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

contrasting images. In Plett’s terms, with regard to quantity, the images can be
represented in full or significant details, but the dramatization can also take the
images apart, take its characters out of the original context of the picture, and
allow them to move beyond the picture’s frame. In terms of frequency and
distribution, this type of ekphrasis will occur at a central moment in the work and
for an extended period of time. Qualitatively, texts and films thus display a high
degree of transformation and additional meaning. Likewise, the degree of
interference will be fairly high, since the dramatization of images, which takes
them out of their immediate context and picture frame, implies a conflict between
the original context of the quotation and the new context in which the quotation is
inserted.
This ekphrasis can take different shapes in texts and films. Literary texts
can bring characters from one or more images to life and make them characters in
the story or drama that speak and act for themselves, thus reflecting on and
interpreting the image they come from in the light of their new quotation context.
For instance, in Rafael Alberti’s drama Noche de guerra en el museo del Prado
(1955/56), the protagonists are all characters from history paintings in the Prado
museum that have come alive, especially those by Goya and Velázquez. 76 The
action takes place in November 1936, when the Prado was evacuated. The
characters from the paintings come together in the now empty museum, defending
it against the attacks and reflecting on their own experiences of earlier wars.
Alberti thus uses the animation of paintings not only to present a different
76 Rafael Alberti, Noche de guerra en el Museo del Prado. El hombre deshabitado, ed. and intro.
Gregorio Torres Negrera (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2003).
61