La poesia ekphrastica de Rafael Alberti y su arte de describir la pintura

Abstract

Rafael Alberti (1902-1999), member of Generación del (19)27, is well known for his love of painting, which has represented him in literary history as one of the most committed writers to poeticize the pictorial world. For this reason the gaditano poet, in his incessant and long-life attempt to poeticize painting, actualizes the Greek word ekphrasis (art of describing a pictorial image) in his book A la pintura in order to establish a dialogue between visual and verbal expression. Although some critics, like German Lessing (1729-1781), have questioned this possibility, Alberti seeks to eliminate the limits between poetry and painting, as Horace (66a.C-8d.C) suggested with the famous line “Ut pictura poesis” in his Ars Poetica. In the book Painting and Poetry (1985), Franklin Rogers asserts that “there is a vital link between the painter and the poet, but the precise nature of that link has never been fully explored” (9). Taking this into consideration, I will focus my research on studying the existing link between painter and poet, demonstrating that painting and poetry, in their two different methods of (re)presentation, can be juxtaposed in an (inter) textual and visual dialogue. In order to prove my hypothesis, I will analyze the poems that Alberti dedicated to the Spanish and European painters, included on his book A la pintura.