A very natural theme arose for my hallway bulletin board this year, which if you’ve ventured down the hall you may have seen. While selecting poetry and hymns to work on as a class, sunrises kept cropping up and bringing me back to the beautiful imagery we “see” of Jesus being our morning star in various hymns and poetry. Our class will be memorizing “Like the Golden Sun Ascending” as well as “A Morning Poem” by Rev. Mark Preus. The way the hymn compares Jesus’ victory over death to a sunrise (“breaking thro’ the gloom of night” with glory, in the “early purple dawning”) is a perfect complement to the way the poem describes how “purple tints the road” and “darkness is broken” by the way Jesus’ resurrection allows for the “end of night and gloom” and “dispels the shades away” turning us to “hope and endless day.”
Beyond those simply being excellent examples of using figures of speech and skillful writing, they are also setting us up fittingly for our work in Ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is “descriptive speech, bringing what is described clearly before the eyes. ‘Clearly’ is added because in this way it most differs from narration; the latter gives a plain exposition of actions, the former tries to make the hearers into spectators” (Nicolaus the Sophist, Preliminary Exercises). I said “see” in the explanation of the imagery above because without really realizing the wonder of it, well-selected wording is ekphrasis; it brings images to our mind. We witness it in poetry and hymnody often, and it allows us to picture what’s being described so completely that not only is it as though it is in front of us, but we are experiencing it for ourselves. We feel the warmth of Jesus’ love when it is compared to the sun’s rays in “Jesus Thy Boundless Love to Me” and we journey to the cross at Golgotha, feeling the burden Christ bore for us vividly when we sing “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”
We are blessed to also encounter many fine examples of ekphrasis within classical literature. Some favorites include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Carroll, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Baum, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and of course The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis (currently the 5th graders are reading The Silver Chair). As we read, the students are picking up on the crafty ways Lewis uses clever comparisons, varying perspectives, and literary devices to make his descriptions unique and incredibly vivid. It’s no wonder movies can’t hold a candle to well-written literature, which is capable of intricately crafting scenes in the mind’s eye through ekphrasis.
For our class to practice Ekphrasis, we started with everyone on one topic. I chose a painting that is in my classroom, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio. We worked through writing about what we see, feel, and the full depth and richness of the painting. We imagined how we could write enough to describe it to someone who had never seen it or even to someone who is blind. We tried describing to a partner, making them pretend they’d never seen it and sketching it solely based on their partner’s directions/description. Then we discussed how to draw out more detail, feeling, perspective and depth. It was a great chance to see them realize how “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but using ekphrasis allows us to go the other direction. This allows us to use God’s gift of words, which carry weight and precision to fully portray truth, goodness and beauty.
To further hone their skills, the 5th and 6th grade students selected a topic they felt they could thoroughly describe—they ranged from seasons to sports to animals. They are working through senses, describing what their “thing” looks like, as well as related sounds, smells, and sensations. Then they will shift their perspective to consider how their “thing” would perhaps be perceived by someone smaller than they, older than they, younger than they (maybe even encountering it for the first time!), and add detail based on those considerations. Finally, they will share their description with a partner without disclosing what their topic was, and see if their partner could determine the topic based on the description, and if they feel it is accurate or have any suggestions for improvement.
As the year goes on, the students and I will continue to incorporate ekphrasis into compositions and highlight examples in our texts. The main goal of these exercises is, of course, to prepare students for more sophisticated rhetoric. We’ve already seen so much growth toward and beyond that as they practice. The students are expanding their imagination, building skill with figurative language, working through some debate on why some authors/excerpts are better examples of ekphrasis than others, and training their minds to think and write in less obvious, more unique ways. In a world that has an attention span that craves information in short bursts, this is needed more than ever before. Students become more finely aware of how language can inform or manipulate, inspire or dissuade. They will be as artful as Caravaggio, whose use of contrast between light and darkness highlighted detail and added emotion and depth to his work. Instead of physical images, our students will be free to summon anything into the mind’s eye. All of these skills will serve to amplify our focus on truth, goodness, and beauty, within their own use of language and when doing the most important reading: the Word of God.
In Christ,
Mrs. Stutheit
“Like the golden sun ascending,
Breaking thro’ the gloom of night
On the earth his glory spending
So that darkness takes to flight,
Thus my Jesus from the grave,
And Death’s dismal, dreadful cave,
Rose triumphant Easter morning
At the early purple dawning.”
(TLH 207:1)
Rev. Mark Preus’ “A Morning Poem”
It is nice to be up in the morning,
When purple tints the road,
When the birds to the mortals sing warning,
And praises to our God.
In the morning the darkness is broken
In glories man can’t paint;
With a speech that all hear when it’s spoken,
The light revives the faint.
So what if morning feel terror
At hours that soon must come,
Since whoever of flesh is a wearer
Must find in earth his home?
But this morning I walk with the Marys
To spice an empty tomb,
Since the Flesh that was mortal now carries
The end of night and gloom.
So this morning my Lord’s resurrection
Dispels the shades away,
And my spirit turns towards the direction
Of hope and endless Day.
