Landscape on a Theater Curtain, Tea Saucer and Hand Fan Screen: Ekphrasis in the Works of Aubrey Beardsley, Ronald Firbank, Mikhail Kuzmin

Abstract

The article studies the influence of Aubrey Beardsley on the English prose writer Ronald Firbank and Russian poet Mikhail Kuzmin, both of whom worked at the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis of literary works in the article is based on comparative-historical and aesthetic-poetological approaches. The ekphrasis of the palace in Firbank’s novel The Artificial Princess is shown to have intermedial connections with A. Beardsley’s novel Under the Hill, or the Story of Venus and Tannhäuser and with M. Kuzmin’s poems Fuji in a Saucer and The Northern Fan. Comparative analysis leads to the conclusion that the relationships between nature and art in the works of Beardsley, Firbank, and Kuzmin are viewed through the prism of culture. In Beardsley’s novel, the landscape of a lake with frogs is created in the hero’s imagination and reflects his desires and fears, which emphasizes the romantic genesis of decadence. The description ends with the assumption that the lake does not really exist, but is only painted on a theater curtain. Firbank presents the ekphrasis of the palace park from different points of view. Reality is transformed not so much by the subjectivity of vision as by its paradoxical perspective. The ‘deceptive expanse’ of the landscape, narrowing, is compared with the image on a porcelain cup or saucer, or on the silken panel of a fan – ‘so much… in so little’. In Kuzmin’s ekphrastic poem Fuji in a Saucer, the landscape simultaneously narrows and expands, demonstrating the unity of nature and art. Unlike the landscape descriptions by Beardsley and Firbank, Kuzmin’s poem immediately indicates the ekphrastic nature of the description, which determines its genre integrity. In Firbank’s novel, the leaves of the fan in the hands of the princess cross the night sky with twinkling planets leading into the world of dreams and imagination. A direct reference to Charles Conder indirectly points to the tradition of Beardsley, whose drawings the creator of the fan admired and imitated. Kuzmin’s poetic cycle The Northern Fan opens with a direct reference to Beardsley, whom Kuzmin compared with his friend Yu. Yurkun (the cycle is dedicated to him). Each poem is like a leaf of a fan, but while the first poem mentions only the material and details, the last one describes the movement of the fan leaves as four elements and four cardinal points, reminiscent of the film by J. Méliès The Wonderful Living Fan. The transformation of the fan in this film ends with the rotation of the planets in the starry sky, as on Firbank’s fan. Thus, ekphrasis in the works of Firbank and Kuzmin, aesthetically ascending to Beardsley, is distinguished by a change of points of view, by allusions to cinematographic images and the realities of the 20th century.