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Pre-Raphaelite Artists Transposing Shakespeare's Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS TRANSPOSING SHAKESPEARE’S OPHELIA Lavinia Hulea Lecturer, PhD, University of Petroșani Abstract: In the context of the preference manifested by the Victorian painters for Shakespeareřs work, the character of Ophelia gradually became a highly exploited subject, which resulted in a series of paintings that were hosted by the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, almost on a regular basis. Despite concomitant or subsequent paintings that treated the tragic figure of Ophelia, Millaisřs version, which has been accredited to represent the scene where the young woman, maddened by the death of her father, Polonius, murdered by Hamlet, her lover, drowned herself in a stream, was quite unusual, at the time, and is considered to have singularly expressed the themes of love, death, youth and beauty as pervasive of both the art and life.The literary source text that Hughes had in mind when he embarked on painting his Ophelia is the same as the one referred to by Millais (act IV, scene 7). Yet, the conversion of the source text engages changes that substantiate an artistic product which hardly asserts an identity resemblance to Millaisřs painting. Text and image are mixed by Hughes in a manner that expresses a conversion of the character that is obviously different from the work of the Pre-Raphaelite founder. Keywords: Pre-Raphaelites, transposition, reversed-ekphrasis, source text, target text Ophelia (1851-2) by John Everett Millais Millaisřs version of Ophelia, which has been accredited to represent the scene where the young woman, maddened by the death of her father, Polonius, murdered by Hamlet, her lover, drowned herself in a stream, was quite unusual, at the time, and is considered to have singularly expressed the themes of love, death, youth and beauty as pervasive of both the art and life. While the sequence of Shakespeareřs play, to which Millais is supposed to refer, might impose certain restrictions regarding its staging, which would require a highly elaborated set, it, nonetheless, appears to be more suited for visual art renderings that transpose both the character of Ophelia and the natural imagery contained by the fragment. Although in Hamlet, the heroine is attributed a less important part, being mentioned in five scenes out of twenty, the painter appears to have heightened her status through an interpretation, which pertains to the characterřs iconicity. 292 Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-2, Tate, London, United Kingdom Millaisřs transposition of the Shakespearean text, carried out through the process of reversed ekphrasis, involves the literary source text, which is transposed into the visual target text, owing to a trichotomous process that comprises: the linear readingof the source text, performed by the painter before the making of the visual art work, theconversionof the literary text, carried out as a destabilizationof the literary source text; and thesubstantiation of the conversion, which, not only involves new and subjective temporal and spatial casts, but also implies the concomitant operation, owing to which the painting is ingrained with pictoriality, representing the scarcely definable quality that turns a non-artistic product into a work of art; pictoriality also gives the measure of the effectiveness of the process of reversed ekphrasis, while pointing to the stylistic identity of the visual target text and its raking within the category of art. The paintersř reading of a literary text they intend to transpose into visual art works may, at times, come out owing to autobiographies, personal correspondence or public self-references that are indicative of the creation process; moreover, other indirect, circumstantial data frequently put forward the intertextual evidence of the target text. The circumstances revealing the manner according to which Millais brought the character of Ophelia into being point out Millais spending almost four exhausting months, between July and October 1851, painting the landscape on the bank of the River Hogsmill, at Ewell, in Surrey. The artist confessed that he used to wake up at 6 in the morning, in order to start working at around 8 ořclock and would return home only by 7 p.m., complaining about a series of issues he had to face while painting outdoors: ŖMy martyrdom is more trying than I have hitherto experienced. The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh… I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay…am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and 293 Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that Lady sank to muddy death, together with the (less likely) total disappearance, through the voracity of the flies… certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging…ŗ (Millais, 1899: 119-20) The figure of Elizabeth Siddal was added to the picture only in December, when the artist brought the painting to London. As far as the stage of conversionis concerned, I should notice that Millaisřs paintingdisplays an apparently faithful rendition of the Shakespearean text as it sets out to recreate imaginatively the lines where Gertrude informs Laertes of Opheliařs death, with the young woman picking flowers and supposedly falling into the river and finally drowning while singing: ŖQueen: …; - your sisterřs drownřd, Laertes. Laertes: Drownřd! O, where? Queen: There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow Ŕ flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead menřs fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and induřd Unto that element: but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pullř d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.ŗ (Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act IV, scene 7: 200) Nonetheless, it is important to observe that Opheliařs drowning is rendered by the playřs text indirectly, through Gertrudeřs words before the court and, when uttering them, the queen appears to share someone elseřs account of the events and attributes the drowning to accidental causes (produced by an Ŗenvious sliverŗ). Meanwhile, the next scene displaying the discussion between the men digging Opheliařs grave, may suggest that the young woman might have indeed committed suicide, despite her being buried as a person having died out of an ordinary death: Ŗ1 Clown: Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully seeks her own salvation? 2 Clown: I tell thee she is; and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial. 1 Clown: 294 Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence? 2 Clown: Why, Řtis found so. 1 Clown: It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is to act, to do, and to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly. … Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good: if the man go to this water and drowns himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes, -mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.ŗ (Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act V, scene 1: 2000) In the case of Millaisřs Ophelia, conversion occurs through a destabilisationof the source text. Theclaim that the reversed ekphrastic process does not involve a reframingof the source text is grounded on a reasoning which supports the idea that Millaisřs visual target text converts, in fact, an absent scene, the moment of Opheliařs drowning, which is turned into a purely subjective and mental construction operated by the painter, who, in the absence of the playwrightřs direct rendition of the characterřs death, builds up a particular, physical, yet intuitive, appearance of Ophelia. Shakespeareřs Ophelia is, in truth, Millaisřs Ophelia, despite the amount of landscape detail, which is rigorously transcribed from Shakespeareřs text. Millais observes closely the intricate scenery of a scene that does not exist in the play, but is only mediated through an indirect description (Gertrudeřs), which does not bear the authorřs validation. The conversion reveals here a problematic functioning that might question the effectiveness of a separation between reframing and destabilisation. If, on the one hand, the abundant details may induce the level of reframing, on the other one, the moment chosen by the painter, indirectly presented by the literary text, strongly claims for the level of destabilization, which forcefully replaces the gap in the play (the drowning scene).
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