Tihožitje in opis

Rene Magritte: Portret (1935). Vir: Wikipaintings

V medigri likovne kompozicije in upodobitve vsakdanjih objektov tihožitje odpira prostor vsakdanjega sveta; konstruira modele novih prostorskih odnosov, ki so sredstvo, s pomočjo katerega naseljujemo ta svet na alternativne načine. Na tej osnovni ravni, kot kompozicijsko obliko, lahko pojem tihožitja v popolnosti apliciramo na moderno literaturo. Posebno osupljive so tri vzporednice: osredotočenost na ne-pomembne materiale, intenca, da je material predstavljen v neki surovi obliki, nepodrejenost reprezentacijski strukturi zapleta [plot], in želja po razgaljanju prostorskih vzorcev izkušnje, namesto časovne organiziranosti doživljanega časa.
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Na tehnični ravni si moramo literarno tihožitje predstavljati kot avtonomen opis ali sliko, pri katerem besedilo ne sledi več pripovedovanju, ampak se zadržuje na detajlih in organizira prikaz slike. Rezultat tega je podoba, vendar ne v kakršnemkoli vizualnem smislu – besedilo ni ekfraza stvarnega oziroma fikcijskega platna –, ampak v smislu shematizacije področja realnosti, katerega red opazujemo znotraj umetniške prezentacije. Taka avtonomna slika služi različnim namenom, a skupni vložek le-teh je, kot se zdi, na novo ovrednotiti nek del stvarnosti, ki je ujet v tihožitju.

Frederik Tygstrup: Still Life: The Experience of Space in Modernist Prose. V: Astradur Eysteinsson & Vivian Liska (eds.): Modernism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2007; str. 263–264

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Through the interplay of artistic composition and presentation of everyday objects, still life painting opens up the space of the everyday world; it constructs models of new spatial relations designed as means to inhabit this world in alternative ways. On this level of generality, considered as a compositional design, the notion of still life seems to apply perfectly to modern literature. Three parallels are striking: the focus on non-significant materials, the intention to present the material in some brute form, not subordinated to a representational plot-structure, and the interest in disclosing spatial patterns of experience rather than temporal organizations of existential time.

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On a technical level, literary still life must be conceived of as a description or a tableau that is autonomized, where the text no longer follows a narrative path but instead dwells on details and organizes the presentation of the tableau. What results is an image, not in any visual sense — the text is no ekphrasis of a real or fictional canvas — but as a schematization of a field of reality, whose order is examined through artistic presentation. 

Such autonomized tableaux can serve different goals, but their common stake seems to be precisely to revaluate some piece of reality arrested in the still life.