On the Fusion of Verbal and Visual Media

The author points out the interest that a number of poets and artists have shown in the fact that the awareness of an event or an object, imaginary or observed, is rooted in more than one of the senses. He mentions the poetic works of the French symbolists and the Italian futurists and the paintings and drawings of Odilon Redon, of the cubists and the futurists and of the pioneers of non-figurative or abstract art in which the verbal and visual media were synthesized. The roles of labels and identity clues and the applications of aspects of calligraphy to bring about a fruitful interplay between the two media are also described.