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THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE NIGHT IN “MOON LANDSCAPES” OF PAUL VERLAINE

I. Sakhno, V. Berest

Abstract

This paper analyzes the problem of visual representation of "moon landscapes" in the poetic heritage of the French poet-symbolist Paul Verlaine. The appeal of poets and other artists of XIX century to the nocturne demonstrated new possibilities of the author's statement in the text characterized as synthetic, as a text in which different languages of art are intertwined. It declared a polycode method of representation, in which the symbolism of twilight and melancholic existence fixed the new metaphysics of the night. The poet's concept of the night is associated with sadness and lovesickness, with a "dream of nothingness" and metamorphoses of nature. New artistic tools of poetic language allowed the poet to integrate the visual experience into the verbal landscapes, which brings a special iconographic status to the poet's "moon landscapes". Paul Verlaine, in his poetic nocturnes, reveals the polyvalent connections between word and painting as well as word and music at all levels of his poetic text. This process of production of new meanings creates a poetic language of special pictorial and musical expressiveness.

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