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“I am Effie, visible and invisible,
remembering and remembered.”
– Adrienne Rich, “Mourning Picture”
This quotation comes from the ending of the poem, “Mourning Picture” by Adrienne Rich. Before reading Moramarco’s analysis of this poem’s interpretation of the original painting, I did not feel these last two lines as intensely as I did after reading it. It was hard for me to see the idea that this girl had passed on and was visible to herself and the two animals (mabye not the lamb), but not to her parents, being remembered by her parents, and remembering her own life as well. At first, I saw this as her being ignored by her parents, clinging on to a lamb, looking out at something in the distance. Of course, I realized that interpretation was surface level at best after reading Moramarco’s understanding of the last two lines of this poem in relation to the painting.
“The paradoxes expressed in the last two lines extend the one conveyed by the
painting—where Effie is visible to the viewer but invisible to her mother and
father, remembering her past and remembered by her grieving parents.”
– Fred Moramarco, “Speculations: Contemporary Poetry and Painting”
What might we have missed if Adrienne Rich never offered us this poetic interpretation of this painting from the 19th century? Why did the poet give the subject in the foreground a voice? Why not the mother or father in the background?
Personally, I think we would have missed the entire understanding that we have now. Without this poem there would only have been contextual understanding of the time and place that this painting was completed in. That level of interpretation provides some understanding of the work, but it fails to capture all of the elements of the artwork. Obviously, poems fail to capture some aspects of the story, but more importantly they serve as the next step on the way to greater connection and understanding with the piece of artwork. As mentioned in Moramarco’s piece, this painting lacked a solid interpretation/understanding for almost a century.
Providing the girl in the front with a voice was the right move, no doubt, but I wonder what would have been different about the poem if it had been written from the father’s perspective. I also assume that the father in the painting is more or less a representation of the painter himself, but I could be wrong.
Some of the lines from the poem by Adrienne Rich, especially those emphasizing how vividly the little girl remembers her life, cut deep into my mind. Thinking about those lines while looking at the parents in the background creates the division that the painter must have intended, between life and death that is.
