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Titre Ekphrasis et fantastique dans la Vénitienne de Nabokov ou l'art comme envoûtement
Auteur Michel Niqueux
Mir@bel Revue Revue des Etudes Slaves
Numéro Vol. 72, no 3-4, 2000
Rubrique / Thématique
Nabokov dans le miroir du XXe siècle, sous la direction de Nora Buhks
 Articles
Page 475-484
Résumé anglais Ecphrasis and the fantastic in Vladimir Nabokov's Venetsianka or the fascination of art Recently published in the original (Zvezda 1996, 11) Venetsianka (1924) embodies several key elements of Nabokov's poetics: art and reality, original and copy, reality and the other world. The description of the portrait of Venetsianka offers a remarkable model of ecphrasis, a verbal description of a picture. Ecphrasis creates a verbal portrait both of Venetsianka and of the author. The sensitive nature of Simpson, the main character, conditions the transition from ecphrasis to the fantastic. Nabokov inverts the motif of the animated portrait: Simpson enters the world of the painting, and is then fixed on the canvas. The walk through the landscape with a path in the background of the portrait (this path is not in the Italian original, in del Piombo's Dorotea) can be interpreted in two ways: autobiographically, as a return to a child's phantasm, described in Glory and in Speak, Memory; and aesthetically, as a fascination for art, an immersion in the other world of art. But Simpson confuses painting and reality and suffers a defeat. Although Nabokov gives a realistic explanation of the story, one enigma remains, the lemon which Venetsianka has given to Simpson: it is a sign of creative inspiration, the symbol of the wonderful otherworld. Venetsianka is a story about walking into the other world of art and about the fascination of reading a literary text.
Source : Éditeur (via Persée)
Article en ligne https://www.persee.fr/doc/slave_0080-2557_2000_num_72_3_6678