Resumen de Un abisso eccentrico: l’ekphrasis impossibile del Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror di John Ashbery
An Eccentric Abyss: the Impossible ekphrasis of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror · Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) is probably the best known of John Ashbery’s poems, and the one that has produced the highest number of readings and critical responses. This article focuses on the semiotic and material flow that the poem traces between the self and the mirror – a flow that is fully visible, furthermore, in the painting by Parmigianino which is the source of inspiration of Ashbery’s verses. Rather than foregrounding the final overcoming of the split between the subject and its reflection – the main concern of the scholars who have written on the poem – this continuity emphasizes the desire of unexplored forms and technologies of subject-making. The mirror, in fact, far from being the site of perfect symmetry between the subject and its other, becomes the instrument through which the subject undoes itself and the world in order to transform both. The reflected image does not represent the recovery of a lost harmony of the subject who finally recognizes itself, but the impossibility of reaching a complete and final appropriation of any otherness.
