An Eccentric Abyss: the Impossible ekphrasis of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror · Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) is probably the best known of John Ashbery’s poems, and the one that has produced the highest number of readings and criti- cal responses. This article focuses on the semiotic and material flow that the poem traces between the self and the mirror – a flow that is fully visible, furthermore, in the painting by Parmigianino which is the source of inspiration of Ashbery’s verses. Rather than fore- grounding the final overcoming of the split between the subject and its reflection – the main concern of the scholars who have written on the poem – this continuity emphasizes the desire of unexplored forms and technologies of subject-making. The mirror, in fact, far from being the site of perfect symmetry between the subject and its other, becomes the in- strument through which the subject undoes itself and the world in order to transform both. The reflected image does not represent the recovery of a lost harmony of the subject who finally recognizes itself, but the impossibility of reaching a complete and final appropriation of any otherness.
UN ABISSO ECCENTRICO: L’EKPHRASIS IMPOSSIBILE DEL SELF-PORTRAIT IN A CONVEX MIRROR DI JOHN ASHBERY
iuliano
2022-01-01
Abstract
An Eccentric Abyss: the Impossible ekphrasis of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror · Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) is probably the best known of John Ashbery’s poems, and the one that has produced the highest number of readings and criti- cal responses. This article focuses on the semiotic and material flow that the poem traces between the self and the mirror – a flow that is fully visible, furthermore, in the painting by Parmigianino which is the source of inspiration of Ashbery’s verses. Rather than fore- grounding the final overcoming of the split between the subject and its reflection – the main concern of the scholars who have written on the poem – this continuity emphasizes the desire of unexplored forms and technologies of subject-making. The mirror, in fact, far from being the site of perfect symmetry between the subject and its other, becomes the in- strument through which the subject undoes itself and the world in order to transform both. The reflected image does not represent the recovery of a lost harmony of the subject who finally recognizes itself, but the impossibility of reaching a complete and final appropriation of any otherness.
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