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91 chapter six PAINTING THE WORD / WORDING THE PAINTING: Allegory and Intertextuality in The Virgin of Port Lligat by Fray Angélico Chávez∞ p manuel m. martín-rodríguez Texas A & M University In recent decades, a resurgent interest in the relationship between poetry and painting has revived the traditional debates on the (non)mimetic nature of art, as well as on the relationship between ‘‘natural signs’’ (of iconic nature) and ‘‘arbitrary signs’’ (of symbolic nature). Not surprisingly, this revival has been accompanied by a revision of linguistic and semiotic approaches to the nature of the sign, which has taken a central role in the area of literary and artistic criticism. As summarized by Wendy Steiner, ‘‘At the beginning of this century, the ut pictura poesis controversy stood as a mere historical curiosity. . . . But if we turn half a century later to the conference programs of institutions of literary studies . . . we find the comparison of painting to literature a major topic of concern. A revolution in critical thinking has taken place, a revolution that seems clearly related to the spread of structuralism and semiotics . . . and the correspondent interest among recent philosophers in linguistics and aesthetic issues.’’≤ This renewed preoccupation with the overall relationship between the plastic and the literary arts has generated considerable attention to Horace’s classical dictum ut pictura poesis, as well as to the notion of ekphrasis. The ekphrastic literary work uses words to create a plastic object for the mind’s eye.≥ As Krieger further explores in his book, the major tension arising in this verbal recreation of an object from the plastic arts results from the predominantly spatial structure of the latter, whereas the former, literature, is marked by the implicit temporality of language.∂ In the context of these recent developments in linguistics, semiotics, literary and art theory, Fray Angélico Chávez’s The Virgin of Port Lligat stands out as an 92 Culture of the Word and Image interesting ekphrastic endeavor.∑ In the 113-line poem, Chávez is largely inspired by Salvador Dalí’s painting The Madonna of Port Lligat (1951), which is reproduced on the dust jacket and frontispiece of the book edition.∏ Dalí presents Madonna and Child as floating slightly above her throne, a throne whose bottom part resembles a mixture of altarpiece and pedestal. Parts of the throne are also suspended in midair, as is the background landscape of Port Lligat. Directly above the Madonna, an egg dangles from a floating seashell, attached to it by a string. Most strikingly, the Madonna’s bosom is represented as a square cut, which serves as a frame for the Child’s figure. A similar square cut is found in the Child’s breast, markedly resembling an altar’s tabernacle, particularly since this square contains a floating piece of bread reminiscent of the consecrated hosts kept in such tabernacles. Several other motifs complete the painting: a fish, a bread basket, a couple of smaller human figures in the background, a rhinoceros, flowers, and a few others. As central as this painting is for Chávez’s poem, it should be noted that Fray Angélico also draws his inspiration from classical mythology, as well as from nuclear physics and astronomy. The resulting richness of Chávez’s imagery and the interconnection of the di√erent referential and cultural fields from which this imagery is drawn are remarkable. At the same time Chávez’s poetic ambition results in an opening up of his text to alternative readings that undermine his unifying allegorical attempt. Given its multiple sources of inspiration, Fray Angélico’s poem moves beyond mere description of the painting, to an ambitious and artistically successful blending of religion, science, painting, and poetry. In that sense, the poem is broader in scope than a simple ekphrasis, turning Dali’s painting into an enigmatic emblem in need of interpretation, much in the tradition explored by Krieger: ‘‘As visual companion to the poem, the emblem, which is no longer anything like a mimetic representation, seems cryptic and in need of explication , so that it leans upon a text whose verbal completeness now permits it to claim primacy.’’π Indeed, Dali’s The Madonna of Port Lligat is a surrealistic painting of ambiguous religious symbolism that requires a great deal of interpretation. A Franciscan priest, Fray Angélico is in a privileged position to turn the somewhat vague or enigmatic religious references in Dalí’s painting into a detailed and carefully constructed alegoría...

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