EZRA POUND'S THEORY OF LIGHT DETAILS AND WASSILY KANDINSKY'S THEORY OF COLORS AND VIBRATION: NEW EXEGETICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL POSSIBILITIES

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to articulate Translation Studies with the interface of visual and textual languages in two of the first avant-garde movements of European Modernism: German Expressionism and English Vorticism – during the first and the second decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, it aims at critically displaying the theoretical conceptualizations by which they have been induced. Such a study will bring into focus, namely, the concept of Vibration in Kandinsky’s visual poetics – presented in Über das Geistige in der Kunst - insbesondere in der Malerei [Concerning the Spiritual in Art] (Kandinsky, 1912/1952) –, as well as the Theory of Luminous Details presented by Ezra Pound’s textual poetics during his Vorticist phase, displayed in “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris” (1911/12).

Departing from two different means of expression – image and word, these two poetics consistently reveal points of contact, concerning a production and reception approach of the work of art. Both suspend the conventional search for meaning in art and literature, thus gathering new exegesis and translation possibilities: the articulation between poetic word and image, with a wide range of prophetic paths of perceptual structure, particularly in what concerns both Literary and Intersemiotic, i.e. Artistic Translation.