Anonymity in both mediums o
Allows you to apply the universal themes to your
own life
Poem and painting both represent pessimistic transition
into adulthood
Both have same eerie, ominous mood o
However, poem’s mood is more shifting and
dynamic
Both portray shifting light
Both provide a source of inward reflection o
The water in the painting o
Nostalgic lines in the poem
Poem has setting sun, painting has rising moon o
Both represent transition of time, but because
the sun usually represents positivity and life, it draws attention to the
metaphor
Allusion to “The Scream” o
Adds darkness to the painting o
Creates connection between Munch’s two paintings
that may not have been inferred without the poem
The poem can
stand on its own, because it delivers the same themes with our without the
painting next to it
What does poem add to painting? o
Further emphasizes and strengthens the same
themes as the painting o
Makes the painting gloomier
Supporting Theory
"And the best poems for paintings are themselves works of art, offering a commentary upon or an interpretation of an artwork that is simultaneously open to interpretation or appreciation as an artwork in its own right. In the strongest examples of ekphrasis there is always therefore a sense of extension or enlargement, but one which brings with it a pressure to discriminate and differentiate between the two media, the two kinds of experience."- Cheeke
"ut pictura poesis" - Roman poet Horace
"A poem is a blind painting, a painting is a mute poem" - Leonardo da Vinci
"All poems for paintings can be read as commentaries upon the nature of the encounter between the verbal and the visual, or as broad allegories of this relationship" - Cheeke