PORTRAIT IN LITERATURE AND GRAPHIC ART: THE CASE OF THE FIERY ANGEL

Title  PORTRAIT IN LITERATURE AND GRAPHIC ART: THE CASE OF  THE FIERY ANGEL
Author(s)  N.A. Drovaleva
Information about the author(s)  Natalia A. Drovaleva, MA student, Lomonosov Moscow State  Natalia A. Drovaleva, MA student, Lomonosov Moscow State  University
Received  April 15, 2017
Published  June 25, 2017
Issue  2017 Vol. 2, №2
Department  Literary Theory
Pages  10-21
DOI  10.22455/2500-4247-2017-2-2-10-21
UDK  82.0+821.161.1+76
BBK  83.3(2Рос=Рус)53+85.15
Abstract  This essay analyzes portraits in several editions of  The Fiery Angel published during  This essay analyzes portraits in several editions of  The Fiery Angel published during  Bryusov’s lifetime and claims that the portrait was as a universal point of convergence for verbal and visual arts. The dialogue between literature and graphics in the context of the  synthesis of arts sheds new light on the possibilities for interdisciplinary research. The   time of the “beautiful book” was a time of great artists and illustrators who introduced  the peculiarities of their own style and the manner of their artistic schools into their art.  Books were commonly decorated with vignettes and famous paintings. Portraits, as well  as plates in general, were of the highest quality. They were ornamental and illusory, with  every minute detail finely drawn out. Yet, in the second edition of the novel Bryusov   deliberately  included  medieval  engravings  and  portraits.  A  comparative  analysis  of  the verbal portraits in  The Fiery Angel and engraved portraits in the book  (Ruprecht,  Heinrich,  Faust,  Mephistopheles,  Renata,  and  Madiel)  demonstrates  that  both  the  main and the secondary characters of the novel are picturesque and multidimensional  whereas  the  xylographic  portraits  rather  reveal  conventionality  and  simplicity  of  the       medieval time. This way Bryusov was seeking to debase clichе’s, especially as regards  Agrippa von Nettesheim and Faust: according to Bryusov, the character of Agrippa had   already become a clichе’d image and so was the popular engraving of the scientist that he  reproduced in the middle of the sixth chapter of the 1909 edition. Juxtaposing the verbal  and the graphic portraits in  The Fiery Angel helps us better understand the function of  the verbal portrait in a Symbolist text that was determined by the author’s design, on the  one hand, and by various “instruments” of different arts, on the other. 
Keywords   Valery Bryusov, portrait,  The Fiery Angel, Symbolism, symbolic novel, synthesis of     arts
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