Chapter 3 The Glance at the Paintings ....................... 16
3.1 Brueghel’s Suffering Gallery ......................... 16
3.2 Other Painter’s Allegorical Gallery ....................... 23
Chapter 4 The Look at the Sculptures .......................... 28
4.1 Sphinx’s Indifferent Oracle ................................. 28
4.2 Achilles’s Double-Sided Shield ......................... 31
Chapter 5 The Gaze behind the Camera .......................... 37
5.1 Coal Miners in Industrial Britain ............................. 37
5.2 A Postal Train in Natural Scenery ............................ 39
Chapter 6 The Observation of the World
6.1 Paysage Moralisé Through Symmetrical Composition
Auden not only took painting as the subject of his poetry, but also was able to integrate the principles and techniques of painting into his own poetry. In 1933, Auden published “Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys” without a title on Criterion. Until 1945, it was included in another collection, and Auden gave it a name—“Paysage Moralisé”. The title is derived from the literary and art term put forward by Erwin Panofsky (1972)64 in his Studies in Iconology and it is “common in late-medieval and Renaissance painting, of dividing the landscape background into two halves of symbolically contrasting character”. Hercules at the Crossroads by Niccolò Soggi① is one of the representative paintings. In Figure 6-1, Hercules is in the center of the picture, with the goddess of Virtue and the goddess of Pleasure on his left and right, both trying to persuade him to choose the path they represent. The path of virtue is barren, but leads to a city of peace and prosperity; the path of pleasure is thriving, but leads to a steep mountain. The symbolic meaning of this picture is obvious: adhering to virtue, Hercules would meet many difficulties on the road of life and eventually achieve spiritual prosperity; choosing pleasure Hercules would induce short-term pleasure, but in the long run it takes great risks. Thus, Auden did not name his poem casually. He used almost the same technique to present a spiritual picture of human civilization.
Chapter 7 Conclusion
As a community of word and image, the ekphrasis in Auden’s poetry is an interaction between poetry and visual arts and a fusion of individual experience and others’ experience, which conveys Auden’s general understanding of the world and humans.
As objects to be seen, the visual arts of painting, sculpture and film embodies human experience, which cannot speak with words like poets, but they can speak with images. They convey information in lines, shapes, colors and textures, and present its history to the viewer. Breughel’s paintings announced to the world the universality of suffering; Bellini’s Agony in the Garden told of the fate of Jesus; Titian’s The Three Ages of Man whispered about the cycle of life; Cosimo’s The Forest Fire roared about the spirit of nature; and Tchelitchew’s Fata Morgana murmured about sex and mystery. Sphinx guarded the pharaoh in solemn silence, while Achilles’s shields told the truth of the ancient Greek world. Coal miners would alternate between work and rest every day, and postal trains would pass messages between the city and nature. They manifest themselves in the form of a whole or a contrast in view, as if telling a riddle to be guessed.
As an intelligent spectator, Auden examines images in different viewing ways. With a glance at painting, he saw the marginality of suffering from Breughel, the anxiety of the spirit from Bellini, the fate of man from Titian, nature as a barometer of society from Cosimo, and the disappearance of Eden from Tchelitchew. He consciously looks at the sculpture, communicates with Sphinx about the permanence of loneliness and suffering, a
