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Article Excerpt
Although Strand has written books about artists, his poetry never is compared with visual art. This essay compares Strand with Hopper and offers an explanation of the Freudian as well as the ekphrastic nature of this correspondence through which aesthetic power is amplified, maximizing the possibility of expressing the Sublime.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure ... That never happens in life. Only in poetry ... Maybe in painting.--Mark Strand, "In the Presence of America"
Through evocation of the unheimlich or the Freudian uncanny, the poetry of Mark Strand and the paintings of Edward Hopper locate themselves in an internal landscape that seems strangely familiar. But a psychological affinity is not the only correspondence between these two artists. Both artists make use of a highly similar iconography, relying on figural representation to evoke emotional responses. By way of a deconstruction of narrative, their work engenders a feeling of stillness caught in an artificially constructed space; both create an experience of personal reality difficult to describe or represent. Strand has written two monographs on artists, Hopper and William Bailey; edited a collection of works by modern figurative painters, Art of the Real, and been involved in the publication of several books of photography. The covers of his books Dark Harbor and Selected Poems display paintings by William Bailey, and the cover of his book Blizzard of One is illustrated with a collage of his own creation. Several books of poetry are printed on paper that replicates the texture of artist's charcoal drawing paper. A limited edition of Prose: Four Poems is printed on watercolour paper and illustrated with drawings by Joseph Albers; each copy is personally signed by Strand. Yet, curiously, Strand's commentators do not compare his poetry to visual art nor do they look for associations with the painters about whom he writes. I attempt to remedy this oversight by presenting correspondences between the poetry of Strand and the painting of Hopper and by offering an explanation of the Freudian as well as the ekphrastic nature of this correspondence. Although Strand does not directly identify Hopper's work in his poetry, a symbiosis effected through ekphrasis exists derived from psychological and metaphorical correlations and a commonality of aesthetic sensibilities.
The tradition of ekphrasis has been examined by several twentieth-century scholars, all of whom attempt to construct their own comprehensive theory to explain its purpose and meaning; most conclude that other theories are inadequate or incorrect. Rather than defining ekphrasis as a genre or literary mode that operates in identical fashion across literary periods, I suggest that it has undergone an evolutionary process, and its contemporary form, as demonstrated by Strand's ekphrasis of Hopper, is one through which the poet attempts to augment and leverage the current creative act by reference to previous ones. The result of this imaginative layering is a heightened and amplified aesthetic ability, maximizing the possibility of expressing the impossible--the Ineffable, the Sublime. Much like the use of poetical intertextuality, Strand's ekphrasis of Hopper's paintings serves to unite him with the aesthetic heritage and spiritual strength of the artistic community.
Strand's selection of Hopper is connected to the special affinity both artists display for the evocation of the unheimlich or uncanniness. Freud's compulsion to repeat instinct is evident in the way both artists repetitively utilize familiar objects and places, stripped of their details and dislocated from any real world; uncannily, they are transformed from the comfortably familiar into the strangely unfamiliar. In addition, I believe that the urge to create is intimately related to Freud's concept of the active principle that irresistably and repetitively vitalizes artists in their work, temporarily distancing the passive principle until its inevitable return at death. The work of both Strand and Hopper displays a preoccupation with Eros and Thanatos, the primary instincts that paradoxically drive humans to seek a unity with others and yet demand a return to an original inorganic state. Freudian psychoanalytical concepts establish a theoretical framework upon which the ekphrastic relationship between Strand and Hopper rests.
The strength of the aesthetic correspondence between Strand and Hopper emerges through Strand's prose commentary in Hopper. In this monograph, Strand describes twenty-four oil paintings that span Hopper's career from 1919 to 1963. In the introduction, Strand insists that his observations of the paintings are not nostalgic but identify "two imperatives--the one that urges us to continue and the other that compels us to stay--creat[ing] a tension that is constant in Hopper's work" (3). The importance of these imperatives for Strand suggests a significance beyond that of a painterly effect; I link them to Freud's forward motion of the desiring Eros life instinct and the backward thrusting of the desiring Thanatos death instinct. By comparing three paintings--Cape Cod Morning, Cape Cod Evening, and Chair Car--that Strand comments upon in Hopper with three of his own poems--"The Good Life," "Where Are the Waters of Childhood?" and "The Whole Story"--I hope to describe the nature of the ekphrastic relationship I believe exists between Strand and Hopper.
In the commentary on Hopper's Cape Cod Morning, Strand concentrates on the light in the painting, which he writes has an "otherwordly power, that [...] seems to bear some message whose meaning, if it is revealed at all, is intended only for those upon whom it falls" (33). On the left half of the painting, a woman, standing inside a house, leans towards a bay window and looks outward. She and the siding of the house are suffused in a bright morning light. The right side of the painting shows a dark gathering of trees, one of which is brightly highlighted. Strand projects into the woman the emotion of expectation and writes that the object of her attention is beyond the picture. He notes that the something "beyond" always works its influence on the characters inside Hopper's paintings and suggests that it might be the "idea of limitation, akin to the kinds of limitation that the traveler experiences" (34).
The Good Life You stand at the window. There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart. The wind's sighs are like caves in your speech. You are the ghost in the tree outside. The street is quiet. The weather, like tomorrow, like your life, is partially here, partially up in the air. There is nothing you can do. The good life gives no warning. It weathers the climates of despair and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing, and you are there. (Selected 60)
In Strand's poem "The Good Life," published in Selected Poems, the poet speaks to someone in his view: "You stand at the window," and "You are the ghost in the tree outside." The speech of the person in Strand's poem is compared to the "wind's sighs" that "are like caves" and the "street is quiet." Weather is compared to time "tomorrow" and the person's life, which "is partially here, partially up in the air," perhaps the "glass cloud in...
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