflexive metanarrative comment, and is thus laid bare as a device, one can speak of foregrounded description or ‘meta-description’. Typical examples of this would be the highly self-reflexive passages from the novels by P. G. Wodehouse and J. M. Coetzee quoted in the first section of this essay. Although there are several precursors for this phenomenon, even in the nineteenth-century realist novel, it is such genres as the comic novel and postmodernist metafiction in which one typically encounters such meta-descriptions. The kind of meta-description that occurs frequently in twentieth-century novels foregrounds reflections about the arbitrariness and contingency of any description. The fifth content-related criterion focuses on the descriptor’s assessment of his/her own descriptive competence, resulting in the differentiation between affirmative and undermining description, i. e. between those forms of description which express the narrator’s confidence, and those forms in which the narrator’s insecurity and self-doubt concerning the act of description become obvious, with many gradual stages in between15. The descriptions provided by authorial narrators in eighteenth-century and most Victorian novels are prototypes of the affirmative type of description, whereas

15

As far as I know, this criterion was introduced by Lanser (1981: 178), who refers to this scale as the “axis of self-confidence”, with “confidence” and “uncertainty” as its poles.

112

Ansgar Nünning

the narrator’s belief in his/her own descriptive as well as narrative competence has declined in many twentieth-century novels. One early typical example of an incompetent narrator is the servant Gabriel Betteredge in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868). Despite many attempts, he never really succeeds in telling a coherent story, and he openly admits his narrative and descriptive incompetence. A particularly extreme example of undermining description can be found in Patrick McGrath’s neogothic novel The Grotesque, in which the psychopathic first-person narrator utters his doubts about his ability to portray events and existents in a precise, coherent, and objective manner in one of his many selfreflexive, meta-narrative as well as meta-descriptive, comments about his rather limited descriptive and narrative competence: So I [...] try to construct for you as full and coherent an account as I can of how things got this way. You must forgive me if I appear at times to contradict myself, or in other ways violate the natural order of the events I am disclosing; this business of selecting and organizing one’s memories so as to describe precisely what happened is a delicate, perilous undertaking, and I’m beginning to wonder whether it may not be beyond me. (McGrath 1990: 114)

This distinction between affirmative and undermining description thus concerns the question of whether and how a descriptor assesses the quality of his descriptions. Affirmative kinds of description tend to be non-critical in that they represent descriptive statements in which no evaluation is expressed, reflecting the narrator’s positive attitude to his/her own description as well as to conventionalized forms of description in general. In contrast to this, critical types of description are characterized by a narrator who distances himself/herself from prevalent conventions or treats them with irony. This is repeatedly the case in B. S. Johnson’s novels, for instance, as becomes obvious in the narrator’s ironic criticism of stereotypical portrayals of characters. The following quotation from B. S. Johnson’s experimental novel Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry (1973), which can stand for many other examples, reflects the narrator’s critical and sceptical attitude to the conventions of realism: An attempt should be made to characterise Christie’s appearance. I do so with diffidence, in the knowledge that such physical descriptions are rarely of value in a novel. It is one of the limitations; and there are so many others. Many readers, I should not be surprised to learn if appropriate evidence were capable of being researched, do not read such descriptions at all, but skip to the next dialogue or more readily assimilable section. (Johnson 1984: 51)

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

113

5. Apart from the formal, stylistic, structural, and content-related criteria, a fifth group of reception-oriented, or functionally determined, forms of description has to be taken into consideration. Here, the main criteria are the potential effects and functions of descriptive segments. It is generally assumed that an accumulation of descriptions contributes considerably to the creation of the aesthetic illusion, to what Roland Barthes (1968/1982) felicitously christened the ‘reality effect’ (l’effet de réel). Descriptions are indeed admirably suited to create a strong illusion of reality, to provide readers with detailed information, and to authenticate the storyworld (cf. Cobley 1986: 396; Lopes 1995: 11). From the point of view of reader-response criticism, one can first of all distinguish between descriptions which seem to be transparent and easy to naturalize and those that are not. The latter might be termed opaque descriptions. Whereas transparent descriptions pose no difficulty for the reader who tries to concretize the phenomenon that is described, opaque descriptions are much more difficult for the recipient to naturalize. In the context of frame theory, the mechanism by the help of which readers actualize and concretize objects that are described in novels can be understood as a set of interpretive strategies or a cognitive process of the sort that has come to be known as ‘naturalization’ (cf. Fludernik 1996), which makes textual phenomena intelligible in terms of culturally accepted frames. Second, the most important question to be asked from a readeroriented and functional perspective is whether descriptions serve to underscore the aesthetic illusion and the reality effect, serving as an authenticating device, or whether they undermine them. Most forms of description serve to create coherence and to support the illusion of authenticity or verisimilitude of the narrated story without impairing the primary illusion referring to the storyworld. This is particularly the case in the detailed story-oriented forms of description found in many seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury novels, in which descriptions often serve as a prominent authenticating strategy. Since the 1970s, however, descriptions and metadescriptions often tend to be used as a metafictional means of destroying the aesthetic illusion. Third, as far as their possible functions are concerned, decorative descriptions can be distinguished from explanatory descrip-

114

Ansgar Nünning

tion16. Whereas the former type is merely ornamental, the latter type of description fulfils some recognizable function within the narrative. Prince (1987: 19) throws some light on what these functions might be: [...] establishing the tone or mood of a passage, conveying plot-relevant information, contributing to characterization, introducing or reinforcing a theme, symbolizing a conflict to come.

Though one should beware to assume that descriptions are generally merely an ornamental device, it would be equally misleading to posit such a wide range of functions for every description. The criteria developed here are not primarily useful for classifying novels, chapters or parts of them according to various subforms of description. Rather, they are intended to provide an elaborated analytical framework for a precise metatextual description of the poetics of different types of descriptions. The following matrix summarizes the most important types of description, providing an overview of the criteria for differentiation on which the preceding classification is based. Types or kinds of description

Criteria for determining these types

I. Formal, discursive and narratological types of description

Communication level and mode of narrative mediation

1. diegetic vs. extradiegetic description vs. hypodiegetic vs. metadiegetic description

textual level on which the descriptor is situated, i. e. mediation situated on the level of story, on the level of discourse/ narrative transmission, or on further framing or embedded levels addressee of a description

2. character-oriented vs. narrateeoriented descriptions 3. externally focalized vs. internally focalized description 4. mono-perspective vs. multiperspective description

kind of focalization through which descriptive information is conveyed perspectival mode of description; number of focalizers and perspectives

16 Cf. Genette (1966: 156-157), who distinguishes between ‘ornamental description’ and ‘significative description’.

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

115

II. Linguistic and stylistic types of description

Linguistic and stylistic form with which a description is rendered

5. explicit vs. implicit description 6. metaphoric vs. non-metaphoric description

degree of linguistic explicitness stylistic form in which description is realized

III. Structural types of description

Quantitative and qualitative relationship of descriptive and non-descriptive parts of the text and syntagmatic integration of descriptions in the narrated story

7. marginal vs. central description

position of the descriptive segment in a novel concentration/dissemination of descriptive segments frequency and extent of descriptions compared to the narrated story degree of integration of a given description in, or isolation from, the narrated story degree to which the action or the discourse itself provide a plausible reason for the description

8. set/block vs. distributed description 9. brief vs. extensive description 10. integrated vs. isolated description

11. motivated vs. unmotivated description IV. Content-related types of description

The ‘object’ of descriptive segments

12. selective vs. comprehensive description 13. story-oriented vs. discourse-oriented description as well as expressive and appellative kinds of description 14. intratextual vs. intertextual or intermedial description

scope of descriptive references and details level and aspect of a narrative that descriptions dominantly refer to

15. unselfconscious vs. self-reflexive/foregrounded metadescription 16. affirmative vs. undermining description

the question if descriptive expressions characterize a narrative as belonging to a genre or text type degree and extent of self-reflexivity with which a description is given descriptor’s assessment of his/her descriptive competence and self-confidence

116

Ansgar Nünning

V. Reception-oriented and functionally determined types of description

The potential effect and function of descriptive utterances

17. transparent descriptions vs. opaque descriptions 18. descriptions compatible with the aesthetic illusion vs. (meta-)descriptions disturbing illusion 19. decorative/ornamental description vs. explanatory/functional description

degree of difficulty a description poses for the reader’s attempt to naturalize it the degree of compatibility with the aesthetic illusion or anti-illusionism of a descriptive utterance the degree of functionalization of a description

Figure 1: Types of Description

Despite its schematic and selective character, this overview may suffice to show that there are a great number of different forms of description which narrative theory has thus far failed to identify or differentiate.

4. On the historically variable functions of description in the English novel: a diachronic overview The typology and poetics of description proffered here also provide a number of precise reference points which can be employed to answer the question of which functions certain forms of description may fulfil. Since the phenomenon of description has thus far mainly been discussed from a synchronic and theoretical vantage point, the following section will give at least a very brief outline of the historic variability and polyfunctionality of descriptions. I should like to stress at the outset, however, that different forms of description can, in fact, fulfil a broad spectrum of functions17. It goes without saying that a comprehensive reconstruction of the diachronic changes in the forms and functions of description will have to remain a desideratum for a longer study, for which the following can only offer some elements. Apart from the widespread and misleading equation of description

17

Generally, one can assume that claims about the potential effects and functions of narrative strategies are only hypotheses projected by the reader; cf. the seminal contribution by Sommer (2000); on the functions of literature see also Gymnich/ Nünning, eds. (2005).

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

117

with the enhancement of the aesthetic illusion, there have been hardly any studies concerning the functions of descriptions. Before the most important changes in the uses of description in the English novel are sketched from the vantage point of their historically variable functions18, let us briefly look at those functions that have been identified as being typical of descriptions. According to Wolf (see his contribution to this volume: 15), the descriptive serves three main functions in everyday discourse: first, it refers to a phenomenon, permitting its identification through the attribution of certain qualities; second, it provides a representation that permits others to imagine or re-experience this phenomenon; third, it serves to provide facts about this phenomenon rather than interpretations. Wolf also observes that while the first two functions, i. e. identification and representation, are as relevant to aesthetic descriptions in literature as to everyday communication, the question of whether descriptions in literature also provide more or less objective facts about the fictional world rather than interpretations thereof is a lot more intricate. Whereas the majority of theorists have either not been much concerned with this issue or argued that descriptions are mainly a means of providing information about the existents of the storyworld, implicitly conceptualizing description “as narrative’s neat meaning-less opposite” (Ronen 1997: 280), Michael Riffaterre (1981: 125) holds a much more radical position, arguing that the primary purpose of a description “is not to offer a representation, but to dictate an interpretation”. Rather than opting for one of these positions or coming up with another such generalizing observation, it might be more fruitful to explore the various functions that different kinds of description can fulfil. In addition to the basic functions discussed by Wolf, narrative theorists have also assigned several other functions to descriptions in literature. These include, for instance, “characterization, prediction […], delay, development of theme […], parody […] and even selfcontradiction” (Mosher 1991: 425). Description typically “situates characters and action in real surroundings […] and also creates an atmosphere” (ibid.: 427) that often prepares the reader for a key theme. In addition to providing background information and atmos18

It is obvious that the scope of possible functions is not limited to those mentioned here. For instance, descriptions can serve as a signal of narratorial unreliability (cf. A. Nünning et al. 1998), particularly in the case of undermining description (e. g. the example of McGrath’s The Grotesque referred to above).

118

Ansgar Nünning

phere, descriptions can serve as a means of “characterization, delay for suspense, foreshadowing, and thematic information” (ibid.: 443). Though, there is widespread agreement that descriptions tend to fulfil several functions at once, one can assume that one of these function may be predominant in any given case. In Elizabethan prose and other precursors of the seventeenth-century novel, descriptions tend to be realistically motivated, of limited number, and relatively isolated. Mostly, they serve as a means of providing expository information and as authenticating strategies. In Renaissance prose – e. g. in Thomas Deloney’s short novels Jack of Newberie (1597) and Thomas of Reading (1600) or in Thomas Nashe’s picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jake Wilton (1594) – description can be found only rarely and in marginal positions without any descriptions that extend over long passages: “the picaresque novel tended to downplay extensive description, since its major concern lay in the plot-directed development of the action” (Fludernik 1996: 150). In most late seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century novels, a larger number of descriptions than in Renaissance prose occurs, but prior to Sterne these do not serve primarily as a means of destroying the aesthetic illusion, but have completely different functions. Independent of the question of whether it is a first-person or an authorial narrator who gives descriptions, the kind of descriptions that are typical of the novels of this period are usually conducive to the construction and maintenance of the aesthetic illusion, both as far as the characters and the places and objects are concerned. In novels written by, say, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson, right through to Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, descriptions function as authenticating strategies, which are intended to underline the supposedly documentary character of the narrations, as any number of examples from novels of that period will illustrate. In addition, the narrator’s and characters’ descriptions are often aimed at having a moral or didactic effect. The quantitative and qualitative importance of description in the novels of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson, as well as in those of many of their immediate imitators, and the spectrum of functions the various kinds of descriptions fulfil is much greater than in any previous works in English narrative literature. As Anne Patricia Williams (1996) has shown, description and tableau play a particularly prominent role in the eighteenth-century British sentimental novel, which, in contrast to the picaresque novel and the

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

119

adventure novel, downplays the plot-directed development of the action. Beginning with Laurence Sterne and then in Romantic narrative prose, a basic change took place concerning the importance and the functions of description, which, from the late eighteenth century onwards, began to play a more central role, developing in the direction of metafiction and self-reflexivity. In Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman the illusion of a personalized narrator or ‘teller’ is intensified by the clear temporal and local deictic situatedness of the act of narration and by the narrator’s repeated self-reflexive thematization of it. Moreover, in Sterne’s novel, there are several chapters which are primarily or even completely descriptive. Some chapters are even devoted to a description of the omnipresent digressions, which are so central that they become the subject of descriptive or metanarrative reflections. Although it is not the narrator but a fictive editor who is the subject of the extended descriptions in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-1834), there are similarities between Sterne’s and Carlyle’s novels from a functional point of view: in both cases, the descriptive segments not only promote ‘an extradiegetic secondary illusion of a close proximity of narrator/editor’ (cf. Wolf 1993: 570), they also fulfil similar parodistic and metafictional functions. In addition, they serve as a medium for poetological and aesthetic self-reflection, and they underline the literary staging of subjectivity in both works. In realistic nineteenth-century novels, descriptions fully come into their own, as it were, fulfilling again quite different functions: strengthening ‘the complicity of the persons of the outer communication level’ (cf. ibid.: 463), they primarily serve to create a trustinducing conversation between the explicit narrator and the narratee, establishing their agreement about basic norms and values. This function is especially apparent in George Eliot’s early novels Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) and Adam Bede (1859), in which both the authorial narrator and the narratee function as observers of the characters19. Eliot’s humanistic and aesthetic concern to endear simple, ordinary individuals to the reader and to ask the reader for his/her sympa19

Cf. Carlisle (1981: 181): “The narrator does not announce his understanding of a character; he introduces himself to the reader, creates a bond between himself and his listener, and only then rouses the reader to the activities that must issue in the discovery of the character’s appeal.”

120

Ansgar Nünning

thy and understanding is repeatedly stressed by the detailed way in which the narrator describes the setting and the characters. The plethora of detailed descriptions, which is characteristic of Victorian novels and which derives from the attempt to provide a truthful picture of reality that is in accordance with the aesthetic norms, values and conventions of realism, mainly serves to enhance the graphic quality, visualization, and vividness of the characters and places. In addition, they often serve to create coherence and to fulfil mnemotechnic functions. The importance of these functions should not be underestimated in view of the size of the standard three-decker novels and the mode of serial publication. There are, for example, not only many intertextual cross-references between Trollope’s Barchester Towers (1857) and the later Barsetshire-novels but also a number of frame-based descriptions which refer to information already provided in the other works of the Barsetshire-cycle. Such intertextual descriptive references also show that the narrator presupposes the reader’s prior knowledge of earlier novels in the cycle: “It is hardly necessary that I should here give to the public any lengthened biography of Mr. Harding, up to the commencement of this tale.” (Trollope 1975: 12) It may be noted in passing that what is arguably almost as interesting as exploring the kinds and functions of descriptions in Victorian fiction is to ask which aspects of the characters’ lives authors and narrators typically refrain from describing. Metanarrative and metadescriptive comments in Victorian novels often serve the function of glossing over taboo areas or, conversely, of foregrounding the external and internal censorship inherent in the system of literature of the time, areas that are typically omitted from the range of descriptions. The following example from William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair illustrates how references to omitted descriptions can have a satiric function by throwing a few critical asides at prevalent ideas of morality: We must pass over a part of Mrs Rebecca Crawley’s biography with that lightness and delicacy which the world demands – the moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. (Thackeray 1967: 676).

Furthermore, descriptions in many Victorian novels also contribute to poetological self-reflection. This poetological function is particularly apparent in the early and later novels by George Eliot20, chapter 17 in 20

For a more detailed discussion, cf. A. Nünning (1989: 147-175, 242-265).

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

121

Adam Bede, tellingly entitled “In Which the Story Pauses a Little”, being probably one of the most noteworthy examples. The narrator’s reflections about “this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings” (Eliot 1980: 223) provide a lot of insight into the nature, quality and functions of the kind of description that one finds in Eliot’s novels as well as in the works of many other Victorian novelists (e. g. Dickens, Trollope and Hardy). The implied poetological purpose of detailed and extended descriptions becomes especially prominent in English novels influenced by the French school of naturalism, in which detailed descriptions of the characters’ living standards and social and cultural milieu serve as a means of explaining their dispositions and behaviours21. Both the realist and the naturalist novel were “committed in a new way to the representation of particulars, in character, scene, and environment” (Ronen 1997: 283), and to functionalizing such descriptions as a means of explaining the characters and their actions. The distinction between externally and internally focalized types of descriptions allows us to identify one of the most significant changes that occurred in respect of their forms and functions in the Victorian fin de siècle, though there are, of course, a number of important forerunners like Aphra Behn and Jane Austen22. In nineteenth-century realist novels most of the descriptions tend to be given by an overt narrator who provides reliable information about the properties of places, characters, and objects from an external, omniscient point of view. In modernist fiction, by contrast, internally focalized descriptions predominate (cf. Wolf in this volume: 29). One of the concomitant effects is that the degree of objectivity that we associate with externally focalized descriptions decreases. The following two examples from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, in which the settings and atmospheres are described through the eyes of an observer sitting in a hansom and from the point of view of the female protagonist respectively, may serve to illustrate the subjective quality that distinguishes the effects and functions of internally focalized description from its externally focalized counterpart: 21 22

Cf. e. g. Wolf’s contribution to this volume: 60.

Cf. Fludernik (1996: 150), who observes that „Behn’s descriptions are frequently subjective rather than objective, rendering the characters’ mutual perception of one another’s qualities”.

122

Ansgar Nünning

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city […] The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the man lost his way, and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The side-windows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist. (Wilde 1982: 184) And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling. (Woolf 1947: 5)

As these examples serve to underscore, the ubiquity of externally focalized descriptions since the beginnings of the novel (if not as far back as since the beginning of narration itself), which are one of the hallmarks of the realist novel, tends to decline in modernism. This is due to modernism’s ideal of narratorial objectivity and non-interference (as opposed to character-centred subjectivity) and the preference of a ‘dramatic’ or ‘scenic’ mode of narration, ideals that can be traced back to Friedrich Spielhagen’s, Henry James’s, and Percy Lubbock’s normative theories of the novel (cf. also Wolf 1993: 654). As a result, in the consciousness novel description starts “to turn subjective, rendering characters’ perceptions rather than mere quasi-objective background information” (Fludernik 1996: 151). Numerous English novels from the second half of the twentieth century demonstrate that descriptions can also fulfil metafictional functions and that they can serve as an instrument of destroying the diegetic illusion. One early but typical example is the game played by the authorial narrator with the fictitious (and real) addressee in B. S. Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry. The following two metanarrative and metadescriptive narratorial asides show how closely description and metafiction are connected in this novel: For the following passage it seems to me necessary to attempt transcursion into Christie’s mind; an illusion of transcursion, that is, of course, since you know only too well in whose mind it all really takes place. (Johnson 1984: 23) An attempt should be made to characterise Christie’s appearance. I do so with diffidence, in the knowledge that such physical descriptions are rarely of value in a

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

123

novel. It is one of the limitations; and there are so many others. Many readers, I should not be surprised to learn if appropriate evidence were capable of being researched, do not read such descriptions at all, but skip to the next dialogue or more readily assimilable section. Again, I have often read and heard said, many readers apparently prefer to imagine the characters for themselves. That is what draws them to the novel, that it stimulates their imagination! Imagining my characters, indeed! Investing them with characteristics quite unknown to me, or even at variance with such descriptions as I have given! (Ibid.: 51) Christie is therefore an average shape, height, weight, build, and colour. Make him what you will: probably in the image of yourself. (Ibid.: 51)

In many contemporary and postmodern novels – e. g. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) or J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello (2003) – descriptions and metadescriptions are also partially functionalized in such a metafictional way23. By foregrounding both the conventions inherent in realist modes of description and the reader’s share in the act of concretization, such metadescriptions not only lay bare the artificiality and contingency of each and every description, they also illuminate some of theoretical issues that the contributions to the present volume set out to explore. Despite the fragmentary character of this sketch of the various and historically changing functions descriptions might fulfil, it should have become clear that, depending on the kind of description we are dealing with, different functions are dominant in each individual case. As narrative language is polyfunctional, one can generally assume that there are variable dominance relations between the different functions and that they can overlap, intensify or relativize each other. This survey moreover highlights that not only the forms, but also, and especially, the functions of description are as much subject to historical variability as other narrative modes and strategies.

5. Conclusion and areas for further research When taking a retrospective look at the desiderata mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the following preliminary conclusion can be drawn. What I hope to have shown is that there are many different types of descriptions in novels which can be distinguished on the 23

Cf. Lopes (1995: ch. 6) for a pioneering analysis of the use of self-reflexive descriptions as “a metatextual/metadescriptive device pointing to its own limits and possibilities” (ibid.: 5).

124

Ansgar Nünning

basis of various clearly definable criteria. The vast range of formal types of description corresponds to a similar multitude of functions that descriptive expressions can fulfil. Further work on the functional hypotheses outlined in section 4 could render them more precise, modify them or revise them. Considering the theoretical, definitional, typological, and functional differences discussed in this paper, it is self-evident that the broad field of description has not yet been treated in a comprehensive, much less an exhaustive way. The differentiated research of the forms, functions, and diachronic development of descriptive commentary is still among the desiderata of narratological research. The criteria proffered here not only allow for a detailed analysis of descriptive passages in a novel or a short story, but also lend themselves to a terminologically exact reconstruction of the development of the forms and functions of description over various periods of literary history, not only in narrative fiction but in other genres as well. The intriguing question of the use of different forms of description in poetry and drama, for instance, and the potential applicability and usefulness of the categories sketched out in this paper are complex issues which narratology has not even begun to gauge. Despite the productiveness of the critical industry, the questions raised in this volume are still a very fertile area of investigation. There are at least six important issues which have yet to be adequately explored. One of them is the development of an exhaustive and fullfledged theory of description24 fully integrating the insights recently provided by cognitive narratology, psychonarratology, and rhetorical narrative theorists as well as the refined conceptual frameworks and sophisticated models developed by possible-worlds theory. Second, what is needed is a more subtle and systematic account of the textual stimuli and contextual frames that are involved in the naturalization of descriptions, including more sophisticated analyses of the interplay between textual data and interpretive choices. Third, the different uses of description and, even more so, of metadescription in the works of both contemporary novelists and authors from earlier periods, and 24

Cf. Cobley’s (1986: 395) summary of the state of art, which arguably still holds true, the more so because none of the extant contributions to the theory of description has even attempted to integrate the insights provided by cognitive narratology, psychonarratology, and possible-worlds theory: “Discussions of description are still in a tentative phase, and no exhaustive or completely satisfactory theory has been advanced.”

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

125

the ways in which they reflect or respond to changing aesthetic norms, literary conventions, and cultural discourses, are just waiting to be explored. Fourth, the history of the development of the narrative technique known as ‘description’ has yet to be written because (at least to my knowledge) no one has dared to provide an historical overview spanning the period from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. Fifth, since the generic scope of description has as yet neither been properly defined nor even gauged, its uses, forms, and functions across different genres, media, and disciplines provide a highly fertile area of research. The use of description in genres other than narrative fiction – for instance in dramatic genres, in poetry and in travelogues – as well as in other media and domains (including law and politics) deserves more attention than it has hitherto been given. Lastly, taking a new look at the development of both narrative techniques like description and the ways in which narratology has conceptualized them could be an important force in the current attempts to historicize narrative theory25.

References Primary sources Coetzee, J. M. (2003/2004). Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Eliot, George (1980 [1859]). Adam Bede. Stephen Gill, ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Johnson, Bryan Stanley (1984 [1973]). Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry. Harmondsworth: Penguin. McGrath, Patrick (1990 [1989]). The Grotesque: A Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Thackeray, William Makepeace (1967 [1847-1848]). Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero. London: Pan. Trollope, Anthony (1975 [1857]). Barchester Towers. London: Dent. Wilde, Oscar (1982 [1891]). The Picture of Dorian Gray. Isobel Murray, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. Wodehouse, P. G. (1957/1952). Pigs Have Wings. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 25 For pioneering work in the field of a diachronic narratology, see Fludernik (1996) as well as Fludernik’s more recent articles.

126

Ansgar Nünning

Woolf, Virginia (1947 [1925]). Mrs Dalloway. London: Hogarth Press. Secondary sources Bal, Mieke (1981-1982). “On Meanings and Descriptions”. Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 6/1-2: 100-147. Barthes, Roland (1968). “L’effet de réel”. Communications 11: 84-89. — (1982). “The Reality Effect”. Tzvetan Todorov, ed. French Literary Theory Today. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 11-17. Bonheim, Helmut (1982). The Narrative Modes: Techniques of the Short Story. Cambridge: Brewer. — (1990). Literary Systematics. Cambridge: Brewer. Bortolussi, Marisa, Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Carlisle, Janice (1981). The Sense of an Audience: Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot at Mid-Century. Brighton: The Harvester Press. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Cobley, Evelyn (1986). “Description in Realist Discourse: The War Novel”. Style 20/3: 395-410. Emmott, Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London/New York, NY: Routledge. Genette, Gérard (1966). “Frontières du récit”. Communications 8: 152-172. — (1969). Figures II. Essais. Paris: Seuils. Gymnich, Marion, Ansgar Nünning, eds. (2005). Funktionen von Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Modellinterpretationen. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Hamon, Philippe (1972). “Qu’est-ce qu’une description?”. Poétique 12: 465-485. — (1982). “What is a Description?” Tzvetan Todorov, ed. French Literary Theory Today. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 147-178. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln, NE/London: University of Nebraska Press. Ibsch, Elrud (1982). “Historical Changes of the Function of Spatial Description in Literary Texts”. Poetics Today 3-4: 97-113.

Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction

127

Kittay, Jeffrey, ed. (1981). Yale French Studies 61 (Special issue: Towards a Theory of Description). Lanser, Susan Sniader (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Lodge, David (1977). “Types of Description”. David Lodge. The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature. London: Edward Arnold. 93-103. Lopes, José Manuel (1995). Foregrounded Description in Prose Fiction: Five Cross-Literary Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lüthi, Max (1984/1987). The Fairytale as Art Form and Portrait of Man, trans. Jon Erickson. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP. (Trans. of Das Volksmärchen als Dichtung: Ästhetik und Anthropologie. Düsseldorf/Cologne: Eugen Diederichs, 1975). Mosher, Harold F., Jr. (1991). “Towards a Poetics of ‘Descriptized’ Narration”. Poetics Today 12/3: 425-445. Nünning, Ansgar (1989). Grundzüge eines kommunikationstheoretischen Modells der erzählerischen Vermittlung: Die Funktionen der Erzählinstanz in den Romanen George Eliots. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. —, ed. (1998/2004). Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie: Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler. —, Carola Surkamp, Bruno Zerweck, eds. (1998). Unreliable Narration: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Pflugmacher, Torsten (2005). “Description”. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan, eds. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London/New York, NY: Routledge. 101-102. Prince, Gerald (1987). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln, NE/ London: University of Nebraska Press. Riffaterre, Michael (1978). Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP. — (1981). “Descriptive Imagery”. Yale French Studies 61: 107-125. Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative, and Representation”. Narrative 5/3: 274-286. Sommer, Roy (2000). “Funktionsgeschichten: Überlegungen zur Verwendung des Funktionsbegriffs in der Literaturwissenschaft und Anregungen zu seiner terminologischen Differenzierung”. Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 41: 319-341.

128

Ansgar Nünning

Sternberg, Meir (1981). “Ordering the Unordered: Time, Space, and Descriptive Coherence”. Yale French Studies 61: 60-88. Watt, Ian (1957/1972). The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Williams, Anne Patricia (1996). “Description and Tableau in the Eighteenth-Century British Sentimental Novel”. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 8/4: 465-484. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst. Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen: Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Functions of Description in Poetry Walter Bernhart As reflection on description in poetry has a long European tradition in the context of rhetoric, this essay starts out by discussing the main defining elements of description in this rhetorical tradition, in the wake of the Aristotelian concept of enargeia. It subsequently sketches the history of description in European poetry by referring to prominent poems from the body of English literature and identifying several functions which description was expected and seen to fulfil at various stages in the development of poetry (for example, rhetorical effectiveness of praise, ‘enargetic’ didacticism, triggering of emotional projections, grasping the Ding an sich). In conclusion, a reception-oriented general model of poetic description is outlined that defines poetic description as a process in which mimetic, imaginative, and emotive elements are fused.

In contrast to most of the other contributions to this volume, which tread on virtually unexplored ground by investigating descriptive processes in their respective media, this paper, dealing with description in poetry, has no need to start from scratch: poetry appears to be the only medium of communication which can look back on a venerable tradition of thoughts on the subject. In view of the fact that reflection on description in poetry goes back to antiquity and has never been lost sight of in the history of poetics, I will start out by summarizing briefly the traditional views of description in poetry, and then sketch, in rather bold strokes, the historical development of descriptive poetry in the European tradition. I will do so by looking at individual poems from English literature, all of them being ‘highlights’ of English poetry, which may serve as an indication that description forms an essential element in the tradition of poetry and is certainly no marginal phenomenon. As we go along, we will be able to identify a number of functions which description has been claimed to fulfil. I will round off my presentation by stating what I consider a main spring and purpose of descriptive practices in poetry and discuss my own modest model of descriptive activity in the arts. By intention, my methodological point of departure is not narratology – however valid and productive this perspective proves to be – but rhetoric.

130

Walter Bernhart

Interest in description is venerably old because “[u]ltimately, description should be considered as a strategy and an instancing of the doctrine of imitation” (Webb/Weller 1993: 283). Surely, imitation cannot blindly be seen as a naïve wish to reproduce reality in any quasi-objective way, yet the old Aristotelian idea of giving ‘imitative’ evidence of what we experience in the empirical world is a strong impulse which also forms the primary impulse for description. It is important to notice, however, that already at a very early stage of writing an awareness arose that description can be put to a variety of distinctive uses, depending on the pragmatic functions description is expected to perform in the communicative process. While “professional historiographers and forensic lawyer-orators” (i. e., people working in the official, public sphere) aim at “veracity”, in poetic use the aim of description is only “verisimilitude”, which implies that in the literary sphere – which is our present concern – the “immediacy of the effect of subjective representation is more important than the strict truth of its contents” (ibid.: 284). Such an effect-oriented ‘subjective’ element is injected into poetic description because “there is in fact always another governing intention (moralizing, didactic, persuasive, emotive) which is served, rather than conditioned, by the technique of description, which is rather to be considered as a rhetorical-poetic strategy to be applied in genres established on other grounds, as occasion demands” (ibid.: 288). Thus we can see that description takes on a different shape – i. e., different from ‘veracity’-oriented cases – when it appears in a ‘rhetorical-poetic’ role, depending on specific intentions motivating the descriptive representation. This rhetorical function of description arose very early in poetic history, although Ernst Robert Curtius – the great scholar who has made us keenly aware of the omnipresence of literary and rhetorical traditions – makes the following interesting point: ‘In Theocritus and Virgil, such descriptions (topothésia / topográphia) form only backdrops setting the scene for pastoral poetry. Yet they soon become independent and are made the subject of rhetoricising depictions.’1 This implies that before rhetorical uses of description came up, there were neutral practices of topographical rendering which were more or less unrelated to 1

This and all subsequent translations from German are my own. “Bei Theokrit und Virgil sind solche Schilderungen [topothésia / topográphia] nur inszenierende Staffage für pastorale Dichtung. Sie werden aber bald losgelöst und zum Gegenstand rhetorisierender Beschreibung gemacht.” (Curtius 1965: 202)

Functions of Description in Poetry

131

the rest of the text and merely formed insignificant backgrounds2. (Yet, as we will see later, Curtius may have underestimated the function of topographia in Virgil’s Georgics.) It is Heinrich F. Plett, who in his seminal study Rhetorik der Affekte (1975) traces the afterlife of ancient rhetorical practices in Renaissance Europe and places description in a similar context as Curtius when he defines it as a ‘pathetic means of representation’ and a ‘part of the treatment of affects’3. The point Plett makes is that description is seen as part of a number of rhetorical devices which guarantee the effect of movere, of ‘moving the passions’, and thus go beyond the qualifications of the Horatian dyas of functions of art, i. e., delectare aut prodesse (‘teach and delight’). Description as a ‘moving’ element of hypotyposis is thus a means of ‘heightening the expressiveness’ and ‘perceptual presence’ of the representation (“Ausdruckssteigerung bzw. Vergegenwärtigung”; Plett 1975: 52), and the central quality which is identified as guaranteeing the ‘moving of the passions’ and to which description is able to contribute significantly is enargeia. This term refers to a quality that was first described by Aristotle and, as a rhetorical principle of effective presentation, is based on the exploitation of such epideictic (i. e., demonstrative and ornamental) devices as description, amplification or digression4. The importance of description for achieving enargeia is underlined by Plett’s observation about the necessary precondition of enargeia, namely, what he calls ‘the perceptual evidence (evidentia) of a description that is made palpable by concrete details (circumstantiae)’5. This qualification emphasises the sensual, visual side of descriptive effectiveness and at the same time highlights one further aspect which has traditionally been considered as an indispensable prerequisite of 2

A parallel can be drawn to early forms of landscape painting which, in contrast to later developments, do not yet enter into a vivid interaction with the main subject of the painting, as is demonstrated, for example, by Götz Pochat’s reflections on Giotto’s innovative “Flight into Egypt” (in this volume: 274f.).

3

“[...] pathetische[s] Darstellungsmittel”; “Teil der Affektbehandlung” (Plett 1975: 44).

4

“[Das] Prinzip der rhetorischen Enargeia [basiert auf der] Ausbeutung epideiktischer Redemittel (descriptio, amplificatio, digressio) ” (ibid.: 111).

5

“[...] die sinnliche evidentia einer durch konkrete Details (circumstantiae) anschaulich gestalteten Beschreibung” (ibid.: 135).

132

Walter Bernhart

description, namely a wealth of observed details. Plett gives an example taken from a poem by Gryphius, and it is indeed striking in its baroque richness of detail: Andreas Gryphius (1616 – 1664), “Die Hölle” Ach! und weh! Mord! Zetter! Jammer! Angst! Creutz! Marter! Würme! Plagen! Pech! Folter! Hencker! Flamm! Stanck! Geister! Kälte! Zagen! Ach vergeh! Tieff’ und Höh’! Meer! Hügel! Berge! Felß! wer kan die Pein ertragen? [...]6

5

Plett’s commentary on this poem is telling: what he identifies is ‘a vivid description (descriptio, ekphrasis) of a place of horror (locus terribilis) giving a wealth (copia) of topographical details’7. Thus, the aim of the description is again vividness (Anschaulichkeit), and in this case the place described, the locus terribilis, is the opposite of its far more popular counter-piece, the locus amoenus (‘pleasant place’). Again, there is a reference to the great amount of details that contribute to the effectiveness of the description, this time referred to as copia. We may observe that ancient rhetoric had a keen awareness of the essential elements involved in effective description, which is reflected in the variety of terminology that was available. It is a further interesting observation about ancient ideas of description that, in order to achieve the increased and heightened effect of movere, i. e., in order to achieve ekplexis (i. e., astonishment, amazement), “the depiction of fantastic, supernatural, and mythological creatures” was “permitted, even encouraged” (Webb/Weller 1993: 284). This implies that the idea of descriptive ‘verisimilitude’ – in contrast to ‘veracity’ –, as discussed before, was applied in a liberal 6

7

Qtd. Plett 2000: 209. English translation: ‘Alas! and woe! Murder! Clamour! Misery! Anxiety! Cross! Torment! Worms! Plagues! Pitch! Torture! Hangman! Flame! Stench! Ghosts! Chill! Quail! Alas decay! Depth and height! Sea! Hills! Mountains! Rock! Who can bear the pain? […]’

“[…] eine anschauliche Beschreibung (descriptio, ekphrasis) eines Schreckensortes (locus terribilis) in einer Fülle (copia) topographischer Details” (ibid.: 210).

Functions of Description in Poetry

133

sense and that the notion of circumstantiae or copia, i. e., of a great number of concrete details, was considered essential for description, but that the specific contents and the phenomenal origin of the details was considered of less importance as long as it triggered the desired effects (which, in fact, was even more likely to happen when nonrealistic items were involved). Another important observation in older descriptive theory concerns the degree of subjective and affective involvement that characterizes enargeia, and consequently descriptio, in contrast to other forms of representation. Plett quotes George Chapman, the great Elizabethan poet and translator of Homer (well-known by Keats’s famous poem, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”): “That, Enargeia, or cleerness of representation, requird in absolute Poems is not the perspicuous deliuery of a lowe inuention; but high, and harty inuention exprest in most significant, an vnaffected phrase” (Chapman 1941: 49, qtd. Plett 1975: 135). This statement by Chapman is not altogether unambiguous, for enargeia is here first paraphrased as “cleerness of representation” – which is unusual, as it was customary to stress the emotive and not the rational side of enargeia –, yet Chapman then states that enargeia is “not [!] the perspicuous deliuery”, where ‘perspicuousness’ necessarily implies ‘clarity’, ‘distinctness’, ‘intelligibility’. So it remains unclear whether clarity is a specification of enargeia or not. (It is equally unclear what Chapman has in mind when he talks about “absolute Poems”.) Plett’s commentary on this passage from Chapman deserves our attention. Enargeia, he says, ‘is not identical with unadorned perspicuitas […], which characterizes the representation of a low invention (inventio); but equally not so with artificial affectation (affectatio), to which many a high invention falls victim’; and referring to what Chapman further says in the source (cf. 49), Plett observes: ‘The >enargetic< description is comparable to a painting that shows >motion, spirit and life<.’8 This obviously identifies three levels of emotional involvement that can be found in representations: one is characterized by una8

“[Enargeia] ist nicht identisch mit der schmucklosen perspicuitas […], welche die Darstellung einer niedrigen Inventio kennzeichnet, aber auch nicht mit der gekünstelten affectatio, der manche hohe ‚Erfindung’ zum Opfer fällt [...]. Die ‚enargetische’ Darstellung wird mit einem Gemälde verglichen, das ‚motion, spirit and life’ besitzt.” (Plett 1975: 135)

134

Walter Bernhart

dorned clarity (‘schmucklose perspicuitas’), one by emotive visualization (‘significant and unaffected’ pictorial enargeia), and one by artificial affectation (‘gekünstelte affectatio’). The first form reminds us of the type of representation, already twice referred to, that was found fit for historians and legal orators, while the second form is the one that Chapman recommends for poetic use, i. e., the descriptive mode. It is interesting that the third form, affectatio, has clearly negative connotations for Chapman. This is interesting because elsewhere, and generally, in Renaissance aesthetics we find a substantial debate about a further, more intense form of affective, ‘moving’ delivery. This other, heightened form of effective rhetoric was called energeia, and it was often confused with enargeia. Both terms had been introduced by Aristotle, but from the very beginning it proved difficult to clearly distinguish one style from the other. I have elsewhere gone into this issue at some length (cf. Bernhart 1993a), but for the present purpose we can more or less safely follow Plett’s attempts at distinguishing energeia and enargeia: ‘(…) that Energeia refers to a style that is made dynamic through a pathetic-visual vividness of representation, while Enargeia refers to the perceptual evidence of detailed descriptions’9; accordingly, the distinction is one between a ‘vivid pictorial style’ (enargeia) and a ‘dynamic motional style’ (energeia)10. Thus, energeia is the more active and more ‘passionate’ mode of the two – and it is usually associated with music –; enargeia, by contrast, is seen as more passive, more perceptual and evocative – and is usually associated with painting. Plett’s definition of enargeia as ‘perceptual evidence of detailed descriptions’ makes its point clearly and convincingly. (In contrast, the fact that energeia is defined by Plett as ‘pathetischanschauliche Verlebendigung’ [‘pathetic-visual vividness’] and enargeia as ‘anschaulicher Bildstil’ [‘vivid pictorial style’] is less convincing and demonstrates that Anschaulichkeit [‘vividness’] is a key term, but notoriously vague as it is applied to both contrastive styles. This issue will be taken up again later.)

9

“[...] dass die Energeia eher die Dynamisierung des Stils durch pathetischanschauliche Verlebendigung der Darstellung, die Enargeia hingegen eher die sinnliche Evidenz einer detaillierten Beschreibung bezeichnet.” (Plett 1975: 183) 10 “Diskriminierung von anschaulichem Bildstil (enargeia) und dynamischem Bewegungsstil (energeia)” (ibid.: 187).

Functions of Description in Poetry

135

The following quotation may serve as a means of rounding off the discussion of traditional notions of description: “Hypotyposis [...] etiā [...] Enargia, Euidēntia, Illustratio, Suffiguratio, Demonstratio, Descriptio, Effictio, Subiectio sub oculos appelatur.” This quotation vividly demonstrates the prominent role which description played in earlier aesthetics as a mode of representation. It is from Joannes Susenbrotus, the Dutch Humanist (Antwerp, 1566; qtd. Plett 1975: 75), and distinctly shows what a wealth of terms existed to be used for labelling a rhetorical mode that was frequently applied and considered a most effective means of communicating experience. I will now turn to sketching – in bold strokes, as already suggested – the development of descriptive poetry from the earlier forms, which follow the principles just outlined, through manifestations in the nineteenth century, leading up to modernist conceptions of descriptive poetry in the twentieth century. As a guideline for this historical survey I will use the observation made by the following statement, which identifies those areas of experience to which descriptive techniques have most frequently been applied: “In practice, d.[escriptive] technique has been applied mainly: (1) to the female body […]; (2) to man’s surroundings and habitat, whether natural or cultivated landscape or crafted architecture; and (3) to isolated objects, whether utensils or representational works of art.” (Webb/Weller 1993: 284) William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Sonnet 130: “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” (1590s) My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, 5 But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. 10 I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. (Shakespeare: online)

Shakespeare’s popular sonnet 130 is famous for its anti-Petrarchist stance: it wittily undermines the typical Petrarchist practice of prais-

136

Walter Bernhart

ing the beauty of the idealized beloved lady by describing the attractive details of her appearance and behaviour. As is well-known, it was standard practice to describe admiringly the lady’s sun-like eyes, her coral lips, snowy breasts, fair hair, rosy cheeks, her musical speech etc. What we find in this sonnet, however, is a far more realistic view of the lady, e. g.: “And in some perfumes is there more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” (ll. 7-8; “reeks”, incidentally, is here used without the modern negative connotation). Yet, as the final couplet demonstrates, the speaker does not give up one of the most fundamental functions of description in poetry, namely to acclaim and praise the lady. In fact, his praise is higher than conventional praise is because he takes her as a real woman and does not simply apply mechanically the standard favourable attributes. But the effectiveness of the realistic description of the woman would be missing if Shakespeare had not been able to go back to the descriptive practice of the Petrarchist topoi. Robert Herrick’s “Delight in Disorder” is one of the great achievements of seventeenth-century Cavalier poetry, which stood in the neoclassical tradition and favoured elegant writing with the purpose of propagating a carpe-diem attitude. Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674), “Delight in Disorder” (1648) A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there 5 Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; 10 A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part. (Herrick: online)

This poem is firmly rooted in the tradition of praising a woman by describing her beauty, and it does so by carefully scanning her appearance from top (shoulders) to bottom (shoes). Yet again, as in Shakespeare’s sonnet, this is done with a twist. For it is the central idea of the poem, expressed in the title, that the woman is more ‘bewitching’

Functions of Description in Poetry

137

(l. 13) because her dress is not in perfect order, as a traditional praise would have it. So the praise is obviously there, but again with a more realistic, unconventional touch. Yet this unusual idea does not at all exhaust the poem. Its title, in conjunction with the final couplet, makes an obvious additional statement of a more abstract nature: it expresses an aesthetic maxim, namely that art is most convincing when it combines order with disorder. (There should be ‘precision’ – according to the last line – but not too much of it.) This prefigures ideas of twentieth-century modernist ‘deviation aesthetics’. (Incidentally, the phrase “too precise” in the last line has another fine, topical reference: seventeenth-century Puritans were attacked for their “too precise” reading of the Bible, and Herrick, as a Royalist Cavalier, clearly took side against them in the Civil War situation of the 1640s.) However, a close reading of the poem will reveal that it has yet another dimension. For the use of adjectives in conjunction with the parts of the dress described is quite unusual. After all, can a “lace” really be “erring”, or a “cuff” be “neglectful”, or a “petticoat” be “tempestuous”? These adjectives refer far more appropriately to human beings than to objects and, thus, metonymically, to the wearer of the dress than to the dress itself. So it is easy to see that the poem, on a further level, not only describes the ideal dress of the woman but at the same time tells her what the speaker expects of her behaviour, namely, that she should be “erring”, “neglectful”, “careless” and “tempestuous”. In other words, the particular description in this poem is also used as a means of encouraging the woman to give in to the speaker’s amorous advances. Thus, the poem takes up – in disguise – the topoi of ‘invitation to love’ and of carpe diem and uses the topos of describing a woman’s beauty (however unconventionally so in this case) for that purpose. This poem neatly demonstrates what has been said before, that poetic description in most cases follows “another governing intention” (as quoted above) beyond the mere enumeration of observed details. In the particular case of Herrick’s descriptive poem “Delight in Disorder” we find a love poem in disguise, with an additional (didactic) purpose of making a statement about art, and with a hidden political reference. Turning to landscape description, the second frequent area of descriptions mentioned, I have chosen Pope’s “Windsor-Forest” because it is not only one of the most successful topographical poems in the English language, but also because it well demonstrates important functions of description in traditional landscape poetry. It is one of

138

Walter Bernhart

the early works of Alexander Pope, who is the main representative of neo-classical writing in England, and it was written soon after Queen Anne had ascended the throne and England entered a phase of prosperity, frequently referred to as the Augustan Age. The first part of the poem, from which the excerpt below is taken, was written in 1704, the second part much later, in 1713, a few weeks before the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the Spanish War of Succession to a conclusion – a very satisfactory conclusion for the British. Windsor, of course, was the seat of the monarch, and the ‘forest’, in contemporary understanding, was the part outside (foris) the common law, so it does not only refer to woodland; it is in fact a legal term (cf. Audra/Williams, eds. 1961: 135). Thus, the ‘forest’ indicates a detached, pastoral sphere outside the common world, which can be filled with various reminiscences and allusions. Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), “Windsor-Forest” (1704/1713) Thy forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats, At once the Monarch’s and the Muse’s seats, Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids! Unlock your springs, and open all your shades. Granville commands; your aid O Muses bring! What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing? The groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long, Live in description, and look green in song: These, were my breast inspir’d with equal flame, Like them in beauty, should be like in fame Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water, seem to strive again; Not Chaos like together crush’d and bruis’d, But as the world, harmoniously confus’d: Where order in variety we see, And where, tho’ all things differ, all agree. Here waving groves a checquer’d scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover’s warm address Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress. There, interspers’d in lawns and opening glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other’s shades. Here in full light the russet plains extend; There wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend. Ev’n the wild heath displays her purple dyes, And ‘midst the desart fruitful fields arise, That crown’d with tufted trees and springing corn, Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.

5

10

15

20

25

Functions of Description in Poetry

139

Let India boast her plants, nor envy we The weeping amber or the balmy tree, 30 While by our oaks the precious loads are born, And realms commanded which those trees adorn. Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight, Tho’ Gods assembled grace his tow’ring height, Than what more humble mountains offer here, 35 Where, in their blessings, all those Gods appear. See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown’d, Here blushing Flora paints th’ enamel’d ground, Here Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper’s hand; 40 Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains, And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns. […] (Pope: online)

In this opening of the poem, after the invocation, Windsor-Forest is first compared to the Garden of Eden: “The groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long, / Live in description, and look green in song” (ll. 7-8). This is interesting in our context as it casually expresses the traditional view that description is a means of ‘giving life’ to things past (“Live in description”), just as the gardens remain “green” (i. e., fresh and full of life) in song. As the commentary in the esteemed Twickenham Edition of Pope’s works points out, “[…] the first long paragraph, ll. 7-42, reflects not only the order and variety of a cosmos governed by God, but also the peace and plenty of a kingdom governed by a Stuart queen [Anne].” (Audra/Williams, eds. 1961: 133134) One can see that neo-classical topographical poetry still works within the traditional conceptual framework of the Great Chain of Being, according to which the planes of existence are coordinated by a “system of analogical correspondences”: thus, the topographical level reflects the cosmic and the political levels and cannot be dissociated from them. This idea is more closely developed in the following quotation: In a poem like Windsor-Forest one cannot expect, nor does one often find, purely descriptive scenes of nature: the setting of the poem is always offering its analogue to human experience. It is not that the poem offers one a scene from nature and then injects into it a moral or ethical prescription; the two elements are rather fused in the one act of perception, for the poet in this instance is discovering meanings inherent in nature, not adding one thing to another. (Ibid.: 133)

The leading writers of the period were well aware of this condition, as comes out in two further quotations, one by Pope and one by Joseph

140

Walter Bernhart

Addison, the well-known contemporary dramatist and author of moral weeklies such as The Spectator. Pope talks about Homer and Addison about Virgil in very similar terms: Pope observes in Homer an “indirect and oblique manner of introducing moral Sentences and Instructions”; “the Description of Places, and Images rais’d by the Poet, are […] leading into some Reflection, upon moral Life or political Institution: Much in the same manner as the real Sight of such Scenes and Prospects is apt to give the Mind a compos’d Turn, and incline it to Thoughts and Contemplations that have a Relation to the Object.” (Pope’s Note on Iliad, bk. 16, l. 466, 1716; qtd. ibid.: 134)

And Addison: But this kind of poetry [i. e., Virgil’s Georgics] […] raises in our minds a pleasing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us; and makes the driest of its precepts look like a description […] to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it, […] lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. (Addison in “Dryden’s Virgil”, 1698; qtd. ibid.: 135)

Again, Addison sees description as surpassing the teaching of ‘dry precepts’. The emphasis on the indirectness of moral and political instruction in both passages underlines the observation that the descriptive process is not seen independently from any additional meanings it may generate analogically. The idea of a fusion of description and concomitant reflective (in this case didactic) meaning touches on a central concern of lyric expressiveness and stresses the fact – already twice referred to before – that activities, descriptive of empirical observation, are never an end in themselves but always serve a purpose beyond. This situation can be seen as a defining quality of lyric manifestations, as I have elaborated on elsewhere (cf. Bernhart 1993b) and to which I shall come back later. With the rise of Romanticism in the eighteenth century the fusion just addressed gains in intensity, and the sphere of experience reflected in poetic descriptions becomes more personal and subjective. Nature descriptions no longer mirror in an analogous way such conditions as are referred to by the speaker for – ultimately, and in the wider sense – moral purposes: nature now becomes a sphere onto which inner feelings and emotional conditions of the speaker can be projected, and what is actually observed in nature loses in importance over what the natural sight triggers in the perceptive poetic mind. In Romantic nature poetry, “the emotions, which would otherwise be aroused by the mental apprehension of the d.[escriptive] details, are directly expressed in wholly subjective terms. Only passing references

Functions of Description in Poetry

141

are made to material, constituent elements of the natural world as normally perceived.” (Webb/Weller 1993: 287) This situation may be demonstrated by looking at a Wordsworth poem – one of his most popular poems –, which was stimulated by the experience of an early morning in the midst of London. William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 5 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; 10 Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! (Wordsworth, online)

True, in this poem we find references to the river Thames and to “Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples”, and they are described as being “bright and glittering”, gently ‘gliding’, “silent, bare” and “still”. Yet these observations, described in terms of sensual perceptions, do not play a major role in the poem; what is far more prominent is the effect which the general impression of the scene has on the enthusiastic observer. He experiences “majesty”, “beauty”, “splendour”, “deep” “calm”, a free “sweet will”, a “mighty heart” perfectly at rest: even the houses “seem asleep”. And, being no ‘dull soul’, this experience puts him into a heightened state of excitement, he is deeply ‘touched’, cries out to God, and reverts to anaphoric repetition of stating that he has ‘never, never, never’ seen anything like it. Certainly, it is the strength of this poem – and of all similar achievements in the Romantic tradition – that we find that overpowering response by the speaker to an experience in nature. (In fact, it is a characteristic feature of this particular poem that it treats the experience of the city of London as if it were an experience of nature: the city is seen in a row with “valley, rock, or hill”, l. 10.) In the context of our discussion of functions of description in poetry, we can observe that in much

142

Walter Bernhart

Romantic poetry description becomes a trigger for subjective impressions which are projected onto the situation described. Yet the situation itself, i. e., the actually observed sights, lose substantial significance. (Any comparison between Dorothy Wordsworth’s entries into her journals and the poems which William made out of them can account for this condition.) The following poem, Edward Lear’s humorous self-portrait, “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!”, is a typical Victorian poem and, as such, a characteristic example of English nonsense poetry. Edward Lear (1812 – 1888), “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!” (1846) “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!” Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough. His mind is concrete and fastidious; His nose is remarkably big; His visage is more or less hideous, His beard it resembles a wig. He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers, Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; Long ago he was one of the singers, But now he is one of the dumbs. He sits in a beautiful parlour, With hundreds of books on the wall; He drinks a great deal of Marsala, But never gets tipsy at all. He has many friends, lay men and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible hat.

5

10

15

20

When he walks in waterproof white, The children run after him so! Calling out, “He’s gone out in his nightGown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!” He weeps by the side of the ocean, He weeps on the top of the hill; He purchases pancakes and lotion, And chocolate shrimps from the mill. He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish, He cannot abide ginger beer:

25

30

Functions of Description in Poetry

143

Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish, How pleasant to know Mr. Lear! (Lear: online)

This poem shows us that the descriptive mode is a very helpful technique for achieving nonsense effects. If one takes a descriptive attitude, as is done in this poem, and enumerates elements that are clearly unconnected, like in the following stanza, He has many friends, lay men and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible hat. (ll. 17-20)

a comical effect is achieved that could not be achieved without the expectation of a coherence of elements as it is characteristic of descriptions. This effect of “additive incongruence”, as Dieter Petzold has called it (1972: 10-43), is typical of nonsense poetry and would not work without the conceptual frame of coherence in descriptive practices. Gerard Manley Hopkins, a representative of the late-Victorian period, is an author who, in a fascinating way, is placed at the borderline between Victorianism and Modernism. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889), “Pied Beauty” (1877) Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted & pieced – fold, fallow, & plough; 5 And áll trades, their gear & tackle & trim. All things counter, original, spáre, strange; Whatever is fickle, frecklèd, (who knows how?) With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím; He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: 10 Práise hím. (Hopkins: online)

Hopkins’s well-known poem “Pied Beauty” shows a typical Victorian love of detail and is again characterized by a basically descriptive mode of presentation. What makes the poem exceptional in its historical context, though, is its extremely condensed and compressed style, which turns the poem into a difficult text. (Typically it is also a sonnet that appears in a reduced form, as a so-called ‘curtal sonnet’.) Of special interest in the present context is the particular function the

144

Walter Bernhart

description fulfils in this poem. On the one hand, it is clearly placed in the old tradition of praise – quite directly so, as the concluding line spells out. Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest, used the poem to express his admiration for God’s creation by stressing the beauty and enormous variety of the created world. Yet, on the other hand, the way in which the numerous elements are described demonstrates a high level of close natural observation. A particularly difficult phrase, as an example, is “Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” (l. 4). The observation is that chestnuts, when they fall from the tree, break their shell and reveal the fresh inner fruit with its colour that reminds one of firecoal. The point to be made is that in such a poem the careful and detailed natural description becomes very much a value in itself and leaves behind Romantic notions of nature as a sphere to be used for subjective projections. True, the motivation for the close observation of nature in Hopkins seems equally enthusiastic as with the Romantics, but in his case the enthusiasm springs from the religious impulse of wanting to give praise to the creator. Thus, the poetry of Hopkins is typically transitional and takes a decisive step in the direction of later Imagist and modernist techniques. A famous statement by Ezra Pound also applies very well to Hopkins’s text: namely, that poetry – following Imagist notions – should present a “direct treatment of the ‘thing’” and aims at “concentration on the object and realistic rendering of the external world”; the poem “intensifies its objective reality rather than expressing the subjective feelings of the poet” (Coffman 1993: 574). Similarly, it has been observed about American Objectivist poetry of the 1930s that it “presents concrete objects not in order to convey abstract ideas but for the sake of their sensuous qualities and haecceity” (Berry 1993: 849). (This last term, incidentally, in its original Latin form, haecceitas, was already used by Hopkins in order to refer to his interest in the ‘thisness’ of things.) What Pound’s conception of poetry implies is a radical exclusion not only of subjective feelings, but also of any conceptual interpretation; direct sensual experience is meant to be the poem’s exclusive aim and purpose. One consequence of this poetics is a radical reduction of the poems, culminating in Pound’s famous haiku-like texts such as the – at the time sensational – “In a Station of the Metro”:

Functions of Description in Poetry

145

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972), “In a Station of the Metro” (1913) The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. (Pound: online)

Pound’s own, very telling story about the genesis of this little gem11 makes a few points of interest in our context. Pound points out that he had a strong impression of faces when he once got out of a metro station, and he calls this impression his “metro emotion”. The context clarifies that he is not talking about any personal emotion but about a strong sense of beauty that stimulates him to give it expression. Yet he finds it impossible to give this experience expression in words, but more so in colours, and he wishes to develop a separate, new “‘nonrepresentative’” “language in colour” to express such experiences. Being a poet, he after all sits down to write about his experience, at first it is a poem of thirty lines, but then – as it lacks intensity – he radically reduces it and ends up with the famous two lines. These lines appear to be “meaningless” to him but obviously form an equivalent to his original idea of expressing himself in a “language in colour”. The point of Pound’s argument seems to be that he wanted to 11

“Three years ago in Paris I got out of a ‘metro’ train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying, and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation ... not in speech, but in little spotches of colour. It was just that – […]. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. […] That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realised quite vividly that if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, or even if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting, of ‘non-representative’ painting […]. The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position, that is to say it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work 'of second intensity.' Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like [sic] sentence: ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals, on a wet, black bough.’ I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.” (Pound 1914)

146

Walter Bernhart

find a verbal expression that represented as closely as possible a strong visual impression without any other mental interference. The purpose of this procedure is what has already been observed, namely, to grasp the haecceitas, the ‘thisness’, of things. This intention comes out in the last sentence of his reflection when Pound says that “a thing outward and objective […] darts into a thing inward and subjective”. This conforms with what the Dinggedicht in the German tradition also aims at, defined as follows: [The] descriptive exactitude [of the ‘Dinggedicht’] results from a process of intense observation that yields insights, often epiphanous in their overpowering suddenness, into the essential nature of things. […] Such transcending of surface descriptions aims at capturing a symbolic and emotive content that is an indissoluble part of a material exterior, which shows the D.[inggedicht] to be the last intensification of the ideal symbolist poem. (Winkler 1993: 295)

In the context of the present discussion it can be observed that the modernist Dinggedicht forms a case of descriptive poetry which radically eliminates earlier functions of description, such as those discussed in this paper: rhetorical effectiveness of praise, ‘enargetic’ didacticism, springboard for emotional projection, and others. At first sight it seems to serve the purpose of drastically reduced, quasiobjective descriptions without any ulterior motivation (as has also been claimed, for example, for Duchamp’s urinal). Yet what the last quotations have shown is that even these skeletal descriptions serve a simultaneous symbolist purpose and adopt the function of defining as truly as possible the Ding an sich. This is also what can be made responsible for the quasi-magical quality which radiates from such texts. A final text example may be able to further back up this point. William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963), “The Red Wheelbarrow” so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water

5

beside the white chickens. (Williams: online)

Functions of Description in Poetry

147

Williams’s popular poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” is clearly in the tradition of the Dinggedicht and has puzzled many readers by its obvious ‘meaninglessness’, in Pound’s terms. The point that has frequently been made about this poem is that the typical line-breaking serves the purpose of drawing attention to the semantic components of words and phrases like “wheelbarrow”, “rainwater” or “white chickens”. This de-automatisation of word usage (in the Russian Formalists’ sense) reactivates genuine perception and imaginatively evokes in the reader actual sense experiences such as “wheel”, “barrow”, “rain”, “water” etc., thus stimulating a distinctly descriptive approach with the purpose of grasping and invoking the Ding an sich. At the same time, of course, the colour adjectives “red” and “white” regain their visual distinctness, and a vivid picture of the white chickens besides the red wheelbarrow may emerge. Much has been made in the discussions of the poem of the fact that the wheelbarrow is “glazed”, which not only adds a particular visual touch to the tool but also implies a transitoriness of the impression given because the sun will soon dry up the water and destroy the glaze. Of course, the crux of the poem is its introductory section, which is not descriptive – “so much depends / upon” – but, in a way, raises the finger and eyebrow in portentous significance. There is no need at present to enter into any speculations about possible ‘meanings’ of this opening of the poem12. The point to be made here is that in this opening we have a signal in the text which again indicates that the careful and perceptually evocative description in the poem should not be seen as an end in itself. Even in this case some moral purpose seems to be looming large (even if only so in ironical terms). To come to a conclusion: Werner Wolf has thoroughly surveyed all possible facets that may be of interest in an assessment of description (in this volume). So I also find a convenient starting point for a summary of my findings in his impressive overview. I started my reflections on description in poetry by referring to the fact that from the beginning critics have found it necessary to distinguish between non-aesthetic and aesthetic forms of description. Wolf has carefully analysed the various conditions that constitute the descriptive in general terms, as a macro-mode of representation, and 12

This is a typical attempt at interpretation: “The wheelbarrow is one of the simplest machines, combining in its form the wheel and the inclined plane, two of the five simple machines known to Archimedes.” (Ahearn 1994: 3)

148

Walter Bernhart

has arrived at a “tentative definition of description” (in this volume: 34) (whose high degree of authority renders the purported tentativeness largely ornamental). As far as the current topic of description in poetry – i. e., a particularly intensive form of aesthetic articulation – is concerned, I can also find a point of entry in two of Wolf’s statements and can develop my argument from them. The first statement by Wolf says that “[t]he main purpose of descriptions is not mere identification of […] concrete phenomena but their vivid representation […]. This leads to a particular experientiality […].” (In this volume: 35) The other statement is Wolf’s reference to what Ernst Gombrich called “‘the beholder’s share’” in the reception of aesthetic objects (1969/1977: 154-169). Wolf says: “[…] it is indeed in the recipient’s mind, in his or her imagination, that the signs of a text or representation have to coalesce into something that can be identified and experienced in analogy to the real-life phenomena referred to in the respective description.” (Ibid.: 36) Here the idea finds expression that vivid, imaginative evocation is a central feature of description, an idea which has been referred to in the above discussion of enargeia. A concise reference to these essential factors involved in poetic description can be found in the following statement: Vividness or enargeia […] is the effective quality deriving from poetic description. […] The stimulation of inward vision in the imagination […] and the arousal of concomitant feelings are closely linked. The practical aim is to evoke vividly the scene of an action or the situation of an object. (Webb/Weller 1993: 284)

The “beholder’s share” in establishing the descriptive quality of an utterance lies in his productive participation in the act by activating his “inward vision” and, simultaneously, forming an emotional response. This procedure is a complex fused mental/emotional activity which finds a further convincing assessment in the following passage: It is the meshing of images (phantasiai) with emotions (pathe) which underlies the affective power of description. Ultimately, these literary and psycho-physical effects all aspire to the mimetic condition, which revivifies static linguistic constructions so that they reproduce subjectively, via artistic means, the vitality and physical immediacy of natural experience. […] Poetry thus invests static spatial objects with vitality by transfusing into them its own rhythmic, temporal succession. (Ibid.: 285)

The point to be made, by way of summary, is, therefore, that poetic description is an activity that consists of the imaginative evocation (phantasiai) of prior experience of static phenomena and a concomitant emotional involvement (pathe) which accounts for description’s

Functions of Description in Poetry

149

affective effectiveness (enargeia). An essential precondition for this process to unfold is that the spatial experience is converted into a temporal sequence; it is only in the temporal dimension that the imaginative act and the emotional response can take place and develop. Thus, in the strictest sense, it is not a poetic text itself that is (possibly) descriptive, but the process of its reception. Similarly one could argue that it is not a painting – like Breughel’s “Return of the Hunters”, e. g. – that is itself descriptive; it is descriptive insofar as it invites perceptive observers to read it ‘descriptively’, i. e., it invites them to recall in their imagination emotionally coloured experiences of objects and events as they find them in the painting. Obviously, the textual constitution of the poem or painting will trigger to a greater or to a lesser degree this descriptive process: more details will ask for longer, temporally more extended evocations and will thus more favourably encourage a ‘descriptive’ response; but even a work less characterized by copia of detail may stimulate in a ‘descriptively’ inclined mind a strong descriptive response. What I argue is that – just as one needs, e. g., a “narrative impulse”, according to JeanJacques Nattiez (1990: 257), to experience narrativity in music – so one needs a ‘descriptive impulse’ in order to experience descriptivity in poetry, or painting, or music, or whichever aesthetic medium. It is obvious that this view of description takes a pragmatic, reception-oriented stance; it is neither structuralist/text-oriented, nor intentionalist/sender-oriented, but – as suggested at the start – rhetorical/receiver-oriented. Can such an approach account for works that are primarily senderor text-oriented? We have seen that in Romantic poetry the descriptive process as here described is overruled, as it were, by the intense projection of the poet’s subjective effusions so that, in fact, a senderoriented condition prevails. Yet insofar as descriptive elements, i. e., elements that encourage a descriptive response in the reader, appear in the texts, they underlie – I would argue – the same conditions as here described. In fact, texts emotionally charged by the poet will facilitate imaginative-emotional responses in the reader. As for Imagist poems or Dinggedichte: by attempting to present the Ding an sich in an as much as possible unmediated form, they do just the same. As we have heard from Pound: he wants to evoke as authentically as possible an original sense impression and a concomitant emotion – his “metro emotion” –, and he can again only do so – even in his extremely short pieces – by activating the time dimension, i. e., by

150

Walter Bernhart

giving the reader/viewer time to establish and develop the image and the emotion. So even extremely text-centred modernist works acquire their descriptive quality only in the pragmatic context.

References Ahearn, Barry (1994). William Carlos Williams and Alterity: The Early Poetry. Cambridge: CUP. Audra, E., Aubrey Williams, eds. (1961). Alexander Pope. Pastoral Poetry and An Essay on Criticism. The Twickenham Edition, vol. 1. London: Methuen/New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press. Bernhart, Walter (1993a). “Die ‚energetische’ Kunstauffassung”. In: Walter Bernhart. ‘True Versifying’. Studien zur elisabethanischen Verspraxis und Kunstideologie. Unter Einbeziehung der zeitgenössischen Lautenlieder. Studien zur englischen Philologie, new series 29. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 313-331. — (1993b). “Überlegungen zur Lyriktheorie aus erzähltheoretischer Sicht”. Herbert Foltinek, Wolfgang Riehle, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, eds. Tales and ‘their telling difference’: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Narrativik. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Franz K. Stanzel. Anglistische Forschungen 221. Heidelberg: C. Winter. 359-375. Berry, Eleanor (1993). “Objectivism”. Preminger/Brogan, eds. 884885. Chapman, George (1941). The Poems. Phyllis B. Bartlett, ed. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Coffman, Stanley K. (1993). “Imagism”. Preminger/Brogan, eds. 574575. Curtius, Ernst Robert (1965). Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Berne/Munich: Francke, 11948. Gombrich, Ernst H. (1969/1977). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Herrick, Robert (online). “Delight in Disorder”. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/992.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006]. Hopkins, Gerard Manley (online). “Pied Beauty”. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1047.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006].

Functions of Description in Poetry

151

Lear, Edward (online). “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!”. Doug Love, ed. Text from The Complete Nonsense Book, ed. Lady Strachey, 1912, 420-421. http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/pw/mrlear.html [16/2/2006]. “Modern American Poetry. On ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’”. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/wheelbarro w.htm [28 May, 2005]. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). “Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?”. Katherine Ellis, ed. Journal of the Royal Music Association 115: 240-257. Petzold, Dieter (1972). Formen und Funktionen der englischen Nonsense-Dichtung im 19. Jahrhundert. Erlanger Beiträge zur Sprach- und Kunstwissenschaft 44. Nuremberg: Hans Carl. Plett, Heinrich F. (1975). Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance. Tübingen: Niemeyer. — (2000). Systematische Rhetorik. Universitätstaschenbücher (UTB). Munich: Fink. Pope, Alexander (online). “Windsor-Forest”. Jack Lynch, ed. Text from The Works (1736). http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/windsor.html [16/2/2006]. Pound, Ezra (1914). “Vorticism”. The Fortnightly Review 571 (Sept. 1, 1914): 465-467. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1657.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2003. [29/5/2007]. — (online). “In a Station of the Metro”. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1657.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006]. Preminger, Alex, T. V. F. Brogan, eds. (1993). The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Shakespeare, William (online). “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” (sonnet 130). http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1873.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006]. Susenbrotus, Joannes (1566). Epitome Troporum ac Schematum et Grammaticorum & Rhetorum […]. Antwerp. Webb, Ruth Helen, Philip Weller (1993). “Descriptive Poetry”. Preminger/Brogan, eds. 283-288. Williams, William Carlos (online). “so much depends”.

152

Walter Bernhart

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2316.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006]. Winkler, Michael (1993). “Dinggedicht”. Preminger/Brogan, eds. 295-296. Wolf, Werner. “Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation: General Features and Possibilities of Realization in Painting, Fiction and Music” (in this volume). Wordsworth, William (online). “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2330.html. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto. 2005. [16/2/2006].

Description in American Nature Writing Arno Heller The objective of the following investigation is to apply the narratological definition of the descriptive to a specific cultural context: American nature writing as a form of non-fiction prose based on the accurate and first-hand observation and description of natural phenomena. While the narrative fictionalization of nature, wilderness in particular, has always played an essential role in American cultural and literary history from Cooper, the Hudson River School of painting, Transcendentalism and regionalism up to contemporary Native American literature, the tradition of descriptive nature writing, despite its great quantity and quality, has largely been neglected by literary scholarship. From its beginnings it has moved away from a traditionally anthropocentric approach to nature towards an increasingly ecocentric one. Starting out from Thoreau’s Journal, the paper refers to three 20th-century nature writers – Edward Abbey, Ann Zwinger, Charles Bowden, and to similar phenomena in the poetry of A. R. Ammons, the landscape painting of Georgia O’Keeffe, and in the documentary film Koyaanisqatsi. The concept of the descriptive in the works discussed corresponds to what Lawrence Buell has called a “new aesthetics of relinquishment”, which reduces narrative interpretation in favour of the intense observation and description of natural surfaces. In the wake of this, the descriptive has taken on new ecological, cultural and aesthetic functions.

1. Introduction The retreat of narration in favour of description, the emphasis on experiential sense data and representational functions rather than on explanation and interpretation have been central aspects of American nature writing. It is a form of nonfictional descriptive prose based on the accurate and intense first-hand observation of natural phenomena. Today it has become a popular literary fashion in the U. S., with nature writing clubs, nature journals and instruction manuals offering their services (see Petersen 2001). Moreover, it has contributed conspicuously to the ongoing ecological and ecocritical discussion (see Payne 1996). The sheer mass of local historians, geographers, environmentalists, writers, poets, visual artists, and filmmakers is unprecedented, and the trend is as expansive as it is diverse. Moreover, nature writing is part of an American tradition that is longer and

154

Arno Heller

larger than in most other national literatures. Since the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854 hundreds of nature writers from John Muir, John Burroughs and Aldo Leopold to Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, or Barrie Lopez have followed suit and attracted large reading audiences (cf. Lyons 1986: 302-317). Paradoxically, literary scholarship so far has largely neglected this type of literature, delegating it to other fields such as natural history, environmental and ecological studies, geography, or biology. Although literary scholars show great interest in nature poetry and fiction and emphasize nature as a major theme in American literary history, they appear to be generally disinterested in the nonfictional, essentially descriptive presentations of the natural environment and have marginalized them in the literary curriculum. Lawrence Buell, who is one of the few notable exceptions, comments on this phenomenon in his book The Environmental Imagination. Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture (1995) in the following way: Apart from Walden and a few other works by Thoreau [...] nonfictional writing about nature scarcely exists from the standpoint of American literary studies, even though by any measure it has flourished for more than a century and has burgeoned vigorously in the nuclear age. (Buell 1995: 8)

For the sake of definition and contrast it may be useful to start out with a brief exemplary outline of nature narratives in American literature and their equivalents in the visual arts before turning to nature writing proper.

2. Narrative Nature Description in American Literature and the Visual Arts A strong preoccupation with wild nature or wilderness has always been an essential part of American cultural history. One crucial point of the national ideology of the American Dream has been, as the cultural historian Perry Miller points out in Nature’s Nation (1967), “that because America, beyond all nations, is in perpetual touch with Nature, it need not fear the debauchery of the artificial, the urban, the civilized” (Miller 1967: 203). In contrast to Europe where the clearing and settling of the land lies far back in the past and cultivated landscapes predominate, the clash between wilderness and civilization has occupied the very center of the American experience, including the literature deriving from it (cf. Overland 1979: 111). Nevertheless, the

Description in American Nature Writing

155

equation of the New World’s ‘Virgin Land’ with the national spirit has never been as uncontroversial as one might expect. From the very beginning there has also existed a strange discrepancy between idea and reality. Although wild nature and the ‘wilderness experience’ served as a kind of mythic vision the concrete reality of American life has always been running counter to it. A utilitarian, sometimes even hostile attitude towards wild nature dominated public opinion in the U. S. for a long time. It goes as far back as the Puritans in the 17th century, who spoke of America as a “hideous and desolate wilderness”, an “evil place of untractable land inhabited by wild beasts and heathen savages” (Bradford 1952: 62). A pervasive fear that the vast continent, inhabited by pagan savages, wild animals, witches and demons of all sorts would eventually swallow up the intruders from the Old World haunted the Puritan imagination. To the Puritan mind wilderness was something that had to be subdued in the name of God, a dismal stage to be overcome on the way to the New Jerusalem. It is not by coincidence that one of the earliest novels written in America, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly (1799), transplants elements of English Gothic literature into the American wilderness. In the 19th century the will to conquer the wild continent and its vast open spaces in the name of ‘Manifest Destiny’, to tame the wilderness and to push civilization west to the shores of the Pacific was the driving force behind the Westward Expansion (cf. Smith 1950: 123-132). To the American frontiersmen, pioneers and early settlers wilderness was an opponent that had to be defeated by axe and plow and subjected to useful purposes in the name of progress. As Roderick Nash observes in his book Wilderness and the American Mind (1973), “the driving impulse was always to carve a garden from the wilds; to make an island of spiritual light in the surrounding darkness” (Nash 1973: 35). It is not surprising, therefore, that the ‘wilderness idea’ dominating so much of American nature writing did not originate in the untouched wild regions of the West but in the cities and cultural centers on the East coast (cf. Nash 1973: 44-66). The rise of Romanticism and Transcendentalism from the 1830s onwards gave the decisive impulses to the concept of the wild as a source of spiritual and aesthetic values. It was a high-cultural and urban phenomenon celebrated by a relatively small and privileged intellectual elite, which largely imported it from English, French and German Romanticism. Only towards the end of the 19th century, when the opening up of the West was completed, the Indians ‘pacified’, and the frontier closed,

156

Arno Heller

did the Romantic preference for wild nature and landscape reach the mass audiences. The landscape painters of the so-called Hudson River School gave the wilderness idea its first visual and artistic expressions. They painted ‘sublime’ landscapes, untouched by man, usually perceived from the perspective of tiny human observers hovering on their edges. Thomas Cole’s famous painting “The Oxbow” (1836), a classic in American art history, pictorially narrates the clash between the advancing civilization and wilderness in an exemplary way (see Illustration 1).

Illustration 1: Thomas Cole, “The Oxbow” (1836)

The viewer looks down into a broad fertile valley with a majestic river meandering in the sunlight. It forms a strong contrast to a section of untouched wilderness on the left side of the picture – the top of a ridge, with splintered tree trunks and storm clouds. In between we hardly realize the tiny presence of the artist himself. Paintings of this kind – Asher Durand’s “Kindred Spirits” is another example – were soon followed by the grandiose landscape canvasses of Frederick E. Church, Albert Bierstadt or Thomas Moran. Paintings such as Church’s “Niagara” (1857), Bierstadt’s “The Rocky Mountains” (1863), or Moran’s “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” (1893) opened people’s minds to the natural wonders of the West (cf. Novak 1980: 19). Wilderness became a kind of sacred national icon and

Description in American Nature Writing

157

metaphor of the frontier myth. It was a very effective ideological construct, idealizing wild nature as an antithesis to the ugly artificiality of civilization. As William Cronon argues in his book Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, it was also a kind of self-betrayal, a flight from reality, which was in fact a history of the conquest and destruction of the natural world (cf. Cronon 1996: 7981). The American nature enthusiasm reached its first literary climax in Transcendentalism, above all in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His famous essay “Nature” (1836) is a Neo-Platonic celebration of the divine in nature, transcending it in the direction of religious and spiritual apotheosis. His vision of man as a “transparent eyeball” taking in “the currents of the Universal Being” (Emerson 1965: 189) and by this partaking in God’s design has since become a common topos in American Romantic literature. Walt Whitman’s great nature poems in Leaves of Grass, for example “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, belong to its most impressive manifestations. In narrative fiction already James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales had made use of the Western wilderness theme. In The Prairie (1827), the last work of his saga of the forward moving frontier, Natty Bumppo, or Leatherstocking, the 80-year-old frontiersman, has lived most of his adult life in the wilderness, deliberately separating himself from civilized society. But in the end he has become a paradoxical, melancholy, and even tragic figure. By putting his skill and knowledge to the service of the pioneers and settlers, he has paved the way for the advance of civilization, from which he had tried to escape. At the end of the novel Leatherstocking appears as a mythical but also ambiguous figure against the sunset of the Western horizon: [His] figure was colossal; the attitude musing and melancholy, and the situation directly in the route of the travellers. But imbedded, as it was, in its setting of garish light, it was impossible to distinguish its just proportions or true character. (Cooper 1954: 771)

Half a century later Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) contributed another national icon to the theme: the vernacular white-trash boy Huck Finn, who together with Nigger Jim, the run-away slave, escapes from a corrupt civilization into wild nature. Their voyage down the Mississippi River on a raft projects an extended symbolical clash between river and shore, nature and society, innocence and experience. The narrative evocation of nature’s beauty, seen through Huck’s eyes at the beginning of chapter 19 contains the

158

Arno Heller

binary opposition in a nutshell. After the traumatic experience of a deadly feud between two Southern family clans Huck and Jim celebrate the sunrise on the river as a new beginning, and the dead fish on the shore, killed and carelessly thrown away by human beings, cannot disturb the idyll: Not a sound anywheres – perfectly still – just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line – that was the woods on t’other side; you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t [sic] black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away – trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks – rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes the streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up [...]. Then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! (Twain 1985: 117-118)

In the 20th century Ernest Hemingway takes up this theme again in “Big Two-Hearted River”, the story of a young man who has returned from his traumatic experience of World War I with a psychic breakdown and seeks regeneration in a fishing trip in the Michigan wilderness. What is striking about the story is that its narrative is almost totally reduced to accurate descriptions of the river scenery and the protagonist’s ritualistic activities of fishing and making camp. Ideas and emotions have been eliminated, although they are subliminally present between the lines. William Faulkner’s legendary chapter “The Bear” in his novel Go Down, Moses is another classic story of initiation in the context of nature. The annual bear hunt in the Mississippi woods, in which Ike McCaslin, a young Southerner, takes part with his black half Indian mentor Sam Fathers, stands for the ongoing struggle between nature and civilization. Old Ben, the huge mythical bear – “phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear” (Faulkner 1942: 193-194) – becomes the symbol of a “doomed wilderness”, which is rapidly destroyed by the advance of civilization. Soon all wild animals will have disappeared, the forests will have been cut down by the lumber companies and replaced by

Description in American Nature Writing

159

cotton plantations. The turning point is reached when Old Ben is killed and Ike at the age of 21 as an act of rebellion relinquishes his family legacy. More recently Native American novels have revived the nature theme within an ethnic perspective. Leslie Marmon Silko in her novel Ceremony (1977) places her descriptions of nature and landscape into a strictly tribal context. Mountains, rivers, lakes, springs, caves are holy places, the origin of spiritual life. Each of them has a mythical history and a timeless dimension. Silko makes ample use of the old mythic stories, chants and rites handed down in the oral tradition of the Laguna Pueblo. She embeds them in a modernist structure, creating a complex network of interrelationships between biographical, local and transcendental dimensions. The young Indian protagonist Tayo, who returns to his reservation in the Southwest from the traumatic experience of World War II, must go through a healing ceremony, administered by a Navajo shaman, before he can be reintegrated into the tribal community. At one of the turning points of the novel he realizes that the family, the tribe, nature, the whole world are held together by Spider Woman’s fragile web, whose balance must not be disturbed: The air smelled damp and it was cool even after the sun got high enough to shine into the canyon. The dark orange sandstone formation held springs like this one, all along the base of the sandstone where wind and erosion had cut narrow canyons into the rock. These springs came from deep within the earth, and the people relied upon them even when the sky was barren and the winds were hot and dusty. The spider came out first. She drank from the edge of the pool, careful to keep the delicate egg sacs on her abdomen out of the water. She retracted her path, leaving faint crisscrossing patterns in the fine yellow sand. He remembered stories about her. She waited in certain locations for people to come to her for help. She alone had known how to outsmart the malicious mountain Ka’t’sina who imprisoned the rain clouds in the northwest room of his magical house. Spider Woman had told Sun Man how to win the storm clouds back from the Gambler so they would be free again to bring rain and snow to the people. (Silko 1977: 98-99)

In all these nature narratives, as different as they may be in their historical, geographical, cultural and ethnic settings, nature never functions merely as a background, an aesthetic adornment or simply as an entity in itself. It always refers to a wider interpretative or argumentative framework from Manifest Destiny, Transcendentalism or regionalism to Native American mythology. The texts take possession of nature by projecting human sentiment, empathy, ideas, values, and re-

160

Arno Heller

ligious traditions onto it. In short, they are always essentially anthropocentric.

3. Descriptive Nature Writing from Thoreau to the Present In contrast to these fictions there exists still another, very different non-fictional strain in American literature on nature which deliberately goes beyond the anthropocentric and emblematic. Nature writing, in this stricter sense, starts out from the essential Otherness of non-human nature and is sceptical towards all speculations about it. It puts the emphasis on faithful description avoiding interpretative closures. In its origins this branch of American literature points back to the early explorers and nature observers in the New World such as William Bartram or John Audubon. In contrast to the fictional narratives and their changing aesthetic and cultural premises they follow a straightforward, fact-oriented and occasionally scientific diction, which has prevented them from becoming dated in the course of time. The earliest and most important representative of this tradition is Henry David Thoreau. His Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) is certainly the most widely discussed literary classic in the field. However, in the specific context of descriptive theory, his lesser known Journal (1837-61) has a larger relevancy. Thoreau started it at the age of twenty after leaving Harvard and broke it off 39 years later, in the year 1861, a few months before his death. It was not published until 1906 (see Harding 1980). It consists of altogether twelve volumes of field-diaries, filled with accurately described nature observations and reflexions. Thoreau later exploited much of this material for Walden and other published books, adding narrative devices and transferring them into philosophical contexts. Walden is a deliberately composed book, which compresses years of observation to the timespan of one year and organizes the material in thematically unified, carefully thought out essay chapters. But while revising and editing his field material Thoreau was always painfully aware that he somehow reduced the descriptive purity of the original. To him the Journal meant more than a mere ‘savings bank’ or ‘draft book’ for his later published works; it was a continuous inner record, although it hardly ever refers to his personal life directly. In the early volumes he still grapples with ideas from the many books he was reading, but later he concentrates almost exclusively on nature observation, shaping into

Description in American Nature Writing

161

words what he brought home from his extended field walks: detailed descriptions of landscapes, plants, animals, ponds and rivers, processes of flow and fluctuation, the seasons and cycles of nature and how they relate to one another. In contrast to his published works the organization of the Journal appears amazingly modern, even postmodern, in places. It is compendious, fragmentary, plotless, and random (cf. Cameron 1985: 5). Not abstract generalities and philosophical ideas establish the substance of this monumental project, but the unmediated and direct recordings of sensory perceptions, sights, sounds, smells, surfaces, textures and facts. Discontinuity, i. e. the lack of narrative linearity, is the structural principle of the Journal. It is not only a result of the typical journal format, but was consciously cultivated by Thoreau. There is always a division or conceptual blank between the individual entries, creating a basically additive, nondeveloping quality. For Thoreau the integrity of nature description depended on this primary, unstructured context, which was not to be violated by anthropocentric projections. He was quite conscious of the uniqueness of his endeavour and in the long run considered the Journal his most important work: “I do not know where to find in any literature whether ancient or modern any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.” (Thoreau, Journal, vol. 3: 186) Thoreau’s dislike of the anthropocentric, or what John Ruskin called the “pathetic fallacy”, i. e. the superimposing of one’s own intellectual, aesthetic or symbolical order upon what one sees, gives the Journal a strongly self-referential quality (cf. Cameron: 11-13). The open descriptive form not only tolerates but even welcomes the confusions, contradictions and inaccessibilities of the observed natural phenomena. Closely observed details and their accurate description are self-sufficient and create in themselves intricate meaningful entities, or as Sharon Cameron puts it: Descriptions are thoughts; to describe is to think, is what Thoreau calls ‘pure mind’, for as the mind has been cleared of the preconceptions which occupy it, it can receive mental pictures, can form mental pictures of the nature that it sees. (Cameron: 148-149)

The following passage from the Journal can illustrate this in an exemplary way. It is an accurate description of the thawing of ice on a sandy slope and the shapes, colours and patterns this produces: Few phenomena given me more delight in the spring of the year than to observe the forms which thawing clay and sand assume on flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the rail road through which I walk.

162

Arno Heller

The clay especially assumes an infinite variety of forms – There lie the sand and clay all winter on this shelving surface an inert mass but when the spring sun comes to thaw the ice which binds them they begin to flow down the bank like lava. These little streams & ripples of lava like clay over flow & interlace one another like some mythological vegetation. [...] It begins to flow & immediately it takes the forms of vines – or of the feet & claws of animals – or of the human brain or lungs or bowels – Now it is bluish clay now clay mixed with reddish sand – now pure iron sand – and sand and clay of every degree of fineness and every shade of color – The whole bank for a quarter of a mile on both sides is sometimes overlaid with a mass of plump & sappy verdure of this kind – I am startled probably because it grows so fast – it is produced in one spring day. The lobe of these leaves – perchance of all leaves – is a thick–now loitering drop like the ball of the finger larger or smaller so perchance the fingers & toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body – & then are congealed for a night. –Whither may the sun of new spring lead them on– These roots of ours– In the mornings these resting streams start again & branch and branch again into a myriad others– Here it is coarse red sand & even pebbles –there fine adhesive clay– –And where the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank on either side it spreads out flatter in to sands like those formed at the mouths of rivers–the separate streams losing their semicilindrical form –and gradually growing more and more flat– and running together as it is more moist till they form an almost flat sand–variously & beautifully shaded–& in which you can still trace the forms of vegetation till at length in the water itself they become the ripple marks on the bottom. The lobes are the fingers of the leaf as many lobes as it has in so many directions it inclines to flow–more genial heat or other influences in its springs might have caused it flow farther. –So it seemed as if this one hill side contained an epitome of all the operations in nature. So the stream is but a leaf. What is the river with all its branches–but a leaf divested of its pulp– – but its pulp is intervening earth–forests & fields&town& cities– What is the river but a tree an oak or pine– and its leaves perchance are ponds&lakes&meadows innumerable as the springs which feed it. I perceive that there is the same power that made me my brain my lungs my bowels my fingers & toes working in other clay this very day – I am in the studio of an artist. (Thoreau, Journal, Vol. 2: 382-383)

As can be clearly seen in this passage, Thoreau’s conception of natural phenomena differed conspicuously from that of his contemporaries. While the artists of the Hudson River School in their landscape paintings tended to work on large scales searching for the aesthetically sublime and grandiose, Thoreau preferred the limited, close, and concrete perspective. Moreover, unlike Emerson or the fiction writers

Description in American Nature Writing

163

of his time, he refrains from superimposing transcendental or moral notions on the natural phenomena. He jots down his observations in a deliberately uncontrolled manner, without punctuation and proper paragraphs, and with a great number of dashes and the ubiquitous abbreviation & connecting or separating words and sentences. The diction is very much in contrast to Walden, where he goes over the same material in a discursively condensed narrative way. The transformation from Journal to Walden, as the following passage can show, ‘civilizes’ the random experimentalism of the original field observations and makes them accessible to the contemporary reader. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of the channel. Such are the sources of the rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out under a more genial heaven? (Thoreau 1965: 226-227)

In the Journal Thoreau looks at natural phenomena with the greatest possible precision, drawing conclusions and comparisons directly from the observed objects. In the quoted passage the meticulous description of the thawing sand flow eventually is extended to other forms of organic life, such as the veins of a leaf, or the arteries and bronchial tubes in a human body. Nature forms patterns in space and time, some of them in an orderly, others in a disorderly way. Some seem to develop structures, others oscillate in ever changing unpredictable shapes. All in all, however, the apparent disorder seems to correspond to some deeper process of order, a delicate balance between stability and flux. Thoreau in this passage strikingly anticipates principles of today’s chaos theory. Like Ilya Prigogine, one of its foremost spokesmen in his book Order Out of Chaos (1984), Thoreau conceives of natural processes as random energy flows with intricate feedback mechanisms and non-linear dynamic motions that eventually develop into complex organic systems. It was this type of non-fiction writing – Thoreau’s life-long habit of field observation during his daily walks, followed by an intensive process of transforming the perceived into verbal pictures – that has had an enormous influence on nature writers ever since. With the closing of the frontier, with urbanization and industrialization and the rapid advance of technology, the protection of wild nature took on an increasing urgency in 20th-century America (cf.

164

Arno Heller

Nash 1973: 141-160). Nature activists of all sorts, ecologists and environmental scientists as well as writers, artists and photographers coincided in their struggle to slow down the encroachments of ‘progress’ and its destructive and diminishing impact on wild lands. One of the outward results of these activities was the founding of the American National Park System and the protection of large wilderness areas. Another result was the rich tradition of nature writing and ‘wilderness advocacy’ (cf. Nash 1988: 194-201) that proliferated along these lines. John Muir, Clarence King, John Burroughs, Mary Austin, Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, or Joseph W. Krutch were some of the important earlier voices, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, John Nichols, Gretel Ehrlich, Terry Temple Williams, Ann Zwinger, Richard Nelson and many others followed suit more recently. They all agree in their basic assumption that wilderness is necessary to complement civilized life. In most of their works the anthropomorphic endeavour of conserving and preserving nature to the benefit of man increasingly gives way to the biocentric and ecocentric concept of what has been labeled “deep ecology” (Devall 1995: 65-70). It replaces the conventional Romantic and Transcendentalist notions of the sublime by the recognition that homo sapiens no longer occupies the centre of the cosmos. It signals a paradigm shift which rejects the idea of wild nature as a source of recreational, spiritual and artistic inspiration or as an escape from civilized life. The primary value of wilderness is not that it is beautiful, edifying, or therapeutic, but that it exists as wild as it is. Deep ecologists are convinced that in the last analysis anthropomorphic environmentalism has been just another form of cultural colonialism, reducing primeval nature to something humanly useful or economically profitable. They regard the non-human quality of nature as an absolute value in itself. Humankind is defined as an element not outside but within natural systems discarding the Cartesian and Newtonian dualism. As logocentrism has obscured the intrinsic value of the non-human world, the new ecologists demand a ‘democratic’ dialogue between man and nature as equal partners. This is why nature writing shifted its emphasis away from the narrative and interpretative to the representational and descriptive. Its aim was to dissolve the old borderlines between science and art, experiential physical existence and aesthetic representation. By exploring and describing specific natural localities and landscapes in greatest detail they amazingly have created descriptive microcosms. It would be a great simplifica-

Description in American Nature Writing

165

tion and misunderstanding to refer them simply to the category of regional literature, as so many literati have done. The endeavour of these works clearly goes beyond the merely local and regional and takes on a “glocal” significance mediating between the local and the global (Dirlik 1996: 21-45). The foremost and most widely read American nature writer is Edward Abbey. Some of his works, especially his non-fiction book Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968), have become classics of ecocritical nature writing. Significantly, Abbey was not born in the Southwest, but came there from the East coast as a young man to study philosophy at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. During that time he deeply immersed himself in the Southwestern desert landscapes and soon became their most adamant advocate. Desert Solitaire is based on his two-year experience as a ranger in Arches National Park in Utah. It is a mixed bag of desert travelogue, autobiographical adventure stories, philosophical and ecocritical reflexion, but the bulk of the book consists of nature descriptions usually leading to ensuing reflexion processes. One of Abbey’s recurring questions is why modern man has alienated himself so much from the natural world. Among other reasons Abbey sees in words and ideas the greatest cause for today’s spiritual fatigue: “That screen of words, that veil of ideas, issuing from the brain like a sort of mental smog that keeps getting between a man and the world, obscuring vision” (Abbey 1971: 209). He distrusts all perceptions of reality based exclusively on verbal naming and interpreting: Through naming comes knowing; we grasp an object, mentally, by giving it a name [...]. And thus through language [we] create a whole world, corresponding to the other world out there. Or we trust that it corresponds [...]. We cease to care, becoming more concerned with the naming than with the things named; the former becomes more real than the latter. And so in the end the world is lost again. (Abbey 1971: 288-89)

To Abbey man is no longer the measure of all things, the centre of meaning and values. Like the poststructuralists he rejects logocentrism, but to him the deconstruction of signifying systems is only a first step. His insistence on paying attention to the non-human, the world beyond language, provides the foundation of his ecological engagement and nature writing: The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying, or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the desert. (Abbey 1971: 301)

166

Arno Heller

Long before the concept of deep ecology entered the mainstream of environmental thinking Abbey pointed out its main principles. All natural phenomena, plants, animals, wilderness landscapes have equal rights. In order to preserve them, the anthropocentric order of things must give way to a biocentric one. The snow-covered ground glimmers with a dull blue light, reflecting the sky and the approaching sunrise. Leading from the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into nowhere meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend of the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height: it looks like a head from Easter island, a stone god or petrified ogre. Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into the juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. [...] I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. (Abbey 1971: 6)

Abbey strongly stimulated a great number of American ecocritical writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Ann Zwinger, and Charles Bowden. But all of them developed characteristic voices of their own. Williams, for example, in her non-fiction book Refuge (1991) carefully balances out personal history and the natural history of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Lopez, in his book Arctic Dreams (1985), creates a meticulously researched vista of the Arctic world, and Ann Zwinger takes up the realistic strain of the early explorers and nature observers. Like them Zwinger approaches nature for its own sake and avoids the elevation of her own ego. In her book Run, River Run (1975) she repeats J. W. Powell’s famous 1000-mile river expedition of 1869 down the Green River, a wild desert stream cutting through the mountain ranges of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. The progress of the trip and its various stops, the close descriptions of the river, the rock formations, and the variety of plants in their ecological niches structure the book. Zwinger is much more scientific than Abbey and delivers the geology and fauna of the canyons with great precision. She keeps her emotions on a short rein and only in rare cases, as after the following description of flowing water, does it surface in a fleeting glimpse:

Description in American Nature Writing

167

When water is constricted into a small channel between rocks, an increase in velocity, a rise in energy, and a decrease in pressure occur. When the pressure decreases to the vapor pressure of water, bubbles form. As water streams through the constriction and spreads out again, the opposite occurs: velocity decreases, pressure increases again, and the bubbles collapse, giving off shock waves that travel outward. Building up in series, they make the peculiar soft booming, a Stygian rhythm that I feel through the ground as well as hear. And all night long the river murmurs and hums and shudders, but always beneath the louder rushing I hear the soft little waves at the shore. I lie awake most of the night, sensitized to the river. Peace, contentment: these are programmed cultural words; what I feel is the infinity outside culture, and although I sleep little, I wake rested. The dawn sky is pale and pearly, like a moonstone, webbed with a few clouds, the jagged skyline just beginning to pick up sunlight, that beautiful moment before awakening when the world is fresh and clear, a time of great expectations, and it is completely right, this grey rock canyon, this cold rock beginning, this beautiful river morning. (Zwinger 1975: 29)

From a literary point of view Charles Bowden is Abbey’s most radical and artistically most impressive successor. In his works he attacks the ecological destruction of the Sonoran Desert by the accelerating progress of industrialization and urbanization. Moreover, he also lashes out against the wilderness freaks and nature writers who contribute to turning the wild into a tourist’s commodity. “We have created a kind of pornography”, he writes, “that fantasizes a natural world which barely exists any longer and that we do not live in. And this is dangerous for us and dangerous for the tiny islands of wild ground that survive” (Bowden 1987: 138-139). Bowden’s non-fiction work Blue Desert (1986) is a collage of authentic observations, reportages and ecological reflections, held together by descriptions of the desert landscape (cf. Porsche 1998: 244-255). Bowden is not a nature enthusiast like Abbey and there are no romantic notions in his works. His entropic settings and run-down characters project an end-time world with interstate highways, gasoline stations, barren military or industrial wastelands, nightclubs and bars. His first-person narrator moves with open senses through an apocalyptic world, increasingly ravaged by excessive agrobusiness, industrialization and urban sprawl. The book falls into three parts – “Beasts”, “Players” and “Deserts” – a series of close descriptions interspersed with autobiographical vignettes. The most impressive of them describe the desperate struggle of desert tortoises for survival, and a U. S. Air Force shooting gallery in the desert, which because of its hunting and grazing restrictions has become a refuge for wild animals. The follow-

168

Arno Heller

ing description of a bat colony to be exterminated by DDT shows the intensely dystopian quality of Bowden’s nature descriptions: This is the forbidden place, the dark zone claimed by nightmares. The air can be rich with rabies and people and animals have died from visiting such places. Up high, up near the ceiling, the rustling grows louder and louder. They [the bats] are disturbed as we march into their world. The eye sees blackness but the skin feels the rustling, the swoosh of something near our brows, our throats, our mouths. We are enveloped in a swirling mass of energy and we keep walking toward the center of this biological bomb. [...] This is the bat cave and 25.000 Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana wrap us with their anxiety. Night is falling outside the cave. Soon our world will become theirs. Then they will exit and plunder the canyons, the mesas, the hillsides, the towns, the fields. They will bring back deadly reports of our world, details buried deep in their bones and body chemistry. The sound tightens now, a shrill spike of screeches and squeaks. The mites scramble across the skin. The larvae writhe like shiny stones at our feet. We stand inside a brief island of life, a hiding place of our blood skin. (Bowden 1986: 9-10)

What the three authors have in common is that they always start out from close descriptions, using detailed nature observations and sharply drawn sensory impressions to create accurate and lively verbal pictures of natural objects and their ambience. Sometimes the descriptive part is followed by some kind of analysis, reflexion or emotional reaction, with the description itself showing forth the implied meaning. In contrast to earlier nature writing they follow a strictly biocentric and deep ecological orientation. They refuse what they call the ‘shallow’ approach of anthropocentrism to environmental problems, the continuing dominance of human over non-human nature. They search for a state of being in which all things in the biosphere have an equal right to exist and their diversity becomes a value in itself.

4. Nature Description in Poetry and in the Visual Arts It is not surprising that the ecocentric stance of nature writing has also found its way into American nature poetry: A. R. Ammons is one of the most prominent representatives in this context. He radically rejects anthropocentric self-assertion and refrains from reducing nature to a mere object of projection, reflexion, let alone mystical union. In search of the self-identity of natural things the lyric I in his poetry enters into an emphatic dialogue with nature, in which its total other-

Description in American Nature Writing

169

ness is respected (cf. Grabher 1989: 142-145). In his programmatic poem “Nature Poetry” Ammons calls in question the idea of ‘messages’: nature has messages in store – however unpredictable, random, oscillating –, but they are “sent to no one”. Only by “irrelevantly” opening up to them through close observation may one verbalize them without any intention. Ammon’s nature poems are tentatively open, free-floating, and widely descriptive. They are not about but by nature, which is supposed to speak in a poetic language of its own. Nature Poetry If no one sends you messages to read, none you can read (so you have no replies to shape) still you may irrelevantly read messages sent to no one, light shaking off a poplar leaf (like seen wind chipped free) or breaking into threads of bright-backed water in brookstone shallows terse messages, though not sent to you and requiring no response may nevertheless be taken down in strict observances (like studied regard) as if to be nearly adequate messages to no one. (Ammons 1983: 13)

In the poem “Corsons Inlet” the lyric persona walks over sand dunes to a seashore and later recollects the transition from thought to pure sight, which he has experienced during that walk. The poem alternates between the description of what the poet sees and the constant selfadmonishment not to draw any defining conclusions from the seen. Nature is described as a dynamic flux – the back and forth of sand dune and waterline, birds feeding themselves on a mussel bank, and a

170

Arno Heller

swarm of swallows gathering for a long flight in the fall. Comparable to Thoreau’s description of the thawing sand, nature is rendered as driven by random energies in the direction of some larger unknown, unpredictable process: manifold events of sand change the dune’s shape that will not be the same shape tomorrow, so I am willing to go along, to accept the becoming thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends, establish no walls: by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek to undercreek: but there are no lines: but “sharpness” spread out, allowed to occur over a wider range than mental lines can keep; the moon was full last night: Today, low tide was low: black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk of air and, earlier, of sun. waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact, caught always in the event of change: a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals and ate to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab, picked out the entrails, swallowed the softshelled legs, a ruddy turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits. [...] thousands of tree swallows gathering for flight: an order held in constant change: a congregation rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable as one event not chaos: preparations for flight from winter. [...] I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will not run to that easy victory: still around the looser, wider forces work: I will try to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening scope, but enjoying the freedom that Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision, that I have perceived nothing completely, that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk. (Ammons 1965: 6-8)

Description in American Nature Writing

171

The descriptor resists summarizing or explaining the significance or meaning of the described. He refuses to engage in conclusions about the perceived natural phenomena, as it would take him away from the physical immediacy of sight. Mere sight is more liberating and valuable than the contemplation of precepts. The dynamic processes of formless flow, described in the poem, forbid the construction of boundaries of thought, aesthetic rules, or philosophical reductions. The shapes and rhythms of the natural events correspond to the irregular lines of the poem as well as to the experiential contours of the walk. The rambling gait of the walker, the ever shifting shapes of water and sand are like a mind in motion. There are no sharp and straight lines in the fractal geometry of non-human nature, as – according to the poet – they should not be in human consciousness either. As there exists no totalizing “scope” of causal or teleological order for the poet, he rules out the superimposing of cognitive categories at the cost of openness. It is interesting to note in this context that the deliberate resistance to interpretative reductions does not only occur in written texts, but also in the visual arts. The work of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of America’s most prominent landscape artists, can serve as an example. In the 1920s she moved from New York to the American Southwest. Overwhelmed by the luminous desert landscape of New Mexico she dedicated her life as an artist to its depiction. What is striking about her pictures is that ‘reception figures’ or all other traces of human life have been banned from them. O’Keeffe approaches landscape as if seen through a wide-angle lens or zoom, a technique she learned from the landscape photographer Ansel Adams. There is no foreground or background, no hint of any kind of impressionistic atmosphere or temporality. Her spatial motifs completely fill the entire format of her paintings. They are monumental depictions of mountains, deserts and animal bones, accurately perceived. It is a strongly reductive and static world of colour and form that only on close scrutiny may reveal hidden human idiosyncrasies. For example, the crevices, cracks and cavities of the depicted rock structure in “Black Place I” (1944) have been interpreted as subliminal sexual connotations of the female body or of a feminine emotional deep-structure (see Illustration 2). O’Keeffe, on her part, strictly rejected verbalizations, explanations and interpretations of this kind (cf. Eldredge 1981: 116).

172

Arno Heller

Illustration 2: Georgia O’Keeffe, “Black Place I” (1944)

The direct approach to a perceived natural surface and its accurate representation was all she endeavored to achieve. She took it for granted that this was a subjective rather than an objective realization, but any narrative analysis of her art she found banal and superfluous. Another example of a radically descriptive realization of nature can be found in film. The concept of cinema verité or direct cinema strikingly corresponds to the descriptive concept in literature (see Mamber 1974). Films of this kind, documentaries in most cases, strive for absolute representational authenticity and refuse obtrusive narrative manipulations of the filmed material. Prearranged scripts, linear structures, plots, characters, commentaries, voice-overs or dialogues are avoided in them. The footage is edited, i. e. cut and montaged in a way that it speaks for itself without overt intrusion on the part of the filmmaker. As a rule, they deal with human, social and political matters and only in rare cases with nature. One remarkable exception is Godfrey Reggio’s nature documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1983) (= a Hopi word for ‘life out of balance’). Without narrative commentary the film relies entirely on camera work, editing, and music. Its underlying issue, the ongoing disintegration of natural life in today’s technological world, is achieved through editing techniques, rhythm, acoustic and pictorial montages. In the course of the film the slowmoving depiction of the pristine Southwestern desert landscape gives

Description in American Nature Writing

173

way to accelerating fast-motion photography of planted fields, highways, dynamite explosions, bulldozers, dams, power lines, overcrowded city freeways, shopping malls, cars, conveyor belts, and atomic explosions, until at the end spaceship earth bursts into a fireball with pieces of debris tumbling down to the ground: homo sapiens at the end of his tether. Koyaanisqatsi stresses the artistic potential of the descriptive although, on close scrutiny, it also amply employs diegetic film devices. With its conscious restraint of storification and interpretative intrusion, however, it represents an exciting new form of documentary film: in a world of simulacra and simulations, of over-information and manipulation, of propaganda, logocentric reductions, and the inflation of words, the film stands for a new artistic purity.

5. Conclusion The concept of the descriptive, as the above examples have tried to show, has indeed become an important trend in contemporary American nature writing, including its poetic and filmic equivalents. Although there exist hardly any pure and uncontaminated examples, because descriptive and narrative elements intermingle in most cases, the works discussed express a desire to move away from anthropocentric narration. The main characteristics of this kind of nature writing has become the striving for an essentially ecocentric state of being, deconstructing the myth of man’s separateness from the natural world. It can be seen as a kind of ecocritical fundamentalism celebrating the rights of the non-human Other. As the selected examples have shown, this tendency expresses itself not only in theme but primarily in form. The gestalt of these non-fictional texts, poems, paintings or films presents in itself a critique of homocentrism. Lawrence Buell has coined the term “aesthetics of relinquishment” in this connection, by which he means the discarding of the illusionary human hegemony vis-à-vis the non-human world (Buell 1995: 168-179). There are several ways by which “relinquishment” is achieved: first of all by the pushing back of storification and narration, character configurations, plot and structural closure in favour of the randomly descriptive. Description in these texts has ceased to function as a sub-dominant frame in the service of some larger macro-text. In its concentration on sensory surfaces it

174

Arno Heller

assumes a dominant existence of its own. The search for simplicity, authenticity, immediacy, and sensual awareness replaces intellectual, ideological and social precepts. Texts or visualisations of this kind invite the reader or viewer to re-experience the described intensely and in his or her own way. Their ultimate intention is to avoid the illusionary and reductive superimposing of order on the intrinsic selfidentity of the natural things presented. The retreat of the oldestablished binary oppositions of the external and the internal, the referential and the expressive, the objective and the subjective, so it seems, allows the descriptive to assume new intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic functions.

References Primary Sources Abbey, Edward (1968). Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Ammons, A. R. (1965). Corsons Inlet: A Book of Poems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. — (1983). Lake Effect County: Poems. New York, NY: Norton. Bowden, Charles (1986). Blue Desert. Tucson, AR: Univ. of Arizona Press. Bradford, William (1952). Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647. Ed. Eliot Morison. New York, NY: Knopf. Cooper, James Fenimore (1954). The Leatherstocking Saga. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1965). Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York, NY: New American Library. Faulkner, William (1942). Go Down, Moses. New York, NY: Random House. Hemingway, Ernest (1925). “Big Two-Hearted River”. Ernest Hemingway. In Our Time. New York, NY: Scribner. 131-142. Koyaanisqatsi (Atlas Film, 1983), directed by Godfrey Reggio. Silko, Leslie (1977). Ceremony. New York, NY: Signet. Thoreau, Henry David (1965). Walden, or Life in the Woods. New York, NY: Harper & Row. — (1981-1997). Journal, 5 vols. Eds. John C. Broderick and Robert Sattelmeyer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

Description in American Nature Writing

175

Twain, Mark (1948). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, NY: Rineheart. Zwinger, Ann (1975). Run, River Run. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Secondary Sources Ahrends, Günter, and Hans Seeber, eds. (1985). Englische und amerikanische Naturdichtung im 20. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Narr. Bergon, Frank (1997). “Wilderness Aesthetics”. American Literary History 9: 128-160. Bloom, Harold, ed. (1986). A. R. Ammons. New York, NY: Chelsea House. Bowden, Charles (1987). “Useless Deserts & other Goals”. Lensink, ed. 131-142. Buell, Lawrence (1995). The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. — (2001). Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U. S. and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Cameron, Sharon (1985). Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press. Cronon, William (1995). Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York, NY: Norton. Devall, Bill, and George Sessions (1985). Deep Ecology. Layton, UT: Gibbs M. Smith. Dirlik, Arif (1996). Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Dreese, Donelle N. (2002). Ecocriticism: Creating Self and Place in Environmental and American Indian Literatures. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Eldredge, Charles C. (1991). Georgia O’Keeffe. New York, NY: Harry N. Adams. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, eds. (1996). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, GA: Univ. of Georgia Press. Grabher, Gudrun (1989). Das lyrische Du: Du-Vergessenheit und Möglichkeiten der Du-Bestimmung in der amerikanischen Dichtung. Heidelberg: Winter.

176

Arno Heller

Harding, Walter (1980). The New Thoreau Handbook. New York, NY: New York UP. Heller, Arno (1999). “Nature’s Nation Revisited: The Wilderness Mystique in Contemporary American Fiction”. Carin Freywald and Michael Porsche, eds. The American Dream. Essen: Die Blaue Eule. 269-290. — (2003). “The Desert Mystique in the Literature on the American Southwest”. Hans Bak and Walter Hölbling, eds. ‘Nature’s Nation’ Revisited: American Concepts of Nature from Wonder to Ecological Crisis. Amsterdam: VU UP. 184-197. Herndl, Carl G. (1996). Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. Huth, Hans (1957). Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press. Lensink, Judy N., ed. (1987). Old Southwest, New Southwest: Essays on a Region and Its Literature. Tucson, AR: Tucson Public Library. Lyon, Thomas J. (1986). “American Nature Writing: A Selective Booklist”. Antaeus 57: 302-317. Mamber, Stephen (1974). Cinema Verité in America: Studies in Uncontrolled Documentary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Marx, Leo (1964). The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford UP. Miller, Perry (1967). Nature’s Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Novak, Barbara (1980). Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875. New York, NY: Oxford UP. Oelschlaeger, Max (1991). The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. Overland, Orm (1979). “Changing Attitudes to Nature in American Fiction”. Teut Andreas Riese, ed. Vistas of a Continent: Concepts of Nature in America. Heidelberg: Winter. 111-121. Nash, Roderick F. (1973). Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. — (1990). American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. — (1992). The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. Payne, Daniel G. (1996). Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics. Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England.

Description in American Nature Writing

177

Petersen, David. (2001). Writing Naturally: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Nature Writing. Boulder, CO: Johnson. Porsche, Michael (1998). Geographie der Hoffnung? Landschaft in der zeitgenössichen Erzählliteratur des amerikanischen Südwestens. Essen: Die Blaue Eule. Prigogine, Ilya (1984). Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, New York, NY: Bantam Books. Slovic, Scott (1992). Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing. Salt Lake City, UT: Univ. of Utah Press. Smith, Henry Nash (1950). Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Stewart, Frank (1995). A Natural History of Nature Writing. Washington, DC: Island Press.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’? Doris Mader This paper seeks to add new perspectives to the analysis and appreciation of audioliterature, a genre that is habitually marginalized in ‘Eng.Lit.’ scholarship and that, even after the ‘intermedial turn’, has hitherto been equally ignored by those engaged in intermedial studies. As part of a volume devoted to description in literature and other media, the following pages first investigate the relevance and scope of descriptions within audioliterature in general, setting the genre apart from, but also relating it to, other (literary) genres and media; by referring to ‘high-brow’ as well as to more ‘popular’ examples of radiotexts, this paper furthermore attempts to scrutinize not only the descriptive potential of audio-/ radioliterature, but also to identify specific forms and functions of the descriptive within the genre chosen. Thus, this survey contributes to the understanding of the relevance of the macro-mode of description within a ‘(re)discovered’ intermedial genre only lately retrieved from near-oblivion in the context of ‘drama’. By investigating audioliterature within the more general context of intermediality, this essay also endeavours to provide a more comprehensive understanding of, and offers specific tools for the analysis and interpretation of, a genre that has only recently come to be focussed on as part of intermedial studies.

1. Introduction Audioliterature as an intermedial genre in its own right has been underprivileged both within literary studies and intermedial studies. Therefore, some preliminary statements, definitions and clarifications are in place. Before raising the more detailed questions of forms and functions of the descriptive in audioliterature, we first need to define the chosen medium audioliterature in the context of literature and the other media and then position it within the macro-modes of the ‘narrative’ vs. the ‘descriptive’. To establish the forms and functions of the descriptive in audioliterature, we need to consider the nature and quality of audioliterature, individual audioliterary artefacts as well as specific descriptive parts within selected artefacts. Therefore, this paper will proceed from the more general to the more specific and conclude by summarizing why and in which way the discourse of audioliterary artefacts in some parts is organized in terms of the de-

180

Doris Mader

scriptive. Moreover, embedding the analysis and discussion of audioliterature within the wider context of the cognitive frames of the ‘narrative’ vs. the ‘descriptive’ on the one hand and (intermedial) ‘literary’ genres on the other hand, this paper likewise seeks to contribute to the understanding of the macro-mode of the descriptive as much as to add to a better recognition of a hitherto marginalized subgenre of literature. Since audioliterary artefacts are by definition either tied to, or originate from, the technical medium radio, readers unfamiliar with the highly evocative visual imagery of radio artefacts might suspect that a ‘blind date’ awaits them. With audioliterature, a medium is placed at the centre of discussion which is not only occasionally associated with ‘blindness’, but frequently outright declared to be a ‘blind medium’1. Also, editorial as well as copyright reasons do not allow for any ‘audio illustrations’ to be provided, so that even with audio examples referred to in this paper it will sometimes be necessary to resort to ‘description’ as well as ‘transcription’ for demonstration.

2. The Nature and Quality of Audioliterature 2.1. A Definition of Audioliterature as a ‘Literary’ Genre: The War of the Worlds In order to illustrate the nature and quality of audioliterature, we can look into (the soundscript of) the initial sequences of The War of the Worlds (1938) by Orson Welles, one of the most famous, and probably the most notorious, of all audio artefacts to date (recently made into a major film by Steven Spielberg). This radio broadcast occupies an important position in the history of radioliterature, and is in fact the radio adaptation of H. G. Welles’s 1897 novel of the same title that was adapted for the radio by Howard Koch. The War of the Worlds is widely regarded as one of the “landmarks” (Crook 1999: 24) in the history of radio and in the history of radioliterature. Its fame mainly rests on the fact that while it was meant to be just a Hallowe’en radio show it provoked a wave of panic with listeners 1

The late Martin Esslin, Head of BBC Radio Drama between 1963 and 1977, impressively dismissed the idea of radio as a ‘blind’ medium and referred to Marshal McLuhan’s classification of radio as indeed a visual medium (see Esslin 1971: 5).

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

181

tuning in too late to grasp the fictional frame. Certainly, neither Orson Welles nor anyone else from the Mercury Theatre had in any way anticipated the hysterical reactions their broadcast would cause. The fictional story, namely that of Martians invading the earth with their space-ships landing in New Jersey, is presented in the form of a series of ‘live’ broadcasts, ‘interviews’ and ‘eye witness’ reports that are embedded in the frame of a light entertainment programme, a combination which undoubtedly contributed to the effet de réel throwing thousands of Americans into a state of panic. Immediately following the announcement and the opening credits the listeners hear Orson Welles as narrator saying: “On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios”2, which mirrors the actual broadcast reception on October 30th in 1938. The following ‘quotations’ provided are my own audio transcripts from the recent audio book edition of the original production3. Music [Announcer:] The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliate stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the air in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Welles. Music [from Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto in B flat minor] [fade-out] [Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theatre, and the star of this broadcast, Orson Welles ... [Orson Welles:] We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligencies greater than man’s, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of time and space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects, vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. Near the end of October, businesses bettered, the war scare was over, more men were back at work, sales 2

Quoted from Faulstich 1981: 18. Subsequent quotations from The War of the Worlds are taken from my own audio transcript. Full transcripts that vary in detail and deviate slightly from this transcript are available online, e. g. Miller 2006.

3

See – or, rather, listen to – DerHörVerlag, ed. (1996).

182

Doris Mader

were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley Service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios. [fade-in] [Weather forecast:] ... for the next twenty-four hours not much change in temperature. A slight atmospheric disturbance of undetermined origin is reported over Nova Scotia, causing a low pressure area to move down rather rapidly over the north-eastern states, bringing a forecast of rain, accompanied by winds of light gale force. Maximum temperatures 66, minimum 48. This weather report comes to you from the Government Weather Bureau. We take you now to the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York where you’ll be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. Dance music [cross-fade] [Announcer:] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramon Raquello leads off with ‘La Cumparsita’. Dance music [quick fade-out] [Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our programme of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennins Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson at the observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell’s observation, and describes the phenomenon as – quote – like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun – unquote. We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York. [fade-in] Dance music [applause] [Announcer:] And now a tune that never loses favour, the ever-popular ‘Stardust’. Ramon Raquello ... [cross-fade] Dance music [fade-out] [Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, following on the news given in our bulletin a moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has requested the large observatories of the country to keep an astronomical watch on any further disturbances occurring on the planet Mars. Due to the unusual nature of this occurrence, we have arranged an interview with the noted astronomer, Professor Pierson, who will give us his views on this event. In a few moments, we will take you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until then to the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

183

[fade-in] Dance music [music interrupted] [Announcer:] We are ready now to take you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, where Carl Phillips, our commentator, will interview Professor Richard Pierson, famous astronomer. We take you now to Princeton, New Jersey. [Phillips:] [over the sound of a clock ticking] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Carl Phillips speaking to you from the observatory at Princeton, standing in a large semi-circular room pitch-black except for an oblong split on the ceiling. Through this opening I can see a sprinkling of the stars that cast a kind of frosty glow over the intricate mechanism of the huge telescope. The ticking sounds you hear are the vibrations of the clockwork. Professor Pierson stands directly above me on a small platform peering through the giant frame. I ask you to be patient, ladies and gentlemen, during any delays that may arise during our interview. Besides the ceaseless watch of the heavens, Professor Pierson may be interrupted by telephone or other communication. During this period, he is in constant touch with the astronomical centres of the world. [My transcript]

This audio example, apart from illustrating the extraordinary evocative potential of the medium radio, in fact also provides us with the ingredients needed to define ‘audioliterature’: audioliterary texts are specifically composed radiophonic or audio artefacts communicating solely by means of acoustic signifiers, usually belonging to several different codes: verbal language (which dominates here), noises (applause, the ticking of the clockwork), sound effects (distortions, echoes, and other effects), music (dance music) as well as silence (which will be of growing importance in the course of the broadcast) and/or pauses (more or less replaced here by various forms of fade-in, fade-out and cross-fade)4. This multimediality is a regular feature of the genre ‘audiotext’, which, however, typically combines a multitude of codes, to foreground the verbal code (see Mader 2003: 4). In other words, audioliterature prototypically offers various forms of combinations of distinct media or distinct codes. The term ‘audioliterature’ serves as an umbrella term for various forms of broadcasts that are quite heterogeneous with regard to sub-mode and the question of mediacy or immediacy as their discursive modes. The term covers a multitude of audio and radiophonic literary forms and does not yet 4

Pauses and silences are to be distinguished from each other because a verbal pause need not be a total silence; when several codes are used simultaneously, the deletion of one of the codes – not necessarily the verbal one – results in some sort of pause, e. g. a background noise dies down while at the same time the conversation continues, etc.

184

Doris Mader

anticipate any genre specifications inherent in the well-known, albeit often misleading conventional labels5. 2.2. The Basic Iconic Mimesis Concept in the Context of (Audio)literary Artefacts The signs exclusively used in audioliterature are acoustic signs, which are employed in the function of what Martin Esslin (referring to theatrical signs) called the “basic iconic mimesis” (1987: 43), which is typical of audioliterary artefacts in that they create fictitious worlds also by means of ‘aural mimicry’ of an ‘as-if’ version of the world6. Esslin’s generalisation of the iconic mimesis, however, is only partly helpful in exploring the category of the descriptive in audioliterature. It is, therefore, advisable to go beyond the basic ‘aural mimicry’ concept that is so typical of the relegation of audioliterature to the status of a ‘lesser theatre’, a theatre, as it were, ‘behind a closed curtain’. Within such an aesthetic concept, the one and only function of the descriptive in audio artefacts that suggests itself is that of compensating for the ‘lack’ of visual information. Such a basic iconic mimesis, according to Esslin, is supposed to be the main function of signs also on stage, TV, and screen. This idea of the signs iconicising real signs only helps us, however, to grasp the ‘as if’ quality inherent in all (audio)literary works, and here I propose to include the epic mode as well as the lyric mode. Within such a generalized frame of iconicity, language itself, imitating ‘real’ language, is iconic of someone verbally and non-verbally interacting now (the dramatic mode) or someone now saying something about what has already happened (the epic mode) or iconic of someone enunciating something in the imaginative here and now (the lyric mode).

5

The English term ‘radio drama’ and even more so its German counterpart ‘Hörspiel’ are reductive in that they invariably denote the ‘dramatic’, and are hence generically inadequate; moreover, both terms seem to connote somewhat outdated literary forms (see Mader 2002: 40-43).

6

See section 1.6 below on “Audioliterature as Informed by the Macro-Mode ‘Narrative’”.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

185

2.3. Audioliterature and its Medium Radio The medium radio has been closely related to literature and fictional stories ever since it was invented, and a lot could be said about this interrelationship and the medium’s role since the 1920s in a) simply transmitting, b) originating, and c) adapting literary artefacts7. The radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a case in point for the adaptational function of radio8, and however exceptional this broadcast’s reception was – quite a number of panic-stricken people, overwhelmed by such ‘eye-witness accounts’9, had to be treated for shock –, it also serves to illustrate the hugely evocative power of the medium radio10 in general and its ‘literary’ genre audioliterature in 7

Apart from serving other purposes, from the 1920s onwards radio has also been used as a ‘literary’ medium. Its very first and original function in the context of literature was that of a ‘medium’ in the sense of transmitting and ‘mediating’ theatre performances or readings of plays and other texts. Its second literary function dates back to 1924, at least for the United Kingdom, when the first ever aired radio play, A Comedy of Danger, written by Richard Hughes, was produced in a live transmission. It was the first in a line of thousands of British works of genuine radioliterature, that is, ‘literary’ works specifically written for the medium radio, an “acoustical literature, a body of creative material [...] distinct from creative expression in film, television, and print” (Cory 1974: vii). Quite frequently, the medium, since its birth as a cultural mediator, has also featured literary texts of a different generic origin in the form of adaptations. This adaptational function, which is the third major ‘literary’ function of radio, is a ‘mediating’ one in every sense of the term: here the medium radio and its medium-specific signifiers are employed in order to ‘translate’ a literary artefact (novel, play) originating from a different medium (print, stage) and to transfer its fictional story into the terms of its own devices. This process can, therefore, be called a case of intermedial transposition in the sense of content-transference. 8

It is perhaps noteworthy in this context that radio created the first ‘global village’: “Here is an inspiring definition of the first electronic global village: it was radio. Arnheim mentions that 40 million sets were scattered around the world in 1936. In 1996 it was estimated that 40 million computer users were connected to the Internet [which is now also a major source of radio programmes globally]. In sixty years the global village was transmogrified into a multidimensional nexus of world media.” (Crook 1999: 9) 9

The very technique of simultaneous reports used resembles the dramatic technique of teichoscopy – a synchronous ‘report’ of what one character perceives or witnesses from a ‘privileged’ viewpoint, but what is not or cannot be conveyed otherwise.

10

“McLuhan has classified radio as a ‘hot’ medium. A hot medium is that which has high definition for senses and gives a lot of information with little to do. He is right in the sense that only the ear as a sense is engaged. But I believe he may well be wrong in the limit he places on the participation of the listener as audience.” (Crook 1999: 9)

186

Doris Mader

particular11. Independently of the radio’s employment either as a) mediator, b) originator, or c) transmediator, audioliterary artefacts share their intermedial quality. Having distinguished between the three basic media-specific functions of radio in the context of audioliterary artefacts, we now need to return to the specific conditions that govern the reception of audioliterature. 2.4. Audioliterature as an Ephemeral Medium Unlike that of printed literature or other cultural media, the typical reception of audio- and radioliterature depends on listening once, and only once. And because we cannot turn pages nor usually ‘rewind’ a tape in audioliterature, we have to rely on understanding at once, which of course puts a rather high demand on both producers and listeners. Listeners are therefore assisted by good radio writers with a careful selection and combination of the acoustic signifiers on offer. Instead of using a torrent of sounds and words, authors have to economize and restrict themselves to a few, but significant sounds. Moreover, audiotexts should not last for much more than an hour lest they lose their audiences. So the medium (with its radio waves) provides acoustic signifiers that are not only temporal, but also ephemeral. It is undoubtedly due to this ephemeral nature of radioliterary artefacts that the genre has elicited little scholarly attention – a circumstance epitomized in the following statement by Elissa S. Guralnick, one of the few scholars devoted to the study of ‘radio plays’: [T]he distinguishing feature of plays conceived for radio, that we do not see them, is true not only literally, but also metaphorically. Unlikely to be noticed in reviews or in scholarship, even less likely to be published [...] radio plays ghost away on the airwaves, leaving behind not a trace of their existence. (Guralnick 1996: ix)

Apart from deploring how little critical attention radioliterature receives, Guralnick points towards its ephemeral quality on immediate reception, which is an important aspect also for the question of the descriptive in audioliterature. (She also, of course, laments the fact that 11

Radiophony was first used for entertainment purposes in the trenches of WWI to boost the soldiers’ morale, with music as the preferred content. Also, the use of the technical medium radio for fictitious (‘live’ reports on the war against the Martians in our first example) alias real war correspondence reminds us of the fact that, as is the case with so many other technical developments, also radio waves as such and radio telephony were originally developed for strategic and warfare purposes.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

187

hardly any of the broadcasts are preserved in forms available to the public or to scholars, which is, indeed, a real gravamen.) Typologically, the genre audioliterature can be said to be strongly determined by the transient nature of the medium radio. Therefore, as concerns the type of medium, audioliterature is a temporal medium which organizes its signifiers along a temporal continuum. The signifiers used are sounds or sound chains which belong to the class of dynamic signs. The acoustic signifiers employed are combined either consecutively and/or simultaneously. Once the classical radioliterary ‘text’ has passed the production studio, this temporal succession of acoustic signifiers, the discourse, is strictly predetermined second per second and, as a broadcast, tape or CD, constitutes a ready-made product. 2.5. An Intermedial Definition of Audioliterature Returning to the essential nature of audioliterature, we can now offer an intermedial understanding of the genre under scrutiny. We can, thus, assign this transient genre a position within the context of both literary and intermedial studies. Any one of an audio artefact’s carefully planned segments features one, several, or a combination of the following acoustic signals: verbal language, non-verbal sound effects (by human voices or other sources), music, pauses and silence. This varying combination of acoustic signifiers also determines the intermedial quality of audioliterature. The term ‘audioliterature’ thus signifies “an artefact that, strictly speaking, is an ‘internal intermedial composite medium’, or, if one prefers to use the term ‘medium’ exclusively for the technical medium radio, an ‘internal intermedial composite genre’” (Mader 2003: 4-5). ‘Internal’ means that within each individual artefact these phenomena can be observed. ‘Intermedial’, once again, refers to the different distinct media or component codes combined within such a ‘composite’ artefact. Moreover, because those components and the way they are combined give audioliterature a distinct character of its own, it is justifiable to regard audioliterature as a separate (sub)genre within the system of literature.

188

Doris Mader

2.6. Audioliterature as Informed by the Basic Semiotic Macro-Mode ‘Narrative’ Apart from our intermedial understanding of audioliterature, this genre can also be semiotically classified as being informed by the macromode of narration because audioliterature is basically a story-telling medium. Audioliterature in its characteristic manifestations, in fact, belongs to the semiotic macro-mode of narration, as the unity of any typical audioliterary artefact is derived from a story. Strictly speaking, this applies to all ‘dramatic’ texts, too, even if the medium chosen to convey the story is the theatre stage. Further, this unifying principle of audioliterature, as of other story-telling media, is prototypically based on such a fictional or at least fictionalised story. The labels ‘radio drama’ and ‘Hörspiel’ have their own history, and institutions such as the BBC use ‘radio drama’ as a sort of brand name. However, from a scholarly perspective, we need to remain aware of the basic macro-mode of narration that governs and informs audio/radio artefacts conveying stories, so the term ‘narration’ here serves to cover a multitude of generic variations which consist in choosing either mimesis (the mode of showing) or diegesis (the mode of telling) or combining both in variable ratios. So even if in many audioliterary artefacts the dramatic sub-mode predominates, the overall macro-mode ‘narrative’12 nevertheless always applies.

3. The Descriptive in Audioliterature 3.1. Towards an Understanding of the Descriptive in Audioliterature We will now move closer towards the descriptive in audioliterature by once more referring to Welles’s The War of the Worlds. Immediately after the introductory segments, which are highly descriptive in themselves, listeners hear an interview with Professor Pierson, who cannot really account for the strange things going on on the surface of Mars: 12 If the well-known distinction between narrative mediacy and dramatic immediacy is applied, the difference as to the representation of story is that, e. g., in narrative fiction past events are (re)presented in the here and now of the text, whereas in drama events are prototypically delivered both as and in the here and now of immediate presentation. In contrast to the literary genre of drama, which is predominantly informed by the dramatic sub-mode of ‘showing’, no such general predominance can be claimed for the epitome of the narrative genre, the novel.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

189

[Phillips:] Professor, would you please tell our radio audience exactly what you see as you observe the planet Mars through your telescope? [Pierson:] Nothing unusual at the moment, Mr. Phillips. A red disk swimming in a blue sea. Transverse stripes across the disk. Quite distinct now, because Mars happens to be at the point nearest the earth – in opposition, as we call it. [Phillips:] In your opinion, what do these transverse stripes signify, Professor? [Pierson:] Not canals, I can assure you, Mr. Phillips. [Phillips:] I see. [Pierson:] Although that’s the popular conjecture of those who imagine Mars to be inhabited. From a scientific viewpoint, the stripes are merely the result of atmospheric conditions peculiar to the planet. [...] [Phillips:] How do you account for these gas eruptions occurring on the surface of the planet at regular intervals? [Pierson:] Mr. Phillips, I cannot account for them. [My transcript]

Description plays a vital part here in establishing the ‘truth’ of his observations, for later on in the broadcast, reports will continue to concentrate on the unbelievable, namely the Martian spaceship divulging monsters crawling out, attacking and killing people. In the following example, ‘reporter’ Carl Phillips can be heard describing the first landed Martian spaceship: [Phillips:] Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed – wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or – something. I can see – peering out of that black hole two luminous disks – are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be ... Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one and another one and another one. They look like – tentacles to me. There I can see the thing’s body. It’s large – it’s large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But the face. It, it – it’s indescribable I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and they gleam like a – serpent. The mouth is – a kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to – oh quiver and pulsate. The monster or whatever it is can hardly move. It seems – weighed down by – eh, possibly gravity or something. The thing’s rising up and now, and the crowd falls back. They’ve – seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can’t find words ... I am pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop description until I’ve taken a new position. Hold on, will you please. I’ll right be back in a minute. [My transcript]

This is one in a series of repeatedly interrupted ‘eye-witness’ reports including a high proportion of descriptions, both of ‘static’ objects (the Martian monsters in their outer appearance) as well as of ‘dynamic objects’ (their crawling out and rising).

190

Doris Mader

3.2. Story and Discourse in Audioliterature Although it does not suffice to treat audio stories in the same way as stories conveyed in narrative fiction, we can still make use of the overall distinction between story – what is represented or told – and discourse – how the story is presented. Thus, we can narrow our focus on the building blocks of an audio narrative, viz. the so-called existents, categorized into characters, spatial and temporal settings, and events (to be further subdivided into what is done by characters, viz. actions, and what happens to them, i. e., happenings). This is a necessary step towards investigating the contribution of the descriptive in audioliterature, namely to include the main elements of the level of story and set them off against the level of discourse. Since descriptivity is very much a matter of presentation and transmission (and much more content-indifferent than narrativity, see the introduction to this volume: 28), discourse is the more relevant focus of attention and therefore has to be addressed in a more detailed manner. For the majority of audiotexts, the relevance of language is selfevident, so the prototypical predominance of the verbal remains indisputable13. 3.3. The Constellation of Codes and the Configuration of Codes in Audioliterature The characteristic discourse of audioliterature, though, needs some further specifications: audioliterary artefacts do not only participate in various other codes, but also vary the degrees to which certain codes are used in given segments – similar to a symphony where the combination of different instrumental voices varies from section to section. For analysis, therefore, the discourse level of audioliterary products can be read like a score. Unlike in instrumental music, however, where the different ‘voices’ belong but to one musical code, in audioliterature the different ‘voices’, alias sound signals, belong to dif13 Exceptions to this rule are to be found in highly experimental audiotexts, like, e. g., those of the Neues Deutsches Hörspiel of the late 1960s and 1970s – experiments that radically undermine both the story-telling and the mimetic functions of conventional radioliterature. Coincidentally, it was a Graz scholar, Friedrich Knilli, who developed a much-disputed aesthetic theory concerning an ‘acoustical art form’, which he preferred to call a ‘totales Schallspiel’ (see Knilli 1961 and also Cory 1974: passim).

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

191

ferent codes combined alternately or simultaneously14. Therefore, for each individual artefact there is, on the level of discourse, a certain constellation of codes (the number and types of codes used), and for every single segment under scrutiny there is a specific configuration of codes: the number and different types of codes used within this particular segment. Different segments are therefore distinguishable not only by changes in the configuration of voices, but also by changes in the number or types of codes employed. These alterations serve to segmentalize audiotexts as well as to create variations and rhythm. Furthermore, since audioliterary texts usually last for less than one hour, they have to assist fairly quickly and economically their recipients in imagining and visualizing the fictitious worlds by a carefully selected choice of acoustic signs15. 3.4. Criteria for Analysing the Descriptive in Audioliterature In order to investigate the descriptive as a category in audioliterature, we need to draw on the general considerations (see Wolf’s introduction to this volume) concerning the predominant or typical nature of audioliterary signs as well as the relation between description and narration within this medium. Furthermore, the descriptive potential of the medium focussed and the recipient’s share in creating a fictional world will be taken into consideration. Applying these general considerations to the analysis of a typical sample audiotext will enable us to determine in how far the frame ‘descriptive’ is applicable to the medium in the first place and to delineate the typical forms and functions of descriptions in the given medium ‘audioliterature’.

14 Unlike the scores of a piece of orchestral music, the production scripts of audio stories, unfortunately, are hardly ever available. Scholars have either got to restrict themselves to the few published texts (but less than 1% of all literary audiotexts ever appear in printed form, and, if at all, those printed versions differ immensely from a proper soundscript) and thus cover only a marginal number of ‘canonized’ products. Alternatively, scholars, who are rarely so lucky as to be able to lay hands on production scripts, can resort to writing sound transcripts for themselves. 15

The potential simultaneity of those various acoustic signifiers requires an approach quite different from that to, e. g., painting or purely instrumental music, but overlaps with musico-literary genres (e. g. the pop song, the Kunstlied, and the opera).

192

Doris Mader

3.4.1. The Predominant or Typical Nature of Audioliterary Signs – Quantitative Versus Qualitative Hierarchy As far as the predominant or typical nature of audioliterary signs is concerned, audioliterature is informed by a typical hierarchy of codes. I find helpful two distinctions along the lines of quantity and of quality (function). As to the quantitative hierarchy of signs, verbal language, in audioliterature, typically comes before sound effects in the sense of (‘natural’, ‘mimetic’) noises, and those (‘natural’) noises override special sound effects (in the sense of distorting/modulating/ filtering those other sounds). These ‘special’ sound effects are more often than not outweighed by non-verbal vocal (human) sounds (snoring, coughing, clearing one’s throat, etc.). Last but not least, we have got silence as a separate discursive element16. The qualitative, that is functional, hierarchy of codes with respect to the overall dimension of the descriptive varies from audiotext to audiotext and from segment to segment, as the second audio example below will illustrate. 3.4.2. The Relation between Description and Narration As to the relation between description and narration, audioliterature as here defined can be said to be largely and prototypically informed by the macro-mode ‘narrative’ and that the descriptive constitutes merely a sub-dominant mode within the genre (see 1.6 above). 3.4.3. The Descriptive Potential of Audioliterature and the Recipient’s Share Concerning the descriptive potential of the medium, if it is true that the typical objects of descriptions “are static and spatial and additionally appeal the sense of vision” (Wolf in this volume: 39), audioliterature does not immediately seem to suggest itself as a genre with a high affinity to the descriptive. The descriptive potential of audioliterary works should, however, not be underestimated. The fact that the heterogeneous audio signifiers can complement each other semantically (and theoretically also contradict each other), renders the de16

Pauses are not included in this hierarchy because they can concern all other types of signs except for silence. I have not yet come across an audio artefact with literal ‘pauses of silence’ (or nothing else, for that matter), even if, paradoxically, side-texts to published radio plays sometimes demand them.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

193

scriptive potential rather high and also enables producers to economize their audio material. Indeed, there is a necessity in audioliterature “to describe scenery and people [...] implicitly and obliquely and in a matter of seconds” (McLoughlin 1998: 56). Inasmuch as the number and combinations of codes usually vary from segment to segment, so can and do the degree and function of descriptiveness – a further intricacy that adds to the complexity of descriptivity in audioliterature. Though immediately appealing to the sense of hearing, the visual, to which the descriptive belongs in our customary hierarchy of senses, is by no means excluded in audioliterature. On the contrary, within the alternation between the narrative and the descriptive that governs also audioliterary storytelling, the descriptive has a particular potential to trigger the listeners’ imaginative capacity, to assist them in creating internal visualizations. 3.4.4. Criteria Applied and Further Developed: Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life In order to elucidate the descriptive in our chosen medium I would like to resort to another audio artefact in order to elaborate on the theoretical considerations discussed above. The example taken is Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life, a ‘radio play’ originally broadcast on 11th December 2000 on BBC Radio 4 in the programme slot The Afternoon Play. What follows is an approach that allows for a paradigmatic analysis of individual segments of any given audiosyntagma. This will lead to a consideration of the special functions of the descriptive in the given medium in general, and within chosen segments of this selected audiotext in particular. The initial sequence of this current audiotext illustrates the points made so far and at the same time serves as a good example of the descriptive as a subdominant frame in an audio artefact informed by the sub-mode ‘dramatic’. The story conveyed in Alexandra Caddell’s 44-minute audio artefact is advertised in the schedules (as well as announced in the introductory paratext) as follows: “In Alexandra Caddell’s comic play, which takes place in real time, Marcus Mundy has 44 minutes in which to park his car, get to the theatre and propose to his girlfriend. But a lot can happen in 44 minutes.” (BBC Online 2000) Apart from this brief paratext we, the listeners, have nothing but soundtrack to

194

Doris Mader

hold on to17. What do we actually hear in this radio artefact? We can distinguish sound effects, verbal language in interaction in the form of dialogue (Marcus verbally interacts with his fiancée Melissa) as well as verbal language in the form of monologue (Marcus talking to himself after he has dropped her at the theatre). The broadcast transmits acoustic signals, sounds – and here I have to resort to verbal description, which cannot match the real audio experience – that imitate the sounds of an engine roaring, an indicator clicking, the sounds of a car speeding up, braking and coming to a halt by bumping into another car as well as the subdued roar of general traffic and the car door opening and closing; also, the sound of footsteps, and the rain falling as well as the rustling of the jacket during our hero’s effort to manoeuvre his car into a parking space18. The various codes this time are applied more in the simultaneous than in the consecutive mode that is so characteristic of the ‘news bulletin’ frame of The War of the Worlds. The perception of these signals, in the listener’s mind, becomes transformed into the apperception of certain signs (see Cory 1974: 2-5). Apart from their ‘iconic’ mimesis, all those signs are also highly descriptive of the spatial as well as the temporal settings of this story19: the inside of a car, the road, the city, which becomes further specified, first by means of ‘word scenery’ when Marcus triumphantly cries: “Who says you can’t park in London?”, and further by means of the ‘descriptive’ sound effect of Big Ben. Among the described ‘objects’ are both static ones (the existents car, city, road) as well as dynamic ones, namely processes (the driving and parking of a car, using the indicator for turning left or right, and also time running out). Neither of these existents and processes, how-

17

We already imagine a rather young man and therefore expect to hear a fairly young voice; also, the parking of a car somewhere near a theatre anticipates urban surroundings. Additionally, the object ‘car’ is placed at the centre of our attention and the reference to Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life taking place “in real time” (ibid.) raises the expectation of some immediate action involving the character Marcus and his fiancée, events to which we expect to become, so to speak, ear-witnesses. 18 These sounds resemble and thus adequately represent the ‘aural sense data’ of driving a car. Their ‘as if’ quality (their fictional quality), however, has some more or less sophisticated studio equipment as its source. 19

Those deictic signs are as much indexical (of the context) as they are ‘iconic’ in imitating ‘natural’ sounds. This indexical function renders the use of those signs ‘descriptive’.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

195

ever, have so far contributed much to a concatenation of action, but more or less only provide the background to (further) interaction. The core function of ‘vivid’ representation is here achieved by the immediacy and iconicity of the ‘dramatic mode’, by the congruence between story time and broadcast time (hence “real time”) rather than by any descriptive details. Characters and settings thus become identified rather than specified. The important thing is that the non-verbal signifiers are reduced to the most typical ones that immediately allow us to identify the situation and its spatial setting. Audioliterature especially requires this economical use of acoustic signifiers because of the scarcity of (broadcast) time and the limited capacity of listeners to pay attention and transform ephemeral signals into signs. This sort of economy, of course, is particularly important in the opening sequences of audiotexts when listeners have to be ‘drawn’ into the story and be prevented from switching programmes or turning off altogether, so the first few minutes are decisive20. What is actually achieved here is an effet de réel, an illusion of reality. Depending on the ‘object’ described and the need to focus our attention we are presented with sound signals consecutively or simultaneously. A recording ‘on location’, that is, a recording of the real traffic noises in a London street, would more likely than not simply irritate the listener and could easily be confusing as to the object that is meant to be signified. In other words, the ‘sound scenery’ in the initial sequence of Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life is effected by metonymic icons that paradigmatically construct what would otherwise become acoustically drowned21. The initial sequence metonymically presents 20

Audioliterature, in its dependence on the programme slots usually provided, has to compete particularly with other radio programmes and is often ‘consumed’ by listeners engaged in other activities (driving a car, cooking, jogging and the like). Therefore, the genre in its typical mainstream manifestations cannot afford to put excessive demands on listeners.

21

The sound effects not only iconicise ‘a car moving’, but within the basic iconic mimesis (of this quasi-dramatic audiotext) those signifiers (the hooting, the braking, the indicating) are also (simply) indexical in that they point towards an immediate context, become indices of the objects themselves simply being there; thus, the signifiers ‘maintain’ the existence of a car and a man driving this car and talking to himself. Likewise, some of those acoustic signifiers are also indexical of the car turning right and left and following a certain route through the city. Hence, what we have actually got here in terms of a paradigmatic discursive organization is the metonymic juxtaposition of certain verbal sounds, sound effects and sound qualities that become immediately associated with someone in the process of driving a car through the city

196

Doris Mader

us with the main character and also identifies the spatial and temporal settings of the story. The even more specific temporal ‘localization’ of the story is achieved in the subsequent segments by the repeated verbal references to time as well as by the striking of the clock indicating the process of time passing. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the whole of the artefact, and applying all criteria discussed so far, we can state the following: The basic relation between description and narration is determined in this audio artefact by its ‘story-telling’ character and, hence, the macromode of the narrative. The mode used (the immediacy of the dramatic, the showing) indicates a here and now, making us ear-witnesses, so to speak, to Marcus’s ensuing mishaps during his desperate pursuit of ‘change’, the coins he needs to feed the parking meter22. The descriptive functions of identification, vivid representation and providing facts rather than anything else, are sufficiently fulfilled to qualify these introductory segments as highly, though not exclusively, descriptive. As to ‘vivid representation’, the vividness derives mainly from the acoustic immediacy of rather conventionalized iconic sounds, typical of the situation referred to. Whenever Marcus moves to a different place and meets a new character, the descriptive again becomes relevant and will indeed temporarily also become the major function of the acoustic signifiers combined. They serve to ‘soundshape’ the background to the foreground of the events and happenings taking place. of London (but signs, which, of course, originate from the technical devices of studio equipment). These sounds in their iconic quality are supposed to originate from the ‘existents’ of the story, hence they are understood as belonging to the diegetic (or intradiegetic) level. However, these signifying sound signals sometimes are even less than iconic but, because of their metonymic and conventionalized quality, border on being reduced to mere (semiotic) symbols: “[W]e find that the demands of indexical signification are very often inversely related to those of iconicity.” (White 2005: 166) 22

During Marcus’s odyssey through the streets of London, his mishaps will include an encounter with a sadistic traffic warden, who refuses to change money, and his subsequent failure to change his fifty-pound note on a bus ride through London. Despite all his efforts to act, he seems a fairly passive hero, who, after his fiancée’s car has finally been hauled off, makes it to the theatre only in time to learn that Melissa has swapped him for a man who manages to be there, on time. Eventually, after having been charged with some criminal offences (including dodging the bus fare and, in his desperate attempt to get some change, even drug trafficking), he ends up earning his living by selling change to London car drivers who have found a parking space but are in want of ‘change’.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

197

As to the quantitative hierarchy, the verbal clearly dominates. Moreover, because the sub-mode chosen is that of ‘showing’, the descriptive is here subservient both to narration and to the sub-mode ‘dramatic’, hence we are provided with sound scenery and word scenery. As concerns the descriptive potential, this particular format of an audio drama as such does not particularly lend itself to the descriptive. However, there is a certain need to transmit necessary information as to characters, time, space other than by means of an intracompositional narrator and/or the so-called ‘descriptor’. This ‘absolute nature’ of the dramatic mode is partly compensated for by means of information integrated into dialogues, but a relatively high percentage of the ‘descriptive’ details of the information required is assigned to the various sound effects. The qualitative hierarchy in support of the descriptive, in this typical format of audioliterature – a ‘radio play’ which actually deserves this term – thus privileges sound effects over language over pauses (here signifying the passing of time). Because of the relative scarcity of the information given, the recipient’s share in imagining and thus creating the various ‘scenes’ is comparatively higher than in most printed narratives, film and the theatre. It is in this respect that audioliterature regularly (and thus prototypically) deviates from most printed literature. 3.4.5. Criteria for Analysing Segments in Audio Artefacts For each of the audioliterary segments scrutinized we would again need to further specify our questions along the following lines: To what extent is the segment descriptive in the first place (criterion of descriptive quality)? If several codes are employed within certain segments, which one dominates, and which ones are subdominant (criterion of dominance)? To which code or codes and to which combination and/or alternation is description delegated in the respective segments (criterion of interplay)? Although the sound effects in our chosen example (the introductory segments) are not quantitatively dominant, description here is primarily assigned to sound effects or at least as much to sound effects as to language. The effect thus created is that of a background and context ‘soundshaped’ by various non-verbal sounds, partly complemented by Marcus’s talking to himself, a background to which the verbal interaction also with his fiancée is foregrounded. The descriptive, however, is not exclusively performed by the non-verbal acoustic

198

Doris Mader

signifiers; what we get in the ‘service’ of the descriptive is an interplay of the privileging of one type of sign before another – and vice versa. 3.5. Specific Functions of the Descriptive in Audioliterature 3.5.1. Focussing the Recipient’s Attention In contrast to the descriptive in general, the descriptive in audioliterature, in whatever way encoded, rarely resorts to and usually cannot afford lengthy and ‘detailed’ descriptions: sensory details are much less regularly specified in audiotexts than in other literary media and are more often than not left to the listener’s imagination. But whenever more detailed descriptions occur, they usually heighten the recipient’s attention and awareness. Such foregrounded details and objects sometimes have an outstanding or a rather ambiguous or even enigmatic quality that would be extremely difficult to convey as convincingly and effectively in other genres and media, including film. 3.5.2. Description versus Interpretation and the ‘Epistemological’ Function in Artist Descending a Staircase In order to outline what I suggest referring to as the ‘epistemological’ function of the descriptive in audioliterature, I am now going to investigate a more ‘highbrow’ audiotext, one of the very few published23 and likewise ‘canonized’ audiotexts, namely Artist Descending a Staircase by Tom Stoppard (originally broadcast in 1972). This ‘play for radio’ is as much about art in general (hence the title’s intermedial allusion to Marcel Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” [“Nu descendant un escalier”]) as about the audio medium itself and thus also meta-aesthetically investigates the most pertinent qualities and ‘strange’ possibilities of radio. It is specifically relevant to the question of the descriptive because the two central enigmas of its story hinge upon the tension between ‘description’ and ‘interpretation’, evoking a gestalt-switch picture as ambiguous as the wellknown duck-rabbit picture. It is the story of three artists (Donner, Beauchamp and Martello) who have been living together for over fifty years and in their young 23 ‘Published’ until recently almost always meant ‘printed’ and hardly ever, unfortunately, issued as tape or CD.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

199

days entertained a relationship with a woman, Sophie, who was affected by a gradual loss of sight, the alleged ‘blindness’ of the medium radio thus becoming mirrored as well as exploited on the level of story. The play actually starts with an audio-within-the-audio-text, namely a tape-recording supposedly being played in the here and now. This recording acoustically conveys Donner being killed by falling down the stairs. In the here and now Beauchamp and Martello accuse each other of having committed murder. In a series of flashbacks24, the story of a fatal misunderstanding unfolds. Hence, apart from playing with the lack of visual and the medium’s most pertinent dimension, time (cf. Mader 2004), the artefact also exploits the tension between description and other modes of communication, viz. interpretation and narration. One of two mysteries is Donner’s death, represented in an audio recording, an acoustic representation, a fragmentary ‘description’ of sorts. This sequence of sound effects, however, only testifies to someone falling down the stairs and is open to various interpretations as to the logical concatenation of the sounds in what can be reconstructed either as an “accident” or as “manslaughter” (Stoppard 1984: 19). Hence, the sound effects themselves are not only described by the two men left behind, but become the object of very subjective, and also contradictory interpretations. The other mystery of the story conveyed is who really loved whom, and the solving of this riddle is dependent on ‘ekphrasis’, the verbal description of a non-verbal artefact, in this case the description of paintings25. So the acoustic mystery, which introduces Artist Descending a Staircase, has its counterpart in ‘innocent’ descriptions of a series of paintings, which likewise prove to be potentially ‘deceiving’. This is linked to the three men’s extraordinary relationship with Sophie, who, fifty years ago, committed suicide after having been left by the one she believed she loved (Beauchamp) and rejecting the one she believed she did not love (Donner). She had visited an art exhibition called “Frontiers in Art”, to which the three young artists had contributed a series of paintings, later described by her as “paintings 24

In terms of temporal structure, the audio artefact is constructed in a V-shape, going back as far as 1914 and then following the same stages alias ‘steps’ of ‘descending’ and ‘ascending’ time back to the present. 25 This is an analogy to James A. Heffernan’s famous definition of ekphrasis as “a verbal representation of visual representation” (Heffernan 1993: 2).

200

Doris Mader

of barbed wire fences” (ibid.: 36). Sophie, who had had more eyes for, but could not see sharply enough, the chosen one among the three artists (Donner), later, when already blind, remembered the three men photographed posing beside their paintings that, in her words, were paintings of rows of “black stripes on a white background” (ibid.: 41). In this way, Beauchamp had become ‘identified’ as her object of love because his painting was marked out as the one she described as representing “black railings on a field of snow” (ibid.)26. However, Beauchamp was identified merely from Sophie’s inadequate description of his painting (while she could still see a little), and the missing link in the reconstruction of the truth turns out to be the important distinction between foreground and background. What the listener has already begun to realize is now also beginning to dawn on Donner, namely that identification depended on Sophie’s ambiguous and thus misleading ekphrasis of the paintings, and that, subsequently, this case of mistaken identity prevented Sophie and Donner from becoming lovers. MARTELLO: Did you ever wonder whether it was you she loved? DONNER: No, of course not. It was Beauchamp. MARTELLO: To us it was Beauchamp, but which of us did she see in her mind’s eye ...? DONNER: But it was Beauchamp – she remembered his painting, the snow scene. MARTELLO: Yes. She asked me whether I had painted it within five minutes of meeting me in the garden that day; she described it briefly, and I had an image of black vertical railings, like park railings, right across the canvas, as though one were looking at a field of snow through the bars of a cage; not like Beauchamp’s snow scene at all. DONNER: But it was the only snow scene. MARTELLO: Yes, it was, but [...] – it was a long time afterwards when this occurred to me, when she was already living with Beauchamp –– DONNER: What occurred to you, Martello? MARTELLO: Well, your painting of the white fence –– DONNER: White fence? MARTELLO: Thick white posts, top to bottom across the whole canvas, an inch or two apart, black in the gaps –– DONNER: Yes, I remember it. Oh God. MARTELLO: Like looking at the dark through the gaps in a white fence. 26

Yet, Donner is deceived when he says: “There was no choice. She fell in love with him at first sight”. But he is quite right in adding: “As I did with her, I think. After that, even when my life was at its best there was a small part missing and I knew that I was going to die without ever feeling that my life was complete.” (Ibid. 55)

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

201

DONNER: Oh my God. MARTELLO: Well, one might be wrong, but her sight was not good even then. DONNER: Oh my God. (Ibid.: 55-56, my emphasis)

Since the black-and-white ‘Frontiers of Art’ paintings were obsessed with fences, railings and bars of cages, the one ascribed to Beauchamp, in Sophie’s unreliable ‘ekphrasis’, could as well have been Donner’s, one being the other’s visual negative, so to speak. Depending on what is perceived as foreground or background, either painting corresponds to the description given. This gestalt-switch effect could very well account for Donner realizing the truth and thus, finally, losing his balance and falling to death – but in fact he dies while trying to kill a fly, and unlike Martello and Beauchamp, the audience realizes this innocent truth in the end. The sound tape and the paintings referred to both become the objects of description, one a dynamic (actantional), the other a static one. The bipolarity of the descriptive is illustrated in the subjective and (apparently) mutually exclusive versions, producing an ambiguity that triggers off the ‘action’. Of course, this double polarity of description is important in the understanding of the central enigma in Artist Descending a Staircase. The verbal descriptions, the verbal rendering of the visual sensory data are confusing and the representation becomes a threat to the identification of the object referred to. The conflicting versions of the painting’s visual details, however, could also be interpreted as disclosing certain different ‘interests’ in establishing a particular version of the past, a past that can safely be (re)constructed as no commitments whatsoever are entailed in the here and now. 3.6. Other Functions of the Descriptive in Audioliterature The descriptive in the case of Stoppard’s radiotext does not only compensate for the visual we are supposed to be deprived of in audioliterature. It hence does not merely perform a) a compensatory function, but rather b) a focalizing function in that it also focuses our attention on the central existents, on ‘what they really are’. Paradoxically, the descriptive functions of identification and clarification in part become playfully undermined if not reversed in Artist Descending a Staircase, so that the descriptive is used here in a more general c) epistemological function, namely the function of radically calling into question the ‘reality’ of our perception and the role language

202

Doris Mader

plays in conveying these perceptions27. We can, however, particularize further functions of the descriptive that belong to the ‘(proto-) typical’ features of audioliterary storytelling. 3.6.1. ‘Suspending the Listener’s Disbelief’ and the ‘Ontological’ Function of the Descriptive in Audioliterature Ambiguity is quite frequently carried to even further extremes than in Artist Descending a Staircase, and the descriptive does have its role in this, too. Actually, another important function of describing ‘surfaces’ of objects and giving specific sense data is to bestow reality to that which is not just ambiguous, but also uncanny, surreal, or even, in terms of the ‘realistic’, impossible. Characters and objects of such an ambivalent ontological status that make listeners doubt whether or not to believe what is ‘there’ acoustically, keep haunting the medium radioliterature. Therefore, audioliterary descriptions not infrequently even refer to existents that are not only ambiguous or difficult to conceive of, but also of an ambivalent ontological status. This, in Fay Weldon’s words, is also “part of the nature of those powerful alternative realities blithely referred to as radio plays” (Weldon 1985: vii)28. “Descriptions can […] contribute to the illusionist experientiality and the meaning of stories” (see in this volume: 44). This may even refer to stories that border on the enigmatic, surreal, even the impossible. In this respect, the impact of the descriptive is arguably more powerful in audioliterature than in other media. Because of the high affinity of acoustic description to ‘reality’, listeners have the impresssion of being ‘close’ to what is (re)presented, and not only complement the given signs in the acoustic field but actually perform inner visualisations and thus complement them also in another perceptual field. This act of imagination is a very powerful psychological process, especially because we not only imagine characters as real but at the same time actually hear them speak, or cry, or even die. The de-

27

Moreover, those descriptions also meta-aesthetically foreground the way in which the visual and the imaginative are of paramount importance in and for successful radioliterature. 28

Shaun McLoughlin devotes a whole chapter to the question “how language properly employed can make the listener participate and believe in a reality beyond the mundane and the every-day” (1998: 55) – and, of course, this applies not only to the acoustic realization of language.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

203

scriptive within such audio artefacts thus can bestow reality even to that which runs counter to our understanding of the world. This is, hence, another major function of the descriptive and a more particular form of ‘suspending the listener’s disbelief’. Outside the scope of science fiction radio plays, this ‘expansion’ of ‘reality’ towards the impossible works most evocatively if the rest of the ‘story told’, by contrast, is in full accordance with what we regard as the laws of our world. It works particularly well when the ‘incredible’ unexpectedly arises within commonplace mass media formats or unwonted forms of ‘ordinary’ (verbal) interaction and communication that are so typical of the conventional audioliterary artefact. One more example may illustrate this medium-specific ‘ontological’ function of the descriptive: In The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles contrived to make plausible, or at least believable, what goes far beyond the listeners’ conception of reality by embedding it within the format of a series of quasi-radio ‘reports’ (heightening the effect with actual references to real places). Apart from the description of the Martian cylinders transforming into Martian monsters, the final conquest of New York by the Martians is a case in point: [Announcer:] [over traffic sounds, sirens of ships, church bells] I am speaking from the – roof of Broadcasting Building. I’m speaking from the roof of Broadcasting Building, New York City. The – bells you hear – are – ringing to – warn the people to evacuate the city as the Martians approach. Estimated in last twohours – three million people moved out along the roads – to the north – Hutchison River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic. – Avoid bridges to Long Island, hopelessly jammed. – All communication with New Jersey shore closed – ten minutes ago. – No more defences. – Our army is wiped out – artillery – air force – everything wiped out. This may be the – last broadcasting. – We’ll stay here to the end. [Over the sound of a choir singing] People are holding service below us – in the cathedral. Now I look down the Harbour. All – all manner of boats, overloaded with fleeing population, pulling out from docks. Streets are all jammed. – Noise in crowds like New Year’s Eve in city. Wait a minute, the – enemy now in sight above the Palisades. Five – five great machines. First one is – crossing the river. I can see it from here, wading – wading – wading the Hudson like a man wading through a brook. – A bulletin’s handed me. – Martian cylinders are – falling all over the country. One outside of Buffalo, one in Chicago – St. Louis – seem to be timed and spaced. – Now the first machine reaches the shore. He – stands watching, looking over the city. – His steel, cowlish head is even with the sky-scrapers. He waits for the others. – They rise like a line of new towers on the city’s west side – now they are lifting their metal hands. – This is the end now. Smoke comes out – black smoke – drifting over the city. – People in the streets see it now. – They’re running towards the East River, thousands of them – dropping in like rats. – Now the smoke’s spreading faster. It’s – reached – Times

204

Doris Mader

Square. – People are trying to run away from it, but it’s no use. They’re falling like flies. – Now the smoke’s crossing Sixth Avenue – Fifth Avenue – one hundred yards away ... it’s fifty feet [Reporter starts coughing, then the sound of something falling to the floor, traffic noise continues, sirens of ships. Silence.] [My transcript]

Quite a number of listeners in 1938 were actually taken in both by the vividness and feigned ‘accuracy’ of these ‘live’ descriptions and by the presence of those ‘objective’ (intracompositional) descriptors that were supposed to be merely reporting. Thus, this ‘ontological function’, even if not intended in this way, simply made them believe the whole story of a Martian invasion was actually true. The ontological function of the descriptive, however, is more frequently employed in ways more subtle than this to capture audiences. In a more recent BBC production, The Sea Warrior (2001) by Leila Aboulela, a character of an ambivalent nature ‘appears’, a man who knows things about other people and their past, a knowledge from a source quite unimaginable. He pesters his victims with details about alleged wrongdoings in the past. What makes the appearance of this strange man so uncanny is that his ‘real existence’ is substantiated not only by his acoustic presentation, but also because two intracompositional descriptors, in fact the two characters harassed by him, independently of each other ‘encounter’ him and give descriptions of his outer appearance. Interpreting his voice, alias character, as a mere psychological projection will therefore simply not work29, so that the descriptive here performs the ontological function of verifying the existence of someone quite inconceivable and making us believe in this character’s ‘reality’. The descriptive in this case constitutes a subdominant mode in an audio artefact that is informed by both the sub-modes ‘dramatic’ and ‘narrative’ and hence belongs to the category of ‘hybrid’ forms. This format of modal mixture is probably less frequently used than the purely ‘dramatic’ radiotexts, yet constitutes an important and fairly common type of radioliterary artefact, which, however, cannot be further elaborated on within the scope of this paper.

29

Not only do the two central characters ‘verify’ his existence but in the end his dead body is found by others, so his existence, if not his identity, somehow becomes proven.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

205

3.6.2. Description in Audioliterature and Transferability of Story The epistemological and ontological functions of the descriptive also call into question one of the basic assumptions, if not dogmas of narratology, that is, the transferability of story into other media. Although this applies to many audio artefacts, quite a number of ‘sound stories’ seem to work not just best, but more or less exclusively in the medium radio. Interestingly enough, it is particularly artefacts playing with the epistemological as well as the ontological function that are radiogenic – i. e., suitable for being broadcast – to a very high degree and resist transposition into other media. One more widely known example here is Harold Pinter’s ‘play’ Old Times. Originally written for the radio, the audiotext makes full use of ontological ambivalence. One of the characters ‘featured’, Anna, the ‘third’ figure in a strange triangle, in her acoustic presence ambivalently oscillates between a mere projection used by a married couple in a struggle for power over the past, and a guest present physically. Her ontologically uncertain ‘presence’ fails to work equally well on stage because there her physical presence allows for less scope to operate this ambivalence. 3.7. The Bipolarity of Audioliterary Descriptivity and Other Sub-Modes of Audioliterature Apart from the more or less ‘dramatic’ as well as ‘hybrid’ audiotexts, we can now work our way through the other possible sub-modes that can potentially inform audioliterary texts, namely the lyric and the narrative sub-modes. As opposed to the lyric, the narrative can be situated on both the levels of macro- and sub-modes30. If purely narrative audio artefacts are reduced to the use of language, they use the radio only as a transmitting medium – as much as purely verbal audio books providing voiced instead of printed texts – and do not properly belong to an intermedial discussion31. However, as far as the 30 Each macro-mode can feature on a sub-mode level, so the narrative can appear on various levels. The lyric, however, does not constitute a macro-mode, but needs to be distinguished from other modes by means of prototypical rather than definitive criteria. 31 In this purely ‘narrative’ mode, narrative voices, even if there are several, tend to be arranged with either no, radically reduced, or merely ‘ornamental’ sound effects. In their (near-)monomediality they more or less converge with printed narratives, and

206

Doris Mader

use of the lyric mode is concerned, there are quite a number of audiotexts worth scrutinizing, and I would like to round off my survey with a very brief comment on what is probably the most famous English audioliterary text to date, namely Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (first broadcast in 1954), an audiotext informed much more by the lyric than by the dramatic sub-mode. As is known, in aesthetic contexts description is never quite an innocent business, and there is little tendency towards completely innocent descriptions in literary artefacts in general. Indeed, ‘innocence’ is certainly not a label that can be stuck to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, neither in terms of the descriptive discourse nor as regards contents. There is hardly any ‘innocence’ to any of the existents or happenings (in a specific sense) and descriptions, in particular as to ‘characters’ and other living creatures appear heavily laden with ‘attitude’. FIRST VOICE (very softly): To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble-streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat [...]. (Thomas 1989: 3)

This initial passage no doubt answers to, as well as runs counter to, some of the criteria of description: it refers to the season of spring and a particular (fictional) sea-side place (temporal and spatial deictics). A lot is packed into these lines, in fact the deictic reference to a wood near the sea (the eponymous “Milk Wood”), the black sea itself and the fact that there are a number of fishing boats “bobbing” on the waves. What immediately strikes us here is that despite the obvious reference to a certain place at a certain seasonal time at dusk, this description uses the somewhat paradoxical metaphor of a “wood limping invisible down to the [...] sea” (ibid.). Even the visual and aural sensory data of this (otherwise unspecified) place previously given are defined by means of the place’s invisibility and silence, i. e., the fact that nothing can be seen or heard. The temporal and spatial deictic references, however, are complemented by the somewhat curious references to anthropomorphic creatures. The silence and desertedness of the town we are supposed to create mentally is enlivened by means of “the courters’ and rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to whatever descriptive potential they possess, it belongs to the discussion of ‘narrative fiction’ rather than intermediality.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

207

the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing-boat bobbing sea” (ibid.). If the descriptive is understood as a bipolar phenomenon (see the introduction to this volume: 26), then in this wording the subjectcentred pole can clearly be distinguished from the object-centred one. The wood “limping invisible” down to the sea is an animating metaphor and already mirrors several important features of this audiotext: the anthropomorphization of nature, a principle at work in the whole of this audiotext, the ‘objective’ invisibility of the ‘described’ objects and the topical element of sexuality hinted at with the ambiguous “moles see[ing] fine tonight” (Thomas 1989: 3) – to ‘see’ in the sense of ‘having sexual intercourse’ and ‘mole’ also being slang for the male sexual organ. The line about the “wood limping invisible down to the [...] sea” (ibid.) in fact beautifully mirrors the double polarity of the objectcentred pole (the wood sloping down, even if we can’t see it now and the trees being sinewy) and the subject-centred pole (the wood imagined as a living creature moving somewhere and being full of other living creatures itself, lovers and animals engaged in sexual activity). Also, this raises the question of who speaks and who perceives, so the issue is that of the intracompositional transmitter (the so-called descriptor) and the question of subjectivity. The “First Voice” in the audiotext is never labelled to be just a voice and not a character, and it takes some time to realize that this voice and the “Second Voice” (ibid.: 8 et passim) are situated on a different level than the many characters that will flit in and out of our ‘earshot’. This descriptive part vividly represents the place ‘Llareggub’ – an anagram of ‘bugger all’, which, apart from its obscene meaning also means ‘nothing at all’. The description of this place as hosting creatures engaged in their never-ending love-game, forms part of the subjective generalization along the lines of animating and anthropomorphizing metaphors. The human ‘existents’ and their anthropomorphic counterparts are rather at the centre of the focus on what happens to and with them; they appear in a paradoxical passivity (except for choosing sexual partners and giving birth to children), kind of driven by this one unifying force32. Those subjective and highly lyrical descriptions play 32

The individual episodes in this “play for voices” (subtitle) afford the pleasure of illustrating, in numerous variations, this all-embracing force at work. The overall ‘narrative’ thrust is reduced to the teleological principle of procreation, the never-ending cycle of life and death; and although these little episodes do have some rudimentary

208

Doris Mader

an essential part in the construction of the overall meaning of this audio artefact. It is this second pole, the pole of evaluation and perspective that determines the attitude towards the characters and objects described33.

4. Conclusion Having worked our way systematically through radiotexts informed by the dramatic, narrative, lyric and ‘hybrid’ micro-modes34, we have come across descriptions in all of the subtypes, and although the descriptive takes on different shapes, performs different functions within different audiotexts, and proportions vary to a high degree, there is no audiotext that can do entirely without the descriptive. Even though drawing an exact line between where description ends and narration or interpretation starts has proven to be a difficult business, the investigation of description in audioliterature nevertheless has turned out to be rewarding in the sense of adding new perspectives to the understanding of this genre. Audioliterary texts can be defined by their internal inter- or plurimedial quality (the fact that they prototypically combine several distinct codes and most frequently foreground verbal language). They also characteristically participate in the basic semiotic macro-mode of narrative (the cognitive frame ‘narrative’), and because of this affinity to ‘story’, description in audioliterature usually has to be seen as auxiliary or ancillary to the overall narrative thrust. Concerning the opposition audioliterary descriptiveness vs. audioliterary narrativity, this distinction can be applied quite neatly when we focus on individual parts of audiotexts where a preponderance of the descriptive occurs fairly regularly, while the overall narrative function – that of conveying a story – remains not only unaffected, narrative elements to themselves, due to the necessity to introduce numerous characters and to display the ever-changing circumstances of the ever-selfsame (sexual) intercourse, they contain more descriptivity than narrativity. 33 The temporal verbal medium, usually described (defined) as best suited to render dynamic objects of description (in consecutive stages) in an iconic discursive sequence, in this radiotext is mainly used to evoke the mental image of the spatial and visual existents (sea, wood, town, people) and, therefore, of something static rather than dynamic. 34

See footnote 12.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

209

but indeed is supported by descriptions. The ‘existents’ of story become ‘subjected’ to description as an important step to setting up immediate contexts and the potential for action, so that the deictic function of the descriptive is the most relevant. This is already one of the most fundamental functions of the descriptive in audioliterature, namely providing for the recipient’s orientation as to the spatial and temporal setting and the anthropomorphic characters involved. Such deictic referencing is normally achieved by verbal prompts of a deictic nature as well as the ‘soundscaping’ and ‘soundshaping’ of surrounding contexts by means of sound effects. It has been interesting to see, however, that although sound effects play such an important part in establishing spatial and temporal dimensions, the acoustic signifiers actually deployed for this purpose are typically highly conventionalized ones, especially in initial segments, where normally no defamiliarizing effects whatsoever occur. This is largely due to the ephemeral nature of radioliterature that requires a specific organisation of the signifiers and puts a relatively high demand on the recipients, whose share in creating the fictional world is much higher than, e. g., in film, where they are presented with ready-made visuals with only a soundtrack accompaniment. From the subdominant frames in audioliterature, the ‘dramatic’ one in particular has been highlighted and chosen in order to illustrate the various ways in which the descriptive is incorporated into the audio-discourse and is relevant for the conveying of the story: Firstly, we have seen that the necessity to restrict discourse to the programme slots requires, prototypically, that the essential information as to character, place and time is given rather plainly. This usually results in initial segments of audioliterary texts only indicating, instead of describing in detail, spatial and temporal settings in the form of sound scenery and word scenery. Thus the descriptive here performs, apart from its deictic, more of an economizing function. Authors and particularly professional directors and producers also have to economize in the use of sounds so as not to overwhelm the listeners with a torrent of different sounds, but sound signifiers that can easily be decoded simultaneously to their aural transmission. Secondly, focussing on the descriptive within audioliterature allows us to appreciate the high degree to which recipients have to mentally create the worlds often only scantily ‘sketched’ out to them. As a subdominant frame within audioliterary storytelling, the descriptive has been shown not only to have an important compensatory

210

Doris Mader

function, especially as far as spatial settings and scenery as well as the outer appearance of characters are concerned; descriptions in audioliterature also perform an aesthetic function, in the term’s literal meaning of ‘perception’, namely in assisting us to internally visualize what is not shown, but acoustically represented. Thirdly, though audioliterature is bound to the technical medium radio and is thus a temporal medium, this does not necessarily mean that audioliterature also favours temporal objects of description. The preferred objects of description proper are usually the so-called existents from the level of story (characters, temporal and spatial settings). Furthermore, individual objects or characters become further specified in audioliterature if there is a need to specifically focus our attention on them. It is because of the scarcity with which ‘objects’ receive detailed descriptions that those descriptions are usually of paramount importance for the meaning and significance of an audiotext. Also, despite the ‘immediacy’ of (dramatic) audiotexts, there can be no visual ‘proof’, so conflicting descriptions of such objects are of particular interest. Apart from this more general focalizing function of the prototypically heavily linguistic passages, we have also encountered two more specific ones, the ontological function of bestowing reality to someone or something beyond belief (The War of the Worlds; The Sea Warrior) and the epistemological function of calling into question the capacity of human beings to perceive, to ‘know’ and to represent reality (Artist Descending a Staircase). Among the potential myriad of possibilities of combining codes in quantitative terms, we have been able to deduce a typical quantitative hierarchy of sound signifiers for audioliterary texts in general. Independently of the structure of the individual artefact, the general predominance of verbal discourse in audioliterature has accustomed listeners to foregrounding the verbal before the ‘background’ of ‘other sounds’. This generalized quantitative hierarchy has had its effects on productive as well as receptive processes so that the specific interplay of these layers of the audio texture for individual works has to be foregrounded against the background of this norm. For an understanding of the function of the descriptive it is, therefore, essential to set the qualitative hierarchy of the various acoustic signifiers against the general background of the quantitative hierarchy. Against this general backcloth we have therefore also had to establish a specific prototypical qualitative hierarchy of acoustic sig-

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

211

nifiers in their descriptive function. We have been able to show that sound effects, though equally important in terms of the descriptive as linguistic signs, are not equally distributed in the various segments nor are they equally assigned to the (basic) functions of the descriptive. The elemental deictic functions of identification, representation as well as of providing the factual are more often than not efficiently delegated to non-verbal, highly conventionalized sound signifiers, particularly in initial segments of the discourse of sound stories. The vividness of representation, as well as the illusion of reality are typically effected by a carefully calculated and well-balanced combination of both the verbal and the non-verbal (including music). All this usually applies to the description of dynamic as well as of static objects. Following the outline of the specific functions of the descriptive, the purely verbal overrides the use of all other types of signs in foregrounding objects, whereas sound effects (and music) are predominant in providing contexts and background. The general endeavour of the preceding pages has been to sharpen our senses, our sense of hearing, to the flux that exists between the two-dimensional coordinates of the descriptive vs. the narrative, as well as between the object-centred vs. the subject-centred poles of descriptions. If we include the three-dimensional aspect of foreground vs. background, we might get a better idea and – I am fully aware of the paradoxical nature of this metaphor – a better ‘picture’ of how description needs to be set off against other cognitive frames. This way, and here is yet another such paradox, we can more easily ‘figure out’ where, how and wherefore description actually occurs in audioliterature.

References Primary Sources Aboulela, Leila (2001). The Sea Warrior [broadcast on 21st May 2001 on BBC Radio 4 in the programme slot ‘The Afternoon Play’]. Caddell, Alexandra (2000). Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life [broadcast on 11th December 2000 on BBC Radio 4 in the programme slot ‘The Afternoon Play’]. DerHörVerlag, ed. (1996). H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds. Radio adaptation: Howard Koch. Director: Orson Welles [CBS 1938]. Audio Books 235.

212

Doris Mader

Miller, Jeff (online). “The War of the Worlds (1938)”. History of American Broadcasting. http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/script.html [10/04/2006]. Stoppard, Tom (1984). “Artist Descending a Staircase” [1972]. Four Plays for Radio. London: Faber. 15-58. Thomas, Dylan (1989). Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices [1954]. Reclam Fremdsprachentexte 9248. Stuttgart: Reclam. Secondary Sources Ash, William (1985). The Way to Write Radio Drama. London: Elm Tree Books. BBC Online (2000). “BBC Online 24 Hours Radio Schedules – BBC Radio 4, Monday 11th December 2000”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schedules/2000/12/11/radio4.html [05/07/ 2001]. Cory, Mark Ensign (1974). The Emergence of an Acoustical Art Form: An Analysis of the German Experimental Hörspiel of the 1960s. University of Nebraska Studies, n. s. 45. Lincoln, NE: Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Crook, Tim (1999). Radio Drama: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Esslin, Martin (1971). “The Mind as a Stage”. Theatre Quarterly 3/1: 5-11. — (1987). The Field of Drama: How the Signs of Drama Create Meaning on Stage and on Screen. London: Methuen. Faulstich, Werner (1981). Eine Studie zum Hörspiel ‘The War of the Worlds’ (1938) von Orson Welles. Medienbibliothek Serie B: Studien 1. Tübingen: Narr. Guralnick, Elissa S. (1996). Sight Unseen: Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard and Other Contemporary Dramatists on Radio. Athens, OH: Ohio UP. Heffernan, James A. (1993). Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago, IL: Chicago UP. Knilli, Friedrich (1961). Das Hörspiel: Mittel und Möglichkeiten eines totalen Schallspiels. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Mader, Doris (2002). “‘Shut Your Eyes and Listen’: Ein Plädoyer zur Be-Sinnung der (anglistischen) Literaturwissenschaft auf Audioliteratur”. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 27/1: 37-50.

The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?

213

— (2003). “‘I saw it on the radio’, ‘I listened to the book’ – Audioliterature in the Age of Glocalized Communication”. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 51/1: 1-14. — (2004). “Sir Tom Stoppard”. The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 Oct. The Literary Dictionary Company. http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4249 [10/04/2006]. McLoughlin, Shaun (1998). Writing for Radio: How to Write Plays, Features and Short Stories to Get You on Air. 2nd ed. Oxford: How to Books. Weldon, Fay (1985). “Foreword” to William Ash. The Way to Write Radio Drama. London: Elm Tree Books. vi-vii. White, John J. (2005). “Coconut Shells and Creaking Doors. A Semiotic Approach to the Avant-garde Radio Play’s Soundeffects”. Outside-In – Inside-Out: Iconicity in Language and Literature 4. Eds. Constantino Maeder, Olga Fischer, William J. Herlofsky. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 151-169.

For Your Eyes Only Some Thoughts on the Descriptive in Film Klaus Rieser This article attempts to elucidate the rarely discussed issue of description in film (with implicit and sometimes explicit comparison to literature). After a discussion of Christian Metz’s ‘descriptive syntagma’, three theses are presented: first, that descriptive sequences in film are not merely spatio-static, but rather include events; second, that in most cases narration and description coexist in film; and third, that description and narration, although coexisting, are nonetheless to be seen as independent variables. In discussing these theses, the article traces the peculiar qualities of description in film, focusing on its relation to narrative. Next, the usefulness of the term ‘description’ for film theory and analysis is problematized, and some of its possible structural and ideological pitfalls are pointed out. Finally, the article presents terms under which description – albeit with a different focus – has been discussed in film theory and criticism.

1. Introduction In his introductory article to this volume, Werner Wolf outlines a general theory of the descriptive, applicable to theory as well as to everyday experience, and, moreover, presents a comparative analysis of description in various media, concentrating on literature, music and painting. Like other contributors to this volume, I wish to add to, and engage with, this analysis by focusing on the descriptive in a particular medium, in this case, film. My own thoughts on the descriptive in film will progress from a concept that was first formulated by the legendary semiologist of film Christian Metz. The presentation of Metz’s ‘descriptive syntagma’ will be followed by a discussion of the relation between description and narration (or, more precisely, the descriptive and the narrative) in film, against the backdrop of that relation in literature. An analytic concept of this relation, I contend, cannot be simply transferred from literature to film, but has to be tailored to film’s unique and specific

216

Klaus Rieser

dimension, the dominating visual aspect1. With this visual aspect in mind, I will here present three theses as a first approach to conceptualizing the descriptive in film. I will suggest that description in film encompasses also events (first thesis) and that in film narration and description coexist (second thesis). The third thesis – that narration and description are to be treated as independent variables – leads to the suggestion of an analytic grid which enables us to distinguish the degree of descriptivity of filmic genres, individual films, or film scenes. Finally, I will problematize the term ‘description’ for film analysis before turning to central terms under which the descriptive has been discussed in film theory.

2. Christian Metz’s ‘Descriptive Syntagma’ In this volume, Wolf and Nünning point out that descriptivity is rarely discussed in literary theory. Yet it is almost never discussed in film theory and does not generally receive an entry in dictionaries of film terms2. A notable exception to this neglect is an account by perhaps the most eminent film semiologist and key theorist of film form, Christian Metz, who, however, most likely transferred the term from literary theory. In this early phase (he later turned to psychoanalytically oriented theorizations of film) he intended to get to the bottom of the common linguistic metaphor according to which ‘film is (like) a language’. Therefore, he compared film to natural languages in a variety of ways. He came to conclude, for example, that film was not langue (language system) but langage (language), amongst other reasons because it lacked the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Interestingly for narratologists, he based this claim on the fact that (mainstream) film has adopted a narrative form (no image resembles another one, but most narrative films resemble each other in their principle syntagmatic configuration). Thus, in developing his ‘Grande Syntagmatique’ in his books Essais sur la signification au cinéma 1

For the same reason this article is restricted to the influence of the visual on cinematic storytelling, although film consists of at least five dimensions which constitute its language: moving photographic images, recorded phonetic sound, recorded noises, recorded musical sound, and writing (credits, intertitles, written materials in the shot).

2

E. g. Blandford 2001; Hayward 1996; O’Sullivan 1994. An informal survey at a conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies also revealed that the term puzzled many media scholars.

For Your Eyes Only

217

(1971, 1972) and Film Language (1974), he distinguished eight syntagmatic types (see below, Figure 1).

Autonomous segments 1. Autonomous shot Syntagma Achronological syntagmas 2. Parallel syntagma 3. Bracket syntagma Chronological segments 4. Descriptive Narrative syntagma 5. Alternate (narrative) syntagma Linear narrative syntagmas 6. Scene Sequences (proper) 7. Episodic sequence 8. Ordinary

Figure 1: Metz’s eight syntagmatic types [my graph]

With these eight syntagmatic types Christian Metz limits his analysis to ‘autonomous segments’, i. e. to segments that can be distinguished from other elements within the film. Amongst those, he differentiates the ‘autonomous shot’ (for example a sequence shot) from what he calls ‘syntagmas’, constituted by a number of shots and in film literature more often referred to as sequences or scenes. Amongst these syntagmas he isolates ‘achronological syntagmas’ (the ‘parallel syn-

218

Klaus Rieser

tagma’3, and the ‘bracket syntagma’). The chronological syntagmas are further subdivided into the ‘descriptive syntagma’ and a variety of ‘narrative syntagmas’. A descriptive syntagma is an autonomous segment of a film that consists of various shots arranged in chronological order (or, more precisely, arranged to create the impression of a chronological succession). It shares these characteristics with other chronological syntagmas, but is characterized by its non-narrative aspect. Metz, who was clearly drawing the parallel from literary theory, even claimed that the descriptive syntagma merely describes and that the relation between its elements is spatial rather than temporal, a characterization which we find precisely in literary analysis. James Monaco, author of the highly successful How to Read a Film (1981), paraphrases Metz’s system in the following manner: “Either a film segment is autonomous or it is not. Either it is chronological or it is not. Either it is descriptive or it is narrative […]” (1981: 189). Monaco here literalizes what is implied by Metz’s system, namely that the categories are mutually exclusive and pure. This, however, does not hold true. I do concede that it is feasible to isolate ‘descriptive syntagmas’, chronological segments of a film which are predominantly non-narrative. Typical descriptive syntagmas in this sense are opening sequences or establishing shots (usually long distance shots which serve to introduce the setting wherein the action then takes place). However, a first problem of the Metzian system is constituted by the fact that these segments are rarely only descriptive. Rather, they already contain – or at least foreshadow – narrative elements, such as introducing characters, historical situations, or geographic descriptors. The opening sequence of Alain Resnais’s L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961) may serve as an example here. The film is renowned for its overlong tracking shot of the location (accompanied by cryptic off-screen narration), almost completely devoid of any human agents or action, for the most part reduced to depicting the walls and ceilings of the ornate château with repetitive and indifferent camera movements. Yet the lack of action ties in closely with the narration, which also addresses – in a painfully repetitive mode – isolation and indifference. Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) in a similar vein opens with lengthy landscape shots from a moving train. The descrip3

This type of segment, in which we are most commonly taken back and forth between two locations, is usually called parallel montage or parallel editing.

For Your Eyes Only

219

tive mode of this opening gives way to the introduction of themes (fear, death, passivity) as well as representing the idiosyncratic aspect of passing time and the difference between civilization and wilderness. We face yet another, more serious dilemma if we conclude from the Metzian system that the narrative syntagmas can be set apart from description. While we may indeed – at least to a certain extent – isolate descriptive segments from the narrative flow in mainstream film, the reverse is not true. As a general rule, narrative syntagmas in mainstream film are at the same time descriptive! I thus contest the usefulness of this Metzian distinction, which seems to be far more adequate for the analysis of literature than of film, because a) the descriptive in film generally includes action or at least movement and b) because narrative in film is always also descriptive.

3. Thesis 1: Description in film is not merely spatio-static, but rather includes events As Werner Wolf, in his introduction to the present volume (23), elaborates in more detail, literary scholars tend to regard description as a mode whose “proper stuff” are static, predominantly spatial ‘existents’ rather than dynamic, temporal ‘events’ as in narrations. In a recent definition, Torsten Pflugmacher also ties description to existents: “Description is a *text-type which identifies the properties of places, objects, or persons (see EXISTENTS). Classical narratology defines description as a narrative pause interrupting the presentation of the chain of *events.” (2005: 101) Gérard Genette, too, defines description in a similar way, when he points out “the absolute slowness of descriptive pause, where some section of narrative discourse corresponds to a nonexistent diegetic duration.” (Genette 1980: 94f.) In other words, for Genette, ‘descriptive pause’ (one of four subcategories of ‘duration’) occurs when time stands still in the story while description is carried on at length. (Cf. also Stam et al. 1992: 119f.) At first sight, Gerald Prince seems to conceptualize the term ‘description’ like the authors cited above: The representation of objects, beings, situations, or […] happenings in their spatial rather than temporal existence, their topological rather than chronological functioning, their simultaneity rather than their succession. It is traditionally distinguished from NARRATION and COMMENTARY. (1987: 19)

220

Klaus Rieser

Interestingly, Prince here stresses the anti-chronological character of description three times, probably because, in contrast to Chatman, Pflugmacher, and Genette, he includes not only existents but also ‘happenings’ among the objects of description. Wolf in this volume, too, asserts that the strict correlation of description with existents and of narration with events is debatable. He specifies that one has to distinguish whether or not the text has “motivated action that involves anthropomorphic agents, [which] are interrelated not only by chronology but also by causality and teleology and lead to, or are consequences of, conscious acts or decisions […]” (24). He refers to the example of Reisebeschreibung [travel description] vs. Reisebericht [travel narration] to exemplify that travel, clearly a temporal ‘event’, can be rendered in a more descriptive or in a more narrative mode (see ibid.). In film, the dilemma is further exacerbated because description here positively covers not only Chatman’s existents (settings and characters) but also events (happenings and actions). While literature often contains extended descriptive passages which interrupt the narrative flow, in film spatio-static descriptive representation is generally limited to a very short moment (generally, a shot of short duration), which immediately gives way to camera movements (pans, tracking shots), editing (for example, an assemblage of shots, which is typical of introducing locales), or happenings as well as actions within the frame. In fact, happenings are a classic of documentary film, which is characterized by a high level of description. Two of the very first films, by the brothers Lumière, both distinctly cinematic descriptions of happenings, represent a train arriving at a station and workers leaving a factory (see Illustration 1). Apart from descriptive renderings of happenings, purely static visuals such as landscapes or interiors do turn up in film, but these are commonly rendered with a pan, a tracking shot or a zoom and thus depart from the classic literary definition of description as ‘static’ (Wolf, however, draws attention to the fact that description can issue from observing agencies in motion [cf. the introduction to this volume: 23]). More importantly perhaps, in narrative film a descriptive pause – rare as it is – almost always serves a narrative purpose. As Brian Henderson writes: “Even if no action occurs in this shot or in this setting, the time devoted to them builds expectations for action to come; they too are ticks on the dramatic clock. Indeed, few things build more expectancy than silent shots of objects in a narrative film.”

For Your Eyes Only

221

(Henderson 1983: 10) In fact, description for its own sake, with little or no aspect of narrativity or suspense-building, is extremely rare in film.

Illustration 1: La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (1895)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), for instance, opens with inert imagery while the story has not yet begun. The male protagonist is asleep and no authorial voice-over distracts us while the camera roams the highly circumscribed setting of the film (an apartment and a backyard). Description here transcends the static realm through camera movement and through a depiction of happenings (people getting up, a running cat, a quarreling couple). In typical Hitchcock manner, the film misleads us by parallelizing irrelevant details (the cat in the yard) and highly relevant ones (the quarreling couple). Thus, what is presented is partly description, partly narration. Hitchcock also characterizes the protagonist through purely visual representation. Interestingly, we here get depiction (we see the protagonist), description (from the photographs and the equipment in the room we defer that he is a photographer) but also a narrative component (how he broke his leg) all in highly cinematic manner.

222

Klaus Rieser

4. Thesis 2: In film, narration and description coexist As Wolf mentions in his introduction to this volume, when one wants to narrate in pictorial media – film, painting, photography – one always also has to describe. Film differs from painting and photography (and among visual media is perhaps only equalled by comics) in its superior potential for narrating. Indeed, it possesses this potential to a degree that narration has become the prime function of the medium film. Yet, as film primarily narrates through pictures and pictures are usually not limited to narrative action but tend to contain also ‘backgrounds’, in film, narration and description typically coexist: description even appears at any moment of the narration in a myriad of instances4. Therefore, one of the defining principles of description in literature, namely that it interrupts the narrative flow, does not hold true for film5. Arguably, the intertwining of description and narration is central for the lasting impact of the movies, whereby description – at least in mainstream film – is often subservient to narration6. Due to its syncretic character, film can even downplay or extinguish one of its strata (the visual, the auditory). It can, for example, reproduce the situation of literature by limiting itself to the abstract mode of spoken or written language. This can happen in what might be called – in opposition to Genette’s ‘descriptive pause’ – ‘narrative pause’: when description comes to a (relative) halt while narration continues. Typically occurring in documentaries – e. g. interviews or the (in)famous ‘talking heads’ of experts7 – this technique is also to be found in narrative film, although it is quite rare. Examples are 4

The high level of descriptivity characterizing narrative film results in high heteroreferentiality if a film is shot on location. For example, urban studies scholars today turn to Harold Lloyd’s films because of their ‘accidental’ reproduction of the Lower East Side.

5

Ironically, the most typical elements which interrupt narrative in film are songand-dance numbers in musicals.

6

Technically speaking, the descriptive element of film might surpass the narrative in importance – witness newscasts, documentaries, etc. But cinema adopted as its major representational mode the narration and in particular the narrational style of the 19th-century novel, which, according to Lukács’s (1936/1955) influential critique, had itself shifted during that century from narration to description.

7

As is quite well known, the auditory trustworthiness of these characters is usually determined by the visual depiction: we tend to trust the image more than the spoken text in such circumstances.

For Your Eyes Only

223

static shots of narrators or narrative intertitles in silent films. Only very rarely do such sequences receive longer duration, as is the case when Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seaberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (1960) read Faulkner to each other in bed, even after the image has faded to black. In mainstream narrative film narration and description seem to coexist side by side, although they are actually more intertwined, a fact that is hidden by the realist mode these films adopt. This convention is exposed in Maya Deren’s experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), which successfully thwarts our attempts to disclose whether we are witnessing description or narration: at some point we see the protagonist sleeping in a chair, followed by weird camera angles depicting her moving through the apartment in a floating, dance-like manner. This imagery suggests that we are witnessing a dream of the sleeping character. But then the dream woman moves into the room of the sleeping woman, and through subjective shots it is implied that she (with us) looks at the sleeper. What is narration and what is depiction in this scene? Is it all the depiction of a dream? Is the sleeping woman our anchor of narrative meaning? Or is it the dancing one? These questions emerge since the film as a whole resembles a dreamscape, laying bare that realist film is merely a fiction constructed through established devices which may be accepted (or rejected) by the audience. The complex intertwining of description and narration in film necessitates a different conceptualization of their distinction and interaction than the one we find on the agenda of the literary models. Since essential parameters of their traditional distinction in literature (stasis vs. action, description interrupting the narrative flow) do not hold true for film, we have to discover new ways of understanding their functioning. In the next section, I therefore suggest a model which treats description and narration as independent variables but allows to trace their interaction in various text types.

224

Klaus Rieser

5. Thesis 3: Description and narration, while occurring together, are nonetheless independent variables The literary definition of description could be graphically rendered in the following manner:

description narration

narration

Figure 2: Graphical rendering of descriptive phenomena in literature

For film, I suggest to conceive of description and narration as orthogonal to each other. In graphic terms it would look like this: descriptive

4

3 5

narrative

2

1

1 2 3 4 5

Narrative intertitles, interviews Abstract film (e. g. flicker film), or Empire State Building E. g. Koyaanisqatsi; Wavelength; La Région Centrale Naturalist film; docu-fiction Mainstream narrative film

Figure 3: Grid representing the potential relation between description and narration in film

For Your Eyes Only

225

Figure 38 clarifies the relation of description and narration in a variety of films and thus explains their essential differences. This can be best exemplified by focal examples: (1) A scene of someone reading Faulkner out loud (À bout de souffle) is certainly high on the narrative axis, yet low in descriptive detail. (2) As opposed to that, abstract film is both low in descriptive detail and in narrativity. For example, in so-called ‘flicker film’ light and darkness succeed each other to achieve a stroboscopic effect. Such films have neither narration nor description, reducing themselves to the constitutive elements of cinema: light and darkness. Somewhat less radical, but still very reductive with regard to narration and description (in relation to its duration), is Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964), in which a static camera captures the Empire State Building for 485 minutes. (3) Experimental documentaries such as Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1983), Wavelength (Snow, 1967), or La Région Centrale (Snow, 1967) have pushed the boundaries of cinema by sporting an extremely high level of description while limiting narrative. For example, Michael Snow’s Wavelength consists of a 45-minute zoom, starting from a wide-angle shot of a room and ending on a picture on a wall (see Illustration 2). For the shooting of La Région Centrale, the filmmaker hid behind a rock from where he controlled a complex camera mechanism, which allowed an almost unimpeded movement and thus enabled the filmmaker to ‘map’ the complete sphere of space around the camera. Lasting for more than three hours and abstaining from any narrative, this film is almost purely descriptive (although, ironically, the landscape is barren). What makes these films 8

A three-dimensional model would be even more accurate: the x-axis would remain that of narrativity, signifying low to high narrative cohesion, and the vertical yaxis would remain that of description, signifying low to high levels of descriptive detail. The z-axis might be one that traces low to high levels of symbolism. For example, abstract film is low on all three scales: the narrative, the descriptive and the symbolic. Argumentative film features varying narrativity, high levels of description, and low symbolization. Most mainstream narrative films, although sporting high variation within and between the individual instances, feature relatively high narrativity, high descriptivity, and medium levels of symbolism. For the sake of clarity, and because the difference between descriptivity and narrativity is central to this volume, I have restricted this to a two-dimensional model.

226

Klaus Rieser

cinematic (as distinct from photographic) is the kinesis of the apparatus alone – a zoom in one case, tilting and panning in the other.

Illustration 2: Wavelength (1967)

(4) Some naturalist films feature high narrativity and high descriptivity throughout, yet (5) the majority of films and many documentaries, occupy a vast zone with relatively high descriptivity and high narrativity. There is, of course, significant variation not only between, but also within films. Thus, not only a particular film, but also a particular scene can be situated on the grid. The descriptive shots and sequences mentioned above (in particular establishing shots and introductory sequences) are near the upper left corner, even if the rest of the film is very narrative. The grid also helps to explain the suspense effect of many descriptive shots: for a brief moment, the film shifts its mode from the upper-right (high narrativity and high description) to the left (reduction of narrativity), which creates the expectation of resuming high narrativity. This effect may be further intensified by simultaneously reducing the level of descriptivity in that the number of details is reduced, for example through a long take with little variation. In such a case, narrativity is limited (even suspended) and descriptivity wears away the longer the shot persists. This creates enhanced tension for a resuming of action and description. The mere vista of a barren

For Your Eyes Only

227

landscape in a Western, if long enough, implies that some barbaric incident is building up. A very similar tension is created in Magdalena Viraga (1986) by Nina Menkes. In this classic of feminist filmmaking, narration is suspended at various points of the film. In these instances the protagonist, a prostitute, receives her clients and we are presented with a close-up of her face in uncomfortably long takes, namely as long as it takes the respective clients to reach their orgasms. We watch the woman, who shows few signs of emotion, while we only see the shoulders of the men and hear their breathing. The feeling of unease created in the audience by the intrusion of privacy is again heightened through a suspension of narration and reduction of description. After a short time, we have grasped the situation, have studied the protagonist’s face and are ready ‘to move on’, something which the film refuses. By offering scant narration and scant description (something hardly possible in literature) the tension is more pronounced than if we only had a narrative suspension. Moreover, these low-density descriptive passages reveal that emotional impact can be achieved not only with an abundance of description (e. g. facial expressions in close-up), but also with a reduction of description. For these scenes in Magdalena Viraga achieve a sort of direct experience: approximating real time and employing the close-up, they do not merely describe disgust, tension and boredom, but make us directly experience disgust, tension and boredom.

6. Problems concerning the term ‘description’ in film theory With these three theses in mind, I would like to turn to the question of why descriptivity lacks prominence in film theory and criticism. One possible explanation is that descriptivity is not at all secondary but rather an all-too-integral part of film. In their highly influential book Film Art (1990) David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson approach film style from four different aspects: mise-en-scène (the theatrical mode of film), the shot (photographic aspects), editing (the cinematographic property), and sound. Description cuts across all of these categories, in particular encompassing mise-en-scène and the shot (framing, long

228

Klaus Rieser

take, etc.), but also pertaining to diegetic sound and montage9. Perhaps because it cannot be successfully categorized, descriptivity has been neglected in film theory. A more convincing answer to the question may be found in Chatman’s (1980/1992) specification that film does not ‘describe’ but ‘depict’10. That is, it does not assert the state of affairs (“The Aran Islands are very barren.”) but instead represents the state of affairs. This useful distinction remains opaque, however, unless we combine it with the ideological aspect of filmic depiction – its correlation with extra-textual discursive formations. For the seemingly direct and trustworthy filmic ‘depiction’, compared to literature’s apparently more questionable ‘description’, is precisely an ideological issue, as a short discussion of the role description plays in film realism may reveal. As in literature, description in film is tied to concreteness (nonabstraction), is often highly detailed and, in its typical manifestations, is referential, or, to be more precise, hetero-referential. However, the depiction of non-referential characters and scenes in animation and science fiction films unveils that the appearance of hetero-referentiality is a textual effect of descriptivity with a textual and ideological function. This is not an accidental complication of the term ‘descriptivity’: the term connotes that a referent comes first and a textual rendering (description) second. However, the artificial or invented referent lays bare that description is actually a textual mode, which has its particular importance in the realist text, namely to construct a meaningful and coherent realm. Thus the relation of descriptivity to other textual parameters (narrativity, symbolization, characterization, focalization, etc.), its textual functions, and its positioning within an intertextual discourse (including ideology) take primacy over the referential aspect. It seems to me that this is the very reason why the term ‘descriptivity’ is only of peripheral importance in film theory: because the importance of filmic depiction lies in its contribution to the construction of a filmic world (and its concomitant ideology) and in its con9

In this context we might also take into account the relation description bears to acting. Is acting subservient to the story and thus predominantly an element of description? Or is it one of the central elements through which narration takes place in film?

10

Although this distinction between ‘depicting’ and ‘describing’ is entirely convincing, in this article I maintain the term ‘description’ in order to cohere with the terminology of this volume.

For Your Eyes Only

229

struction of ways of seeing (and the concomitant viewing positions). These are issues which are not at all neglected in film theory and criticism. In other words, if we focus on description in film, then film theory advises us to analyze the ‘rhetoric’ of description. As already mentioned, one typical function of the rhetoric of description is the creation of a realist text. While the image is polyvalent and the meanings of its individual elements both alone and in combination can never be pinned down successfully, its descriptive aspects are – in the Hollywood mould at least – made subservient to narrative. Thus description is on the one hand devalued, yet on the other it gains unexpected importance because as prime bearer of verisimilitude, it vouches for the coherency of the textual world. In fact, the audience generally takes the image to be the most trustworthy aspect of a film. For example, at one point in Stage Fright (1950), Hitchcock does not use the image as a tool for realism but instead makes the image conform to a character’s narration in a first-person point of view. When it is later revealed that the character lied, the audience is usually disconcerted because it cannot accept an image to ‘lie’. The ideological perils of realist description have been particularly widely discussed regarding documentary film. Man of Aran, shot in 1934 by Robert Flaherty, one of the founding fathers of documentary film, can serve as an example that the ideological burden of film is not limited to the narrative construction (in this case, the choice of voice-over narration, editing or re-enactments) but also to descriptivity itself. Like his other films, Nanook of the North (1922) or Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926), Man of Aran shares Flaherty’s vision of a humanity set against the cruelty of the natural. However, when George C. Stoney in his 1977 documentary How the Myth Was Made revisited some of the Flaherty locations, he found disillusionment: where Flaherty had shown a barren field, pure description, which suggested that the poverty of the people of Aran was to be attributed to their harsh environment, Stoney panned a little further to reveal a landlord’s mansion, thus making description reveal that the source of poverty in the area was of socio-economic rather than of environmental nature. Consequently, to study descriptivity in a merely formalist manner creates new difficulties. The formalist or structuralist approach tends to disregard or neglect other aspects such as the relations between text and author(s), text and audience, text and other texts, text and discourse (in its Foucaultian sense). I assume that this is the main reason

230

Klaus Rieser

why the issue of description – or depiction – is generally disregarded in film theory, and appears instead under a variety of rubrics more eminent for the study of these relations.

7. Some issues under which description has been discussed film theory Aspects of description in film that have been widely discussed in film theory include questions of detail, depth of field (spatiality), referentiality, the relation of image to narrative, authorship, questions of the construction of gaze, issues of spectatorship, the construction of viewing positions, etc. As already mentioned, one prime location for the debate of such matters has been amongst practitioners and theoreticians of documentary films. This has led to a variety of approaches in making documentaries (e. g. cinema verité, direct cinema, reconstructive cinema) which were aimed at minimizing subjective interferences or else rendering them conscious and transparent. Translated into the discussion of this article and this volume, many of these techniques aimed at reducing narrative in favor of supposedly noncommittal and objective description or else at precisely exposing description as motivated, subjective, and/or in the service of hidden focalization. In relation to narrativity, analogous debates surrounded the favoring of the long take and deep focus, which – due to a preference of mise-en-scène (i. e. description) over editing – were said to allow the viewer greater freedom in navigating his or her gaze. See Illustration 3 for an example of a deep focus shot rich in descriptive detail. Similar discussions have taken place around the opposition ‘open vs. closed form’. Against Hollywood’s closed form, it has been claimed that the open form, which integrates the extra-diegetic space, favors the described against the description and thus reveals the constructed nature of the filmic text. Illustration 4 is an example of such open form: The car is moving to the left background, the woman is moving right, and her gaze is directed to the left foreground. Moreover, all three vectors point outside the frame, drawing attention to the fact that the filmic shot does not represent reality but is rather a creation (or at least a selection).

For Your Eyes Only

231

Illustration 3: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Illustration 4: Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

Immediacy became another supposed guarantee of descriptive realism. Particularly since the 1960s, when new and lighter equipment allowed increased flexibility, documentarists treated their subjects head-on in direct cinema and cinema verité style. It is interesting to see how these methods, which were designed to enhance referentiality, were soon integrated as stylistic features in narrative films.

232

Klaus Rieser

Today jerky camera movements in narrative film signify hand-held equipment, which in turn signifies immediacy, realism, or ‘truth’. Very soon, however, such technical preferences as the long take or deep focus were themselves demystified as tokens of objectivity. This feeds back into my argument that it is not the distinction between description and narration which is truly at stake in film, but rather a representational (or communicative, if you will) process between authors, social environment, industries, and audiences, all related through textual strategies and structures. In Chantal Akerman’s 1976 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a classic of feminist and experimental cinema, extended scenes in real time present a woman doing housework. The film restricts itself to three days in the life of a Belgian widow who is shown doing household chores in meticulous detail and routine. Part of this routine is her work as a prostitute (which is more discretely represented) but eventually on the third day she kills her client after they have had sex, ostensibly to reconstruct the order of her life. What interests us here are the long representations of household work (in a film that lasts three hours and twenty minutes) which amount to a unique instance of description in the history of film. These long takes in their descriptive valor obviously serve the demands of realism. In fact, the precise attention to detail makes the film seem almost like a science experiment, as Vincent Canby, the noted New York Times film critic, has written: “Miss Akerman records three crucial days in the life of Jeanne Dielman (Miss Seyrig) as if she were observing the habits of some previously unknown insect.” However, as in the previously discussed example of Magdalena Viraga, in Ackerman’s film, too, descriptive scenes are not ‘merely’ descriptive (i. e. enhance the reality effect) but rather create a disconcerting atmosphere. Although in this case the scenes present relatively profane situations, audiences have typically reacted to them with unrest or anger, emotions that are evoked by the formal means employed. As Vincent Canby remarks: Like its blunt title, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, deals in unadorned facts. It’s about the looks and sounds of ordinary things and people, which it records with such precise, unsettling clarity that it has the effect of finding threats in mundane objects and doom in commonplace characters. (1983)

Beyond the heightened, perhaps excessive, duration of the descriptive scenes the filmmaker also used distancing devices which break the

For Your Eyes Only

233

comforting rules of mainstream narrative cinema and its concurrent ideological constructions. Janet Bergstrom has pointed out a distinctive feature of Jeanne Dielman: One of the aspects of Akerman’s visual style that was most noted was the separation she maintained between the visual field occupied by the camera, which she has often equated with her own view, and the field observed by the camera. There is an absence of the conventional shot/reverse-shot rhetoric of editing and a skilled use of ellipsis that emphasises the separation of these two fields. A choice has been made not to draw the viewer into the psychological depths of dramatic verisimilitude. (1999)

Thus, the suggestive and upsetting character of Jeanne Dielman’s highly descriptive scenes combined with the distancing focalization reveals the constructed nature of description. In simple terms: highly realist (descriptive) takes here serve to destroy the reality effect. This renunciation of realist conventions bars identificatory potentials and exposes the concomitant ideological effects.

8. Conclusion As the example of Jeanne Dielman has shown, description is far from being a neutral term in film. While often in the service of realist conventions, it can also be employed to deconstruct and question these conventions and their effects on the viewing subject. The functions of description in film therefore depend on how the descriptive is constructed, i. e. on the filmmaking techniques employed, chiefly among them camera positioning, framing, editing styles – all of which add up to the question of focalization and the construction of spectatorial positions. This fact may go a long way towards explaining why film studies has rarely picked up the issue of description as such but has, for example, preferred to analyze ‘the gaze’, which involves questions of authorial position, the construction of hierarchies of looks within the film, and questions of audience (in particular the textual construction of spectatorial positions)11.

11 The best starting point for an examination of this aspect is still Mulvey (1975/ 1992).

234

Klaus Rieser

References Andrew, Dudley (1997). The Image in Dispute: Art and Cinema in the Age of Photography. Austin: U of Texas P. Baudry, Jean-Louis (1975/1992). “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 4th ed. Eds. Gerald Mast et al. New York: Oxford UP. 302-312. Bergstrom, Janet (1999). “The Innovators 1970-1980: Keeping a Distance”. Sight and Sound. (Nov.). http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/196 [28/02/2006]. Blandford, Steve et al. (2001). The Film Studies Dictionary. London: Arnold. Bordwell, David (1985/1988). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. —, Kristin Thompson (1990). Film Art: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Canby, Vincent (1983). “‘Jeanne Dielman,’ Belgian”. The New York Times. March 23. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E0DA143BF 930A15750C0A965948260 [28/02/2006]. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. — (1980/1992). “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)”. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 4th ed. Eds. Gerald Mast et al. New York: Oxford UP. 403-419. Genette, Gérard (1980). Narrative Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Hayward, Susan (1996). Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London: Routledge. Heath, Steven (1981). Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Henderson, Brian (1983). “Tense, Mood and Voice in Film”. Film Quarterly (Fall): 4-17. Lukács, Georg (1936/1955). Erzählen oder Beschreiben? Probleme des Realismus. Berlin: Aufbau. Mast, Gerald et al., eds. (1992). Film Theory and Crititicism: Introductory Readings. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP. McCloud, Scott (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial.

For Your Eyes Only

235

Metz, Christian (1971, 1972). Essais sur la signification au cinéma. Vols. I and II. Paris: Klincksieck. — (1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford UP. Monaco, James (1981). How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media. Revised Edition. New York: Oxford UP. Mulvey, Laura (1975/1992). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 4th ed. Eds. Gerald Mast et al. New York: Oxford UP. 746-757. Nichols, Bill (1976, 1985). Movies and Methods. Vols I and II. Berkeley: U of California P. O’Sullivan, Tim, et al. (1994). Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Pflugmacher, Torsten (2005). “Description”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, MarieLaure Ryan. London, New York: Routledge. 101-102. Prince, Gerald (1987). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska P. Rosen, Philip (1986). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. New York: Columbia UP. Stam, Robert, et al. (1992). New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. London: Routledge. Filmography À bout de souffle (1960) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Année dernière à Marienbad, L’ (1961). Dir. Alain Resnais. Perf. Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff. Citizen Kane (1941). Dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead. Dead Man (1995). Dir. Jim Jarmush. Perf. Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer. Empire (1964). Dir. Andy Warhol. How the Myth Was Made (1977). Dir. George C. Stoney. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976). Dir. Chantal Akerman. Perf. Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, J. Doniol-Valcroze. Koyaanisqatsi (1983). Dir. Godfrey Reggio.

236

Klaus Rieser

Magdalena Viraga (1986). Dir. Nina Menkes. Perf. Claire Aguilar, Nora Bendich. Man of Aran (1934). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty. Perf. Colman ‘Tiger’ King, Maggie Dirrane, Michael Dirrane. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Dir. Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid. Perf. Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid. Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty. Perf. Fa’amgase, Pe’a, Ta’avale. Nanook of the North (1922). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty. Perf. Nanook, Nyla, Cunayou. Rear Window (1954). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. James Stewart, Grace Kelly. Région Centrale, La (1971). Dir. Michael Snow. Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon, La (1895). Dir. Louis Lumières. Stage Fright (1950). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding. Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d’un film tourné en 1964 (1964). Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Bernard Noël, Macha Méril, Philippe Leroy. Wavelength (1967). Dir. Michael Snow.

Description in Visual Media

Dürer’s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction A Contribution to the History of Descriptive Techniques in the Visual Arts1 Johann Konrad Eberlein2 ‘Description’ does not seem to be a term that fits into the context of the visual arts, for in imitating reality they do not use writing, and therefore one should, strictly speaking, use the term ‘depiction’, rather than pictorial ‘description’. Yet, in the context of the present volume this would mean blurring the issue, for what is in focus here are forms, medial techniques and functions of ‘description’ as a general ‘cognitive frame’ which is notably opposed to ‘narration’, and in this context ‘description’ and ‘depiction’ can be used as synonyms both in literature and in the visual arts. However, this contribution does not focus on the differences of description and narration in the visual arts but on an important quality that is often attributed to description; in the introduction to this volume it is even called its “main purpose”, namely the “vivid representation” of “concrete phenomena”. In literature as well as in the visual arts such “vivid representation” is often destined to produce, or at least to support, aesthetic illusion. Such illusion is not only dependent on cultural-historical contexts but also on certain techniques used in the visual representations in the course of history. In the visual arts the ‘invention’ of central perspective in the Italian Renaissance was a milestone towards an intensified illusion both for descriptive and narrative purposes. The present essay focuses on another of such milestones, this time one that was developed by an artist of a northern country, namely Dürer.

Present-day civilisation is dominated by the digital image, which, when perceived as (amongst other things) a descriptive medium, may be considered as one among the systems of graphic reproduction Western civilisation has developed since the Late Middle Ages. Walter Benjamin already traced the evolution of these systems up to 1

Shortened version of a talk given as part of the lecture series “Description in Literature and Other Media” on May 3, 2006 in Graz. I would like to thank Werner Wolf for the invitation to take part in the lecture series and Johanna Aufreiter, Julia Feldkellner, Elisabeth Sobieczky and Edgar Lein for valuable suggestions on the topic. The current text takes up ideas from my own publication on Dürer (cf. Eberlein 2003/ 2006: 38-46).

2

Translated by Katharina Bantleon.

240

Johann Konrad Eberlein

his own time – from woodcut through copper engraving, lithography and photography to film (for details cf. Eberlein 1998). From a medium-oriented perspective, the systematics of pictorial reproduction by graphical means can be traced even further back. Recent evidence suggests that these were already inherent in medieval miniatures and possibly date as far back as ancient handicrafts (cf. Eberlein 1995). From an alternative point of view, which is not exclusively medium-oriented and does not necessarily perceive of pictorial reproduction systems as having developed from one another genealogically, the publication of Dürer’s Apocalypse marks the decisive watershed moment after which the aforementioned systems started to develop towards what we would nowadays consider medial reproduction with a maximum of descriptive and illusionist power. ‘Mechanical reproduction’ (“mechanische Reproduzierbarkeit”), as defined by Benjamin, is nowadays determined by two expectations: On the one hand, the reproduction system should enable unproblematic replication and consistent reproducibility. On the other hand, the reproduction itself ought to provide the means necessary for the beholder to envisage what is reproduced in a way that does not detract from the aesthetic illusion. Bearing this in mind, we can isolate a specific point in time as of which these demands have been increasingly met: 1498, the year which marked the appearance of Dürer’s Apocalypse (cf. most recently, also for a list of relevant older literature, Schoch/ Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2002: 59-105). Firstly, I shall outline what was novel and yet particular to these illustrations that would account for their importance in the history of pictorial reproduction (cf. Panofsky 1977: 66-78). Dürer’s woodcuts did not only span the divide between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era in terms of content-related descriptive accuracy resulting in a new richness in detail, but also in terms of their fictional quality. This becomes apparent when comparing them with earlier Apocalypse illustrations3. Dürer’s anonymous predecessors had already employed the basic graphic elements, contour and hatching, although without subjecting them to a coherent, over-arching descriptive purpose. Before Dürer, these graphic elements complemented each other while, on the whole, remaining largely independent. Contours were used to 3 Respective parallels are listed with the catalogue numbers in Schoch/Mende/ Scherbaum, eds. (2002).

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

241

set off certain areas without being involved in creating a depth effect. Hatching was reduced to more or less schematic lines, following the contours in the manner of brush strokes and contributing little to plastic modelling. The ideal underlying this artistic practice remained line woodcuts that were subsequently coloured in. Dürer’s achievement was to unify contour and hatching into a homogeneous system in which they function as the constituents of light and shade effects. Dürer endowed the line with a hue, refined and enriched it, made it livelier, and gave it copper engraving’s bulging and thinning qualities. The hatching lines also gained in suppleness. Thus, on the basis of their realistic appearance and quality, draperies became the bearers of emotional expression. Plane areas were no longer automatically evenly enclosed. Dürer introduced darker sections against which lighter elements could be silhouetted as threedimensional, plastic shapes. In the works of his predecessors, the individual picture elements had appeared on a white background like stamped-out shapes on a baking tin. Yet, Dürer used the whiteness of the paper as the print’s lightest shade as opposed to its darkest that he achieved through very closely spaced cross-hatching lines, between which the printing ink is partly impervious. This allowed for contours to blend with a darker ground, which greatly enhanced the possibilities for shading. Dürer’s Apocalypse illustrations represent a milestone in the development of the dimension of depth in woodcut. In merging paper ground and images, Dürer liberated the paper from functioning as a mere plane upon which picture elements were placed. This allowed images to develop an optically independent existence which nowadays defines our understanding of graphic rendering. In refining woodcut, Dürer followed the model of copper engraving which had already been elevated to a high artistic and technical level by the most famous graphic artist before Dürer, Martin Schongauer (ca. 1450 – 1491). Dürer, however, greatly surpassed Schongauer in two respects: in terms of the line and in terms of the ground. Schongauer’s hatching lines were subjugated to pen-and-ink line drawing and therefore remained determined by their subjective development. They were thus often executed as small ticks. With Dürer, these elements became increasingly abstract and turned into freely employable technical means. His hatching lines were quasi objective and showed no direct reference to the artist’s own hand, thus uniting the line with the requirements of the depicted image. The second difference between Schongauer and Dürer lay in the treatment of the

242

Johann Konrad Eberlein

ground. Not unlike the aforementioned anonymous woodcutters, Schongauer still treated the paper ground as a plane on which he laid out his scenes. He, thus, would regularly leave part of a print’s white paper ground to represent the sky in outdoor scenes. In Dürer’s works, however, the plain, empty paper ground completely disappeared, allowing for the entire print to be read as a spatial illusion. It is for these reasons that Dürer’s Apocalypse illustrations may be termed epoch-making. They introduced into Western civilisation a system of graphic depiction whose means were capable of evoking on paper, without a sense of loss to the beholder, every possible object in the same way and with a high degree of descriptive accuracy by way of light-dark plasticity and colour contrast. In terms of technical reproduction, the system was easy to handle and allowed for anything to be depicted and rapidly conveyed. Woodcut became the illustrative medium par excellence both for descriptive and narrative purposes. The development and proliferation of technology would have been unthinkable without it. Mankind learned to recognise objects in the changeable relations between printing ink and paper ground and acquired a certain way of seeing which developed into a common ground for understanding. Ultimately, the nuances of shaded paper, or the contrast of light and dark created by more or less closely spaced dots, sufficed to make objects identifiable. It was then that graphic reproduction ceased to merely aim at making ‘images’ (in the sense of sources or models) reproducible by mechanical means. Their additional aim became to impart the optical illusion of what was being reproduced, which, in nuce, marks the birth of photography and thus of all other media up to the computer screen, whose technical fictions we could not perceive of as optically true had it not been for the step taken by Dürer. Dürer’s illustrations quickly achieved unparalleled success. His pictures have fundamentally shaped mankind’s idea of the apocalypse. He did everything in his power to promote his own work. Dürer’s Apocalypse is a book containing the text of the Apocalypse (prefaced by Hieronymus) and fourteen illustrations, which Dürer himself called ‘Figuren’ (‘figures’) (see Illustrations 4-17). These are preceded by “The Martyrdom of St John” in the same format (see Illustration 3). The book first came out in 1498 in a German and a Latin version, in both of which the titles consisted of printed words only – in German: “Die heimlich offenbarung iohanis” (‘The Secret Revelation of St John’, see Illustration 1) and in Latin: “Apocalypsis

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

243

cum figuris” (‘The Apocalypse with Figures’). A second Latin edition was published in 1511, in which the title was enriched with a small woodcut depicting the Madonna appearing to St John (according to contemporary belief) (see Illustration 2). The format of the book is the large, so called ‘Superregal’, measuring 38 x 30 cm, in which Schedel’s Chronicle of the World (Liber Chronicarum, 1493) had also been printed. For the German Apocalypse, Dürer used a Gothic typeface, an early stage of the Schwabacher, and for the Latin edition the so-called great Rotunda. Both had already been in use in the Koberger workshop, where we also find the subdivision of the text into two columns. Dürer is likely to have cut the plates and distributed the books himself. The designs were organised in such a way that both text and illustrations could simultaneously be clamped into the printing press. For the first time, each woodcut bore the artist’s signature. At the end of the Apocalypse, we find the following annotation: “Gedruckt zu Nürnberg durch Albrecht Dürer, Maler, nach Christi Geburt 1498” (‘Printed at Nuremberg by Albrecht Dürer, painter, 1498 AD’). From an art-sociological point of view, Dürer’s Apocalypse may be considered the modern period’s first great work of art in which the artist was personally responsible for all aspects of production and distribution. Dürer left behind the medieval division of labour and carried out all artistic as well as business-related tasks himself. It has often been argued that Dürer’s time was receptive to apocalyptic visions; that during the Late Middle Ages Dürer’s contemporaries had perceived of recurring epidemics, the Turkish threat or locust infestations as omens of God’s apocalyptic plagues, or even as those plagues themselves, and that there had been a prevailing fear of the approach of the year 1500, the turn of the epoch (cf., e. g., Cottin 2003: 90). This argument, however, would be more sustainable had Dürer dated his work 1500 rather than 1498. Moreover, it has recently been shown that the concept of the medieval fear of epochal dates was apparently a projection of the nineteenth century (cf. Brendecke 1999). Attempts to interpret Dürer’s illustrations as an apocalyptic critique of his times have so far remained unsuccessful4. This, however, should not call into question the fact that Dürer shared a common level of understanding with his contemporary audi4

This especially applies to the publications by Chadraba (1963) and Perrig (1987) (cf. Schoch/Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2002: 63).

244

Johann Konrad Eberlein

ence. His determination to actualise the biblical text in order to intensify the impact of his illustrations is obvious. He paid attention to the most modern details, dressed his female figures in the most recent fashion, and placed the action in landscapes resembling the Central German Uplands with distinctively Franconian features. Furthermore, he made the magnitude of the pending apocalyptic threat tangible by also portraying the powerful and rich as its victims. Against a humanist background, the striving for actualisation and accuracy were hallmarks of the time. In accordance with the humanist focus on sources, Dürer adhered more closely to his sources than his predecessors. Based on a close reading of the texts, all his illustrations exhibit a remarkable closeness between the image and the textual narration. Yet, this does not imply that Dürer valued the text higher than the image. On the contrary, the Apocalypse illustrations even reversed the pre-existing intermedial relationship between text and image. In medieval illustrated books the text had been dominant, while the miniatures had merely filled the spaces left empty by the scribes (cf. Eberlein 1995: 128), whereas Dürer transferred the main thrust of the meaning from the written word to the image. Determining their own rhythm, his ‘Figuren’ (‘figures’) form a continual, coherent flow, while the text appears disorganised, if not confusing. At the ends of the text columns, which differ in length, there are running references to the ‘figures’ on the opposite pages, whereas the references within the text jump accordingly. The text is no longer predominant in the book’s layout, typographic design, or in its relation to the image. Dürer also reduced the dominance of the text as a source in that he, in the fullness of his own creative powers, took it upon himself to combine several different text passages into one image while leaving out other passages altogether. Thus, when considering the illustrations as an exegesis of the text, Dürer’s artistic practice can be seen as an implicit reflection on the theologian’s duties. This freedom is a precondition for the medial quality of Dürer’s illustrations. He created his ‘pictures’ effectively on the basis of his own designs, into which he incorporated stimuli from earlier Apocalypse illustrations. He then realised these ‘pictures’ by making use of the reproduction systems outlined at the beginning of this contribution. His inspiration to do so dated back to his first journey to Italy in 1494/1495, during which he acquired the method of correct spatial depiction, somewhat loosely referred to as aerial perspective (‘Luft-

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

245

perspektive’). This method can be illustrated with reference to a quote from the Venetian scientist Giovanni Fontana (ca. 1395 – after 1455), who wrote a book on Jacopo Bellini (ca. 1400 – ca. 1470) that was subsequently lost (cf. Thorndike 1931). However, Fontana has summarised the content of his book in a few sentences: I have described how he [Bellini] was able to apply dark and light colours with such a technique that not only parts of a picture that were painted on a plane appeared elevated but also that, moreover, the depicted figure seemed to stretch a hand or foot towards the beholder, and that, on the other hand, all humans, animals or mountains depicted on the same plane appeared as if some miles distant, etc. Namely, the art of painting teaches that what is near should be painted in light, what is distant in dark, and what is in the middle with mixed colours5.

The graphic system of Dürer’s Apocalypse is based on the intention to depict, through shades of light and dark, the transformation an object undergoes with changes in light. As Dürer succeeded in conveying different degrees of visibility solely through the use of the inked line, the hitherto common practice of subsequently colouring prints could be dropped. Abandoning colour had an important theological dimension at the time, as one of the most enduring and dangerous arguments brought forth by Christian theologians, who were hostile towards the painted image, was that art fooled the beholder by using colours and thereby creating something that does not actually exist.6 This can be verified by a number of examples. Vitruvius (first century B. C.) had already objected to the squandering of colour in fresco painting7. Gregory of Nazianz (308 – ca. 390) drew parallels between (positive) simple people and simply coloured pictures as well as between (negative) overly sophisticated people and a way of painting that applies “floridis et nusquam umbrosis coloribus”8 (‘flourishing and in no place dark col5

This and all subsequent translations from Latin as well as from German are those of the translator of this contribution. “[...] descripsi, quibusque modis colores obscuros et claros apponere sciret, tali cum ratione, quod non solum vnius imaginis partes releuatae viderentur in plano depictae, verum extra manum vel pedem porrigere crederentur inspectae, et eorum, quae in eadem superficie hominum animalium vel montium equantur quaedam per miliaria distare apparerent atque eiusmodi. Ars quidem pingendi docet propinqua claris, remota obscuris mediaque permixtis sub coloribus tingi deberi.” (Fontana 1544: Book 3, chapter 13 [wrongly 14]: n. p.).

6

For what follows cf. Eberlein 1995: 143-145.

7

Cf. Book VII, 5, 8 in: Vitruvius Pollo 1964/1976: 356f.

8

Poemata de seipso XI, De vita sua, 739-754 in: Migne, ed. 1857 – 1866: 1220.

246

Johann Konrad Eberlein

ours’). Isidore (570 – 636) criticised the evocation of mirages by means of colour9. Hrabanus Maurus (780 – 856) spoke of “falsche Malerei der Farben”10 (‘deceptive painting in colour’), as did, in a similar way, the Council of 754 (cf. Weitmann 1997: 137f.). William of Malmesbury (ca. 1080 – ca. 1142) commented on the seductive power of crimson colours (cf. 1870: 69f.). Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) condemned the fact that the most colourful pictures were the most popular ones11, a line of argument also supported by Nicolaus Cusanus (1401 – 1464) (cf. Hempel 1977: 7). The very fact that Dürer replaced colour with an arrangement of black and white lines was at the centre of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s famous eulogy, which we shall come back to. In this, Dürer’s concern with contemporary theology reappears, as becomes apparent from Erasmus’ statement, albeit with a change in focus from mere theology towards a theological assessment of aesthetic questions. Subsequently, I shall discuss the question of how Dürer dealt with the issue that the images of the Apocalypse were in fact visions. These visions, and hence their pictorial description, would not mean an identification and vivid representation of experiental realities as in so many descriptions, but an evocation of imaginary phenomena. The visions belong to another world, albeit one which occasionally impinges ominously upon the world of the living. In order to create a pictorial difference between the heavenly and the earthly spheres, and in his strife for the greatest possible affinity to nature, Dürer drew upon an old stratagem: the ‘Wolkensaum’ (‘cloud fringe’). Having developed from the aureole surrounding Christ Pantocrator, this motif had already been used in Carolingian illuminations and could be transferred to other heavenly apparitions12. Dürer uses this device to differentiate between the spheres of heaven and earth, and it is interesting to examine all fifteen Apocalypse illustrations in terms of this aspect. “The Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist” (see Illustration 5) is set on earth and no ‘cloud fringe’ is evident. This is remarkable, for 9

Cf. Et. 19, 16 in: Isidore 1911: n. p.

10

Carm. 38, 4-7 in: Dümmler, ed. 1884: 164.

11

Cf. Apologia 12 in: Bernhard of Clairvaux 1963: 105.

12

E. g. in the Vivan Bible (Paris BN Lat. 1, e.g. f. 329v) or in the Gospel Book of Lothar (Paris BN Lat. 266, e. g. f. 171v).

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

247

Dürer, recognisable by his hook-nosed profile and the cutting knife, has portrayed himself as an onlooker in the foreground (cf. Oettinger 1971: 1832). (The supposed) St John the Evangelist is both witness and author of the vision, while Dürer appears merely as an observer of the earthly event. He does not, like Hildegard of Bingen in one of the so- called Lucca Codex miniatures, witness the vision itself. The first ‘figure’, “St John’s Vision of Christ and the Seven Candlesticks” (see Illustration 4), is set amidst clouds. St John is kneeling in the lower foreground upon a flat layer of naturalistic clouds spreading to the front and to the left, where they are intersected by the margins of the print. They ascend along the left and right picture margins, creating a space above God the Father. Yet, that space does not resemble an opening, since it is bordered by a dark ‘cloud fringe’ merging with the darkly hatched borders of light clouds. The entire scene is a ‘cloud picture’ and as such it need not be set off against an earthly zone. In the second ‘figure’, “St John and the Twenty-four Elders in Heaven” (see Illustration 5), the celestial scene flows from an open gate. The circular group of figures is enclosed by a ‘cloud fringe’ both from above and, more pronouncedly, from below. Outside the fringe, Dürer suggests thunder, lightning, and voices emanating from the throne of God. In witnessing all this, St John is placed upon a bulge of cloud, below which none of the aforementioned elements appear. In the third ‘figure’, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (see Illustration 6) are carrying out their ghastly work on earth, while at the same time emerging from a vision, which is part of the celestial sphere. This is indicated by a frilled ‘cloud fringe’, which is still discernible on the left while diffusing into broad cloud formations that dissolve towards the right. On the upper left, lightning bolts, perhaps reminiscent of the previous ‘figure’, emerge from an opening between two ‘cloud fringes’. In the white wall of clouds, darkening behind him, a flying angel is guiding the horsemen. The fourth ‘figure’, depicting the “Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals” (see Illustration 7), contains two ‘cloud fringes’. The group of divine figures dressing the martyrs is separated from the lower part of the picture by a frilled ‘cloud fringe’ broadening in the middle as it rises upward from the earth in a triangular formation. It thus appears like a reversed funnel from which the stars fall down to earth. Cloudlike forms surround the divine grouping on both sides beneath the sun

248

Johann Konrad Eberlein

and moon, perhaps illustrating the displacement of mountains and islands from their appointed positions. The fifth ‘figure’, set on earth, shows “Four Angels Staying the Winds and Signing the Chosen” (see Illustration 8). The sky is filled with frilled ‘cloud fringes’ as well as with actual clouds. These cloud formations form the backdrop for the four winds, whose anthropomorphised heads appear to partly grow out of them. The sixth ‘figure’ depicts how “The Seven Trumpets are Given to the Angels” (see Illustration 9). There are several kinds of clouds in this illustration, each having a distinct function. Above his outstretched arms, God the Father is surrounded by the usual thin ‘cloud fringe’, which creates a white space behind his shoulders and head. However, corresponding shapes, adumbrated in some distance to the left and right, suggest that the ‘cloud fringes’ are actually two broad bands of clouds spreading downward. Below, we can distinguish two groups of clouds. Despite thin ‘cloud fringes’ suggested at their edge, these cloud structures, as a whole, form the ground from which the two frontmost angels are signalling to earth. Hailstones and fire mixed with blood rain down from the right section of the clouds. “The Battle of the Angels” in the seventh ‘figure’ (see Illustration 10) is set on earth. In the background there is a mountainous landscape and a bay with a natural cloud floating above. The celestial zone is divided from the rest of the picture by a half-round ‘cloud fringe’. This, in turn, is divided into individual sections below and opens for the horses to emerge and bring doom over the world. The eighth ‘figure’ depicts how “St John Devours the Book” (see Illustration 11). The angel, whose descent to earth is traceable by a band of clouds, which also add a certain anthropomorphic dimension to the angel’s appearance, is pointing towards the altar on the upper left, encircled by an aureole. There are several thin frilled ‘cloud fringes’, which, however, continually expand into rounded actual clouds or broad bands of cloud. “The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Seven-headed Dragon” in ‘figure’ nine (see Illustration 12) belong to the earthly sphere. Above them, the half-figure of God the Father is surrounded by a ‘cloud fringe’ dissolving into the white paper ground. However, on the periphery, this ‘cloud fringe’ features black outlines in some places, behind which more clouds appear on the lower right. The tenth ‘figure’ depicts “St Michael Fighting the Dragon” (see Illustration 13). The group of angels surrounding the archangel is interspersed with very thin, frilled ‘cloud fringes’. The

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

249

heaven above the earthly scenery is cloudless, that is to say, white. “The Sea Monster and the Beast with the Lamb’s Horn” in ‘figure’ eleven (see Illustration 14) both move upon earth. Above them, God the Father as the central figure is surrounded by an aureole that merges into a frilled ‘cloud fringe’ expanding to the lower left and right into actual clouds raining fire. The twelfth ‘figure’ depicts “The Adoration of the Lamb and the Hymn of the Chosen” (see Illustration 15). A frilled ‘cloud fringe’ broadening towards the left correctly separates the congregation of the chosen from the earthly zone and from St John kneeling on a hill. “The Whore of Babylon” in ‘figure’ thirteen (see Illustration 16) is seducing the humans on earth. Above her, the angels in the centre of the picture are bordered by a ‘cloud fringe’ on the left, which expands into actual rounded clouds, while on the right new clouds emerge from the conflagration raging in Babylon. On the far left, Christ’s army appears from a strait, formed by the aforementioned ‘cloud fringe’ and a second one meandering upward along the left margin of the print. “The Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Pit” in ‘figure’ fourteen (see Illustration 17) is standing on terrestrial ground and no clouds are depicted. What is the structure behind Dürer’s implementation of the ‘cloud fringe’ as a motif? In depicting ‘cloud fringes’ and bands of clouds as realistically as possible, he ‘naturalises’ this traditional artistic means of separating the heavenly and the earthly spheres. The ‘cloud fringes’ frame the scenes set in heaven. They open up when heavenly events draw near to earth, while being entirely absent in exclusively earthly scenes. There is a clear distinction between the pictures in the clouds and the earthly landscapes, which, in comparison, are more summary and carried out with less medial suggestiveness. In the landscapes, the big step Dürer took with the Apocalypse, as has been explained above, is not as pronounced as in the ‘cloud pictures’. In the scenes depicting regions of the Franconian Central German Uplands such as the ‘Walberla’13, the paper ground remained clearly recognisable in a rather backward manner and is thereby suggestive of the sun shining or of snow having fallen upon the scenery. This is, however, not the case in the prints that are entirely set on earth, as for example the eighth ‘figure’, “St John Devouring the Book”. The pic13 A monadnock north-east of Forchheim, which repeatedly appears in Dürer’s works.

250

Johann Konrad Eberlein

torial realisations of these scenes meet the standard of the celestial images, as if the ‘cloud pictures’ had virtually descended to earth. The fact that Dürer furnished all scenes encircled by ‘cloud fringes’ with their own aesthetic quality allows for them to be termed ‘Wolkenbilder’ (‘cloud pictures’). That is not to be understood in the sense of figures or shapes emerging from cloud formations, but in the sense of scenes that are set in the clouds. Why has Dürer chosen this technique? Firstly, it should be noted that, as a device, the ‘cloud picture’ also stems from the Italian tradition. There is a frequently quoted example in Renaissance painting: Andrea Mantegna’s ‘horseman in the cloud’ (see Hauser 2001 for details). In a small painting of St Sebastian, probably executed around 1460 in Padua and now kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Mantegna depicted a horseman who is formed by, and emerges from, the highest cloud floating above the protomartyr (see Illustrations 18 and 19). While an interpretation of this rider has proved difficult, its traditional sources have largely been traced back to two strands: one is based on the ability of the human eye to discover in indistinct structures – such as clouds, rock faces, or the like – distinctly identifiable objects – above all, heads or faces. This phenomenon was mentioned by Lucretius, Philostratus, and Michael Psellos as well as by Pliny and Cicero. In sixteenth-century painting, heads of angels emerging from cloud structures were so abundant that quoting individual examples is unnecessary. However, Dürer’s celestial scenes are obviously not in accordance with this strand of the tradition, which does not even pertain to the heads of the wind angles in the fifth ‘figure’. Dürer’s figures are encircled or framed by ‘cloud fringes’, but do not emerge from them. His practice, therefore, has to be seen in the context of the second strand of tradition as to the depiction of phenomena in the clouds, which perceives of apparitions in the clouds or in the air as reflections. Aristotle (384/382 – ca. 322/321) had already mentioned reflections in the sky in his Meteorology: ‘The apparitions in the air are, all in all, partly mere reflections and partly have a true being.’14 He thereby meant meteorological phenomena such as rainbows. In the 14

“Die Erscheinungen im Luftbereich sind, zusammenfassend gesagt, teils bloße Spiegelungen, teils haben sie wirkliches Wesen.” (Aristotle 1970: 247; cf. also n. 312; for the ‘cloud as a mirror’ cf. ibid.: 80 and n. 208).

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

251

fifteenth century, the reflecting quality of clouds or the air became the subject of treatises on optic phenomena. Once more, Fontana can be quoted in this context. His accounts – adopted from his teacher Palacani – match the methodology applied in Dürer’s Apocalypse so well that one could suppose Dürer knew the treatise: The aforementioned Blaxius of Parma, who once was my teacher, tells that once in his time in the year 1403 in Lombardy near the fortress called Buxetum, armed horsemen and infantry appeared every day before the third hour over a period of three days, fighting one another with lance and sword, and that those witnessing it were very much alarmed as they did not know the reason for this abnormality. This was happening because at a distance from this place, on a certain plane, there were soldiers and infantrymen who the Duke of Milan had called together so that they would go to Bologna in order to besiege it. And since there was a rain cloud in the sky at that time, which received the picture of those moving armed men, the people in other nearby places looking upon the cloud thought that war-faring demons in the form of armed warriors existed in the air: they assumed that those had got there unaided or by magical force. And a second time he [Blaxius] says that in his time in Milan several angel-like images were able to be seen; some of them seemed to want to descend to earth and some to ascend to heaven; some of them had trumpets in their hands and some swords; everyone feared that God wanted to announce judgment upon the world. However, later it was learned that this had been a vision of fantastic things, because on the high and pointed tower of St. Gotthard an angel was affixed, holding in his hands a trumpet and a sword, which presented themselves in the aforementioned and water-laden cloud like in a mirror. Through the movement of the cloud, the illusions were multiplied as in moving water and appeared to be moving in various gestures. I have also read myself that not only human and angelic figures appeared repeatedly in the air, but also many other things like ships in stormy winds, or rowing ships, or fortresses with towers, or fruitful gardens, or beautiful cities, vast dragons and chimera-like monsters which had never been heard of. However, that this has happened due to the reasons we have proposed can be seen from the events that very often precede or follow the rainbow. I do not deny, as I have elsewhere clearly proved and described, that this could also happen with non-magical force but rather be shown through mere craftsmanship.15

15

Fontana 1544: Book 3, chap. 13 (wrongly 14), n. p.: Recitat .n. Blaxius Parmensis, olim doctor meus, semel apparuisse tempore suo anno gratiae .MCCCCIII. in Lombardia iuxta castrum quod dicitur Buxetum per tres dies omni die ante horam tertiarum in nubibus equites et pedites armatos cum lanceis et gladiis inuadentes se quibus perteriti nimium sunt inspicientes causam nouitatis ignorantes. Acciderat .n. hoc quia distanter ab illo loco in quadam planitie erant in armis milites et pedones, quos Dux Mediolani conuenerat, vt ad obsidendam Bononiam accederent. Et cum tunc esset in aere nubes aquosa recipiens similitudinem illorum armatorum se mouentium homines existentes in aliis conuicinis locis, nubem intuentes iudicabant in aere

252

Johann Konrad Eberlein

This account is so much in accordance with Dürer’s solution to the problem of placing the events of the Apocalypse in the clouds that it may be assumed he was familiar with the tradition Fontana’s lost treatise represents, if not the text itself16. This assumption might also apply for Mantegna’s ‘horseman in the clouds’ who, despite being as such formed by clouds, cannot clearly be separated from the mirage tradition. Dürer may have encountered this northern Italian tradition during his travels. If that was the case, and Dürer ‘rationalised’ the apparitions of the Apocalypse as mirages, this not only marked a step towards a new, realistic quality of the medium, but also showed how Dürer considered potential frictions with theological aesthetics. This would also answer the question of why Dürer chose to test his newly developed system on the Apocalypse, as opposed to a more pleasing cycle of ‘pictures’. Even more than the use of deceptive colours, contemporary theologians criticised the fact that artists depicted in their works things that did not actually exists. The most frequently attacked example was that Demones sub formis armigerum bellantes existere: sponte vel arte magica illuc aduenisse. Et inquit iterum semel in ciuitate Mediolani visum fuisse tempore suo imagines plures ad instar Angelorum: Quorum quidam videbantur ad terram velle descendere, et quidam ad coelum salire: Quidam eorum habentes tubas et quidam enses in manibus: quasae si Deus volens promouere iuditium mundi, omnes pertimebant. Sed post cognitum fuit harum fantasticarum visionem fuisse, quoniam in Turri sancti Gotardi alta et acuta erat Angelus quidam factus cum tuba et ense in manibus suis, qui nubi prefatae et aquose velut in speculo se offerebant (!). Motuque nubis sicut in aqua mota multiplicabantur ydola et variis apparebant moueri motibus. Legi quoque ipse aliquotiens in aere apparuisse nedum hominum et Angelorum figuras, sed et aliarum multarum rerum et Naues ventis tumentibus et Galeas remigantes et Castra cum turribus et viridaria pomiferia, et pulcherrimas ciuitates, Dracones immensos vltra modum monstraque cimerica et inaudita. Sed eadem contigisse ratione quam propalauimus, intelligere debes ad quas demonstrationes vt plurimum yris percedit vel sequitur. Et non nego vt alibi clare deduxi, et scripsi arte fieri posse etiam non magica, sed puro artifitio demonstrari. The name “Blaxius Parmensis” refers to Biago Palacani da Parma. A 1428 transcript of his “Quaestiones perspectivae” contains the source material for the passage in Fontana (cf. Pfisterer 1996: 133, n. 104; Canova 1972: 30, n. 63; for further literature see Hauser 2001: 152, n. 29). 16

For Dürer, perspective meant ‘Durchsehung’ (‘a looking through’) and it took him long to acquire the skill of employing the central perspective (cf. Eberlein 2003/ 2006: 85f.).

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

253

of ancient mythological creatures such as the centaurs. Thus, this criticism also implied a rejection of pagan gods. Sources stating this position, once more, go back to antiquity: Vitruvius rebuked adornment as needless invention17 and Horace regarded centaurs and sea creatures as examples of artistic licence18. Isidor used pictures of the Chimera and Scylla to exemplify that painting was a lie19. The condemnation of such creatures continued through the Middle Ages, for example in the works of Bernard of Clairvaux20 or the English cleric who around 1200 wrote the Pictor in carmine “ad modernadam … pictorum licentiam”21 (‘to govern the painters’ liberty’). However, in accordance with Horace’s views, the Renaissance witnessed a positive revaluation of the concept of artistic licence, for instance in the works of Cennio Cennini. In this context the ‘cloud pictures’ in which the images emerge naturally are of significance. In the Apocalypse, creatures are described that are no less absurd than centaurs, but were legitimised through the Bible, which is why theologians could not criticise their depiction. From this perspective, Dürer’s Apocalypse delivers an argument of great significance to the theory of art.22 Through his Apocalypse, Dürer was able to demonstrate his newly developed system of depiction and reproduction which withstood all limitations of theological aesthetics. Through the pictorial persuasiveness of his medial system, Dürer was able to depict for his contemporaries a whole range of images – from God to mankind, condemnation to salvation, war to peace, a panoply of emperors, kings, prostitutes, peasants and monsters – in such a way that they all seemed to actually exist23. Thus it becomes apparent how important the word/image problem was to Dürer. For him, its essence lay in the confrontation with the 17

Cf. Book VII, 5, 2-7 in: Vitruvius Pollo 1964/1976: 332-337.

18

Cf. De arte poetica, 1-10 in: Horatius Flaccus 1985: 538f.

19

Cf. Et. 19, 16 in: Isidore 1911: n. p.

20

Cf. Apologia 12 in: Bernard of Clairvaux 1963: 105.

21

Pictor in carmine, “Prologue” in: Delisle 1880: 206f.

22

This has already been noted by Blaise Pascal (see 1997: 227).

23

It could easily be shown that Dürer also employed the motif of the ‘cloud fringe’ in other works as a means of separating the supernatural and the earthly spheres. For example in his copper engraving “Das große Glück” (‘The great happiness’) (Schoch/ Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2001: catalogue number 33), in which the ‘cloud fringe’ appears almost ironic.

254

Johann Konrad Eberlein

theologians. Focussed on the written word, Christian theology had from the beginning been disinclined towards the ‘picture’ (cf. Krause/ Müller 1980, s. v. “Bild”). Pope Gregory was influential to the status of the ‘picture’ in the Middle Ages.24 As pictures conveyed to the illiterate what they could not read in books, Gregory recommended paintings to Bishop Serenus of Marseille, who was hostile towards imagery. The basis of this approach was not the mnemotechnical function of paintings, but that of the sermon. Pope Gregory’s idea was not for the faithful to look at paintings for their beauty, which would have been superficial, but for the message they conveyed. They were for the illiterate ‘to see what they should follow’: “vident quod sequi debeant”25. This legitimised the ‘picture’, without, however, detracting from the supreme importance of the written word. Yet, during the Reformation, Gregory’s ideas regarding paintings were recanted.26 Zwingli and Karlstadt gave the same precedence to the written word as had Hrabanus Maurus. In the view of the Reformation, God wanted to be worshiped spiritually. ‘Writing’ regained the direct connotation of the spoken word, but now in the form of the sermon juxtaposed with the earthbound image, the depiction of the flesh. Throughout his life, Dürer feared the Christian theologians’ verdict regarding pictures (cf. Eberlein 2003/2006: 142f.). As a devout Christian, this concerned him beyond his role as an artist. For Dürer, reformatory tendencies turning hostile towards images seemed like a repetition of early Christianity’s destruction of ancient art. He, therefore, felt the need to liberate art from the ideological conflict it was involved in by turning it into a practical and scholarly matter, so that it could be wielded as purely and objectively as an instrument. Dürer’s aim was to protect art – widely perceived of as false pretence – from iconoclastic attacks, which it was helpless against as long as its products depended on the fortuitous artistic skills of its creators. While this was the case, pictures were bound to lack artistic objectivity due to their low depictive quality. Dürer was therefore interested in improving medial reproduction and accuracy. He succeeded in concentrating artistic depiction into the black and white rendering of woodcut, thereby nullifying the theologians’ criticism of the ‘deceptiveness’ of colour, whose differentiation in intensity his line 24

For what follows cf. Eberlein 1995: 102-108.

25

Cf. Reg. L. 8-14 in: Gregorius 1891: 270.

26

For what follows cf. Dugan 1989: 237.

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

255

structures were capable of conveying. This becomes apparent in Erasmus’ aforementioned eulogy of Dürer: But Apelles used colour. His colours were admittedly restricted in number and the reverse of flamboyant, but they were colours nonetheless. Dürer, however, apart from his all-round excellence as a painter, could express absolutely anything in monochrome, that is in black lines only – shadows, light, reflections, emerging and receding forms, and even the different aspects of a single thing as they strike the eye of the spectator. His harmony and proportions are always correct. Above all, he can draw the things that are impossible to draw: fire, beams of light, thunderbolts, flashes and sheets of lightening, and the so-called clouds on the wall, feelings, attitudes, the mind revealed by the carriage of the body, almost the voice itself. All this he can do just with lines in the right place, and those lines all black! And so alive is it to the eye that if you were to add colour you would spoil the effect. It is surely much cleverer to be able to dispense with the meretricious aid of colour that Apelles required and still achieve the same results as he did. (Erasmus of Rotterdam in: Sowards 1978: 399)

Through Dürer, mankind learned to perceive of the visible as a phenomenon that could be furnished with spatial depth, i. e., to associate all things with the aspect of their potential optical mediation by way of graphic representation. This also included those things that did not yet exist, the plans and concepts to be put into practice in the future, just like the Apocalypse, which Dürer had envisaged as visible in the present despite its lying beyond earthly time. It was thus that the world became offered to the eye, at any time transferable into a scientific-technical graphical depiction. Since then, the “diagram” (i. e., schematic depiction) has embodied the promise of purity and freedom. What we call the Modern Era, characterised through aspects of permanent conquest, exploration and Western civilisation’s intellecttual appropriation, was preconditioned by the adoption of Dürer’s descriptive system. It is told in an account of the humanist Peucer that Dürer claimed his art was capable of depicting that which, by orthodox opinion, was undepictable: Melanchthon was, back then, very often together with that Pirckheimer and consulted with him in Nuremberg about questions concerning the church and the school. Albrecht Dürer, the painter and learned man, was called in on these gatherings, whereat Melanchthon professed that even the most splendid paintings were inane, and Pirckheimer and Dürer often argued about this question. When, in doing so, Dürer, with the vigour of his mind, heftily attacked Pirckheimer and the latter dismissed what he proposed, he went off like a fighting cock. Now Pirckheimer glowed […] and oft broke into the words: No, that cannot be painted. To

256

Johann Konrad Eberlein

which Dürer replied: But that, about which you speak, cannot either be said and not even thought27.

With his Apocalypse Dürer found the way to introduce and enforce a graphical depictive and reproductive system with a maximum of descriptive and illusionist power without evoking the opposition of traditional advocates of the importance of the ‘word’ before that of the ‘picture’. In this, he had to take into account their line of reasoning, but not for long. Soon the ‘cloud fringe’ became unnecessary in setting off naturalistically depicted phenomena from a natural earthly environment. The success of these medial systems and their successors forced the advocates of the primacy of the ‘written word’ to find new paths: in the age of Rembrandt, they tried to interpret the ‘written word’ as a (spoken) ‘sermon’, thereby ‘silencing’ pictures (cf. Busch 1971). Dürer’s ‘revolution’ in the field of graphic depiction could be used both for narrative and descriptive purposes. He himself did so in his illustrations of the Apocalypse, which in itself combines narrative with descriptive visions. However, Dürer’s newly developed illusionist technique may arguably be said to be of more importance for pictorial descriptions than for narrations. Narrations rely less on the convincing representation of phenomena as such, and more on their plausible and ‘readable’ relation to one another in order to suggest or evoke a story, while descriptions are by their very nature vivid representations of phenomena as they appear to our senses. In this sense, Dürer contributed substantially to empowering his pictorial medium to do precisely this: to vividly suggest that the objects depicted are ‘there’ and can be experienced as if they were real. Dürer therefore occupies a pre-eminent position in the history of descriptive techniques in the visual arts.

27

“Mit diesem Pirckheimer war damals Melanchthon sehr oft zusammen und beriet sich mit ihm in Nürnberg, über Fragen der Kirche und der Schule. Zu diesen Zusammenkünften wurde Albrecht Dürer, der Maler und gelehrte Mann, hinzugezogen, wobei Melanchthon ausführte, daß selbst die hervorragendste Malkunst nichtig sei, und über diese Streitfrage kam es oft zu Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Pirckheimer und Dürer. Wenn dabei Dürer in seiner Geistesstärke heftig Pirckheimer bekämpfte und jener das von ihm Vorgebrachte ablehnte, so ging er los wie ein Kampfhahn. Nun erglühte Pirckheimer [...] und oft brach er in die Worte aus: Nein, das kann nicht gemalt werden. Darauf erwiderte Dürer: Aber das, wovon du redest, läßt sich auch nicht sagen, und nicht einmal denken.” (Peucer in: Lüdecke/Heiland 1955: 46)

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

257

References Aristotle (1970). Meteorologie: Über die Welt. Transl. and annot. Hans Strohm. Aristoteles. Werke in deutscher Übersetzung. Ernst Grumach, ed., continued by Hellmut Flashar. Vol. 12. Berlin. Bernard of Clairvaux (1963). Apologie ad Guillhelmum Abbatem. Sancti Bernardi Opera. Vol. 3. Jean Leclercq, Charles. H. Talbot, eds. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses. Brendecke, Arndt (1999). Die Jahrhundertwenden: Eine Geschichte ihrer Wahrnehmung und Wirkung. Frankfort/Main: Campus. Canova, Giordana Mariani (1972). “Riflessioni su Jacopo Bellini e sul libro dei disegni del Louvre”. Arte Veneta 26: 9-30. Chadraba, Rudolf (1963). “Politische Sinngehalte in Dürers Apokalypse”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humbold-Universität zu Berlin. Ges.- und sprachwiss. Reihe 12: 79-106. Cottin, Jérôme (2003). “L’apocalypse de Dürer. Un modèle esthètique et herméneutique”. Philippe Abadie, Jean Burgos, eds. L’imaginaire des apocalypses. Bibliothèque Circé 4. Paris: Lettres modernes Minard. 89-112. Delisle, Léopold (1880). Mélanges de paléographie et de bibliographie. Paris: Champion. Dugan, Lawrence G. (1989). “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?”. Word and Image 5: 227-251. Dümmler, Ernst, ed. (1884). Poetae latini aevi carolini II. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Berlin: Weidmann. Eberlein, Johann Konrad (1995). Miniatur und Arbeit: Das Medium Buchmalerei. Frankfort/Main: Suhrkamp. — (1998). “Zur Grundlage von Benjamins Aura-Begriff”. Konrad Hoffmann, Peter K. Klein, Regine Prange, eds. Zeitenspiegelung: Zur Bedeutung von Traditionen in Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft. Festschrift für Konrad Hoffmann zum 60. Geburtstag am 8. Oktober 1998. Berlin: Reimer. 291-299. — (2003/2006). Albrecht Dürer. Rowohlts Monographien 50598. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Fontana, Giovanni da (1544). Liber Pompilii Azali Placentini De omnibus rebus naturalibus quae continentur in mundo videlicet: coelestibus et terrestribus necnon mathematicis : et de angelis motoribus quae coelorum. Venice: Amadei.

258

Johann Konrad Eberlein

Gregorius I (1891). Registrum epistolarum. Paul Ewald, Ludo Moritz Hartmann, eds. In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae II. Berlin: Weidmann. Hauser, Andreas (2001). “Andrea Mantegnas ‘Wolkenreiter’. Manifestation von kunstloser Natur oder Ursprung von vexierbildhafter Kunst?”. Gerhart von Graevenitz, Stefan Rieger, Felix Thürlemann, eds. Die Unvermeidlichkeit der Bilder. Literatur und Anthropologie 7. Tübingen: Narr. 147-172. Hempel, Eberhard (1977). Nikolaus von Cues in seinen Beziehungen zur bildenden Kunst. Berichte über die Verhandlungen der sächs. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Kl. 100, 3. Berlin: Akademischer Verlag. Horatius Flaccus, Quintus (1985). De arte poetica. In: Horaz Sämtliche Werke: Lateinisch und deutsch. Part II: Sermones und Epistulae. Transl. and ed. Hans Färber, Wilhelm Schöne. Munich/ Zurich: Artemis. Isidore (1911). Isidori hispaniensis episcopi etymologiarvm sive originvm libri XX. Vol. 2. M. W. Lindsay, ed. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon. Krause, Gerhard, Gerhard Müller, eds. (1980). Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Vol. 6, Bibel – Böhmen und Mähren. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lüdecke, Heinz, Susanne Heiland (1955 –). Dürer und die Nachwelt: Urkunden, Briefe, Dichtungen und wissenschaftliche Betrachtungen aus vier Jahrhunderten. Berlin: Rütten & Loening. Malmesbury, William of (1870). De gestis pontificum anglorum libri quinque. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, ed. Rolls Series 52. London: Longman. Migne, Jacques Paul, ed. (1857 – 1866). Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Graeca. Vol. 37. Paris. Oettinger, Karl (1971). “Dürers Selbstdarstellung”. Das Neue Erlangen 24 (August): 1814-1835. Panofsky, Erwin (1977). Das Leben und die Kunst Albrecht Dürers. Transl. Lise Lotte Möller. Munich: Rogner und Bernhard. Perrig, Alexander (1987). Albrecht Dürer oder die Heimlichkeit der deutschen Ketzerei: Die “Apokalypse” Dürers und andere Werke von 1495 bis 1513. Weinheim: VCH. Pfisterer, Ulrich (1996). “Künstlerische potestas audendi und licentia im Quattrocento – Benozzo Gozzoli, Andrea Mantegna, Bertoldo

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

259

di Giovanni”. Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 31: 107-148. Schoch, Reiner, Matthias Mende, Anna Scherbaum, eds. (2001). Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Band I: Kupferstiche, Eisenradierungen und Kaltnadelblätter. Munich: Prestel. —, eds. (2002). Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Band II: Holzschnitte und Holzschnittfolgen. Munich: Prestel. Thorndike, Lynn (1931). “An Unidentified Work by Giovanni da’ Fontana: Liber de omnibus rebus naturalibus”. Isis 15/1 (Febr.): 31-46. Vitruvius Pollo (1964/1976). Zehn Bücher über Architektur. Transl. and annot. Curt Fensterbusch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Weitmann, Pascal (1997). Sukzession und Gegenwart: Zu theoretischen Äußerungen über bildende Künste und Musik von Basileios bis Hrabanus Maurus. Spätantike, frühes Christentum, Byzanz. Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Reichert.

Illustrations

Illustration 1: Albrecht Dürer, Title Illustration 2: Albrecht Dürer, Title page of the Apocalypse’s 1498 German page of the Apocalypse’s 1511 Latin edition edition

260

Johann Konrad Eberlein

Illustration 3: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 4: Albrecht Dürer, “St Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist” John’s Vision of Christ and the Seven Candlesticks”

Illustration 5: Albrecht Dürer, “St John Illustration 6: Albrecht Dürer, “The and the Twenty-four Elders in Heaven” Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

261

Illustration 7: Albrecht Dürer, “Open- Illustration 8: Albrecht Dürer, “Four ing the Fifth and Sixth Seals” Angels Staying the Winds and Signing the Chosen”

Illustration 9: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 10: Albrecht Dürer, “The Seven Trumpets Are Given to the An- Battle of the Angels” gels”

262

Johann Konrad Eberlein

Illustration 11: Albrecht Dürer, “St Illustration 12: Albrecht Dürer, “The John Devours the Book” Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Seven-headed Dragon”

Illustration 13: Albrecht Dürer, “St Mi- Illustration 14: Albrecht Dürer, “The chael Fighting the Dragon” Sea Monster and the Beast with the Lamb's Horn”

Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction

263

Illustration 15: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 16: Albrecht Dürer, “The Adoration of the Lamb and the Hymn of Whore of Babylon” the Chosen”

Illustration 17: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 18: Andrea Mantegna, “St Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Sebastian” (ca. 1460). Kunsthistorisches Pit” Museum, Vienna

264

Johann Konrad Eberlein

Illustration 19: Detail from Andrea Mantegna, “St Sebastian” (see Illustration 3)

“Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”?1 Description in the Visual Arts Götz Pochat A verbal description is always related to a corresponding cognitive frame. This is also true of the visual arts, where the mode of representation is, however, furthermore subjected to conventional codes of representation to which the recipient is expected to respond. With regard to the mimetic arts, the recipient will succumb to illusion by way of projection, e. g. through imagination. As phenomenology has shown, this process of conjuring up the (absent) signified object involves viewer identification, an emotional response, and recollection. The question of why certain (art-historical) periods feature specific motifs and why the public has been willing to accept those motifs, is a sociological one. Yet it has to some extent been answered by iconology, which deals with the respective cognitive cultural frames, while the qualitative aspect of depiction reflects the transformation of an object perceived and conjured up in the artist’s mind. Description is always the outcome of a mental process, yet in contrast to processes triggered by verbal description and communication, the mode of (descriptive) representation in the visual arts appears more closely related to limbal faculties of the brain. In both cases the final outcome oscillates between the reference and the referent as encompassed by the mind.

Description is, no doubt, as stated by Wolf in his introduction to the present volume, a mental concept, a cognitive frame. The cognitive frame, however, according to Paul de Man, may show cracks2. A metaphor, describing an object or person, referring to a specific significance, is embedded in a cognitive framework; but the properties of a person or object described by way of attributions, which is, for instance, the case in metonomy, may prove to be haphazard, even more so when the signified in question is subject to a process of selfreflexive deconstruction. Hence, within the context of description, the

1

St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica I, qu. I art. 9, c (‘Corporeal Metaphors of Things Spiritual’).

2

The arbitrariness of meaning is discussed by Paul de Man (1979), especially in unmasking the uncertainties of metaphor compared to metonomy.

266

Götz Pochat

cognitive frame is always at risk3. If we take for granted Wittgenstein’s characterization of description as “a basically anti-metaphysiccal and language-centred epistemological programme”, as opposed to explanation, there is still no guarantee that the characteristic qualities attributed to an object will withstand a closer examination (Wolf in this volume: 11). All the same, as a participant in this interdisciplinary debate, I assume that description itself, which is to be analysed here, will turn out to be no more and no less than the universal ability of man to establish connotations to omnipresent cognitive frames, description itself being one in case. Jacob Burckhardt once complained that the art historian, in trying to describe a certain work of art, only manages to encircle it. He never arrives at the heart of the matter, owing to the ineffable process of artistic transformation. This puzzling fact of creativity and mimesis, the making and matching, has been discussed at length by Gombrich (1960/1968), at the end leaving him baffled by the ‘wonder of simultaneity’; this seems to be confirmed by recent research in neurobiology (cf. Singer 2002) – visual communication addresses a realm of consciousness which is less related to discursive logic than to deeper layers of emotion and expression situated in the pre-cortical limbal structure of the brain (cf. ibid.: 224). Maybe the use of metaphors in poetry, after all, helps to bridge the gap between the visual arts (the representation of objects) and the poet ‘thinking in pictures’ – using images as a means of literary expression. The three basic functions of the descriptive in literature and other media as listed by Wolf in his introduction to this volume (see 12) are: a) description as a means of identifying objects and phenomena and referring to them for communicative purposes by means of characteristic attributions, b) as a means of vividly representing objects and phenomena to the recipient, c) as a means of approaching reality in a seemingly objective way rather than as a means of explanation and interpretation. These basics are also relevant with regard to aesthetics.

3

The role of Paul de Man as a representative of demonstration in aesthetics has been summarized by Kern (1998).

Description in the Visual Arts

267

The everyday function of description as identification through attribution with special regard to absent phenomena is very much the same in the realm of the visual arts. Panofsky speaks of the primary or natural subject matter and the act of interpretation referring to it as pre-iconographical description (cf. 1939/1962). The problem arising here is that even in case of a plain description, the mode of representation is inextricably linked to convention and tradition both from the artistic point of view and with regard to the spectator. Any kind of communication in everyday life presupposes a constant process of identification, a make-believe that encompasses the willingness of the recipient to succumb to illusion: listening to a narration or perceiving an object appearing as ‘real’ in a painting – the psychological readiness to adjust the mental set in order to internalize the object described seems to be much the same (cf. Gombrich 1960/1968: 190). The experience referred to by Wolf in this context, is much enlarged if we turn to phenomenology and the distinctions made by Franz Brentano, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and others (cf. Husserl 1969; Merleau-Ponty 1945; Keller 1964: esp. 64; Gorsen 1966; Pochat 1984, and Pochat 1996: 7-26). The primary retention signifies the immediate recognition or identification of a represented object. The secondary retention harks back to former experiences, actualized and represented as a whole, a recollection of contexts in the past (see Husserl 1969: 16). A further distinction is made by Husserl, as the primary recollection does not only include identification of objects and persons but also the emotional response attached to them; the secondary recollection, on the other hand, not only represents a former mental situation but also distinguishes the present state of mind as distinct from the former content actualized in the mind. The consciousness of this ambivalence is characterized as “phantasy of mind” (‘Phantasiebewußtsein’ – cf. Husserl 1969: 48, and Pochat 1996: 15). Recollection in this wider sense is a sine qua non of creative reproduction, affecting the mind as a whole. This emergence in phenomenology may be traced back to Romanticism and even further, to the processes in the mind as discussed by Locke and Hume. Later on, Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817) dwells upon the distinction between Fancy and Imagination – the first defined as “Memory blended and modified by Choice; Imagination dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate” (Coleridge 1817/1907: chapter 13).

268

Götz Pochat

So far, at this stage of discussion, we are still dealing with the ordinary kind of memory and description of objects which are experienced but absent and therefore substituted by description. But here, too, it proves almost impossible to draw a clear line between object and experience – is there such a thing as an objective description? The stronger a verbal or illusionistic description, the more we are inclined to yield to the suggestiveness of the representation. The painter in former times was regarded as a magician, a mediator between reality and the observer by way of mimesis (cf. Kris/Kurz 1934/1980: 89-120). Is there a psychological difference between a vivid description by Thomas Hardy, as cited in Wolf’s introduction, and a painting by Constable (cf. Wolf: 7 and Illustration 1)?

Illustration 1: John Constable, “Wivenhoe Park” (1816; detail). National Gallery, Washington

As an analysis of descriptions shows, description in most, if not all, cases – be they of a verbal or pictorial nature – transcends the state of a mere reproduction. The components of most descriptions are chosen

Description in the Visual Arts

269

from a reservoir of memories, decomposed and put into place again in a new construction of a world, referred to by Coleridge as ‘Imagination’. Thus, even life-like descriptions contain an element of construction rather than of re-presentation, but I agree that explanation and interpretation have nothing to do with it – on the contrary, they rather counteract description as such. If, with regard to literary description, Riffaterre therefore speaks of its primary function as being “to dictate an interpretation”, the formal aspect of how something is described is adumbrated (Riffaterre 1981: 125). The analogous case of practical representation in the visual arts (form, colour, expressiveness, etc.), however, does obviously not play any role in Riffaterre’s consideration of a ‘meaningful construct’. In my opinion, the formal ‘meaning’ on this level of pre-iconographical description and experience is just what painterly description is all about. Van Gogh, for instance, makes us ‘see something’: the pungent yellow or the power of ultramarine in his “Wheat Field with Crows” (1890). This pre-iconographical description and the practical experience related to it, dealing also with formal aspects and aesthetic appreciation, in some cases coincides with the general aspect of Panofsky’s intrinsic meaning or symbolical value of a piece of art within the cultural context on the whole (cf. Panofsky 1939/1962: 7). With regard to still-life painting, for instance, the iconological question is not necessarily concerned with a specific meaning revealed by description, but rather investigates the value of such pictorial descriptions within a specific cultural context. Obviously, the strong demand for still-life paintings in seventeenth-century Dutch society provided the financial basis and means for a widespread specialization in this field of painting. The fundamental question arising, as to whether a certain tradition of representation may lead to specific expectations, selective perception and widely accepted aesthetic norms, cannot be discussed here, but has been dealt with at length by Gombrich. The sociological explanation of an anthropological phenomenon may, however, turn out to be a deadlock reminiscent of the insoluble question about the hen and the egg. Svetlana Alpers has written a most influential book with the challenging title The Art of Describing (1983), dealing with description as the essential impetus and aspect of Dutch painting in the 17th century (1985: 4-146). Francis Bacon, Huygens, Kepler and Comenius were the champions of the empirical conquest of reality

270

Götz Pochat

and the exact description of natural phenomena. The astronomer and the geographer, as represented by Vermeer in two famous paintings in Paris and Frankfort, by profession encompassed the field of natural sciences of the age – map-making was explicitly addressed as Descriptio mundi. The artist held a prominent place in society as an expert in pictorial representation less concerned with the quantitative aspect of the cognitive frame ‘description’, but rather with the qualitative aspect of ‘depiction’. Jan Vermeer’s famous painting “The Painter in his Studio” (1665/1666, Illustration 2) serves as a brilliant example in the line of Alpers’ argument (cf. Alpers 1985: 213; Sedlmayr 1960).

Illustration 2: Jan Vermeer, “The Painter in his Studio” (1665/1666). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

As described by Ripa (cf. 1604/1970: 346), the woman with the attributes of laurel, a trumpet and a book represents the allegory of History, i. e. Clio, but this interpretation is weakened by her strong physical presence, the allegory brought back to life by acute observation and a phenomenal technique. Painting itself, the conjuring make-believe, may be seen as the self-referential object of the masterpiece – a recon-

Description in the Visual Arts

271

struction of the intimate world of the studio, reflecting the everyday life of the busy painter, who, himself a part of the setting, is depicting his model’s laurel on the canvas and thus appears as master and subject matter of the actual painting. Light is transformed into colour, defining the objects and closing the gap between reality and the réaliser on the canvas, enhancing the visual quality of experience, leaving the spectator astounded by the strangeness of an interior at first glance classified as familiar. Description, as practised by Vermeer, is not a mirror of visible reality but of the mind of the artist at work. This complex subject touches the core of artistic creativity, representing and transforming the world vu à travers un tempérament. The true subject of the painting – cognition as a frame – is here located in the realm of otherness, reflecting the autonomy of mind. The spectator stands at the threshold of a room which he perceives but will never enter. Description is not an end in itself, but nonetheless an indispensable means of communication, in the realm of art and aesthetics as well as with regard to cognition. In fact, Alpers and many scholars with her have paid attention to the spectacular map of the Netherlands covering the wall in the background. With utmost precision Vermeer re-presented an actual map, of which one copy has been preserved in Paris (Illustration 3; cf. Welu 1975 and 1978; Alpers 1985: 213).

Illustration 3: Detail from Jan Vermeer, “The Painter in his Studio” (see Illustration 2) with the printed Map by Claes Jansz Visscher. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

272

Götz Pochat

The rendering of the northern and southern parts of the country hints at the historical time passed, the country itself being the result of a long historical process with intimations of a lost past and the potential glory of future society. Clio, the personification of History, stands between the painter and the map, which shows the art of mimetic description in its most prestigious form but, at the same time, exemplifies a highly complex abstraction. In fact, the word Descriptio on the upper border of the map denotes a geographical representation of the world, ending up in a conceptual form of depiction. Many artists were surely involved in the investigative conquest of the visual world with all its scientific, commercial, and political implications. On the lateral borders of the map a series of topographical views of Dutch cities is shown within the frames of the cartouches – actualizing the tradition of topographical representation, which in Holland became a popular genre of painting itself (cf. Alpers 1985: 264). The depiction of authentic cityscapes reached its climax with Vermeer’s “View of Delft” (Mauritshuis, Den Haag; Illustration 4).

Illustration 4: Jan Vermeer, “View of Delft” (c. 1660). Mauritshuis, The Hague

The distinction between the accurate topographical description on the verge of a scientific representation, making use of the camera obscura and other devices responding to demands of a cognitive kind, and the

Description in the Visual Arts

273

cognitive, abstract description of the map is, in the first place, a question of function and social expectation. The veduta in the eighteenth century can be gauged either way. Canaletto was held in high esteem, not only as an outstanding painter, but perhaps even more so by the English gentry having their castles and the prestigious sites of their estates depicted (cf. Links 1982: 145180; Links/Baetjer 1989: 223-255). The commissioners certainly focussed primarily on the accurate description, and it took the genius of Constable to escape from the straight-jacket of this demand. Vermeer is only one of many painters reflecting upon description and the vital role of mimesis in the process of artistic realization. The wish to conjure up by means of a perfect illusion has been a constant theme in literature and ekphrasis since antiquity (see Pygmalion’s dream), the utopian quality of this dream notwithstanding. An interesting painting by Magritte has come down to us, showing the artist depicting his model, representing her as a real person in space, liberated from the canvas she would normally merge with (Illustration 5). The paradoxical nature of miraculous fiction is commented on in the title: “Attempting the Impossible” (cf. Sylvester 1992: 148).

Illustration 5: René Magritte, “Attempting the Impossible” (1928). Toyota Museum, Nagoya/Japan

274

Götz Pochat

So far, I have dwelt upon some aspects of iconic description, wavering between the representation of things, absent and unseen, and the encounter with the world as reflected in the artefact. The examples chosen make it clear that even the iconic description and identification of simple objects tells us plenty about the general conditions promoting the choice of motives and the mode of representation. Moreover, the micro-genres cannot be separated from the general frame, which in the visual arts, in my opinion, differs from the cognitive macro-mode aimed at by verbal description and communication. I will here discuss the arguments put forward by Wolf in his introductory statement on “descriptions in the pictorial medium (painting)”. The “typical class of signs”, at first envisaged, concerns the simple identification of “objects as static and spatial”. According to Wolf, a pictorial medium such as painting appears to have a very high descriptive potential, whereas the experience of its objects “requires only a relatively low degree of recipients’ share […], since it permits the beholder to experience these objects in a way that is much closer to reallife perception than is the case, e. g., in written literature” (Wolf: 39). While Wolf focuses on a comparison between pictorial and verbal media, one must emphasize that without such a comparative focus it would be a simplification to relate painting to perception. In fact, such a simplification would obscure the complexity of the matter from a neuropsychological point of view and, moreover, would not do justice to the mental processes involved in mimetic representations and their mental reproduction on the part of the beholder. When hearing the sentence, ‘the horse is rearing’, as well as when looking at a drawing that shows a rearing horse, the brain of the recipient is triggered and his mind starts reproducing the event hinted at and the circumstances related to it. The word is not moving, nor is the depiction, but they are experienced as dynamic, suggesting a movement. The function of description, be it in words or in an image, is referential. Confusing a depicted object – illusionistic and spatial as it may appear – with reality is less probable, ‘impossible’ as Magritte asserted. I agree with Wolf that the amount of information stored by the depiction of a tree would require a never-ending, quite tiring ekphrasis – the simultaneity of iconic representation can conjure up an image which looks as diversified and rich as phenomena in nature (see Illustration 6).

Description in the Visual Arts

275

Illustration 6: Camille Pissarro, “Gardenview from Pontoise” (1917). Louvre, Paris

But the process of making and matching is regulated by norms and techniques related to the medium alone, the outcome of a longue durée and personal skill (cf. Gombrich 1960/1968: 126-152). The readiness of the spectator to respond to lines and dots, to ‘read’ these codes as descriptions and references to real objects, is astonishing indeed, and bears witness to the capability of a high degree of abstraction. I therefore venture to say that the ‘beholder’s share’, consciously or not, is always operating at a high level. The dynamics of perception have been scrutinized for a long time, especially by Arnheim with regard to the visual arts, and the phenomenon of projection itself had been reflected upon even long before. The blottings by Alexander Cozens may serve as an example (Illustration 7; cf. Cozens 1785/ 1786)4.

4

The specific method of investigation of Cozens is discussed by Werner Busch (cf. 1993: 337-354). Further aspects of the dynamics of perception have especially been dealt with by Rudolf Arnheim (cf. 1972, 1974 and 1978).

276

Götz Pochat

Illustration 7: Alexander Cozens, “Blot Nr. 11” (1785/1786). British Museum, London

Wolf has formulated the provocative question ‘whether there are any pictures at all that are not descriptive’. Of course, all mimetic pictures are descriptive in a simple way, notwithstanding the fact that they consist of abstract, codified micro-signs put together in order to represent a certain motif. The pull of illusion indeed proved to be so strong as to serve as a common denominator in the visual arts for about 800 years. Kandinsky stands at the end of this development, and his own artistic career bears witness to the struggle of liberation while eliminating mimesis. Yet in “Composition IV” from 1911, referred to by Wolf, there are still traces of mountains, towers (the ‘Kremlin’), riders, horses, battles, couples – lines and clusters of colour, intimating a world pervaded by a ‘sounding cosmos’, standing at the brink of autonomy and self-referentiality – lines, colours and volumes, indexical traces of emotional response (Illustration 8; cf. Brucher 1999: 350-372). Modern art is directed towards the world within, an emerging structure and harmony hitherto unseen and unheard of, coming into being – a revelation born out of the artist’s mind. Less a description, it

Description in the Visual Arts

277

is true, but rather a divination of a spiritual kind, as stated by Kandinsky himself in his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst, likewise from 1911. Also the pittura metafisica aimed at the Great Spiritual ‘sub metaphoris corporalium’.

Illustration 8: Wassily Kandinsky, “Composition IV” (1911). Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

Even if there is such a thing as ‘abstract art’ – let us consider Mondrian as another representative –, description does not completely disappear there either, despite being directed towards structure and energetic planes of colour, which, according to the artist, represent underlying principles in nature and the cosmos by way of analogy. The knowledge which arises in descriptions of abstract art is as differentiated as that of mimetic art. We may compare Jackson Pollock’s ‘gestic painting’ (see Illustration 9) with Barnett Newman’s “Vir heroicus Sublimis” (1958/1959), which cannot be defined by a oneway reference to well-known motifs and concepts, but rather as a deictic approximation toward expression, reflecting the state of the artist’s mind (cf. Newman 1996: 179). Boehm has discussed the convergence of processual abstract art and ekphrasis with regard to the deictic, making the spectator see what has been brought to light (cf. Boehm 1995: 23-40).

278

Götz Pochat

Illustration 9: Jackson Pollock while ‘drip painting’

Wolf rightly speaks of a minimum of representationality required to evoke illusion and narrativity (cf. Wolf in this volume: 40). Giotto’s fresco of the “Flight into Egypt” in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova (about 1305 A.D.), is referred to as an example of a “schematic, lowdegree landscape description” (ibid.: 42; see Illustration 10). It is true – mountain forests were certainly “not among the main interests of [the] painter” (ibid.: 42). But on the other hand, an application of our standards of illusion may prove fallacious. As spectators we have the possibility and ability to ‘adjust our mental set’, as Gombrich puts it. Compared to fresco-painting in the late thirteenth century, Giotto certainly embarked on an illusionistic adventure undreamt of before. At the same time, description as a means of illusion is never pushed beyond a certain point; it is rather balanced and even reduced, due to other artistic considerations.

Description in the Visual Arts

279

Illustration 10: Giotto, “Flight into Egypt” (1305). Scrovegni Chapel, Padova

Mother and infant, riding on the donkey, occupy the centre of the square, according to Arnheim, the least dynamic position of an object on a plane – intimating stability and certainty5. The group is further stabilized by the mountain peak looming in the background. At the same time, Giotto had to represent a passing moment – the donkey and the other protagonists ‘move’ across the picture plane from left to right. The position of the lines and the torsion of the bodies, not to speak of the foreshortened angel showing the way, certainly evoke this effect – Wolf later on concedes “a particularly large share of the recipients’ imaginary activity” while experiencing movement in bodies (ibid.: 44). The effect of transitoriness is further enhanced by the companion just entering the picture on the left, or the contour of Joseph overlapped by the framing border on the right. Depth in space is hinted at by the smaller and darker mountain to the left. The dominant sweeping contours of the mountains falling down diagonally from left to right enhance the forward pull of the group, especially 5

Structure and dynamics of perception have been dealt with by Arnheim throughout his life. Cf. for instance Die Macht der Mitte (1982). As for Giotto, Imdahl has brought earlier discussions to an unexpected revival (cf. 1980).

280

Götz Pochat

accentuated by the right arm of Joseph who is about to vanish out of sight (cf. Imdahl 1980: 49; Pochat 1996: 249). The position of the tree-trunks, stabilizing verticals or slight diagonals, also indicates both stasis and movement. A raising diagonal from left to right – the arm of the companion, the bridle and the neck of the donkey, culminating in Josef’s head and shoulders – serves as a counterpoint, indicating the direction of the protagonists. All of this is effectuated within the square of the fresco, which never gives up its specific character being an iconic structure restricted to a plane. The indexical hints are incorporated into a calculated, apparently simple order which turns out to be highly complex. We are confronted with a formal deictic frame, an icon corresponding, by way of analogy, to the true subject matter: “The Flight to Egypt”, transitory, yet fixed. For these reasons I cannot see why paintings, as asserted, have “obvious limitations in realizing […] the temporal frame of representation par excellence, namely narratives” (Wolf in this volume: 44). Although restricted to the representation of single events and specific objects, references to the past or to the future within a narration are abundant in the visual arts. Temporality, in fact, is a constitutive part of representation, mimetic and expressive, as well as of perception. The depiction of a verbal story in art may be called intermedial, but most of the stories themselves are related, in their turn, to conceptual frames of a more general kind. This is also the case in pictures. Bialostocki talks about general human topics as iconographical ‘framing themes’ (“Rahmenthemen”, see Bialostocki 1966). As for religious motifs and biblical texts, these meta-frames serve as a sine qua non of any story told or represented, and the description or representation itself is, in the end, also related to the exegesis, or, in the profane context, to an implicit moral lesson. Detailed information on single objects and constellations refers to concepts and events, represented by visual objects, figures, signs and symbols. Description, thus, is not only restricted to the presentation and identification of the motives enumerated. They serve as vehicles as well, i. e. as references to a referent of a more general kind. Wolf has given us a good example of this in his analysis of Wüest’s “Rhône Glacier when looking north-east” from 1772/1773 (Illustration 11, cf. Wolf in this volume: 47f.).

Description in the Visual Arts

281

Illustration 11: Johann Heinrich Wüest, “The Rhône Glacier when looking northeast” (1772/1773). Kunsthaus, Zurich

The minute figures in the foreground reflect different attitudes and reactions in the observer himself. As he is caught by the overwhelming dimensions and the force of the scenery, the painting mediates awe, enjoyment of the spectacle, and the actual representation of the panorama by an artist. The ‘reception figures’ are shown as reacting to Nature. The referent, in their case, is not located in the landscape, but rather their state of mind, revealed by gestures and the like. Whereas Burke stressed the physical conditioning of fear and terror, Wüest seems to take sides with Diderot and Kant here, relegating the

282

Götz Pochat

Sublime to the realm of psychology6. Even in this landscape painting, which is not primarily narrative, the motif itself and the minute figures represented suffice to direct attention to a conceptual frame reflecting aesthetics. The analysis of Giotto’s “Flight into Egypt” concerned the formal structure as related to the represented narrative. The second layer of Panofsky’s iconology not only dealt with the content of ‘images, stories and allegories’, but also with the question of how a picture can refer to an action unfolding in time. Description here also functions as a reference to a conceptual frame. During some periods of cultural history there was a tendency even to imbue single objects with a symbolical value – the locus classicus of Thomas Aquinas has deliberately been chosen as the title to this paper: spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium (Summa Theologica I, qu. I art. 9, c). The problem of ‘disguised symbolism’ (Panofsky) emerging in early Netherlandish painting arises from the fact that the minute description of a contemporary interior is packed with objects, the referential function of which is sometimes hard to prove. Iconographical tradition helps to clarify the significance (cf. Panofsky 1971: 1242). The Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin (about 1425; Metropolitan Museum, Cloisters, New York; Illustration 12) may here serve as an example: the pot with the lilies on the table refers to the chastity of the virgin, as do the laver and basin as substitutes for the ‘fountain of gardens’ and the ‘well of living waters’. The lions in the armrest of the bench refer to the Throne of Solomon (I Kings X, 18 ff.), a simile of the Madonna as Sedes Sapientiae. The candle on the table may signify Christ – Christus […] est candela accensa (Spec. hum. salvationis, chap. 10), though the extinction, according to Panofsky, could refer to the notion of St. Bridget that the mother by the radiance of Light Divine became “reduced to nothingness” (Panofsky 1971: 142).

6

As for the different aspects of the Sublime as stated by Burke, Diderot and Kant see Pries 1989: 1-90; Pochat 1986: 419-423, 451-452, 513-517.

Description in the Visual Arts

283

Illustration 12: Robert Campin, “The Annunciation” (Mérode Altarpiece; 1425). Metropolitan Museum, Cloisters, New York

In the Lucca-Madonna by Jan van Eyck (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfort) about ten years later, we are confronted with the same constellation, now, however, in a more restricted but highly illusionistic representation of the interior. The motif of the Madonna lactans is here combined with the illuminated glass carafe in the niche, referring to the vision of St. Bridget, recapitulated by the Nativity Hymn: As the sunbeam through the glass passeth but not breaketh, So the Virgin, as she was, Virgin still remaineth. (Panofsky 1953/1971: 144; see also Meiss 1945)

284

Götz Pochat

The referent, made visible by description, in turn refers to a meaning underlying the picture as a whole: the purity of the Virgin. If we turn once more to the Mérode altarpiece, which represents the crucial event of the Annunciation, we certainly deal with a narrative subject. The extensive research devoted to this painting has progressed further since Schapiro and Panofsky. What moment of the event has been chosen? Has the angel already announced to the Virgin still reading in her breviary? The tiny depiction of the infant carrying the cross and just intruding through the circular window to the left, was normally accompanied by the dove of the Holy Ghost. Has he already reached his goal? The sumptuous codex on the table has been identified by Châtelet as the Exposition of Ludolph of Saxony on the life of the Virgin (cf. Châtelet 1996: 102). Ludolph, in another text, describes the descent of the Holy Ghost on the occasion of the Pentecost in terms of a blowing wind. According to Bonaventura in his Lignum vitae (c. 1250), the Holy Ghost “came over her like a divine fire, inflaming her mind and sanctifying the flesh with the most perfect purity. Then the virtue of the most High was infused into her in order that she might be able to sustain such ardor.” (In Robb 1936: 523) We can thus conclude that the divine wind, or fire, has already passed and extinguished the candle in doing so.

Illustration 13: Detail from Robert Campin, “The Annunciation” (see Illustration 12)

Description in the Visual Arts

285

Reuterswärd drew attention to another indication of the occurrence: the parchment folios of the codex (also dealing with the subject) have been curled up as if having been exposed to great heat (Illustration 13; cf. Reuterswärd 1998: 47; Pochat 2004: 130). Previous stages of the narrative are made visible, the incarnation itself is just about to take place. The cognitive limitations of narrative in the visual arts are compensated by a wide range of references, located in the past or in the future. Pictorial narrativity is endowed with a complexity which is different but as diversified as in verbal narratives. An apparently ‘realistic scene’ and single motifs are saturated with meaning, though we can never be sure to grasp them all, nor can we speak of the ‘one and only’ intention behind them. Pictorial representations, ambiguous as they may be with regard to narrativity and descriptivity, are, by their own means, no less suggestive and far-reaching than their verbal counterparts. Description as such is therefore – as well as narrative – certainly a transmedial mode of representation, not restricted to verbal texts, or pictures for that matter.

References Alpers, Svetlana (1983/1985). The Art of Describing. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983. German: Kunst als Beschreibung: Holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Cologne: DuMont, 1985. Arnheim, Rudolf (1972/1977). Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1972. German: Zur Psychologie der Kunst. Cologne: DuMont, 1977. — (1974/1978). Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1974. German: Kunst und Sehen: Eine Psychologie des schöpferischen Auges. Cologne: DuMont, 1978. — (1982). Die Macht der Mitte: Eine Kompositionslehre für die bildende Kunst. Cologne: DuMont. Bialostocki, Jan (1966/1981). Stil und Ikonographie: Studien zur Kunstwissenschaft. Dresden: Fundus/Cologne: DuMont.

286

Götz Pochat

Boehm, Gottfried (1995). “Bildbeschreibung: Über die Grenzen von Bild und Sprache”. Gottfried Boehm, Helmut Pfotenhauer, eds. Beschreibungskunst – Kunstbeschreibung. Munich: Fink. 23-40. Brucher, Günther (1999). Wassily Kandinsky: Wege zur Abstraktion. Munich/London/New York, NY: Prestel. Busch, Werner (1993). Das sentimentalische Bild: Die Krise der Kunst im 18. Jahrhundert und die Geburt der Moderne. Munich: Beck. Châtelet, Albert (1996). Robert Campin, le Maître de Flémalle: la fascination du quotidien. Anvers: Fonds Mercator. Coleridge, S. T. (1817/1907). Biographia Literaria. Ed. J. Shawcross. Oxford: OUP. Cozens, Alexander (1785/1786). A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape. Reprinted in: Adolf Paul Oppé, Alexander Cozens (1952). Alexander and John Robert Cozens. London: Black. Gombrich, Ernst H. (1960/1968). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon. Gorsen, Peter (1966). Zur Phänomenologie des Bewußtseinsstroms: Bergson, Dilthey, Husserl, Simmel und die lebensphilosophischen Antinomien. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie, Psychologie und Pädagogik 33. Bonn: Bouvier. Husserl, Edmund (1969). Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893-1917). Rudolf Boehm, ed. Husserliana X. The Hague: Nijhoff. Imdahl, Max (1980). Giotto, Arenafresken: Ikonographie, Ikonologie, Ikonik. Munich: Fink. Keller, Wilhelm (1964). “Die Zeit des Bewußtseins”. Rudolf W. Meyer, ed. Das Zeitproblem im 20. Jahrhundert. Bern/Munich: Francke. 44-69. Kern, Andrea (1998). “Paul de Man”. Julian Nida-Rümelin, Monika Betzler, eds. Ästhetik und Kunstphilosophie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzeldarstellungen. Stuttgart: Kröner. 529-534. Kris, Ernst, Otto Kurz (1934/1980). Die Legende vom Künstler: Ein geschichtlicher Versuch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Links, John G. (1982). Canaletto. Oxford: Phaidon. —, Katharina Baetjer (1989). Canaletto. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Description in the Visual Arts

287

Man, Paul de (1979). Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. Meiss, Millard (1945). “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenthcentury Paintings”. Art Bulletin 27: 175-181. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1945/1966). Phenoménologie da la perception, 1945. German: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966. Newman, Barnett, Richard Shiff (1996). Schriften und Interviews 1925 - 1970. Bern/Berlin: Gachnang & Springer. Panofsky, Erwin (1953/1971). Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. New York, NY: Icon Edition. Panofsky, Erwin (1939/1962). “Introductory”. Erwin Panofsky. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York, NY/Evanston, WY/London: Harper & Row. 331. Pochat, Götz (1984). “Erlebniszeit und bildende Kunst”. Christian W. Thomsen, Hans Holländer, eds. Augenblick und Zeitpunkt: Studien zur Zeitstruktur und Zeitmetaphorik in Kunst und Wissenschaften. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges. 22-41. — (1986). Geschichte der Ästhetik und Kunsttheorie von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Cologne: DuMont. — (1996). Bild – Zeit. Vol. I: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frühen Neuzeit. Vienna/ Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau. — (2004). Bild – Zeit. Vol. II: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Vienna/Cologne/ Weimar: Böhlau. Pries, Christine, ed. (1989). Das Erhabene: Zwischen Grenzerfahrung und Größenwahn. Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora. Reuterswärd, Patrik (1998). “New Light on Robert Campin”. Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 67: 43-54. Riffaterre, Michael (1981). “Descriptive Imagery”. Yale French Studies 61: 107-125. Ripa, Cesare (1604/1970). Iconologia: overo descrittione di diverse imagini cavate dall’antichità, e di propria inventione. Hildesheim: G. Olms. Robb, David M. (1936). “The Motive of the Christ Child in the Annunciation”. Art Bulletin 18: 523-526.

288

Götz Pochat

Sedlmayr, Hans (1959). “Jan Vermeer: Der Ruhm der Malkunst”. Hans Sedlmayr. Epochen und Werke. Gesammelte Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte. Wien: Herold. 107-120. Singer, Wolf (2002). Der Beobachter im Gehirn: Essays zur Hirnforschung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Sylvester, David (1992). René Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson. Welu, James (1975). “Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources”. The Art Bulletin 57: 529-547. — (1978). “The Map in Vermeer’s Art of Painting”. Imago Mundi 30: 9-30.

Descriptive Images Authenticity and Illusion in Early and Contemporary Photography Susanne Knaller From the very beginning of, and far into, the 20th century the descriptive mode, constitutive of the photographic medium, has not allowed a full integration of photography into the art system. At the same time, the art system itself was far from being homogeneous in the 19th century. On the contrary, it was defined by different and even antagonistic programs such as Idealism and Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. In order to gain reputation, the photographic image imitates traditional media such as painting, at the same time insisting on its own artistic logic, within which the descriptive mode plays a decisive role. By discussing early and contemporary photography in the context of aesthetic concepts such as authenticity, appearance and illusion, this study offers a definition of the descriptive mode in the context of the photographic image. At the same time, the analysis of the descriptive mode allows new insights into the specific character of photography itself.

1. In the contributions to the lecture series which forms the basis of the present volume, ‘description’ as a term for a basic mode of organizing signs and thus a mode of communication (Werner Wolf) was defined as an “interrelation of textual and extratextual information” (Ansgar Nünning) and a “transmedial mode of representation” (Götz Pochat). Werner Wolf differentiated between description as a macro-mode, or a macro-genre, and description as a micro-mode (i. e. as part of works and artefacts). Photography can be both. If we regard photographs as realizations of the descriptive as a macro-mode, we are dealing with an ideotypical construction, a typologisation of the medium. Thomas Benton observed in 1922:

290

Susanne Knaller

Die Fotografie ist durch ihre mechanische Einrichtung ganz an natürliche Prozesse gebunden. Sie gibt mit Hilfe des Lichts naturinhärente Qualitäten wieder. Eher beschreibt sie, als daß sie interpretiert. Sie ist wissenschaftlich. (Benton in Kemp 1999: 41f.)1

For Irene Albers, observation, documentation and description are semantic characteristics of photographic features (see 2001: 542). Peter Galassi talks about “photography’s talent of description” (2001: 10), the camera can be used as a “means of description” (Campany 2003: 24). However, description can also structure the photographic picture as a micro-mode, as a mode which characterizes certain picture genres or picture motifs – “descriptive photography” (Galassi 2001: 25), documentary photography, the scientific exposure, the photo-fit, etc. The evaluation of photography as a factually descriptive medium is based on media-specific attributes such as deixis and referentiality, which assume that photography is based on objective, precise observation as its determining perspective. These assumptions hindered the acceptance of photography as part of the art system far into the 20th century. Pure description and the depiction of what stands in front of you were regarded as adverse to art in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries. The sense of composition and art can be found much more clearly in invention and creation. In the 18th century, Gottsched, for instance, distinguished categorically between mere description (copy of reality) and “lebhafter Schilderey” (‘vivid depiction’) (1982: 142). For Schiller, any dependence on an ‘external subject’ (‘äußerer Stoff’) was an evil (cf. 1962: 399). For Schlegel, imagination is the mainspring of the aesthetic which unfolds irrespective of what is lying ahead, i. e., referentiality. Even for the structuralist Roman Jakobson, literature does not obtain its meaning through a relationship between text and world, nor through hetero-reference. The poetic function of a text is quintessentially activated by text codes generated through selfreferentiality. This results in the text referring to itself and its form. The view that hetero-referentiality and description are not constitutive of art still lingers in many current theories and is mostly based on the opposition of description and narration. The latter is attributed to the demand for interpretation and interpretative representation, whereas 1

‘Photography, by its mechanical constitution, is completely bound to natural processes. With the help of light, it reproduces qualities inherent in nature. It describes, rather than interprets, things. It is scientific.’ [My translation]

Descriptive Images

291

description is often regarded as a strictly hetero-referential form of neutral observation which does not interpret or design the described (see Jakobson 1960; cf. Stern 1990; Ronan 1997: 280f.). Let us go back to the 19th century. Opposing the idealistic positions à la Schiller, realistic and naturalistic poetics propagated the function of literature and painting as depicting reality where description and thus details, play an important role. Flaubert emphasised the constitutive efficiency of description and explained in a letter to Sainte-Beuve that there is not a single redundant description in his book and that every single one of them has a bearing on the plot (in Ronen 1997: 281). Zola defended the new descriptive, naturalistic literature with recourse to Flaubert. In spite of these views, many contemporaries continued to believe that, contrary to literature, photography lagged far behind the literary form of description and was classified as a pure copy. As photography is radically descriptive, it was regarded as artless and as not belonging to the art system. Baudelaire’s condemnation of the new medium that merely copies nature is legendary. He opposed it to an art reflecting the impressions and the imaginative creations of a ‘true’ artist. However, neither the realists, who were accused of being literary daguerreotypists by Baudelaire, nor the critics took a clear stance in favour of the new medium. On the one hand, they distanced themselves theoretically and artistically from photography, while, on the other hand, they worked with photographic motifs and metaphors in their texts. Champfleury, for instance, rejected photography when it came to defending the artistic quality of realistic art, yet fell back on it to define realistic poetics (see 1856: 92). This ambiguous attitude did not significantly change with naturalism. Zola, for instance, bridled at a continuous photographic method and insisted on the author’s intervention. On the other hand, he considered the author to be a kind of photographer: “Il doit être le photographe des phénomènes: son observation doit représenter exactement la nature […]” (1968: 1178)2. Photography fulfils, without limitation, the claims for clarity demanded of realism, a claim that is at the same time met by literary description, which increases in importance in naturalism, in particular owing to the modelling of the author as a neutral, factual observer. The author becomes a 2

‘He must be the photographer of the phenomena, his observation must represent nature precisely.’ [My translation]

292

Susanne Knaller

photographer, and the linguistic act of description is thus tied to a palpable act of seeing. The naturalistic author is in so far photographic-descriptive as he can reproduce a situation of objects and subjects referentially, accurately, synchronically, and from an objective-observational perspective. He thereby follows the scientific ideal of positivism. This clearness and accuracy through description are equated to photography. The immoralism, which Flaubert was accused of in court due to his objective narrative style that refuses to moralise, was rejected by his defence lawyer with reference to the photographic form: “[…] une fidélité toute daguerrienne dans la reproduction du type de toutes les choses […]” (Flaubert in Küpper 1987: 130)3. Joachim Küpper consequently defines the realistic descriptive form, which was used in the texts following a realitydepicting aesthetics, as a ‘merely registering description of the banal everyday existence, where the principle of aesthetic and moral idealizing has been abandoned’ [my translation]4. It is exactly this method of renouncing selection which Nietzsche strictly disclaimed: Es ist Selbst-Verachtung aber bei den Modernen […]. Was sie erreichen, ist Wissenschaftlichkeit oder Photographie d. h. Beschreibung ohne Perspektiven, eine Art chinesischer Malerei, lauter Vordergrund und alles überfüllt. (1980-1999: 57f.)5

This comparison is confirmed, albeit from a favourable perspective, by one of the inventors of photography, William Fox Talbot, who claimed that the neutral camera would depict exactly what it sees and register a chimney or a chimney sweep with the same impartiality as a Greek statue. If we take a look at 19th-century aesthetic theories, we find that photography was positioned in a flux between the idealistic poetics of genius and realistic referentiality. Hence it had to define its artistic or medial status within a field of contradictory concepts, where the artist/writer took on a problematic position: terms such as creative 3

‘[…] an entirely daguerreo-like fidelity in the reproduction of the type of all things […]’. [My translation]

4

“[...] nur mehr registrierende, vom Prinzip der ästhetischen und moralischen Idealisierung abgelöste Deskription der banalen Alltagsexistenz” (Küpper 1987: 58).

5

‘It is self-contempt, however, of modern artists […]. What they achieve is science or photography, i. e., description without perspective, some sort of Chinese painting, purely foreground and completely overcrowded.’ [My translation]

Descriptive Images

293

power, imagination, subjectivity, and originality were merged with postulates of object authenticity and objectivity. When reproached with the argument that he, the naturalistic writer, was merely a mechanical recording medium, passive and reproductive, he countered this with the preference for a new concept of truth, which, based on observation, allowed for objectivity and harmonised with extraliterary discourses. In the following, I would like to examine the question of how the descriptive, renditional and referential photographic image does indeed fit into the art system and in what ways it changes it. In order to do so, I correlate the defining concept of description for photography with two termini which defined the artistic status of artefacts in the 18th and 19th centuries: mimesis and appearance. These terms can insofar be connected to description as mimesis and appearance may, at least as aesthetic effects, evoke referentiality. In the 19th century, the artistry of photography could only articulate itself in this field of concepts.

2. In the media paradigm of the 19th century, the invention of photography caused a sensation reaching into all social, cultural and scientific circles. At last it was possible to realise the arts’ and sciences’ long cherished dream of the perfect rendition of reality as well as to permanently retain a copy of it. A photograph is the perfect copy of an object. Moreover, the object can depict itself as the picture generates itself. A contemporary critic referred to the “Lichtzeichnungen” (‘light drawings’) or “Abdrücke” (‘imprints’) as nature and object themselves (in Stiegler 2000: 25). Humboldt was thrilled by the ‘objects that paint themselves with inimitable fidelity’ [my translation]6. Henry Fox Talbot noted that “it is not the artist who makes the picture, but the picture that makes itself” (Talbot in Stiegler 2000: 55). Talbot’s Pencil of Nature is based on the concept of photographic self-depiction of nature. In painting and other pictorial media, authenticity to life and affinity were regarded as an artistic quality even before photography was invented. Yet it was not only the au6

“[...] Gegenständen, die sich selbst in unnachahmlicher Treue mahlen” (Humboldt in Stiegler 2000: 22).

294

Susanne Knaller

thentic copy which was intriguing, but also the illusion of reality connected with it. The aesthetic pleasure, in fact, lay in the recognizing the illusion rather than in the illusion itself. Artistic quality appeared in the perfection of realism. However, it was this very poetological demand of mimetic illusionism or illusionistic mimesis which excluded photography from the 19th century art system. Due to its property as a technical medium reproducing objects and subjects with unprecedented accuracy and sharpness, photography was considered a merely scientific means of recording rather than an artistic medium. In order to gain recognition as an art form, photography had to confront itself with mimesis as a mode of rendition and illusion as a value and renditional effect, respectively. Existing conventions, as for instance offered by the medium of painting, therefore lent themselves to adaptation.Indeed, many artistically ambitious photographers of the 19th and early 20th centuries were geared to styles and motifs of painting. Within pictorialism, for instance, this medial adaptation became an aesthetic principle. Contrary to this move towards adaptation, photography could also force a reformulation and expansion of artistic determinative categories such as author and work. The possibility of the technically and chemically based recording and reproduction of segments of reality sustainably changed the medial relation between subject and object. Photographic perception modified the status of real objects just as it modified the relation between perceiver and objects. Already at the beginning of the 20th, century photographic art defined itself with reference to its technical nature as well as to the distinctiveness of the photographic view and the singularity of photographic reality. Reality itself is subsequently not only a mediated, perceived object, but also the mediated image, and no longer the mere object of an image. In 1929, Max Picard denounced the “Photographierwelt” (‘world to be photographed’), in which these objects, removed from reality and thus separated from it, would ‘live’. Kracauer also continued to speak of a “Photographiergesicht” (‘face to be photographed’) which the world has put on (see Picard 1932: 174; Kracauer 1977: 34). On the basis of such discourses concerned with photographic perception, theorists not only dealt with the problem of mimesis, but photography also forced them into taking a perception-theoretical standpoint which required medial awareness. This is why photography is both hetero-referential as well as self-referential. Flaubert already

Descriptive Images

295

made this clear: “Il n’y pas de Vrai! Il n’y a que des manières de voir. Est-ce que la photographie est ressemblante? Pas plus que la peinture 7 à l’huile […].” (in Stiegler 2000: 378) . This was not without consequences for the concept of description. It has several functions: Firstly, it has defined the photographic image since its beginnings. Secondly, it is connected with the concept of mimesis, because description is a handed-down method of rendition to create mimetic illusions (see Ritzer 2004: 101). Thirdly, description creates a notion of relation between hetero- and self-referentiality, as description necessarily implies a semiotic process between perceiving and presenting. Finally, the functions of description mentioned herein and the semiotic conditionality of photography lead to a preference of certain descriptive genres: portrait, street and architectural photography count among the most important genres. Description in the context of photography is thus relevant both as a term of definition as well as a concept of rendition.

3. I would like to begin the discussion of the photography-descriptionappearance-mimesis paradigm with an analysis of the multi-faceted notion of appearance. In principle, the aesthetic concept of appearance deals with the relationship of art-reality-truth/universal and until today has encompassed meanings which are derived from Greek origins (see Früchtl 2003: 367): 1) splendor or lumen (glow, shine) 2) phainomenon and apparentia (becoming visible, appear) 3) illusio (seeming) and tightly connected to 4) fictio (apparentness, as-if) These four fundamental elements of meaning each show historically and medially caused differences in accentuations, reductions or eliminations in the terms which have developed over time. The three most important ones are: aesthetic appearance, aesthetic illusion, and fiction. Aesthetic appearance is an attribution and a value which has an art-defining function. Aesthetic illusion is a category describing aes7

‘The Truth does not exist! There are only modes of seeing. Is photography mimetic? Not any more than oil painting […].’ [My translation]

296

Susanne Knaller

thetic effects. Fiction, finally, is a renditional and perceptional concept, which has been increasingly used since the 1960s and refers to medial, culturally conditioned constructs which can take on many meanings in productive as well as receptive areas. The difference between reality and fiction/appearance is thereby often suspended. All three forms, aesthetic appearance, aesthetic illusion and fiction, are of significance to photography. I would like to commence with a brief definition of aesthetic appearance, followed by that of illusion, before returning to fiction. The concept of aesthetic appearance emerged in the second half of the 18th century in the context of Genieästhetik (‘aesthetics of genius’) and the incipient development of an autonomous art system. Romantic art in the broad sense is mimetic to the extent that it was still oriented towards the autonomous laws of natural beauty. Yet, this beauty must be ‘filtered’ through art in order to be useful for legitimizing art. Autonomous art arises from the deviation to the non-artistic, societal, and natural. The validity of art is produced by an author who establishes the composition as an autonomous carrier of validity. The artist is a revealer; Novalis calls him “Messias der Natur” (‘Messiah of nature’, 1960: 248). He becomes the guarantor of aesthetic distinctiveness which refers to the universal. This poetic truth generates itself by confining itself from all reality and takes on a life of its own (cf. Petersen 2000: 204-212): Schiller claims that ‘the artist cannot make use of a single element of reality the way he finds it […], his work must be ideal in all its parts […] if it is to be realistic as a whole.’ [My translation]8 In the ideal case it means the abolition of the medial in favour of a seeming presence of infinity and the ‘idea’, Hegel’s “sinnliches Scheinen der Idee” (‘sensuous appearance of the idea’). The beauty in appearance, the apparent beauty, refers to the apparentless, the idea. Deception is not impossible: Die Poesie heilt die Wunden, die der Verstand schlägt. Sie besteht gerade aus entgegengesetzten Bestandteilen – aus erhebender Wahrheit und angenehmer Täuschung. (Novalis 1957: 374)9

8

“Der Künstler [kann] kein einziges Element aus der Wirklichkeit brauchen [...] wie er es findet, [...] sein Werk [muss] in allen seinen Teilen ideell sein [...], wenn es als ein Ganzes Realität haben [...] soll.” (Schiller 2004: 812)

9

‘Poetry heals the wounds that the mind inflicts. It consists of directly opposite elements – of elevating truth and pleasant deception.’ [My translation]

Descriptive Images

297

This refers to the effect of the independent appearance of beauty, which is true in its sincere commitment to the appearance (see Schiller 1989: 656f.). However, the deception/illusion is only acceptable as appearance of beauty, not as deception as such: Soll eine Nachahmung schön seyn, so muß sie uns ästhetisch illudiren; die obern Seelenkräfte aber müssen überzeugt seyn, daß es eine Nachahmung und nicht die Natur selbst sei. (Mendelssohn 1994: 166)10

The romantics’ aesthetic concept of appearance referring to the object of art is based on the 18th-century reception-aesthetic concept of illusion. During the Enlightenment and particularly in the Age of Sensibility, aesthetic illusion was embedded in the context of the literary ideal of naturalness and emotional appeal, an ideal which was considered reachable by way of simulating authenticity and factuality: this is a rhetorical effect, which can be defined in terms of Roland Barthes as ‘referential illusion’ (illusion reférentielle). As an example of a successful effect of illusion, one may mention epistolary novels which are allegedly based on real letters and elicit an emotional identification with the protagonists and their fates. The addressee of this art of illusion is an ideal ethical subject that is sure of his/her emotions and capable of virtue, a subject that recognises and follows the voice of his/her ‘inner nature’ (cf. Sauder 1974: 92). This reflexive emotional consciousness forms the basis for morally sound actions within society. 19th-century realism distanced itself both from concepts of 18thcentury illusion and its moral and aesthetic implications as well as from the concept of ‘appearance’ of the romantics. The reproductive art of the French realists, for instance, lacks the educational and sentimental moral component. Balzac and especially Flaubert defined the novel as a representation of extra-literary reality in the sense of an adequate description of reality (Balzac speaks of reproduction rigoreuse). To sum up, we can say that with the development of the sciences and the invention of new media such as photography, the conditions for the representation of reality in the 19th century slowly changed. While still measuring itself against aesthetic illusion as an effect suggesting authenticity, 19th-century representation of reality no 10

‘If imitation is supposed to be beautiful, it has to give us an aesthetic illusion; the rational powers of the soul, however, must be convinced that it is imitation and not nature itself.’ [My translation]

298

Susanne Knaller

longer carried emotional or moral connotations as had been the case in the 18th century. It no longer had a transcending function, but developed as its main parameters perception and the observation of reality as well as connectivity to given constructs of reality. With this displacement within the aesthetic discourse formation, literature approximated a tradition of the fine arts where mimesis was defined in the sense of rendition and where creating a reproduction of reality and similarity were understood as artistic/artisan qualities. In literature, the Aristotelian concept of mimesis, which considers mimesis and illusion as a unity, dominated until the 19th century. Aristotelian mimesis means depiction, creating techniques of fictionalisation which do not reproduce what is in the foreground but rather the possible and the probable. Poetry is thought to be descriptive and should orientate itself to the appearance of reality, yet never merely copy or reproduce it (see Ritzer 2004: 86, 89). The poetics of realism and naturalism connected to the concept of imitatio rerum in painting and defined the relations reality/art and reality/artist through forms of perception and depiction which were, inter alia, derived from the new medium of photography: objective observation and description of a given reality. The realistic and naturalistic strategies are certainly also fictional strategies. Irene Albers, with reference to Zola and in analogy with Roland Barthes, speaks of an effet de photographie. She also shows that Zola cannot solve the ambivalence between créateur (the author as creator) and observateur (the author as observer): Das ungelöste Problem seiner Theorie ist das Problem der positivistischen Wissenschaftstheorie. Es resultiert auch aus der undurchschauten Medialität der Beobachtung und der Gestaltung des Experiments, der ungeklärten Rolle des Subjekts in der Relationierung von ‘Sehen’ und ‘Wissen’. (Albers 2002a: 244, 249)11

Theories of photography have reflected this relationship of subject/ medium/picture from the very beginning and have raised questions of perception. As Wolfgang Kemp notes, there has been a displacement since the mid-19th century from imitation of nature to an imitation of the visual: “Jetzt will man nicht mehr zu sehen geben, sondern das 11

‘The unresolved problem of his theory is the problem of the positivist theory of science. It is also due to the yet undiscovered medial character of observation and to the making of the experiment, the unsolved role of the subject in the process of relating ‘seeing’ to ‘knowing’.’ [My translation]

Descriptive Images

299

Sehen geben.” (1999: 20)12 The photographer faces reality and its pictures and potential pictures, respectively, as he faces his own perception. In connection with the kind of ‘naturalistic’ photography postulated by him, Emerson speaks of a form of image which reflects “physical, physiological and psychological properties of sight” showing us how things look, not how they are – “the naturalistic photography […] would endeavour to render the tree as it appeared to him when standing a hundred yards off” (Emerson 1889: 126).

Illustration 1: Peter Henry Emerson, “Waterlillies” (1886)

Besides Emerson, this development becomes evident in David Brewster and Hermann von Helmholtz, who also describe the stereoscope and photography, respectively, as subjective constructions which are based on physiological (sense) and rational-constructive fundamentals (creating and understanding symbols through memory and experience). This is where, at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the basic features of a definition of art photography can be found. Photography developed a medial self-consciousness which arose from ‘experience’ (and ‘sensation’) as well as from ‘perception’ 12

‘Now there is no longer the intention to give us things to see, but rather to give us the (process of) seeing.’ [My translation]

300

Susanne Knaller

as introduced by empirical approaches of physiological, psychological, and perceptual theory. This construct dimension was consistently adopted by the 20thcentury avant-gardes. They understood photography to be an abstraction of visual and spatial experiences (Bauhaus, surrealism) and led it into a displacement of object and mimesis. This development already became apparent in the 19th century. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for instance, recognised a consequential change of the term of reference: Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact, matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it. (Holmes in Busch 2001: 505)

The new photographic devices and their images linked questions of mimesis with the consciousness of materiality and perception of the objects. The questions as to what is art in photography and which aesthetic shape photographic art is supposed to take were answered both with reference to object authenticity as well as to artistic subjectivity. Both established models – the realistic postulate of object authenticity and the idealistic postulate of subjectivity – thereby underwent significant changes: mimesis, hetero-referentiality and referential authenticity (the factual) were expanded through the indexicality of the photographic image, while the creative, imaginative subject as the perceiving allowed the photographic images to produce the view selfreflexively. The photograph thus became an object-recording, perception-reflexive medium. Photographic perception is therefore in a precarious equilibrium between indexical recording (light trace) and perception/observation. Photographic images are hence accurate and momentary. In the photographic image, reality uncovers aspects which would have stayed hidden to the naked eye in everyday perception. As the early theorists show, photography downrightly provoked the use of magnifying glasses and later detailed enlargement. After looking through a magnifying glass, Samuel Morse observed: “The effect of the lens upon the picture was in a great degree like that of a telescope in nature.” (in Gunthert 2003: 16f.) Morse’s comparison refers just as much to the scientific-objective revelation character of the image as to the presence of traces which the photographer was not entirely able to control during the recording. A new form of seeing and reproducing

Descriptive Images

301

emerged, which experimental picture artists also wanted to express. For film, Dziga Vertov writes: I am a kino-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it […]. My path leads to a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you. (1984: 17f.)

This is how Vertov describes his Kino-Glaz. Ossip Brik writes on the occasion of an exhibition of photos by Alexander Rodtschenko: Vertov is right. The camera can act in an autonomous fashion. It can see things that man is not accustomed to seeing […]. The ordinary human field of vision must be abandoned. (Brik 1987: 295)

What has been said so far makes it clear that, given the medial peculiarities of photography, its artfulness can be determined only to a certain extent through established mimesis and concepts of appearance. Due to its semiotic condition as a fundamental indexical sign, photography can only maintain the relation of mimesis and appearance if it denies its semiotic quality and is, for instance, geared towards iconicity, the representativeness of painting (as in Pictorialism). If it wants to instil its own discourse of art photography, it needs to reformulate mimesis and appearance, both through their characteristics such as reference and object authenticity, which are defined by their indexicality, as well as through a related, specific form of perception. This is where the concept of description becomes relevant again. Its determining functions of referentiality and visuality are emphasized through the postulate of objectivity which was introduced into the discourse of art by realism. Indexicality and objectivity can be combined in the concept of description. For Lincoln Kirstein, for instance, photography would best be made use of if it were to produce a “descriptive document” (1932: 27). Yet, the concept of description goes beyond this function. This is revealed by looking at the specific semiotic process of photography. Analogous photography is first of all indexical. The photographic act is, moreover, not pure mimetic depiction, but implies an archiving and recording function. However, photography is not only recording, but also image: “A photograph isn’t what was photographed. It’s something else. It’s a new fact.” (Garry Winogrand13) It appears that photography has to redefine the appearance and the concept of illusion discussed above in the sense of fictio. As an indexical medium, photography always factually refers to 13

In: Winogrand/Lifson/Fraenkel 1999: [n. p.], between plates 10 and 11

302

Susanne Knaller

absent objects or subjects. Yet these are put into a creative, constructive context. This does not primarily mean an imaginative creation of picture elements. Fictio in the sense of ‘construct’ becomes virulent from the beginning in the photographic process, as a photograph is created as an image of perception, and in that experiences of seeing and reception are illustrated. Photography itself embodies a selfreferential moment – it is, as already elaborated on, a rendition of vision. As the subject positions itself between perception and active creation, the photographic image becomes mimesis (depiction) of vision. For Talbot, for instance, the splendor of photographed objects is overwhelming but not sufficient to understand the given vision: the meticulous descriptions of photographs position the iconicity of photography not only in the field of subjective choices (of picture segments) but also in the field of a self-reference of perception. The description takes the image out of its property as ‘phainomenon’, splendor, apparentia, and allows for it to become a legible image/ medium. This view was taken from one of the upper windows of the Hotel de Douvres, situated at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. The spectator is looking to the northeast. The time is the afternoon. The sun is just quitting the range of buildings adorned with columns: its façade is already in the shade, but a single shutter standing open projects far enough forward to catch a gleam of the sunshine. The weather is hot and dusty, and they have just been watering the road, which has produced two broad bands of shade upon it, which unite in the foreground, because, the road being partially under repair (as is seen from the two wheelbarrows, &c. &c.), the watering machines have been compelled to cross to the other side. By the roadside, a row of cittadines and cabriolets are waiting, and a single carriage stands in the distance a long way to the right. A whole forest of chimneys borders the horizon: for, the instrument chronicles whatever it sees, and certainly would delineate a chimney-pot or a chimney-sweeper with the same impartiality as it would the Apollo of Belvedere. The view is taken from a considerable height, as it appears easily by observing the house on the right hand; the eye being necessarily on a level with that part of the building on which the horizontal lines or courses of stone appear parallel to the margin of the picture. (Talbot 1992: 85f.)

Talbot is thus the first to determine the photographic picture as a describing image and at the same time as an image to be described, a hetero-referential as well as a self-referential image.

Descriptive Images

303

Illustration 2: Henry Fox Talbot, “View of the Boulevards at Paris” (1843)

What Talbot’s perception of describing images and images to be described points towards is the fact that photography inevitably becomes a text image: it is back-pedalling and isolation of a moment. It disintegrates connections into fractions, it is de-contextualisation and fragmentation of the situation (see Albers 2002b: 146f.): photography “nötigt zur Entzifferung” (‘compels to decipher’) (Busch 1989: 343), while the words recursively gain their authenticity from the unquestionable indexicality of the image: Talbot hat damit auch eine erste, weitreichende Theorie des Fotografischen entworfen, sie aus der Spannung zwischen Bildern und Texten entwickelt. Als Gegenstand des Wahrnehmungssinns bedarf die Evidenz des Bildes der Beschreibung, um sich aus der Ferne, in der sie versunken ist, zu lösen. (Ibid.: 501)14

In Talbot’s view, nature does indeed depict itself: the apparatus records things mechanically and is not selective, yet the image has to become conscious of itself as an image in order to fulfil its function. 14

‘Thus Talbot created a first, far-reaching theory of photography, which he developed from the tension between images and texts. […] As an object of perception the evidence of the picture requires description in order to free itself from the distance where it has been caught.’ [My translation]

304

Susanne Knaller

Meaning is established in the receptive act of describing the photographic description. With this mode of description, Talbot shows the nature of the photographic image: mediality, self-reference and receptive perception as the carriers of semiotic actions. On the basis of what has been said so far, we can explain the concept of description in the following terms: it mediates between indexicality and iconicity (from the chemical copy to the picture). It includes the complex interplay of perception, object, image formation and reception, which is contained in the concepts of index and icon, in the photographic process of production and reception. The concept of description, which defines photography, strengthens the authenticity of photography as it is determined by its iconicity, which is created by perception, self-reference and reception. As shown by Talbot, the tension between rendition and image has been inherent in photography from the beginning. Since the 1980s, when photography was finally established as a separate field in the art system, the mediation position of description in the constellation index/icon can clearly be recognised. This is because contemporary photography positions itself between referentiality and self-reference, perception and iconicity. Characteristic of it is, for instance, the exhibition project Un’altra oggettività/Another Objectivity15, in which the editors initially argued for objective, descriptive pictures. Artists such as Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer “insist therefore on a descriptive and verifiable reference to a motif (or subject) whose nature is heterogeneous to the image – that is to say, precisely, objective” (Chevrier/Lingwood 1989: 34). Yet one thing is imperative: the image is not only the trace of an experience or situation, but self-reflexively creates a new objective reality as a picture, ‘the reality of the image as picture’. This selfreferential iconicity can be upgraded through explicitly relating rendition and creation. This becomes particularly clear with the digitalisation of photography and digital photography, respectively. Thomas Ruff, who edits his architectural pictures digitally, explains that he does not want to document a building. The authenticity of the photograph is of no concern to him. What is much more decisive is the “Bildermachen” (‘making of images’) (Ruff in Cosar 1994). As will 15

June 10 – July 17, 1988, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. March 14 – April 30, 1989, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. June 24 – August 31, 1989, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato.

Descriptive Images

305

be illustrated below with works by Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and others, trends in new photography since the 1980s have formulated an aesthetics positioned between reference-authenticity and iconicity: Gursky’s contemporary Urbild of the Rhine […] frankly presents its unbroken horizon as a creation of the digital studio. But an equally pristine green band already zips across the center of Sha Tin of 1994. Having wised up to Gursky’s digital mischief, we are condemned to wonder whether he hasn’t swept the track clean, or inserted the post-modern touch of the giant video screen on which the race thunders to finish. But, to use photography’s old-fashioned lingo, the picture is perfectly straight. (Galassi 2001: 41)

In Gursky’s photography, description – the ‘straightness’ – is relevant as a micro-genre. This single image-creating, describing mode has prevailed in the history of photography to varying degrees. American New Vision and Straight Photography fall back on description while Pictorialism also forces narrative moments. Experimental European photography emphasises the aspect of perception, while documentary photography has postulated description since the 1930s. Within the arts, photography is perceived and used as an indexical, descriptive, documentary medium (e. g. in Pop Art, Concept Art, or Land Art). In post-modern art, the photographic medium is put under extreme fictionalisation and de-authentication. With the mise en scène of stereotypical images and the reproduction of newspaper and advertisement photographs, the iconic and mass media character are processed aesthetically (already with Andy Warhol and later Cindy Sherman or Richard Prince). Descriptive images remain decisive in contemporary photography in many forms: description co-exists with narrative modes, as, for instance, in Jeff Wall’s Street Photography or in Nan Goldin’s autobiographical pictures. It commits itself to demands for objectivity and registration, as, for instance, in Thomas Struth’s and Thomas Ruff’s architectural photography of the 1980s. These artists seem to connect to earlier photography with interior and exterior photos. Both moments – the fictionalising narrative and the descriptive – are not always reconcilable. Yet for advocates of objectivity, the reflexive fictio-form of photography is also decisive: They [the photographers] know that no observation, no description, however precise or scientific it may be, can establish a ‘pure fact’. They know that all representation, even photographic, is fiction and artifice […]. (Chevrier/Lingwood 1989: 33)

306

Susanne Knaller

4. Man hat danach sehr Unrecht, wenn man glaubt, der Daguerreotyp werde der Kunst der Malerei großen Schaden zufügen. Er schreibt die leblose Natur ab; die Beobachtung der lebenden und der Geist sie zu fassen ist ihm fremd; noch weniger weiß er von Erfindung und freier Darstellung dessen, was unsere Phantasie und unser Gemüt bewegt. (Schorn/Koloff in Kemp 1999: 59)16

If, as in the assessment by Ludwig Schorn and Eduard Koloff (1839), photography only copies inanimate nature and has no space for the observation of the animate, then architectural photography is the photographic genre par excellence. This also appears to apply to early photography: the first heliography handed down is a rooftop landscape by Nicéphore Niépce, the first daguerreotype shows a street in Paris, William Henry Fox Talbot took a photograph of a boulevard in the same city, and at the beginning of the 20th century Eugène Atget’s pictures of Paris had a sustainable effect. Documentary and descriptive functions have defined the architectural photography until today, as architect and photographer Klaus Kinold noted in 1993: Architekturfotografie heißt, ein Gebäude visuell zu beschreiben, in der Regel für den Leser einer Publikation. Umfassend funktioniert das nur in der Serie: innen – außen, von verschiedenen Seiten, als Totale und im Detail; die Fotos in Korrespondenz mit Zeichnungen und Texten.17 (Kinold in Weisner 1993: 13)

Kinold continues that ‘the autonomy of the image in relation to the 18 object’ is not given. Talbot has already shown that a text describing and explaining a pictures goes beyond its strictly picture-accompanying function by expounding the problems of perception and rendition. He also showed that the image is not merely a rendition, but must be understood as an implicit picture of perception. As demonstrated in the foregoing dis16

‘One is definitely mistaken in thinking that the daguerreotype is going to inflict great damage on the art of painting. It copies inanimate nature; there is no observation of the animate nature and it lacks the spirit to grasp it; it knows even less about the invention and free representation of what moves our imagination and our mind.’ [My translation]

17

‘Architectural photography means visually describing a building, usually for the reader of a publication. Comprehensively, this only works in a series: interior – exterior, from different angles, as a whole or in detail; the pictures in correspondence with drawings and texts.’ (Kinold in Weisner 1993: 13; my translation) 18

“Autonomie des Bildes gegenüber dem Gegenstand” (ibid.; my translation).

Descriptive Images

307

cussion, object and reference authenticity attributed to the photographic image has been tied to medial self-reflection from the beginning – rendition and imagination are placed in a more or less open relationship. Although this means that reference authenticity (‘fact’) is superimposed by fictio, the subjective component favors the concept of authenticity of the representational picture (as in Emerson’s concept of ‘naturalistic photography’). Yet the indexical character remains the determining basis and is itself self-referentially taken into the picture. This becomes obvious even in such radical fictio-photographs as those by Thomas Demand. Demand cuts out pictures from magazines etc., recompiling them into three-dimensional paper models. He then photographs the models with a Swiss Sinar, a camera with a telescopic lens. The pictures are later exhibited behind Perspex and without frames. In the catalogue to Demand’s 2005 exhibition at the MoMA in New York, Roxana Marcoci writes: “The resulting pictures are convincingly real and strangely artificial.” (2005: 10) With this play between indexicality/referentiality and construction/ fictio, Thomas Demand radicalises the simultaneously hetero- and self-referential structure of photography without erasing the traces of both the hetero- and self-referential processes. In the well-known picture Flur (1995), which shows the corridor leading to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s flat, there are – as in all of Demand’s pictures – no people to be seen, and even the objects are alienated: the doors have no latches, the picture seems proportionally inaccurate, digitalised and fictio. At the same time, it is a place of real-life events and a criminological recording of traces. Moreover, it is the analogous picture of an analogous model of an occurring picture which again showed an occurrence, Jeffrey Dahmer’s hall. In none of the postmodern photographs of the 1980s, such as those in Cindy Sherman’s theatrical performances or Richard Prince’s photographs of commercial photographs, this concurrence of image and perception in relation to the occurring as object and discourse is shown in such a conesquent manner. Thus, for Michael Fried, Demand’s work differs from Gursky’s and “stands apart from it in its insistence on the importance of the referent – in his art, as in all traditional photography, the referent ‘adheres’, to use Barthes’ term” (Fried 2005: 203). Even though Gursky digitally edits his photos and hence follows an order different from Demand’s, ‘straightness’ of photography is his basis, too. Indexicality and hetero-referentiality, and thus the descriptive

308

Susanne Knaller

attitude, determine the photographic picture as an artistic image. This has applied also in theory as of the 1980s at the latest, after Barthes’ insistence on photography’s indexicality. Rosalind Krauss explains that every photography is the result of physical imprint transferred by light reflections onto a sensitive surface. […] The photograph is thus a type of icon, or visual likeness, which bears an indexical relationship to its object. (1985: 203)

For Bernd Busch, photography is the ‘technological linking of the optic principle of the perspective mode of perception to the chemical 19 recording of the sensitive photographic layer’ [my translation] . And for Philippe Dubois there is no photography without a reference. After a first phase in which photography was defined as mimesis, as a mirror of the real, and after a second phase of codes and deconstruction in which mimetic relations of reality and image were merely understood as effects and construction, Dubois recognises a third phase in which the discourse of the index and of reference dominates. After its important post-structuralist cycle, theory returns to the question of ‘referential realism’. The meaning of the photographs does therefore not lie in themselves. The indexical sign is a contingent trace which must be read and interpreted. Authentic images are, as Wortmann argues, not finds torn from the world, but ‘pictures of reality’ in which one finds mirrored experiences and discourses as an (objective) image of the world (see Wortmann 2006: 167). As being indexical, images are at first intentionless, contingent, presymbolic signs. Only in the process of contemplation do they become significant (see ibid.: 180). This, however, also applies to verbal texts as well as to iconographic paintings. In contrast to the latter, however, analogous photography is dependent on its indexicality: every semiotisation is based on this trace of reality. By copying pictures into three-dimensional objects, which in turn become photographs, Demand simultaneously transfers semiotic processes and meaning-constituting discourses into the picture. This explicit ‘discursivation’ of the image can also be interpreted as an expansion to established architectural photography, insofar as contemporary architectural photography is an objectively recording, perception-reflecting medium which also reproduces dis19

“[...] technologische Verknüpfung des optischen Prinzips der perspektivischen Wahrnehmungsweise mit dem chemischen Aufzeichnungsverfahren der empfindlichen fotografischen Schicht” (Busch 1989: 11).

Descriptive Images

309

cursive image contexts. The architectural pictures by Gursky and Ruff are, like Demand’s photographs, images of culture and pictures of perception and discourses. What is at stake here is not levelling the difference between the object and its rendition nor imagining a reality of simulacra, because representation and perception simultaneously remain constitutive of the object picture: Andreas Gursky wants to set the visual level of reality in parallel with the textual level of reality: Entscheidend ist der unmittelbare visuelle Zugriff auf Wirklichkeit, der Grundstein für das nächste Bild ist. Das ist das eine. Das andere sind die visuellen Erfahrungen, die ich bereits gemacht habe, die zu bestimmten Bildideen geführt haben und dann über Monate, zum Teil auch über Jahre erarbeitet werden. […] Ich wollte immer eine ganz klare, nachvollziehbare Rückkoppelung zur vorhandenen Wirklichkeit aufrechterhalten. Es geht mir letztendlich ja nur um Verarbeitung von Wirklichkeit, nicht um Wirklichkeiten, die mit dem, was wir tagtäglich erleben, nicht mehr zu tun haben. (Gursky in Krajewski 1999: 12, 14)20

There is hardly any space for reference authenticity: [...] in der Tat werden meine Bilder zunehmend formaler und abstrakter. Eine bildnerische Struktur scheint die abgebildeten, realen Begebenheiten zu überlagern. Ich unterwerfe die reale Situation meinem künstlerischen Konzept der Bildfindung. (Gursky in Görner 1998: v)21

And for Thomas Ruff, the “Authentizität der Photographie” (‘authenticity of photography’) is irrelevant; it is much more about “Bildermachen” (‘the making of images’) (Ruff in Cosar 1994): Photographs aren’t depictions, they’re just images. […] For that reason my images are not depictions of reality, but show a kind of second reality, the image of an image. (Wulffen 1993: 66)

The obvious question as to what differentiates the new photographers from artists such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, whose approach can be described as pictures of pictures, can be answered by pointing to the fact that Gursky and others take art photographs and 20

‘Most decisive is the immediate visual access to reality which is the basis for the next picture. This is one aspect. The other are the visual experiences I have already made, which have led to certain ideas for pictures and which are then elaborated over months or sometimes even years. […] I have always wanted to maintain a clear, comprehensible linkage to the given reality. Because, after all, I am only interested in the processing of reality and not in realities which have nothing to do with what we experience every day.’ [My translation]

21

‘In fact, my pictures are increasingly becoming more formal and abstract. A visual structure seems to eclipse the depicted, real events. I subject the real situation to my artistic concept of image-finding.’ [My translation]

310

Susanne Knaller

do not create art through the medium of photography. This is required by the form of the, as Galassi calls it, “inventive description” (2001: 40) which is innate to photography: fiction as well as descriptive documentation are formative. As becomes clear with reference to the initial quote by Ludwig Schorn and Eduard Koloff, photography has – not least due to the technical options of the period – from its beginnings been understood as an adequate medium to depict nature and objects. As a motif of the immobile, architectural photography congenially represents the objective self-projection of nature called for by the early photographers. Images of architecture were, and still are, understood and used as archivable documents. This is a traditional line, which the new photographers also refer to when they formally and textually re-formulate this objective-descriptive attitude. At the same time, there is, in this reference to medial and cultural discourses, a self-referential element, so that architectural motifs allow for a transformation from object to image (see Derenthal 2000: 19). If, for instance, Thomas Ruff quotes postcards from the 1950s with his pictures of houses, in which the contemporary, modern, new buildings are presented like sights, then he not only describes architecture, but also its medial conditions and cultural forms of perception: he creates, to quote Ruff, “images of images of reality” (Ruff in Adam 1990: 46). Formally, the pictures remain in the descriptive mode, as shown by a definition of the architectural images of Gursky, Struth and Ruff by Anne Wauters: They are statements of fact, cold and even detached descriptions, objective observations characterized by their frontality and precision. Static, empty of all human or even animal presence, for these buildings time is suspended. (1996: 40)

What is decisive is that the descriptive and documentary approach is linked to the decision to present the pictures in the context of art. The new photographers find examples of this in conceptual art and in the works of their mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose serial renditions of industrial motifs have had a late but, since the 1950s, sustainable effect. The de-contextualised, alienated and at the same time aesthetisising form of the images dissolves the descriptive, frontally and uninvolvedly renditioning gesture towards sculptural representation. In pictures by the Düsseldorf photographers we also still find this serial character evident: repeated motifs, repeated exposure technique.

Descriptive Images

311

Illustration 3: Thomas Struth, “Crosby Street, NY Soho” (1978)

Illustration 4: Thomas Ruff, “Haus 81” (1988)

In 1978, Thomas Struth took photographs of deserted streets in New York, each from a central perspective position and frontally (see Illus-

312

Susanne Knaller

tration 4). He repeats these photos of streets in Düsseldorf and other cities and complements them with skewed view points. Andreas Gursky takes pictures of the entrance areas of large office buildings with two re-appearing security guards behind a reception counter. Thomas Ruff photographs façades of industrial or office buildings and apartment houses in the peripheral areas either frontally or from a skewed viewpoint. The exterior exposures in particular already form a series of their own, exceeding the individual photographs. This not only applies when it comes to the choice of motif, but also in terms of the construction of the image: the façades of the buildings become detached from their architectural functionality and ornamentality and dissolve into a plane image which prescinds from colour and geometry as well as from sculpturality. The result is a reciprocal relationship between conceptuality and indexicality. The characters of rendition and indexicality are constituted by the motifs of functional to banal, everyday architecture articulating reference authenticity, and above all the observational perspective, which quotes classical architectural exposures and pictures as well as the “Optik des Nabels” (‘optics of the navel’) (Loock/Struth 1990: 24), which was despised by the experimental avant-garde photographers. Conceptuality in the architectural pictures results from the discursivation of the mundane, ‘artless’ motifs and their radical, de-contextualised descriptive form through re-contextualisation into the picture. In contrast to the photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, these pictures present, above all, a reflexive understanding of pictures and media and make an issue out of the construction of the image at a meta-level (see preface in Steinhauser/Derenthal 2000: 5). This is most evident in Gursky’s pictures which enhance the degree of abstraction by open, digital editing and their large format. The exposure of the housing estate in Montparnasse, Paris, makes the building jut out beyond the image border; the pictures of atria in large hotels (for instance, in Atlanta) are reduced to studies of proportions between man and architecture, and allow the observer to lose himself in the picture. What Galassi calls “inventive description” can be reformulated as a reciprocal relationship between the image and the rendered, through which the postulate of authenticity of photography has been renewed since the 1980s. After the post-modern photography of appropriated images, theories of de-differentiation between image and reality in the notion of simulacrum – Baudrillard’s ‘death of

Descriptive Images

313

reality’ –, the basis of photographic aesthetics continues to be reference authenticity by referring to a trace of reality. This is exactly where we find a connection to Conceptual Art. As already in Conceptual Art and Land Art, matter and object worlds remain in the game, recorded and commented on by photography. Examples of this discursive implementation are the following: simultaneity of object and semiotic process (Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs), concrete and mediatised spaces (Smithson), relation between city and ideology (Rosler), body and image, body and language (Baldessari), etc. The reversibility between image and rendition, which is displayed in Gursky’s pictures as well as in numerous museum images (by Struth and Candida Höfer, for instance), shows that the self-referentiality constituted by the synchrony of image and rendition does not resolve the track of reality. As in Conceptual Art, the descriptive mode remains a link between indexicality and abstraction. As opposed to post-modern photography, there is no poetics of de-differentiation between image and fiction/construct.

References Adam, Willi (1990). “Der Betrachter entscheidet. Im Gespräch: Thomas Ruff”. Kultur Joker 4 (9/10): 46. Albers, Irene (2001). “Das Fotografische in der Literatur”. Karlheinz Barck, Martin Fontius et al., eds. Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Vol. 2. Stuttgart. 534550. — (2002a). “‘Der Photograph der Erscheinungen’ – Émile Zolas Experimentalroman”. Peter Geimer, ed. Ordnungen der Sichtbarkeit: Fotografie in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technologie. Frankfurt. 211-251. — (2002b). Photographische Momente bei Claude Simon. Würzburg. Bazin, André (1958). Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? Ontologie et langage. Paris. Brik, Ossip (1987). The Complete Work. Cambridge. Busch, Bernd (1989). Belichtete Welt: Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte der Fotografie. München.

314

Susanne Knaller

— (2001). “Fotografie/fotografisch”. Karlheinz Barck, Martin Fontius et al., eds. Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Vol. 2. Stuttgart. 494-550. Champfleury, Jules (1856). Le réalism: Discussions esthétiques, receuillis et commentés par Max Buchon. Neuchâtel. Chevrier, Jean Francois, James Lingwood, eds. (1989). Un’altra oggettività/Another Objectivity. Paris 14. 3. – 30. 4. 1989. Prato 24. 6. – 31. 7. 1989. Milano. Cosar, Michael (1994). “Freie Sicht auf das Objekt: Der Künstler Thomas Ruff im Gespräch mit M. C.”. Risz 6 (2): 14-16. Derenthal, Ludger (2000). “Skeptische Architekturphotographie”. Monika Steinhauser, Ludger Derenthal, eds. Ansicht – Aussicht – Einsicht. Bochum. 19-29. Dubois, Philippe (1983). L’acte photographique. Dossiers media, L 90 70 08. Paris. Emerson, Peter Henry (1889). Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art. New York. Fried, Michael (2005). “Without a Trace”. Artforum 43: 199-203. Früchtl, Josef (2003). “Schein”. Karlheinz Barck, Martin Fontius et al., eds. Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Vol. 2. Stuttgart. 365-390. Galassi, Peter (2001). “Gursky’s World”. Andreas Gursky: Ausstellungskatalog Museum of Modern Art New York. New York. 9-42. Görner, Veit, ed. (1998). … im Allgemeinen gehe ich die Dinge langsam an. Andreas Gursky. Fotografien 1994-1998: Ausstellungskatalog Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Ostfildern. Gottsched, Johann Christoph (1982). Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst. Darmstadt. Gunthert, André (2003). “Ein kleiner Strohalm oder Die Geburt des Photographischen”. Oliver Fahle, ed. Störzeichen: Das Bild angesichts des Realen. Weimar. 15-22. Jakobson, Roman (1960). “Linguistics and Poetics”. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Style in Language. New York/Cambridge. 350-377. Kemp, Wolfgang (1999). Theorie der Fotografie II: 1912-1945. München. Kinold, Klaus (1993). “‘Ich will die Architektur zeigen, wie sie ist.’ Klaus Kinold, Fotograf”. Ulrich Weisner, ed. Ausstellungskatalog Kunsthalle Bielefeld. Düsseldorf. 11-39. Kirstein, Lincoln (1932).“Photography”. Arts Weekly 1 (2): 23-29.

Descriptive Images

315

Kracauer, Siegfried (1977). “Die Photographie” (1927). Siegfried Kracauer. Das Ornament der Masse. Frankfurt. 21-39. Krajewski, Michael (1999). “Kollektive Sehnsuchtsbilder: Andreas Gursky im Gespräch”. Das Kunstbulletin 5: 8-15. Krauss, Rosalind (1985). “Notes on the Index”. Rosalind Krauss. The Originality of the Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA. 196-219. Küpper, Joachim (1987). Ästhetik der Wirklichkeitsdarstellung und Evolution des Romans von der französischen Spätaufklärung bis zu Robbe-Grillet. Stuttgart. Loock, Ulrich, Thomas Struth (1990). “Unbewußte Orte”. Parkett 23: 21-27. Marcoci, Roxana (2005). “Paper Moon”. Thomas Demand: Ausstellungskatalog Museum of Modern Art New York. New York. 9-27. Mendelssohn, Moses (31994). “Von der Herrschaft über die Neigungen”. Otto F. Best, ed. Ästhetische Schriften in Auswahl. Darmstadt. 166-172. Munier, Roger (1963). Contre l’image. Paris. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1980-1999). Nachgelassene Fragmente 18841885. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden. Eds. Giorgio Colli and Massimo Montanari. Vol. 11. Munich. Novalis (1957): Werke/Briefe, Dokumente. Vol. 2: Fragmente 1. Ed. Ewald Wasmuth. Heidelberg. — (1960). Das allgemeine Brouillon: Material zur Enzyklopädistik. Schriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs. Eds. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel. Vol. 3. Stuttgart. Petersen, Jürgen H. (2000). Mimesis – Imitation – Nachahmung. Munich. Picard, Max (1932). “Menschliches Auge und photographische Linse”. Eckart 8: 174-177. Ritzer, Monika (2004). “Vom Ursprung der Kunst aus der Nachahmung: Anthropologische Prinzipien der Mimesis”. Rüdiger Zymner, Manfred Engel, eds. Anthropologie in der Literatur: Poetogene Strukturen und ästhetisch-soziale Handlungsfelder. Paderborn. 81-101. Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative and Representation”. Narrative 5: 274-285. Sauder, Gerhard (1974). Empfindsamkeit. Vol. I: Voraussetzungen und Elemente. Stuttgart.

316

Susanne Knaller

Schiller, Friedrich (1962): Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 20: Philosophische Schriften I. Eds. Helmut Koopmann and Benno von Wiese. Weimar. — (1989). Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. Friedrich Schiller. Sämtliche Werke. Eds. G. Fricke and H. G. Göpfert. Vol. 5. Munich. — (2004). “Über den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragödie”. Friedrich Schiller. Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 2: Dramen 2. Ed. Peter-André Alt. Munich. 813-823. Schorn, Ludwig, Eduard Koloff (1839). “Der Daguerrotyp”. Das Kunstblatt (1839). 305-308. Steinhauser, Monika, Ludger Derenthal (2000). Ansicht Aussicht Einsicht: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth: Architekturphotographie. Düsseldorf. Stern, Laurent (1990). “Narrative Versus Description in Historiography”, New Literary History 21: 555-578. Stiegler, Bernd (2000). Philologie des Auges: Die photographische Entdeckung der Welt im 19. Jahrhundert. Munich. Talbot, Henry Fox (1844). The Pencil of Nature. London. — (1992). “The Pencil of Nature”. Henry Fox Talbot. Selected Texts and Bibliography. Ed. Mike Weaver. Oxford. 75-115. Vertov, Dziga (1984). “Kinocks: A Revolution”. Annette Michelson, ed. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Berkeley, CA. 17-18. Wauters, Anne (1996). “photographie réaliste/architecture ordinaire: Realist Photographs/Ordinary Buildings”. art press 209: 40-47. Winogrand, Garry, Ben Lifson, Jeffrey Fraenkel (1999). The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand. San Francisco, CA. Wortmann, Volker (2006). “Was wissen die Bilder schon über die Welt, die sie bedeuten sollen? Sieben Anmerkungen zur Ikonographie des Authentischen”. Susanne Knaller, Harro Müller, eds. Authentizität: Diskussion eines ästhetischen Begriffs. Munich. 163-184. Wulffen, Thomas (1993). “‘Reality is so real, it’s unrecognizable’: Interview mit Thomas Wulffen”. flash art 26: 64-67. Zola, Émile (1968). Le roman expérimental. Émile Zola: Œuvres complètes. Vol. 10. Ed. Henri Mitterand. Paris.

Description in Music

Musical Sunrises A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential of Instrumental Music Michael Walter The article explores the description of sunrises as a case-study of musical description. The understanding of musical descriptions in general, and consequently also of sunrises, depends on appropriate cognitive framings (or markings) of the music. Among these, a verbal framing (notably in the title of a composition) is helpful (but sometimes also misleading) in triggering a visual reference. The use of a musical topos would be a further relevant framing. Besides such framings, the essay explores several compositional means of musical description, in particular several possibilities of using musical structure that provide a correlative to the object described. These categories are illustrated by examples from Haydn’s symphony Le Matin and Strauss’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In discussing the processes at work in the understanding of descriptive music, special emphasis is laid on the cultural conditions of the epoch in focus. For, once these cultural conditions disappear, it becomes difficult to understand the meaning, for example of one of Haydn’s musical sunrises.

On a website of the German Fachausschuß Geschichte der Meteorologie (Committee for the History of Meteorology) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Meteorologie (German Society for Meteorology) one finds a ‘selection of works of classical music with a link to meteorological subjects’1, that is, of compositions describing meteorological events. Among these there are those compositions that one would traditionally expect to be mentioned in this context: the tempests in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), in Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens, and, of course, in Vivaldi’s concerto La tempesta di mare (op. 8,5/RV 253). There are other pieces of which the relation to a meteorological subject is at least doubtful, such as Beethoven’s piano sonatas no. 17 (“Tempest”) and no. 14 (“Moonlight Sonata”). In both cases the subtitles are later additions by other people than the composer himself. The epithet “Mondscheinsonate”, for instance, goes back to the pianist Wilhelm von Lenz, who, in 1852, claimed that the poet and music critic Lud1

“Eine Auswahl von Werken der klassischen Musik mit Bezug zu meteorologischen Themen” (Meteorology Online).

320

Michael Walter

wig Rellstab had compared the Adagio to a nightly boat trip at moonlight on Lake Lucerne. (There is no evidence of this comparison in Rellstab’s works, although in 1824 he published a story, “Theodor. Eine musikalische Skizze”, in the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, where he likened the expression of the movement to a lake in falling moonlight.) It was not before the 1920s that Arnold Schering interpreted Beethoven’s instrumental music as containing hidden programs and claimed that the program for the sonata no. 17 had been Shakespeare’s The Tempest (cf. Schering 1934, Schering 1936). More convincing of the examples of the Fachausschuß might be Beethoven’s or Mendelssohn’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). But there are also obvious mistakes in this list: Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring has nothing to do with spring, nor with the Appalachians (cf. Pollack 1999: 390). It is not difficult to find the reasons for such shortcomings. Without a thorough knowledge of music history or the pieces themselves the authors of the list drew conclusions from the titles – or alleged titles – of musical pieces as to their extramusical or programmatic meaning. They could not know that, for example, the title Appalachian Spring was chosen by mere coincidence and did not refer to the content of the music at all. Copland had the problem that neither he himself nor to the author of the ballet, Martha Graham, had come up with a title for his already music composed. The solution was found when Graham, in reference to her favourite poem, chose the misleading title Appalachian Spring. Copland agreed but was subsequently much amused by various interpretations based on this title. Even today the music is still heard, in Neil Butterworth’s words, “as having its roots in the countryside of New England” and as a “strong expression of national feeling” (Butterworth 1985: 101). The reason for such an interpretation is that Appalachian Spring is one of Copland’s works which are considered to be typically American. Therefore it was convincing to relate the work, via its title, to an American landscape (cf. Walter 2004: 294). For a musicologist the list of the Fachausschuß might provoke some humorous or dismissive comments, but more important is the epistemological question of how such errors can occur. Since music itself cannot express a meaning in the strict sense of the word, we need a cognitive framing to attribute to music such a meaning. Normally we rely on the fact that the title of a piece of music provides a

Musical Sunrises

321

reliable hint to its semantic or descriptive meaning. Thus, the title is an important part of the cognitive framing, although, as we have seen, it can be quite misleading. Musical descriptions of sunrises are not rare in music history. Some well known examples are the beginning of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (Le Matin, 1761), the Trio with Chorus “Sie steigt herauf, die Sonne” (“The sun ascends, he mounts”) from Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons (c. 1800, No. 11), the sunrise in the prologue of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Attila (1846, “Coro di eremiti” in the scena of Foresto’s cavatina: “L’alito del mattin già l’aure appura”), the beginning of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1896), or the transition from night to sunrise in Strauss’ Alpensinfonie (1915). Presumably, Strauss’ first measure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the best known example of a musical sunrise because of its use by Stanley Kubrick for a musical illustration of the sunrise in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But this has been, so to speak, a secondary exploitation of a musical gesture already well known as a description of a sunrise. But how can we know that a specific piece of music describes a sunrise? Since music bears no semantic meaning, there are no hints of the representation of an extramusical event in the music itself. This is even true for the Zarathustra example, although by tradition we are used to interpreting it as a sunrise. Yet tradition might be as misleading as a title, as the case of the two sonatas by Beethoven has shown. To interpret music as a description of a sunrise we need semantic hints which are reliable and clearly connected to the composition by the composer himself, since a musical description must be intentional in order to be reliably identified as such (a requirement which seems less important with regard to literature or painting). In the examples given above such hints do exist. Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 bears the title Le Matin (The Morning). There are no more indications than this title (presumably chosen by Haydn himself). Since it seems to announce programmatic music, it was easy for interpreters to conclude that a morning begins with a sunrise, or in other words, that the slow introduction of the first movement of this symphony depicts such a sunrise. In the Trio from Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons it is not the title, but the text which provides a cognitive framing: “Sie steigt herauf, die

322

Michael Walter

Sonne, sie steigt. / Sie naht, sie kommt. / Sie strahlt, sie scheint. / Sie scheint in herrlicher Pracht, / in flammender Majestät! / Heil! O Sonne, Heil!” (‘He ascends, the sun, he mounts. He’s near, he comes. He beams, he shines. He flames in radiance full, in glowing majesty! Hail, O sun, be hail’d!’). In Verdi’s Attila the descriptive meaning of the music becomes not only clear by the words of the chorus but also by the stage direction: Le tenebre vanno diradandosi fra le nubi tempestose: quindi a poco a poco una rosea luce, sino a che (sul finir della scena) il subito raggio del sole inondando per tutto, riabbella il firmamento del più sereno e limpido azzurro. Il tocco lento della campana saluta il mattino. (The darkness is vanishing among the tempestuous clouds: then little by little a rosy light spreads until (at the end of the scene) sudden sunrays flood all [the stage], showing again the beauty of the cloudless and bright blue sky. The slow stroke of the bell welcomes the morning. [My translation])

The beginning of Strauss’ Zarathustra, however, lacks the cognitive framing in the form of a title. But, on the first page of the score, the composer prefixed a text which partly reads: “When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But finally he had a change of heart – and rising one morning with the dawn, he went before the sun, and spoke thus to it: […]”.2 These are the opening words of Zarathustra’s prologue. Since the status of this text in the score is not really clear – is it a paratext in the Genettean sense or is it part of the score proper? – one of the earliest interpretations of this beginning of Zarathustra was ambiguous: ‘Within only a few measures, the beginning of the tone poem describes a picture of enormous sublimity and greatness. We witness a great natural spectacle, for example a sunrise.’3 If we merely rely on the text in the score, the descriptive meaning of the beginning of Zarathustra is by no means clear. But its musical 2

Nietzsche, online. (“Als Zarathustra dreissig Jahre alt war, verliess er seine Heimat und den See seiner Heimat und ging in das Gebirge. Hier genoss er seines Geistes und seiner Einsamkeit und wurde dessen zehn Jahre nicht müde. Endlich aber verwandelte sich sein Herz – und eines Morgens stand er mit der Morgenröthe auf, trat vor die Sonne hin und sprach zu ihr [...].” From Nietzsche 1968: 5.)

3

“Der Beginn der Tondichtung zeichnet uns in wenig Takten ein Bild von gewaltiger Erhabenheit und Größe. Wir wohnen einem großen Naturschauspiel bei, etwa einem Sonnenaufgang. ” (Hahn c. 1912: 112, my translation)

Musical Sunrises

323

structure, as will be shown below, can clarify its extramusical contents. In contrast to this, the meaning of the sunrise in Strauss’ Alpine Symphony seems to be much clearer because the section of the score bears the title “Sonnenaufgang” (‘sunrise’). Texts and titles thus give important hints for the triggering of an audience’s receptive expectations. They form the horizon of expectations and in a way shape the listener’s capability for interpretation. However, a title is not enough to design a cognitive framing for an understanding of the contents of a piece of music. As the example of Appalachian Spring has demonstrated, some composers chose the titles of their scores at random. But Butterworth’s above quoted misleading interpretation of this ballet hints at a second cognitive framing necessary for making the listeners aware of the descriptive content of a musical composition. This is the music itself, notably its structure. Both criteria – extramusical semantic framings and intramusical structure – must coexist; one alone would not be sufficiently clear. (Butterworth’s interpretative mistake results from his relying only on the title.) Haydn’s slow introduction to Le Matin, although an admittedly short depiction of a sunrise, is typical of the musical structure of sunrises (see Figure 1). First of all, it is not the melody itself which is important in this example. Clearly, there is hardly such a thing as ‘melody’, which is the rule with slow symphonic introductions. Nevertheless, we have a kind of ‘melodic contour’ as a result of the successive employment of various instruments. Since Haydn’s score is far simpler than the scores by Strauss to be discussed later, even a non-musician can ‘see’ that there is an ascending melodic contour from the low violins to the oboes and finally the high flutes. In the diagram in Figure 1 this is indicated by the arrow above the score. (I am well aware that there is also the bassline by bassoons and horns beneath the oboes, but they can be neglected as the bassoons only double the basses, and the horn tones are nothing more than a bass pedal.) Given the fact that a rising sun ascends from the horizon, the ‘geometrical’ progression of the melodic contour from ‘low’ to ‘high’ ones seems to be a convenient means of mirroring the ascending motion of the sun. However, the basis of this assumption is the conventional division of notes into ‘high’ and ‘low’ ones, which emerged in the Middle Ages (cf. Walter 1994). We are used to such geometrical metaphors employed in discourse on music but should be aware of

324

Michael Walter

the fact that they are metaphors. This is important because any interpretation of a musical structure depends on our prior understanding of such metaphors, or in other words, the understanding of music, especially when music has a programmatic or descriptive meaning, depends on the cultural context.

Figure 1: Joseph Haydn. Symphony Le Matin, introduction.

The second important descriptive device used in Haydn’s music is the intensification of the orchestration: Haydn starts with the first violin, adds the second, then the bassoons, horns, and basses, and finally completes the range of the whole orchestra with the oboes and the flute. I deliberately use the term ‘intensification’ instead of ‘enlarge-

Musical Sunrises

325

ment’ of the orchestration because the addition of instruments leads to a more intense and denser sound. This may be compared to the intensification of brightness when the sun rises. Here, the correlation between music and descriptive referent is arguably less metaphoric as it rests on parallel intensifications in different perceptual areas (the aural and the visual). The third descriptive technique employed by Haydn is similar in its resting on a perceptual structural analogy: it is the dynamic development, the crescendo from the pianissimo at the beginning to the fortissimo at the end of the slow introduction. It can also be related to the growing brightness of the sun (as musical equivalent to a visual event). The fourth structural technique is the harmonic device of the section which is very simple: Haydn begins in D major and reaches the dominant A major at the climax of the introduction. Normally – that is, compared to other musical sunrises – one would expect the tonic at this point, but that was impossible in a slow introduction, which had to end on the dominant. Although the overall harmonic development in this introduction is very simple, there is nevertheless a tension built into the details of the transition from the first harmony to the last one, in which this tension is resolved: due to the requirements of a slow introduction, Haydn, as already said, had not much of a choice in his harmonic development but was able to create a harmonic tension by suspensions and a secondary dominant before the A major chord. Thus, the A major chord is heard as a breakthrough. A breakthrough may here be defined as a more or less sudden resolution of tension without a loss of intensity (resulting even in an increased intensity). Of course, ‘breakthrough’ is – again – only a metaphor, which facilitates our understanding of music because, technically, this section is no more than the harmonic trajectory from tonic to dominant. But in using – and arguably triggering – the notion of ‘breakthrough’ the music can easily be related to a sunrise. At the beginning of the sunrise one sees only a small part of the sun, then a larger one and so on, until one can see the full disc of the sun as a visual ‘breakthrough’. (In the stage direction to Attila this breakthrough is verbalized as a development from the cloudy and tempestuous sky to a sun-flooded scene with a cloudless blue sky.)

326

Michael Walter

At this point it is possible to give an overview of some elements (cognitive framings and descriptive devices) that facilitate the understanding of musical descriptions: 1. There is a semantic explanation of the meaning of the music given in a title or a text, i. e., a verbal reference. It is important that this verbal reference is not ambiguous (at least not for expert listeners), since music itself is already ambiguous. Suffice it to mention two examples: one of the sections of Strauss’ Zarathustra is entitled “Of Science” (“Von der Wissenschaft”). It begins with a fugue. A fugue is a musical technique and belonged to what had been called, ever since the baroque era, ‘musical science’. Thus there is a clear correlation between the title of the section and its musical contents. In contrast to this, one may point out another section of Zarathustra which is entitled “Of Those at the Back of the World” (“Von den Hinterweltlern”). Who are these people from “the Back of the World”, and what is the meaning of the term? One has to read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in order to find an interpretation of this heading, and even then one does not know Strauss’ interpretation of Nietzsche’s book. The meaning of the music must here remain unclear because the verbal description is ambiguous. 2. There is a pictorial relation between music and the event depicted which is based on common (in part arbitrary, but culturally conventionalized) assumptions about the pictorial attributes bestowed on music. These are pictorial or visual references, as becomes clear from the following example: the last piece of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition entitled “The Gate of the Old Fortress of Kiev”4. The movement begins with massive ‘chord piles’ consisting of eight notes piled up (or ‘towered’ up) on top of one another. This causes remarkable difficulties for the pianist, but the pictorial reference ‘tower’ becomes very clear to the expert listener who is able to associate the sound of these chords with their visual representation in the score and thus also to correlate the music itself to the picture of the towers of the gate.

4

In English this piece is usually referred to as the “Great Gate of Kiev”, which is not a literal translation.

Musical Sunrises

327

Figure 2: Modest Mussorgsky, “The Gate of the Old Fortress of Kiev”

3. There is a metaphorical explanation of music which is not so much a convention as a result of the spontaneous correlation of abstract structures of everyday life to the impression of music. In these cases it is important that the correlation be of an abstract and not of a concrete nature. The latter would force the composer into mere acoustic mimicry or perceptual iconicity (as was often the case in the 18th century) and would limit the composer’s artistic means of expression. We, for example, often speak of a ‘breakthrough’ when to a dispute a solution has been found to which all participants can agree. At first, one has the complicated situation of the dispute and then the uncomplicated and relaxed situation after the breakthrough. This is basically a sequential structure. However, because we know this structure (which becomes manifest in gestures, for example), we are able to recognize the general contours of the situation if musically ‘depicted’ by means of diagrammatic iconicity, even without knowing its contents (i. e., the arguments). In music, the structural situation of the dispute is represented by a harmonically (or otherwise) complicated state which dissolves into an uncomplicated state. The breakthrough is

328

Michael Walter

usually marked as a musical climax, which accompanies a calming down of all musical parameters: harmony, orchestration, melody or melodic contour and rhythm. In the case of Haydn’s introduction, the dotted rhythms of the beginning are thus reduced to square repetitive semiquavers framed by pedals in the flute and horns. Even the dotted rhythms in the last measure of the introduction in the two violins follow the usual ritardando device evoked by the repetitions. The interpretation of the meaning of a musical breakthrough (or any other structure), however, depends on the verbal (or visual) references in conjunction with the musical structure: a musical tempest, although usually comprising a breakthrough like a musical sunrise, consists of a relatively calm musical section at the beginning, which harmonically and rhythmically becomes more and more complicated. As in a musical sunrise the orchestration is intensified and there is a crescendo until the final breakthrough. However, this breakthrough is not a calming down but rather the opposite. It represents the most dramatic situation (and is therefore the most complex musical section without any relaxation). The pictorial reference in this case is the darkening sky; the verbal reference is the indication ‘tempest’ (as in tempesta di mare). 4. The last element facilitating a musical description again belongs to the category of cognitive framings: it is the use of topoi, i. e., a cognitive framing provided by the musical tradition. In the case of the sunrise, the topos was available for Strauss and exploited in Zarathustra. Once the topos ‘sunrise’ was established, it could be referred to using merely musical means5. This is also true of musical tempests. In both cases, composers could rely on the virtual verbal description which was part of the topos instead of providing a descriptive title of their own.

5

There are other topoi as well which have become equally easily understandable. For instance, battle music is such a topos, or the description of a tempest. In both of these cases also pictorial or ‘diagrammatic’ features play an important role, namely the (varying) distances of two armies (cf. Beethoven’s Battle Symphony) or the approach of a tempest which becomes louder and louder the nearer it comes. The distance in the objects musically referred to correlates in these cases with appropriate acoustic phenomena.

Musical Sunrises

329

Relying on the topos, Strauss could dispense with a specific descriptive title for the beginning of his Zarathustra. Hahn’s above quoted conclusion that this beginning represents a sunrise was thus by no means arbitrary but a logical conclusion derived from the topos. His hesitation (‘for example a sunrise’) results only from the fact that the dimensions of Strauss’ sunrise exceed the topos in a previously unexperienced way. Although there seems to be a tremendous difference between Haydn’s modest introduction and Strauss’ bombastic beginning of Zarathustra, there is a remarkable similarity in the musical means employed, which is shown in the following diagram, Figure 3 (comprising measures 1-21 of the beginning):

Figure 3: Sunrise in Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra.

As one can see in Figure 3, there is a threefold disposition of the musical material. Above a bass pedal c, Strauss begins with a melodic contour in the trumpets which consists only of the root c and the fifth g (m. 5); the major third, which is essential to establish the key C major, is missing. This major third follows at the semiquaver upbeat (m. 6), which is also a chord of the full orchestra. But instead of the expected C major chord in the measure following the upbeat the surprised listener hears a c minor chord (m. 7). Essentially, one perceives an ascending melodic line leading to a breakthrough, but the usual

330

Michael Walter

strained situation before the breakthrough is missing, or rather condensed to a semiquaver chord. In a second step, Strauss once more uses the ascending melodic contour for the trumpets (m. 9). This time, one might think erroneously, the music will lead to c minor because the previous chord of the orchestra was c minor. But Strauss now employs a C major chord in the full orchestra (m. 11), which can be qualified as a second breakthrough. Before this second breakthrough, we have an unclear and therefore strained harmonic situation. Yet, the development to the relaxation of the breakthrough is still missing. The two breakthroughs come too abruptly. In a third start-up of this beginning, Strauss again uses the ascending melodic contour of the trumpets (m. 13), but now there is a short development of only four measures to a real breakthrough with a crescendo and an ascending melodic contour in the orchestra. The harmony becomes more complicated compared as to the measures already heard, before Strauss finally reaches the cadence leading to C major (mm. 18-19) so far missed. Only now, precisely at the point of the breakthrough, does the dynamic range open up to the fortissimo which is reached with the same musical structures and means already employed by Haydn. The two ‘fake breakthroughs’ before were only qualified as forte. There is also a secondary layer of a melodic contour: every time one hears the full orchestra, the range of the orchestra has been widened (i. e., the highest notes in the orchestra are constantly going up). In other words: Strauss’ technique is basically the same as the one used by Haydn, despite the divergence of styles. The nevertheless existing differences between the beginnings of Zarathustra and Le Matin are the delay of the final breakthrough, a harmonic device which was unthinkable in Haydn’s times, and an orchestration that could not be employed by Haydn for pragmatic reasons: compared to an orchestra of the 19th century, his orchestra was small, and some of the instruments used by Strauss did not exist in the 18th century. However, the musical structure of both sunrises is the same. This is also the case with the other examples mentioned: Haydn’s Trio from The Seasons, the sunrise in Verdi’s opera, and Strauss’ Alpine Symphony. Suffice it here to demonstrate the similar structure with the help of spectrograms (see Figure 4). They all have a typical triangular structure, due to the development from piano to forte or fortissimo at the final breakthrough. Differences in the spectrograms result from the differences in orchestration and musical style.

Musical Sunrises

331

Haydn, Le Matin

Haydn, The Seasons, Trio

Verdi, Attila, Prologue

Strauss, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Strauss, An Alpine Symphony, transitional section “Nacht” – “Sonnenaufgang” (“Night” – “Sunrise”) Figure 4: Spectrograms (breakthroughs = black lines)

332

Michael Walter

The last example from An Alpine Symphony needs a clarification insofar as the title “Sonnenaufgang” (“Sunrise”) in the score marks the moment of the breakthrough. “Sonnenaufgang” has a double meaning in German. It can refer to the actual rising of the sun or to the sun already risen. In the case of An Alpine Symphony, the latter meaning is implied. Therefore, one finds the development to the breakthrough at the end of the section before the “Sonnenaufgang” which is entitled “Nacht” (“Night”). A perceptive listener will even hear single sun rays during the transitional section from ‘night’ to ‘sunrise’. As we have seen, cultural conditions are essential for the interpretation of descriptive music. In the Trio of Haydn’s Seasons the breakthrough is reached at the words “in flammender Majestät” (“in flaming majesty”). Haydn at this point used the usual means of a majestic portrayal in his epoch, namely dotted rhythms, trumpets and kettledrums. These were the means to musically refer to the highest possible (secular) person one could think of in Haydn’s times, which was normally the sovereign (king, emperor). Here, of course, these characteristics are metaphorically employed in order to portray the sun as the ‘sovereign’ of nature or the highest possible ‘majesty’ in the realm of nature. The cultural frame to which Haydn refers is the ceremonial music of his time, where the connection of dotted rhythms and brass instruments was a topos for the portrayal of majesty. Once this cultural frame is not understood anymore, the musical sunrise can lose its meaning for a listener. A certain Elizabeth Eastlake wrote in the middle of the 19th century with regard to Haydn’s sunrise in The Creation (No. 12, recitative Uriel: “In vollem Glanze steiget jetzt die Sonne strahlend auf” [“In splendour bright is rising now the sun and darts his rays”]): But his [i. e., Haydn’s] ‘rising sun with darting rays’ is an utter failure: it is a watchman’s lantern striking down a dark alley, not the orb of day illuminating the earth. There is nothing of that ‘majestic crescendo of Nature’, as Carl Maria von Weber has so musician-like expressed himself, and which he himself has rendered in his little-known music of the Preciosa, where we feel pile upon pile of heavy cloud to be slowly heaving and dispersing, while the majestic luminary ascends, almost laboriously, here and there tearing a rent through a veil of vapour with a thunderbolt bass note, till the whole earth is full of his glory. (Eastlake 1852: 52)

Haydn’s musical sunrise in this number of The Creation occurs at the beginning of the recitative (mm. 1-15) before Uriel begins to sing. The breakthrough is marked by ‘heavy’ dotted rhythms, which obvi-

Musical Sunrises

333

ously meant nothing to Eastlake anymore. Her cultural frame was not that of the ceremonial 18th century but that of the 19th century, as becomes obvious not only by her reference to Weber’s opera but also on the next page when she writes about the “sense of sublimity conveyed by [musical] storms and tempests” (ibid.: 53). Musical aesthetics at this time relied more on intrinsic aesthetic categories than on external ceremonial topoi. Eastlake found this intrinsic category in Weber’s Preciosa, a Romantic opera with a very different aesthetic background compared to Haydn’s oratorio. Obviously, Eastlake, as was common around 1850, lacks the sensitivity for a historical understanding of music, which requires the awareness of divergent cultural frames. For Strauss, the purely aesthetic qualification of the ‘highest’ was already the sublime in a Kantian sense. In Kant’s definition the sublime is what is absolutely and without any comparison great (cf. Kant 1790, online: § 24). The sublime, therefore, is comparable only to itself alone. “The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense.” (Ibid.: § 25) With regard to nature, Kant defines: “Nature, therefore, is sublime in such of its phenomena as in their intuition convey the idea of their infinity.” (Ibid.: § 26) This idea of infinity is musically conveyed by Strauss through the missing musical definition of a key at the beginning of Zarathustra and the employment of the full orchestra in the breakthroughs, although the latter cannot be ‘infinite’ in the proper sense of the word due to the technical restrictions of the instruments. The different referential devices for musical descriptions used by Haydn and Strauss are a corollary of the different aesthetic assumptions depending on their epochs and cultural contexts. Both musical descriptions were easily understood by contemporary audiences. But as has been shown, there can be difficulties in understanding descriptive music when the cultural conditions and the musical aesthetics change. This is, of course, also true of literary works and paintings, albeit to a lesser degree. Since music lacks a semantic meaning, however, the danger of a misconception of descriptions transmitted by this medium is by far greater than in other arts and media. Beethoven therefore felt the need to emphasize that the music of his Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral Symphony) was not descriptive when he wrote “mehr

334

Michael Walter

Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey”6 (‘more expression of sensations than painting’). Such a measure of caution was necessary because, on the other hand, Beethoven provided the essential means of recognizing descriptive music, i. e., titles to each of the five movements, and so may have feared that the descriptive content would be overstressed by contemporary listeners to the detriment of other features of his composition. Yet, in spite of his cautioning comment, it turned out that his sixth symphony became in many ways the prototype of a kind of music that testifies to a quality which at first sight seems so alien to music, in particular to instrumental music, namely to approach the condition of the descriptive.

References Butterworth, Neil (1985). The Music of Aaron Copland. London: Toccata Press. Eastlake, Elizabeth (1852). Music and the Art of Dress: Two Essays Reprinted from the ‘Quarterly Review’. London: John Murray. Hahn, Arthur (c. 1912). “Also sprach Zarathustra: Tondichtung frei nach Fr. Nietzsche. Op. 30”. Herwarth Walden, ed. Richard Strauss: Symphonien und Tondichtungen. Erläutert von G. Brecher, Georg Gräner, A. Hahn, W. Klatte, W. Mauke, A. Schattmann, H. Teibler, H. Walden. Berlin: Schlesinger. 109-127. Kant, Immanuel (1790, online). The Critique of Judgement. Transl. James Creed Meredith. http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of-judgment.txt [20/11/2006]. Meteorology Online. “Eine Auswahl von Werken der klassischen Musik mit Bezug zu meteorologischen Themen”. http://www.met.fu-berlin.de/dmg/dmg_home/fagem/musikundwett er.html [14/11/2006]. 6

In the first print of the symphony one could read on the back of the part of the first violin “Pastoral-Sinfonie oder Erinnerung an das Landleben (mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey)”. This remark goes back to a letter Beethoven wrote to his publisher, Breitkopf und Härtel, in March 1809, in which he says: “Der Titel der Sinfonie in F ist: Pastoral-Sinfonie oder Erinnerung an das Landleben Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Mahlerej”.

Musical Sunrises

335

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1968). Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (1882 – 1885). Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montanari, eds. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 1. Berlin: de Gruyter. — (online). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: An Adaptation Based on the Thomas Common Translation. Paul Douglas, ed. http://bellsouthpwp.net/m/s/mschelb/zarathustra.htm#A0 [20/11/2006]. Pollack, Howard (1999). Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Schering, Arnold (1934). Beethoven in neuer Deutung. Die Shakespeare-Streichquartette op. 74, op. 95, op. 127, op. 130, op. 131. Die Shakespeare-Klaviersonaten op. 27 Nr. 1, op. 27 Nr. 2, op. 28, op. 31 Nr. 1, op. 31 Nr. 2, op. 54, op. 57, op. 111. Die SchillerKlaviersonate op. 106. Leipzig: Kahnt. — (1936). Beethoven und die Dichtung: Mit einer Einleitung zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Beethovendeutung. Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt. Walter, Michael (1994). Grundlagen der Musik des Mittelalters. Schrift – Zeit – Raum. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler. — (2004). “Music of Seriousness and Commitment”. The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music. Eds. Nicholas Cook, Anthony Pople. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 286-306.

Notes on Contributors Walter Bernhart ([email protected]) is Professor of English Literature at the University of Graz, Austria, chairman of the university’s research and teaching unit “Literature and the Other Media”, and founding and current president of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). His main research interests are intermedia studies, word and music studies, theory of lyric, and rhythm studies. His numerous publications include ‘True Versifying’: Studien zur elisabethanischen Verspraxis und Kunstideologie (Tübingen, 1993); “Überlegungen zur Lyriktheorie aus erzähltheoretischer Sicht” (1993); “Iconicity and Beyond in ‘Lullaby for Jumbo’: Semiotic Functions of Poetic Rhythm” (1999); “Lied som intermedial konstform” (2002); “The ‘Destructiveness of Music’: Functional Intermedia Disharmony in Popular Songs” (2002); “Narrative Framing in Schumann’s Piano Pieces” (2005); “‘Musikalische Verse’: ‘Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten’” (2006); “Myth-making Opera: David Malouf and Michael Berkeley’s Jane Eyre” (2007). He is Executive Editor of two book series, Word and Music Studies (WMS) and Studies in Intermediality (SIM), and has (co)edited nine individual volumes. Johann Konrad Eberlein ([email protected]) has been Professor of art history at the University of Graz, Austria since 1998. He studied art history, history and classical archaeology in Erlangen, Munich, Freiburg and Bonn. In 1978 he obtained his PhD in Würzburg and became associate Professor in Kassel in 1992. Since 1985 he has taught at the Universities of Munich, Frankfort, Kassel, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and Bern. Besides many articles, the following publications are amongst his most important ones: Apparitio regis – revelatio veritatis. Studien zur Darstellung des Vorhangs in der bildenden Kunst von der Spätantike bis zum Ende des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden, 1982); Lothar Strauch, 1907 - 1991. Plastik und Graphik. Verzeichnis der Werke des Künstlers, mit einem Beitrag von Theodore Klitzke (Berlin, 1993); Paul Klee (Munich, 1994); Miniatur und Arbeit. Das Medium Buchmalerei (Frankfort/Main, 1995);

338

Notes on Contributors

Albrecht Dürer (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2003/2007); “Angelus novus”. Paul Klees Bild und Walter Benjamins Deutung (Freiburg i. Br./Berlin, 2006); Noriko Hori. Leben und Werk (Tokyo, 2006); Harald de Bary. Leben und Werk (Frankfort/Main, 2006). With Christine Mirwald-Jakobi he wrote Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Kunst. Eine Quellenkunde (Berlin, 1996/2004). Arno Heller ([email protected]) is Professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. His publications concentrate on 19th and 20th century American literature and film (mainly on sociohistorical themes such as maturation, initiation, identity formation, utopian and dystopian thought, violence, transatlantic relations, cultural and comparative studies, regionalism, and ecology). He has published Odyssee zum Selbst: Zur Gestaltung jugendlicher Identitätssuche im neueren amerikanischen Roman (Innsbruck, 1973); Gewaltphantasien: Untersuchtungen zu einem Phänomen des amerikanischen Gegenwartsromans (Tübingen, 1990); Der amerikanische Südwesten: Geschichte, Kultur, Mythos (Innsbruck, 2006). He has edited and co-edited several books and published over 100 articles in international journals and essay collections. Susanne Knaller ([email protected]) is Professor of Romance Philology and Comparative Literature at the University of Graz, Austria. Her main research interests include aesthetic theories (18th to 20th centuries), theories of allegory, the history and definition of the notion of authenticity, postcolonial literature, and conceptions of reality since the Age of Enlightenment. Recent publications are: Ein Wort aus der Fremde. Geschichte und Theorie des ästhetischen Begriffs Authentizität (Heidelberg, 2007); Authentizität. Diskussion eines ästhetischen Begriffs (Munich, 2006; co-edited with Harro Müller); Zeitgenössische Allegorien – Literatur, Kunst, Theorie (Munich, 2003); Reformulating Allegory: Literature, Theory, Film (Special issue of The Germanic Review 77, 2, 2002). “Das Gedächtnis der Allegorie. Am Beispiel von Rachel Whitereads Holocaust-Mahnmal” (2002). “Scattered Voices. Some Remarks on a Narrative Theory of Postcolonial Storytelling” (1999). A collection of essays edited by her, Realitätskonstruktionen in der zeitgenössischen Kultur. Beiträge zu Literatur, Kunst, Fotografie, Film und zum Alltagsleben (2008), is forthcoming.

Notes on Contributors

339

Doris Mader ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Graz, Austria. Her main research interests are English literature of the 20th century, the interrelations between radio and literature, and contemporary British theatre. Previous publications include a study of Tom Stoppard’s stage plays: Wirklichkeitsillusion und Wirklichkeitserkenntnis. Eine themen- und strukturanalytische Untersuchung ausgewählter großer Bühnendramen Tom Stoppards (Heidelberg, 2000) and several essays on audioliterature as an intermedial phenomenon: “‘Shut Your Eyes and Listen’ – Ein Plädoyer zur Be-Sinnung der (anglistischen) Literaturwissenschaft auf Audioliteratur” (2002); “‘I saw it on the radio’, ‘I listened to the book’ – Audioliterature in the Age of Glocalized Communication” (2003). She has co-edited a collection of essays on English literature and the tradition, Metamorphosen. Englische Literatur und die Tradition (Heidelberg, 2006), which includes her most recent contribution to the study of audioliterature: “Audioliteratur und intermediale Tradition: Zu den Metamorphosen von Gattungskonventionen in zeitgenössischen Radiomonologen: Dramatischer Monolog, Melodrama und Monodrama”. She is currently preparing a monograph devoted to the systematic study of audioliterature in the context of intermediality. Ansgar Nünning ([email protected]) is Professor and Chair of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. He is the founding director of the “Giessener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften” (GGK), which is currently expanded into an International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, and the Head of the International PhD programme “Literary and Cultural Studies”. He has recently coauthored An Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature (Barcelona et al., 2004, with Vera Nünning), edited the Metzler Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory (Stuttgart, 1998, 3rd ed. 2004), Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: Theoretische Grundlagen – Ansätze – Perspektiven (Stuttgart, 2003), Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft (Tübingen, 2004, with Roy Sommer), as well as Erzähltextanalyse und Gender Studies (Stuttgart, 2004, with Vera Nünning), Medien des kollektiven Gedächtnisses: Konstruktivität – Historizität – Kulturspezifizität (Berlin/New York, NY, 2004, with

340

Notes on Contributors

Astrid Erll) and Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin/New York, NY, 2005, with Astrid Erll). Götz Pochat ([email protected]) studied comparative literature and art history at the University of Stockholm, where he was assistant and associate professor from 1971 to 1981. From 1982 to 1987 he was Professor of Art History at the RWTH Aachen, Germany and as of 1987 Chair of the Art History Department at the KarlFranzens-University in Graz, Austria. His most important publications include: Der Exotismus während des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Stockholm, 1970); Figur und Landschaft – Eine historische Interpretation der Landschaftsmalerei von der Antike bis zur Renaissance (Berlin/New York, 1973); Der Symbolbegriff in der Ästhetik und Kunstwissenschaft (Cologne, 1983); Geschichte der Ästhetik und Kunsttheorie – Von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1986); Theater und bildende Kunst im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance in Italien (Graz, 1990); Bild/Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frühen Neuzeit (Vienna, 1996); Bild/Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 2004). Klaus Rieser ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, where he teaches mostly in cultural studies and in film studies. Before this employment, he was a lecturer at various departments of the University of Innsbruck, where he gained his “Doctor of Philosophy” (PhD) in 1993. In 2006, he completed his “Habilitation” at the University of Graz in the area of “American Studies (Film)”. His major areas of research comprise US film, representations of gender and ethnicity, and cultural studies. His dissertation on the representation and the metaphorical functions of immigration in film, Passagen zum Ende des Regenbogens: Ethno-Amerikanische Pidgin- und Interkulturen im Migrationsfilm, has been published by Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier in 1996. He also co-wrote (with Susanne Rieser) Daughter Rite (1978) und Daughters of Chaos (1980): Filmanalysen (Trier, 1996). Beyond that, he has published a number of articles on film and co-edited two volumes on cultural and literary studies. His most recent publication is Borderlines and Passages: Liminal Masculinities in Film (Essen, 2006). He is board member of the Austrian Association of American

Notes on Contributors

341

Studies, chairs the European Scholars Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and co-edits the book series American Studies in Austria. Michael Walter ([email protected]) is Professor of Musicology at the University of Graz, Austria. He has edited and co-edited several books, among them three volumes of the Jahrbuch für Opernforschung (1985, 1986, 1990) and Text und Musik: Neue Perspektiven der Theorie (Munich, 1992). He is author of Hitler in der Oper: Deutsches Musikleben 1919-1945 (Stuttgart, 1995/2000), “Die Oper ist ein Irrenhaus”: Sozialgeschichte der Oper im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1997/Tokyo 2000), Richard Strauss und seine Zeit (Laaber, 2000), and Haydns Sinfonien: Ein musikalischer Werkführer (Munich, 2007). He has also published numerous articles and book contributions on the music history of the Middle Ages, the history of opera, classical music, Richard Strauss, and on music and musical life in the first half of the twentieth century. Werner Wolf ([email protected]) is Professor of English and General Literature at the University of Graz, Austria and member of the executive board of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). His main areas of research are literary theory (in particular aesthetic illusion, narratology, and literary self-referentiality), functions of literature, eighteenth- to twenty-first-century English fiction, eighteenth- and twentieth-century drama, as well as intermedial relations and comparisons between literature and other media, notably music and the visual arts. His extensive publications include, besides numerous essays, Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst (Tübingen 1993) and The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality (Amsterdam 1999). He is also co-editor of volumes 1, 3 and 5 of the book series Word and Music Studies published by Rodopi (Word and Music Studies: Defining the Field 1999, Word and Music Studies: Essays on the Song Cycle and on Defining the Field 2001, Essays on Literature and Music by Steven Paul Scher 2004) as well as of Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, vol. 1 of the series Studies in Intermediality.