Blurring the Boundaries : Ekphrasis as a Fold

The article provides a new theoretical perspective on ekphrasis, a very old rhetorical and literary device. The new approach applies the morphology of the fold, a notion examined by Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz in the 17th century and recently discussed by Gilles Deleuze and Anna Munster, to present ekphrasis as a continuum of word and image rather than the opposition of the verbal and the visual. The hybrid nature of ekphrasis and the dynamic tensions between its verbal and visual components allow for the blurring of the boundaries between word and image.


Introduction
Analyses of the most essential features of ekphrasis1 and various ways of understanding and interpreting elements constituting this literary figure belong to the very old tradition of investigating the relationship(s) between word and image.Since antiquity there has been an insight that the verbal and the visual are inseparable, but it seems that the mechanism has not been explained comprehensively.What has been achieved in numerous studies so far is an intuition that the verbal and the visual, though radically different, are connected, while my assertion is that they are not only inseparable, but also translatable and belong to an infinite continuum.
Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a new dynamic model of ekphrasis which can be used to interpret literary works that refer to, and thus, represent works of art.It will be demonstrated here that the paragone between word and image can be resolved in a draw.In other words, word and image can be perceived as complementary rather than competitive modes.Consequently, W. J. T. Mitchell's momentary "ekphrastic hope" can be extended and prolonged ad infinitum.Such perception of ekphrasis which blurs the boundary between the verbal and the visual is possible because ekphrasis has the shape of a fold that differentiates but at the same time unites elements.

The fold
Cartesian system of thought irreversibly separated the immaterial mind from the corporeal body, juxtaposed the two and privileged the mind.Post-Cartesian rationalism has been continually present in Western thought and can be traced, for instance, in modern computing and its negligence to the point of exclusion of the body. 2 But, already in the 17 th century there appeared a counter-concept which aimed at eliminating the ideal-material dichotomy, namely the fold.For German philosopher, Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, and later in the 20th century for Gilles Deleuze, the Baroque world extends between two axes: physical (material bodies) and metaphysical (free souls) which are separate but at the same time connected by means of folding.For Leibniz, matter is an infinite continuum of elastic texture that folds into ever smaller folds. 3ithin these folds there is no final indivisible point and different forces are at play.Subject to these forces, matter also forms inner folds, distinct from outer ones, but belonging to the same continuum, the same unity.Hence, the unity of matter points to the existence of another layer -the labyrinth of the soul, also subject to folding and unfolding.
The allegorical image of the Baroque house of thought can be used to illustrate Leibnizian/Deleuzian vision of the world as "a virtual plane that is unfolded through the pleats of matter and the folds of the soul" and an "infinitely folded curve that extends to infinity". 4The ends of the fold constitute two floors of the house: the fold of matter lies below and the fold of the soul occupies the upper deck.There are no windows on the upper floor and there are only little channels -inflections -which are tiny openings connecting the upper and the lower floor.The openings between the floors suggest correspondence and communication between the levels.Hence, despite the division into upper and lower, the two floors constitute one organism: the body of the house.This suggests that "two really distinct parts of matter can be inseparable", 5 and that there is no "absolute distinction" between the upper and the lower floor, "but only one relative to point of view" 6 which is constructed with the qualities of each floor and its other.
The fold is also Gilles Deleuze's, and later Anna Munster's, genuine way of perceiving the world.Both scholars question the omnipresent Post-Cartesian discourse and refer to Leibniz's ideas in their works.While Deleuze can be regarded as a philosopher categorically affirming multiplicity, difference and becoming, hence departing 3 SEPPI.Simply Complicated, p. 66. 4 SEPPI.Simply Complicated, p. 50. 5 DELEUZE, The Fold, p. 5. 6 EGGINTON, The Theater of Truth, p. 19.The image of the Baroque house of thought is used by William Egginton to describe the relation between the space of the viewer and the space of represented reality in his discussion of Baroque theatricality of life.Egginton, however, uses the interior and the exterior as points of reference, instead of the floors.
from Nitzschean negativity/nihilism; 7 Munster focuses on restoring or reinstating the body into the digital culture and aesthetics.
Following Leibniz, Deleuze states that the fold "goes on to infinity" 8 and in the process of extension to infinity it embraces everything on its way.The universe, then, is an endless process of folding and unfolding the outside/matter that creates an inside/soul which, in turn, is the doubling of the outside.Everything is then folded in-between: it is "a fold-of-two". 9Examples that illustrate the mechanism of fold, beside the Baroque house of thought, are many.In Cinema 2: The Time-Image Deleuze uses the instance of time in which the present moment, part of the fold, is split in "two heterogeneous directions, one of which is launched towards the future while the other falls into the past". 10Thus, no moment in time is omitted, and there are two extremes, ends or directions of the time fold: the future and the past, which are contained in the present moment.By analogy, in the case of ekphrasis, the two directions in which the ekphrastic fold is split are the verbal and the visual.To provide another example, Angelika Seppi uses the image of a folded sheet of paper: As it is being folded, the sheet of paper both increases when considering the dimensions of the embedded space and reduces when considering the space it occupies on the desk.It is still the same sheet of paper -nothing has changed with regard to the paper's chemical composition -yet it is quite different; everything has changed when considering the space it embeds and the space it is embedded in.Furthermore it not only preserves some of its main features, it also stores the potential energy of the process of transformation it underwent.It thus reveals itself as its own present and past. 11evealed and concealed within the fold.In the seminal study The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque Gilles Deleuze claims that an ideal fold is the one that differentiates and is differentiated.This "'duplicity' of the fold has to be reproduced from the two sides that it distinguishes, but it relates one to the other by distinguishing them". 13In other words, the structure of the fold is always double and it is impossible to suppress one side of the fold without the other being suppressed at the same time. 14As noted by Russell West-Pavlov, "[t]he fold is Deleuze's most genial solution to resolving the paradox of simultaneous indivisibility and multiplicity". 15To use again Deleuze's example of time, singularity of time is folded into multiplicity -the past, the present and the future -while its multiplicity is unfolded into singularity.By analogy, the singularity of the concept of ekphrasis is folded into the multiplicity of verbal and visual representations, and the multiplicity of the concept is unfolded into its singularity.
The fold has no beginning or end, and stretches in an undisturbed continuum into infinity.As there are two ends of the fold, or two directions in which the fold may continue, for Deleuze there are two kinds of infinity: "the coils of matter" and "the folds in the soul". 16The fold is, then material but at the same time devoured or permeated with the immaterial.Ideas are imbued with the material realisations of these ideas.They are part of an infinite continuity.Consequently, fold is a hybrid, which allows to explain the material and the immaterial reality.It is impossible to know the material without the presence of the immaterial.Fold not only suggests but also imposes continuity, eliminating the principle of the excluded middle and neutralising and deconstructing binary oppositions.In this model, the binary oppositions may constitute two extremes or ends of the fold.Since they belong to a continuum of the fold, mentioning of one extreme immediately evokes the presence of the other extreme.As will be seen, all the above is true for ekphrasis.

Ekphrasis as a fold
The intuition of inseparability of the verbal and the visual can already be seen in the roots of the notion.Ancient Greeks defined ekphrasis as "a descriptive account bringing what is illustrated vividly before one's sight". 17The exact etymology of the term, Greek ek phrazein, literally "to tell in full" or "to speak out," 18 suggests the translatability of one code or system into another.Used as a school exercise in learning and teaching rhetoric, 19 ekphrasis was intended to practice precision, linguistic flexibility and fluency of a description which was at that time the integral part of any speech act.The speakers/orators had to "through hearing operate to bring about seeing" 20 and thus transform the listener (or reader) into a spectator. 21The language of the vivid oral description was to create a picture of the fragment of the world in the imagination of the listener.Heidrun Führer and Bernadette Banaszkiewicz even use the verb "to unfold" with reference to rhetorical ekphrastic description. 22onsequently, the language of description in rhetorical ekphrasis always immediately pointed to a certain image and invoked certain visual structure.The ability to evoke instantly mental pictures in the listener/ reader is referred to in theory of rhetoric as enargeia and plays an important part in Cecilia Lindhé's discussion of contemporary digital ekphrasis. 23Digital ekphrasis focuses on the process of visualisation and the bodily interaction with the work of art.Lindhé emphasises the return to and the significance of enargeia in the new media for it can revitalize the traditional approaches and disciplines.Indeed, rhetorical ekphrasis is a "device surpassing the traditional narratological classifications of description and narration as well as the generalising semiotic categories of word and image when considered as two conventionally distinct media of oppositional character". 24It offers a dynamic vision of ekphrasis in which the distinction between the verbal and the visual is blurred for the word and image are folded together into a single structure.
Lindhé's interest in digital ekphrasis and in tactile interaction of the body with an artwork corresponds to Anna Munster's discussion of digital media.Inspired by Gilles Deleuze, Munster uses the notion of the superfold to explain human-computer interaction.Superfold "envelops an endless production of folds, or endless combinations produced out of an initial set of constant parameters". 25It is, then, a totalizing superstructure which includes the widest possible range of notions and phenomena.Superfold unfolds onto that which appears to remain outside, which seems non-human, in order to fold it back and provide new modalities and means of expression.Again, for Munster superfold means an endless and undisturbed continuity: from virtual reality (e.g. on the computer screen) and digital media through the matter/body and materiality to the soul and spirituality.How does the morphology of the fold work in the case of ekphrasis?
Paraphrasing W. J. T. Mitchell's ideas, Peter Wagner states that "art and literature cohabit within the same representational space". 26onsequently, if they occupy the same space, there can be no "line separating the visible from the readable". 27Gilles Deleuze also points to a smooth transition from seeing to reading the unfolding world. 28Mack Smith, in turn, allows for the unconstrained transition between word and image by questioning the stability of the relation between word, idea and thing.He opens his reflection with the following statement: "An empirical, correspondence theory of literary description implies a representational model in which a verbal sign and external referent are joined logically by denotation". 29In other words, the correspondence theory of literary description, and language in general, assumes that there is a stable and invariable reference, and a clear relation between the signifier and the signified (sign and its referent/object).Structuralism, however, carries the idea of connotation which destabilises the fixed relation between the sign and its referent: "connotative references behind the denotative 25  sign constantly remind one of the instability of communicative and reading acts that are always subject to supplementation or substitution". 30onnotation thus triggers the creation of additional meanings of signs or the replacement of some meanings with others in the processes of communication and reading.Within broadly understood texts, however, there are certain contextual determinants that limit sign's meaning by indicating a relation between the sign and a singular external referent.Ekphrasis, understood by Mack Smith as "a descriptive scene within the novelistic text in which there is a representation of any work of art", 31 is used to "foreground linguistic debates over truth-claims of referential and linguistic paradigms, making language their primary theme". 32It is so because there are two competing and contradictory theories of truth.According to the correspondence theory, there is a logical and empirical match between language and reality. 33On the other hand, in coherence theory it is claimed that language is a "rational system containing analogical truths that fit the experiential world". 34Thus, language is the instrument of world-making.By analogy, the tension between correspondence and coherence can be compared to the relation between the visual and the verbal as the two competitive modes of representation.The analogy is brought out when juxtaposing Smith's statement that "[t]he consistent use of ekphrasis [...] reveals a regular pattern of literary struggle between the conflicting correspondence and coherence paradigms of representation" 35 with James Heffernan's claim that ekphrasis "stages a battle for mastery between two rival systems of representation": 36 the driving force of the verbal code and "the stubborn resistance" of the fixed visual code. 37n the same passage Smith goes on to say that "in thematizing this struggle in order to establish truth-claims for a valorized paradigm of representation, the texts must represent both discourses, and this act of representation undermines any obvious attempt to deny the representational efficacy of the opposing paradigm". 38Thus both correspondence and coherence, or referentiality and performativity, are present side by side in the literary work.Neither of them is the privileged, the superior, the predominant or the favoured one.Yet, thinking of one immediately makes the other present.As a consequence, there is no stability and the denotation governing the relationship between sign and its referent is not unambiguous.Without the privileged foundation, meaning is a play of differences that depends on what is present and what is absent. 39By analogy, in ekphrasis the visual and the verbal are equally valid and significant, and each element bears a trace of the other.The verbal implies the visual and the visual bears marks of the verbal, even if the other element seems to be absent.Such situation opens ekphrasis to connotation which in turn uses substitution and supplementation.Stability is impossible in language which is always susceptible to the aforementioned processes.In such situation the features of the image, a visual artwork in the case of ekphrasis, can be extended to the verbal representation of it and the other way round: the properties of the verbal representation entail and can be extended to the visual.Consequently, ekphrasis seems to be incomplete; it seems to point beyond itself and it seems to be capable of continuation.
Considering and combining the above characteristics of both ekphrasis and the fold, it seems reasonable and justified to treat the notion of ekphrasis as a fold which "is both confluent and dissonant: it joins sides and marks the difference between them". 40In other words, ekphrasis as a fold joins word and image and at the same time marks the difference between them.The paragone is solved -the elements are equally important and the binary opposition is lifted/deconstructed as the verbal and the visual elements in ekphrasis constitute the ends or extremes of the fold's extension in a given direction.It does not mean, however, that ekphrasis as a fold is finite or definite.On the contrary, ekphrasis, like the fold, can be further extended into infinity, by means of another fold, embracing, for instance, the world presented in a story, to which a work of art described or mentioned belongs.Also, it does not mean that ekphrasis is a description of the world presented, unless the story is set 38  within the work of art described therein.Rather, ekphrasis is inseparably connected with the lives of characters, the plot and in a broader sense with the world presented in a particular literary work, and thus, with the structure of literary works themselves and ideologies or ideas expressed within them.In other words, ekphrasis, as any sign, gains meaning "in a signifying system of similarities and differences". 41Linguistic sign refers to a connotative series of other signs.Thus, ekphrasis as a sign refers to other signs, possibly ekphrases.These "correspondences are internal and potentially infinite". 42They can extend ad infinitum, precisely like a fold.Because "[a] fold is always folded within a fold" 43 by means of inflections that make inclusion and extension possible, the fold formed by ekphrasis may unfold into a fold including the world presented in a literary work, which in turn may extend to the literary convention or formal aspect of the work, and to the world outside the literary work, that is, the world of the reader.
What is more, ekphrasis understood as a Deleuzian fold is a continuum of the verbal and the visual or the visual and the verbal.It embraces both the natural sign typically associated with the visual code and the conventional sign ascribed to the verbal code, i.e. language.There is no hierarchy, no domination of one element over the other due to the fact that the elements cannot be told apart.Instead, there is a chiastic balance and equality of the elements.The classical binary opposition between the visual and non-visual (the verbal) ceases to exist on the grounds of thus understood ekphrasis.It is replaced with the complementary and extendable functions of each element.The instances in which the material language is unable to provide the model for other symbolic systems, including the pictorial, are complemented, in an immediate, continual and uninterrupted way, by the immaterial images and the ideas unexplainable in words.Ekphrasis unifies word and image but at the same time maintains the difference between them.Hence, the verbal does not act upon the visual, and the visual does not act upon the verbal.Instead, "one belongs to the other, in a sense of double belonging". 44The visual is the principle of the verbal and the verbal 41  is the principle of the visual through their presence, not through their action.In other words, in ekphrasis the world is actualised in the visual and realised in the verbal, therefore, it is folded over twice.
Such "double representation" 45 allows for the fusion or combination of features typical of the verbal code and the visual mode, especially in terms of spatiality of art 46 and temporality of literature. 47It seems to me that in ekphrasis the spatial-temporal dilemma is resolved in aforementioned chiastic exchange.The frozen moment of art bestows corporeality and spatiality upon a literary work, and the same work of visual art described by means of words acquires temporal aspect experienced and contained in the process of the description's unfolding in the process of reading.To put it differently, by using and describing works of visual art in literature, writers attempt to introduce not only some elements of atemporal "eternity" to the text, for instance to suspend action; but also to endow still works of art with temporal aspect by developing their description on the page and in time.
What is more, "[t]he idea of segregating the 'literary' sexes proves false" 48 because there is no hierarchy of elements and binary oppositions are deconstructed within the fold.As a result, the fixed division into male/ dominant/voiced word and female/subordinated/silent image traditionally associated with ekphrasis and discussed by James Heffernan in Museum of Words becomes flexible and protean, i.e. dynamic and prone to change, while the struggle for dominance is resolved in a draw.One can potentially think of the reversal of the traditionally and ideologically assigned roles, namely that woman may become the beholder and man the object of the painting or sculpture.Also, due to the constant changes in societies and their culture(s), it is now possible to attribute the gender of the gaze and of the object of the gaze to the same biological sex.Such situation takes place, for instance, when a female poet or writer contemplates paintings or sculptures representing female figures.
Another consequence of adopting Deleuzian fold by/to the notion of ekphrasis is the disappearance or erasure of ekphrastic fear, a fear of 45  the impending collapse of the border between the verbal and the visual, and "of being silenced, petrified and unmanned;" 49 and the prolongation of ekphrastic hope described by William John Thomas Mitchell in Picture Theory.Mitchell's ekphrastic hope, that is, "the desire for union," 50 according to which it is possible to "see" the verbal description in one's imagination: "the impossibility of ekphrasis is overcome in imagination or metaphor," 51 allows the possibility of a total deconstruction of the boarder between the verbal and the visual and the collapse of the difference between the two. 52Mitchell claims that "[o]nce the desire to overcome the 'impossibility' of ekphrasis is put into play, the possibilities and the hopes for verbal representation of visual representation become practically endless". 53A kind of reciprocal transference and unlimited exchange between the verbal and the visual can take place. 54The goal of ekphrastic hope, then, is to overcome otherness, to eliminate the differences and to indicate the translatability of sign systems, which is nothing other than an implication of the fold-like structure.However, for Mitchell, this excessively enthusiastic situation in which "the figurative, imaginary desire of ekphrasis might be realised literally and actually" 55 almost immediately imposes restriction and regulation of the borders between the two modes of representation, i.e. ekphrastic fear.Ekphrasis as a fold, in turn, eliminates this ekphrastic fear and extends ekphrastic hope.
Ekphrasis, like the fold, is something more than the sum of the verbal and the visual component.It is an interpretation of the work of art which has a purposeful function in the text in which it appears, but more significantly, it is the binder of the fragmented text 56 in the narrativedescription fold, the fold-of-two that separates but also connects the inner with the outer, intrinsic with the extrinsic, 57 the story/plot with the structure of the work, and consequently, with the reader.Above all, in ekphrasis, the verbal is invariably associated with the visual and the visual is inherently tied to the verbal.One is the model or the metaphor of the other.In order to see the visual one must acknowledge the verbal and conversely, in order to appreciate and understand the verbal it is crucial to see the visual.In other words, it is only possible to know one by means of the other.

Conclusion
It has been claimed here that the notion of ekphrasis has the structure of a fold which joins but simultaneously makes a distinction between two such distant elements as word and image.The verbal and the visual constitute the ends or extremes of the fold's extension to each side.Ekphrasis as a fold, then, is a continuum of the verbal and the visual or the visual and the verbal.Indeed, it is assumed that there is no hierarchy within a fold, and consequently within ekphrasis, and that there is no domination of one element over the other because the elements cannot be told apart.There is, hence, a chiastic balance and equality of the elements.The classical binary opposition between the visual and non-visual (the verbal) is replaced with the complementary and extendable functions of each element.
Ekphrasis as fold can be extended into infinity, by means of another fold or folds, embracing, in the first place, the world presented in the literary work, to which a work of art described or mentioned belongs.Hence, ekphrasis might be inseparably connected with the lives of the characters or the plot and thus, with the structure of literary works and with ideas or ideologies expressed within them.In other words, ekphrasis unfolds into a fold including the world presented in a literary work, which in turn may be extended to the literary convention or formal aspect of the work, and to the world outside the literary work, that is, the world of the reader.
Such fresh and dynamic perspective contributes to the progress of literary as well as interdisciplinary or transmedial studies, especially in the field of word and image relationships.Due to the structure of a fold, ekphrasis gives new research possibilities and indicates original interpretative contexts, in particular, for contemporary literary works.