Voyeur or Visionary: Examining the Ethos of Muses

Ekphrasis: The Muse's Revenge

The Muse’s Revenge by Ilya Milstein

Introduction

Ekphrasis describes a presumably written work in which one describes and/or comments on a different visual work of art. Notable examples include John Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Anne Carson’s poem “Nighthawks.” Crafting an ekphrastic poem demands a careful balance of embodying the character of the original work yet still being transformative and valuable in its own right.

Last month, I was challenged by an English professor to write an ekphrastic poem myself. Deciding on the right work of art to write on was exceedingly difficult, but I was luckily presented with artist Ilya Milstein’s painting The Muse’s Revenge while scrolling on TikTok. The poem below functions best when read aloud with two speakers.

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Poem

Sing to me once more.
Only your voice can soothe me.
Only your essence can make one and one three.
Only your light can guide my hand.
Only your skin can withstand.
Sing to me once more.

Inevitably
Irreparably
I’ve failed in capturing your form
You’ve mistaken infatuation with inspiration
Unending interpretations have yet to reproduce my intoxication
You fashion me a living photo, an actor who now refuses to perform

No longer.
My vision of you grows stronger.
No more.
You shall live evermore.
No end.
With this final brushstroke you shall transcend.

Clarity escapes me just as insight forsakes me,
A broken mind reshapes me just as a few spoken words deflate me,
yet these paint blemishes unmake her. I choose now to await her
yet these mental scars predate him. I must learn how to erase him
true form. Only in time’s embrace shall I dictate her
from my mind. Only in time’s embrace shall I displace him
in shadow and light.
to shadow’s blight.

I now affirm my self-esteem
and adorn the me of my dreams.
There’s no reason to atone
now that I have the peace of being alone.
I’ve realized inspiration is anointed
rather than appointed.
With this bullet I’m washed anew.
In this moment, I bid you adieu.
All you did was entertain yourself and abuse,
so I declare now, NO LONGER AMUSE.

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Reflection

Firstly, I must acknowledge that this painting’s dynamic, self-referential subject matter lends itself well to creating a narrative without diluting the original work. Rather than having me dream up some story, it feels like this work of art reveals its story so clearly: A woman, so mentally battered by an artist’s ceaseless interpretation of her image, is pushed to her limits, and in her action of killing this artist, she sheds the label of “muse.”

I started by writing a single line: ”Inevitably, I’ve failed in capturing your form.” It wasn’t till much later that I broke this line into two. To reflect the relationship between muse and artistic reproduction, I used bolding to emphasize the differences in perspective. These bolded lines represent the muse and her “true form” while the non-bolded lines are the artist’s reproduction. This was by far the hardest stanza to write because I wanted to figure out a way to reflect the message of the print both in the structure and the content of the poem.

Next, I began writing the third stanza. At this point, my goal was to write a series of disconnected stanzas rather than writing stanzas that are narratively connected and parallel in structure. The idea was that each stanza would represent one of the artist’s paintings of the muse, and I think this ended up shining through in the final product. In line with this idea of creating different “artworks,” I wanted the dichotomy between the paintings' two subjects to be evident; The muse is concise, direct, and dejected while the artist is overzealous and wordy. The artist’s words project a sense of longing and imperfection akin to how I believe he feels about his search for a worthy reproduction of his muse. When I started working on the fourth stanza, I fully abandoned the idea that each stanza would be narratively disconnected. It also became clear that this poem functions best with two speakers.

Lastly, I decided to write two stanzas solely from the perspective of each of the poem’s subjects. I started with the artist, referencing singing, soothing, and guiding as a subtle allusion to the Muses of Greek mythology. The repetition of the first and last line and the phrase “only your” is a purposeful decision meant to evoke a sense of nagging, unending, and pervasive desire to paint something that truly captures the muse's essence. In writing the last stanza, though, I finished the narrative arc of the whole poem and showed that her essence cannot be captured. The alliterative “ad” sound is meant to add to the rising sense of tension as the main action of the artwork, the action of shooting the gun is finally addressed directly and the muse’s voice is finally heard without tether. By saying “NO LONGER AMUSE,” this woman asserts that her purpose is not to entertain him or anyone else and that her identity exists beyond him. It was paramount that this be the last stanza I wrote taking into consideration the idea that the bolded lines represent her “true form.”