Vojeslav Mole kot pesnik ekfraze

slovenian

2017

volume 11, issue 1

Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

The paper analyses the ekphrastic poetry of the art historian Vojeslav Mole (1886-1973), who shaped Slovene art history and was in his youth a poet and essayist. Before he emigrated to Poland in 1926, Mole published two poetry collections, a few essays related to art history and some poems.. Formally, Mole's poetry was marked by his interests in Antiquity and Symbolism, and his major themes were love, women, and, later in his career, an idealistic longing for youth. While in Rome he was fascinated by Tizian paintings Sacred and Profane Love, as well as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Rafael's Apollo and Marsyas, published in 1910 in his first book When Flowers Bloomed. During his stay in Rome he also wrote the essay Art and Nature, in which he discussed the relationships among visual art, literature and nature. Poems like Giorgione and Byzantine Madonna make reference to Venice and the monuments he visited during his travels. In terms of ekphrasis, Mole applies a classical approach to underline the beauty and importance of the focal artistic works. His ekphrastic perspective is rather similar to that of romantic poetry. During WW I Mole was captured as a prisoner and sent to Siberia, where he wrote the poems that were eventually collected in Tristia ex Siberia, published in 1920. Despite the fact that Mole was fascinated by Rilke's poetry, which played important role in his artistic development, it is not possible to know whether he was influenced by that author's most famous ekphrastic poem, Archaic Torso of Apollo. Overall, most of Mole's ekphrastic poetry refers to much earlier works of art, with only a few exceptions. One of these is the poem The Sower, that could have been inspired by The Sower, an oil on canvas that was painted by Mole's contemporary, the Slovene Impressionist Ivan Grohar.

01.04.2020