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Art “En Abyme„

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Tadeusz Kowzan
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Extract

“What I like in a work of art, is when one finds the very subject of the work transposed, with specific reference to the characters in it. […] Thus, in certain paintings by Memling or by Quentin Metzys a small convex dark mirror reflects on its own the interior of the room where the painted scene occurs. […,] Then, indeed, in literature, in Hamlet, the scene of the play; and in a lot of other theatre plays as well. […] In The Tall of the House of Usher, the story that is read to Roderick, etc. Not one of these examples is totally accurate. What would be far more so, [….] is to compare it to a coat of arms where one image places a second one in a subjugated position (en abyme).”

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 24 , Issue 96 , December 1976 , pp. 67 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. Tzvetan Todorov, Littérature et signification, Paris, Larousse, 1967, p. 24.

2. Cf. Jacques Robichez, Le théâtre de Montherlant, Paris, S.E.D.E.S., 1973, pp. 157-182.

3. Alain Goulet, "Lire Les faux-monnayeurs," in "André Gide, 5" of La Revue des Lettres Modernes, nos 439-444, 1975 (4), edited by Claude Mar tin, p. 23.

4. Cf. Lucien Dällenbach, Le livre et ses miroirs dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, Paris, Lettres Modernes, 1972.

5. L'espace et le regard, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1965, pp. 248-249.

6. Ross Chambers, La comédie au château. Contribution à la poétique du théâtre, Paris, José Corti, 1971, pp. 33-34.

7. Let us point out that, three centuries later, Velasquez' painting became the subject of a play, Las meninas, by Antonio Buero Vallejo, written in 1960. The final scene of the drama re-evokes the famous canvas.