The poet and the painter portraying each other (poems by B. Slutsky and A. Kushner)

Abstract

This article studies two poems in which the poet becomes the model for a painter: “The painter is painting my portrait...” by B. Slutsky and “The painter works quickly, faster than I do...” by A. Kushner. By analyzing the similarities and differences in the lyric situations and plots, the author shows the ways in which the lyrical “I” is represented through the act of painting. Special attention is paid to the subject structure, the spatiotemporal organization, and the role of visual perception in the poetics of both texts. In Slutsky’s poem, conflict and alienation between the poet and the painter predominate; in Kushner’s, the central experience is one of collaboration and dialogue. A comparative analysis enables revealing different models of interaction between poetry and painting, and shows how the figure of the painter becomes a form of the poet’s metareflection on the nature of artistic creation.