Ekphrasis: Homer and Kleist

Abstract

In this text, a contrast is drawn between two models of the rhetorical resource of the ekphrasis: the description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, which is the model par excellence, and the description of a pitcher broken in Der zerbrochne Krug (1808) by Heinrich von Kleist. The contrast allows us to recognize two opposing modes of construction of the work and configuration of the world by poetic language, what could be called, in the first case, a cosmogonic mode, and, in the second, a catastrophic mode. The opposition points to a radical change in the status of language in terms of its ability to account for a unity of word, image and thing, which in the Homeric poem teaches its original constitution, while in the Kleist’s comedy that same unity is presented in an state of irreparable dissociation.