Ekfraza kot izkustvena pripoved: primer Vergilijeve Eneide

In most interpretations of Virgil’s Aeneid inspired by structuralist theory (and by the New Criticism in the anglophone world), the scholarly reader/interpreter sees himself confronted with the text as a self-sufficient cryptic system to be deciphered. As typical examples of “narrative pause”, descriptions of works of art are often seen as interpretive clues revealing the deeper meaning of the narrative. Even in cases of ekphrases that are not only focalised by a character, but explicitly narrated through his eyes, the response of the character is often superseded by the zeal of the interpreter in a search for the hidden meanings of what is described. A good example is Aeneas’ emotional response to the pictures in Juno’s temple at Carthage (1.453–495), which the hero reads as an expression of universal compassion. According to a number of recent interpretations, Aeneas the “ekphrast” is victim of a fatal delusion, as he is unaware of the fact that the temple is dedicated to his enemy Juno, and that the Fall of Troy is represented on the murals as a triumph of the goddess; the real meaning of the depiction is to be revealed in the Punic Wars. Yet those future events are external to the narrative of the Aeneid: except for Dido’s prophecy of the birth of the avenger Hannibal, they do not play a role in the narrative. This paper suggests that Aeneas is not only meant to be autonomous as the focaliser of the pictures, but that a number of intratextual links to this ekphrasis later in the poem have a clear psychological logic. The description is mediated through the personal experience of the character, the retrospective narrative in Book 2 reveals the motives for his response to the images, and the meeting with Dido in the Underworld recalls, through a character-focalised citation, Aeneas’ experience in front of the pictures in the temple of Juno.V interpretacijah Vergilijeve Eneide, ki izhajajo iz strukturalistične teorije (in v anglofonem svetu iz »nove kritike«), se učeni bralec/interpret pogosto obnaša kot tolmač, ki besedilo razume kot samozadosten sistem. Opisi likovnih umetnin so značilen primer »pripovedne pavze«, zato so pogosto razumljeni kot interpretativni ključ, ki razkriva globlji pomen pripovedi. Celo pri opisih, ki niso le podvrženi žariščenju, temveč so izrecno posredovani »skozi oči« literarnega lika, interpret, ki išče skrivni pomen opisanega, rad zanemarja odziv literarne osebe. Značilen primer je Enejev čustveni odziv na slike v Junoninem svetišču v Kartagini (1.453–495). Enej te podobe bere kot izraz univerzalnega sočutja; kljub temu je večina interpretov prepričana, da Enej kot »ekfrast« podlega usodni utvari, saj se ne zaveda, da je tempelj posvečen njegovi sovražnici Junoni in da upodobitev padca Troje pomeni Junonin triumf nad Trojanci; po tej razlagi se bo »pravi« pomen slik razkril šele med punskimi vojnami. Vendar ti prihodnji dogodki niso del pripovedi; Didona jih kvečjemu nakaže s prerokbo maščevalca Hanibala. Temeljna ideja pričujočega prispevka je, da je Vergilij Eneju kot gledalcu oz. fokalizatorju slik namenil povsem avtonomno vlogo. V poznejšem besedilu se pojavi vrsta odzivov na ekfrazo, ki imajo jasno psihološko motivacijo. Opis je posredovan skozi osebno izkušnjo literarnega lika; retrospektivna pripoved v 2. knjigi razkrije motive njegovega odzivanja in srečanje z Didono v podzemlju se s »fokaliziranim citatom« naveže na Enejevo doživetje pred slikami v Junoninem svetišču