Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

interpretive ekphrases), or visually enacted and dramatized (interpretive or
dramatic ekphrases).
Feuchtwanger’s use of ekphrasis coupled with trochee verses at the end of
each chapter is not only a means for achieving local color and
Verfremdungseffekt, but also marks the text as hybrid, as a compound of prose,
poetry and art. The use of ekphrasis as well as poetry in a prose novel underscores
its own artistic status and emphasizes its ability to combine and unify the three art
forms in one. Similarly, Wolf’s film competes with both the author and the
painter by constructing his own visual, speaking and moving images of the Sueño
de la razón, adapting and appropriating both Goya’s aquatint and Feuchtwanger’s
ekphrasis of that image. In resisting adaptation of Feuchtwanger’s ekphrases and
instead creating his own animations and enactments of the Sueño de la razón,
Wolf uses dramatic ekphrasis to emphasize film’s potential to enact paintings to
make them living, speaking, moving pictures. While the paragone is thus present
in both the literary and the filmic ekphrases, the film underscores its competition
not only with the visual arts but also with the literary text. By competing with
both the visual and the verbal arts, Wolf’s film emphasizes its status as hybrid
medium that both combines and goes beyond the visual and verbal arts.
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