Intermedial Topography and Metaphorical Interaction

Abstract

As the title of this volume illustrates, we often tend to think of arts and media in terms of geographic areas delineated by borders, and consequently of interartial and intermedial studies as a kind of topographical description, a charting of territories and their positions in relation to each other. This conception is often a helpful way of imagining the arts and media, and one which is deeply connected to the way they have been functioning for the last couple of hundred years or so. My point in this essay is not to argue that the topographical model ought to be discarded, but to contrast it with a different model, namely the conceptualization of intermedial relations in terms of metaphoricity.¹ My examples will concern the interplay between music and literature, specifically works of Western art music (Ravel and Mozart) and poetry (Bertrand and Celan) that bring the ‘other’ medium into play.