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

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hohen Brauen, den breiten Mund mit schmaler Ober- und starker<br />

Unterlippe geschlossen (Goya 21). 65<br />

Although there are <strong>at</strong> least eight more ekphrases <strong>of</strong> this painting<br />

throughout the novel, this is the only time details <strong>of</strong> it are mentioned, and thus, the<br />

only time the reader is allowed to visualize it. Since this work in the novel plays<br />

such an important role in Goya’s subsequent aesthetic and political change, and is<br />

discussed in terms <strong>of</strong> its style on various occasions, this first descriptive ekphrasis<br />

is crucial for the reader, for whom the l<strong>at</strong>er ekphrases would otherwise remain<br />

meaningless.<br />

<strong>The</strong>re are countless further examples in this novel in which the narr<strong>at</strong>or<br />

reconstructs images verbally through extended description with many details, a<br />

depictive ekphrasis <strong>of</strong>ten followed <strong>by</strong> the novel’s characters’ interpretive<br />

reflections on the paintings. This same procedure is applied in Vargas Llosa’s<br />

Gauguin novel, such as the passage quoted above, which is also followed <strong>by</strong><br />

Gauguin’s reflections. Because film can directly show the paintings, it largely<br />

foregoes or abbrevi<strong>at</strong>es depictive ekphrases.<br />

A filmic example <strong>of</strong> his c<strong>at</strong>egory is the Nightw<strong>at</strong>ch scene in Alexander<br />

Korda’s Rembrandt (1936). 66 When this famous commissioned painting is<br />

revealed to the public, people point to several details <strong>of</strong> the image, which they<br />

condemn, while the camera shows these details in close-ups, moving back and<br />

65 Lion Feuchtwanger, Goya oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951; Berlin: Aufbau Verlag,<br />

1961) “From the canvas a lady looked down: very pretty, the r<strong>at</strong>her long face like a mocking<br />

mask, the eyes far apart under arched eyebrows, the mouth wide, the thin upper lip and heavy<br />

lower one meeting firmly” (This Is <strong>The</strong> Hour, trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter and Frances Fawcett [New<br />

York: <strong>The</strong> Viking Press, 1951] 16).<br />

66 Rembrandt, dir. Alexander Korda, perf. Charles Laughton, Gertrude Lawrence, Elsa<br />

Lanchester, and Edward Chapman, 1936, DVD, MGM Home Entertainment, 2001.<br />

51

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