Poetic “Dialogue before the pictures” by Van Gogh: A. Tarkovsky, A. Kushner, E. Rein

Having appeared as the result of the cultural paradigm shift and intensification of intermediality processes, the interdisciplinary approach towards visual culture studies aims to develop and test a number of innovative methods of the cultural-historical and hermeneutic analysis of art and poetic discourses. V. Van Gogh’s unique experience of overcoming the world-outlook crisis through coloristic decoration of art and interpretation due to philosophical conceptualization of color transformation (overcoming black and worshipping sun color) becomes a rich data to study the symbolism of his art work and letters. Such occasions as creation of a large number of self-portraits and other pictures, writing letters to brother Teo and friends, etc. acquire new artistic evaluation and interpretation due to ekphrastic poems of three Russian contemporary poets. The article deals with the comparison of the three ekphrastic poems written by the contemporary poets A. Tarkovsky, A. Kushner, and E. Rein devoted to the Dutch painter Van Gogh. The variants of Van Gogh’s “dialogue before the pictures” and forms, which this dialogue acquires, are analysed. Genre and stylistic characteristics of the ekphrastic poems are revealed, the authors’ individual creative methods in the aspect of arts interaction are juxtaposed. The image of the pupil (eye) in the pictures by Van Gogh, which ‘provoked’ in the poem of A.Tarkovsky the anagram k(g)rn and a possibility to reveal the anagram image of the ekphrastic poem and the parallel of the image of the Queen of Spades are profoundly studied. The role of the anagram in understanding the peculiarities of the poems is considered. Learning of ekphrastic genres enables to overcome the crisis of artistic consciousness, initiates the renewal of artistic creativity and makes possible to explain the controversial phenomena of contemporary culture.