Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
“He has probably written more about art
than any other American poet ever has.” —
Heffernan
“As M.H. Abrams showed, the mirror is the
traditional king of metaphors for
verisimilitude: Hamlet tells the players that
drama should aim ‘to hold, as ‘twere, the
mirror up to nature, and Samuel Johnson
wrote that Shakespeare’s own greatest
achievement lay in offering us ‘a faithful
mirrour of manners and of life.’ What then
happens when the metaphor is turned inside
out, when a work of art faithfully mirrors a
mirror that distorts what it reflects? We get a
startling critique of the notion that any kind
of mirror—whether literal or metaphorical,
pictorial or verbal—can represent the world
as it is.
This critique originates with Plato, the
first Western theorist to use the mirror as a
metaphor for artistic representation. When
Plato compares the painter to a person
holding up a mirror to the universe, he does
so precisely to argue that painting appeals to
our basest impulses: manipulating
appearances, it represents not the true
dimensions and proportions of things but
only their appearances.”—Heffernan
This inaccurate representation, along with
other peculiar characteristics of mirrors,
have long fascinated writers, such as Carroll,
Cocteau, Borges (“one of the heresiarchs of
Uqbar had declared that mirrors and
copulation are abominable, because they
increase the number of men”), and O’Brien
(de Selby). Ashbery is just one of the latest,
and one of the most thorough and incisive.
“In keeping with the etymological roots of
the Greek word ekphrasis, meaning "to
speak out," Ashbery transforms the mute
self-portrait into language. Re-presented as
language, the painting loses its edges and
clearly marked borders; it surges into the
unframed present, where it is now subject to
the poet's unlimited speculation and to the
infinity of language. Transformed into
words the painting can now be expressed
through an inexhaustible series of
descriptions. Ekphrastic reincarnation
transforms the enclosed, fully coherent, and
englobed sixteenth-century painting into an
open, decentered, postmodernist text.” —
Stamelman
68
“The opening three and a half lines—a
sentence fragment—sound as if they
came from the middle of a conversation.
This description of a painting seems
dependent on something conceptually
prior, some unnamed act to which the act
of depiction is compared: X did it—or
now does it—“as Parmigianino did it.”
The logical candidate for this unnamed
act is Ashbery’s own act of composition.
To write a poem about a self-portrait in a
convex mirror is inevitably to find
oneself—or imagine oneself—mirrored
by it, as the poet later suggests when he
says that the painting of the rounded
reflecting surface is so carefully
rendered
that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection
Isn’t yours.
(233-35)
As he begins a poem that will freely
alternate its focus between himself and
his nominal subject—“the strict /
Otherness of the painter in his / Other
room” (238-40)—the poet contemplates
the self-portrait of a fellow artist who is
also an alter ego: a man whose virtuosity
in representing himself ‘naturally’
distorted by a convex mirror could well
serve as a model for any postmodern
poet seeking to represent a self that he or
she knows can only be misrepresented or
refracted by the very words that purport
to advertise it.” — Heffernan
“THE FIRST MIRROR PORTRAIT”
There had certainly been self-portraits
before. There had, of course, always been
crudely reflecting surfaces, from lakes to
sheets of metal, and modern glass mirrors,
as used by self-portraitists such as Albrecht
Dürer, were available in Europe at least a
century before Parmigianino’s painting.
Nevertheless, Ashbery writes, on p. 74 of
the poem, that “it is the first mirror portrait.”
In his book about Parmigianino, cited
repeatedly in the poem, Sidney Freedberg
observes that “the mechanical agency
through which a self-portrait is achieved, the
mirror, had never before been openly
confessed, nor indeed exploited as it is here,
nore had it been used as the vehicle for the
formal structure of a portrait.”
“Significantly, Ashbery’s parenthetical
allusion to the self-conscious artificiality of
this portrait—to the painter’s deliberate
displaying of the ‘mechanical agency’ by
which he represents himself—is
immediately followed by the first passage in
which the poet tries to read the painting as a
mirror of himself.” — Heffernan
“No account of what a painting[, or, for that
matter, a poem] is or represents can ever be
wholly objective. Interpretive judgments
shape even the coolly analytic prose of the
art historian furnishing a set of seemingly
incontestable ‘facts’ about a work of art.
When Ashbery quotes the words of Vasari
and Freedberg in his poem, he is quoting
interpretations of Parmigianino’s SelfPortrait: interpretations that help each of
these writers tell a particular kind of story.
For Vasari, who believed that painters
advance by perfecting the means of
representing the natural world and who
wanted to tell the story of how Italian artists
did so, Parmigianino’s painting was
distinguished by its ‘wonderful realism.’ For
Freedberg, who wants to fit the painting into
a story about Parmigianino’s gradual turning
from High Renaissance norms to mannerist
tension, the early Self-Portrait ‘retains a
strong measure of ideal beauty.’
These are roughly analogous to the
Victorian belief in progress and the
Modernist desire to “Make it new.”
This interpretation helps Heffernan tell a
particular kind of story, which contrasts with
those of other Ashbery critics, such as
Stamelman.
VANITY
Whether or not one thinks it appropriate to
call it “the first mirror portrait,” it would
seem to be the first self-portrait which
deliberately called our attention to the mirror
used. The mirror’s convexity draws us to the
theme of distortion, which is very important,
but the theme of vanity, which also misleads
the viewer, is also quite relevant. “A painter
who takes the mirrored image of himself as
his model would seem to be implicitly
revealing the narcissistic origin of his
enterprise and the vanity of the image he
constructs.” — Heffernan
This kind of mirror imagery has long been
present in English-language poetry. One
critic cites this passage, spoken by Eve, in
Paradise Lost:
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awak’d and found myself repos’d,
Under a shade, on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issu’d from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov’d,
Pure as th’ expanse of heav’n. I thither went
With unexperienc’d thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the wat’ry gleam appear’d,
Bending to look on me. I started back,
It started back; but pleas’d I soon return’d
Pleas’d it return’d as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love. There I had fix’d
Mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warn’d me: ‘What thou seest
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself:
With thee it came and goes; but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming and thy soft embraces—he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call’d
Mother of human race.’ What could I do
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,
Under a platan; yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth wat’ry image. Back I turn’d;
Thou, following, cried’st aloud, ‘Return, fair Eve;
Whom fliest thou? Whom thou fliest, of him thou art,
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart,
Substantial life, to have thee by my side
Henceforth an individual solace dear:
Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half.’ With that thy gentle hand
Seiz’d mine: I yielded, and from that time see
How beauty is excell’d by manly grace
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.”
Again, “in Pope’s Rape of the Lock, Belinda
is similarly admonished. Enraptured by her
own mirrored face as she cosmetically arms
herself to meet the man she both desires and
fears, she is lectured on the superiority of
‘merit’ to purely visible charms.” — Heffernan
This might lead us to reflect, so to speak,
that mirrors and portraits are both associated
with vanity. We might further consider the
extent to which, and the ways in which,
literature about the author is vain. “The
poem has begun by suggesting that
Parmigianino’s way of representing himself
(‘As Parmigianino did it’) might serve as a
model for the poet’s own project in selfrepresentation.” (Heffernan) Ashbery is certainly
no “Confessional Poet,” but 28 of the book’s
35 poems includes the word “I” or “we,”
and the book actually begins with the word
“I.”
68-69:
Gombrich
Scale (small, flat cover reproduction,
though the original is only 9 ½” in
diameter)
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
Sometimes he writes about Parmigianino
(l. 1), but at other times he addresses
Parmigianino himself (p. 70, l. 6). The poem
alternates between soliloquy and
monologue, and its closest analogue may be
“A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” also a poem
about an artist in another medium. Give a
handout and discuss it.
RIVALRY
We might at first take the poem’s title to be
a simple repetition of the painting’s title, as
a thoughtless student might write an essay
about Hamlet and title the essay “Hamlet.”
Ashbery is much too good a writer for that.
This poem is, among other things, a selfportrait of Ashbery in a convex mirror.
What is Ashbery’s convex mirror?
Ashbery wanted “to make his poem
serve as a critical reflection of the
painting: an ekphrastic representation of Parmigianino's selfportrait” (Stamelman) — a representation
(poem) of a representation (painting)
of a representation (mirror), each one
adding distortions.
“The poet sets out to rival as well as
represent Parmigianino’s self-portrait, to
portray himself ‘as Parmigianino did’ by
incorporating all the elements of a poet’s
studio—‘desk, papers, books / Photographs
of friends’ (p. 71) along with Parmigianino’s
painting and all the furniture of his mind—
in the convex mirror of the poem.” — Heffernan
As Ashbery wrote in “And Ut Pictura
Poesis Is Her Name,” “You can't say it that
way any more.”
“By both representing and critically
dismantling the painting (and, by
implication, the aesthetic confidence and
ideological faith it manifests in the portrayal
of a self), Ashbery writes an ekphrasis
turned against itself. But it is more than
Parmigianino's self-portrait or the Mannerist
aesthetic that Ashbery deconstructs. He aims
at demystifying the notion of an idealized
and totalized representation. In rejecting
Parmigianino at the end of the poem, asking
him to return to the sixteenth century—
literally speaking, the poet deflates the
painting's convexity, its protruberance into
the present ("Therefore I beseech you,
withdraw that hand, / Offer it no longer as
shield or greeting, / The shield of a greeting,
Francesco" [82])—Ashbery dismisses the
concept of a perfectly representative
mimesis:
Aping naturalness may be the first step
Toward achieving an inner calm
But it is the first step only, and often
Remains a frozen gesture of welcome etched
On the air materializing behind it,
A convention. And we have really
No time for these, except to use them
For kindling. The sooner they are burnt up
The better for the roles we have to play.” (82)
— Stamelman
“The painting represents an autonomous and
complete life within its convex globe. But
the price paid to bring forth this unified and
coherent image is high: it entails the
deadening of the painter's spirit and the
sacrifice of his freedom. In representing
himself, Parmigianino has had to exclude
much about his life and world that must
have defined him as a person. He has had to
reduce his being to a miniature image which
conforms to the limits of an artful and
timeless prison. Parmigianino's is a cautious
self-portrait, and in his striving for a perfect,
idealized expression of himself, he distorts
the meaning of human existence:
The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says. (69)
The representation freezes one moment in
the painter's life and presents it (falsely,
Ashbery implies) as representative of that
life, its perfect and essential embodiment.
Everything is purified, filtered, selfcontained; this is a curtailment of human
possibility that moves Ashbery to tears of
sympathy:
The pity of it smarts,
Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,
Has no secret, is small, and it fits
Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of
attention. (69)
It is the immobility of the Parmigianino
painting, its changeless and unmoving
reality, that Ashbery questions.” — Stamelman
“Ashbery's rejection of the prison house of
form, his denial of the illusions of artistic
representation (its deceptive sense of
perfection and unity), and his assertion that
knowledge is always fragmentary evolve in
his poem from a critical analysis and
interpretation of Parmigianino's sixteenthcentury Self-Portrait. Where Parmigianino's
painting imprisons the soul and sequesters
being in a fixed, unified, finished portrait,
Ashbery's poem acknowledges the
imperfectness and radical incompleteness of
life by presenting a stream of random
associations, thoughts, and impressions that
point to the fundamental discontinuity of
self. The Mannerist painting orders the
chaotic experience of everyday life by
means of polished forms that immobilize the
changing rhythms of life and enframe the
world. But the post-modernist poem abides
by a principle of uncertainty; it is
mimetically faithful to the centrifugal
expansiveness of consciousness.” — Stamelman
COMMENTARY
Though Ashbery has seen Parmigianino’s
painting, he relies upon Sidney Freedberg’s
commentary, even within the poem itself.
The theorist W.J.T. Mitchell once made the
following argument about our reliance on
external devices when encountering a
painting:
“The blind can know anything they
want to know about a painting,
including what it represents, what it
looks like, what sort of color scheme
is involved, what sort of
compositional arrangements are
employed. This information must
come to them indirectly, but the
question is not how they come to
know about a painting, but what can
they know. It is entirely conceivable
that an intelligent, inquisitive blind
observer who knew what questions
to ask could ‘see’ a great deal more
in a painting than the clearest-sighted
dullard. How much of our normal,
visual experience of painting is in
fact mediated by one sort of ‘report’
or another, from the things we are
taught to see in and say about
pictures, the labels we learn to apply
and manipulate, to the descriptions,
commentaries, and reproductions on
which we rely to tell us about
pictures?
But surely no matter how
complete, detailed, and articulate the
conception of a picture might be to a
blind person, there is something
essential in painting (or in a painting)
that is forever closed off from the
apprehension of the blind. There is
just the sheer experience of seeing
the unique particularity of an object,
an experience for which there are no
substitutes. But that is just the point:
there are so many substitutes, so
many supplements, crutches and
mediations. And there are never
more of them than when we claim to
be having ‘the sheer experience of
seeing the unique particularity of an
object.’ This sort of ‘pure’ visual
perception … is perhaps the most
highly sophisticated sort of seeing
that we do; it is not the ‘natural’
thing that the eye does (whatever that
would be).”
Now consider the implications for the
relationship between verbal and pictorial
expression.
Can we directly and “innocently” see
Ashbery in the poem?
What do we use?
There is irony in this, considering
that Ashbery’s poetry, like much
postmodern poetry, is notoriously
resistant to interpretation.
“In an early poem, a sestina entitled "The
Painter," Ashbery describes the artist's ideal
state, where "nature, not art, might usurp the
canvas" (ST, p. 54). A painter tries to copy
the sea, first dipping his brush into the water
and then, when that fails, praying that the
water would "rush up the sand, and, seizing
a brush, / Plaster its own portrait on the
canvas." The painter's wish for this
unmediated representation, for a portrait
expressing "itself without a brush," is an
impossible dream. Art and life, he comes to
realize, cannot coincide. Only a
representation that is self-consciously aware
of its limitations; that points to what it may
have excluded or the possibility of things it
may have forgotten; that is not afraid to let
the artist's hand break out of its
imprisonment and wreck the picture
surface—only an ekphrasis self-consciously
deconstructing the mode of its own selfpresentation, only a reflection critically
multiplying the mirror images it contains so
that finally the backing of the looking glass
shatters, and the world enters with its
"sawtoothed fragments" (70), its
heterogeneity and its impermanence—only
this kind of self-negating and selfdisordering representation can hope to give
tentative expression to what Ashbery calls
the "mute, undivided present" (80).” — Stamelman