Images of blindness: intermedial references to paintings in "Blindness"

• Autor(a) principal: Reichmann, Brunilda
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Terra Roxa e Outras Terras: Revista de Estudos Literários
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/terraroxa/article/view/44089
• topic: Literature; Painting; Intermedial references.; Literatura; Pintura; Referências intermidiáticas.

This paper presents an analysis of the dialogue between literature and painting in José Saramago’s Blindness (1995/1997). It deals with two moments in the novel in which there are references to famous paintings: the first one is mentioned by the anonymous narrator, who associates the status quo of the blind people in the city to a painting; the second one, by the anonymous character’s descriptions who mentions the last paintings he saw in a museum before becoming blind. These descriptions intensify the desperate state in which the characters live, just as the narrator’s description reaffirms the impossibility of blind people leading other people. The asylum is the place where all the blind people are taken, until the moment when, apparently, there is no one who can see, except for the doctor’s wife. To explore the types of dialogue between literature and painting, we will present concepts such as ekphrasis, evocation, allusion, pictorial description, conceived by Liliane Louvel, Claus Clüver, Irina Rajewsky, and Werner Wolf.