“The Fourth Dimension”: ekphrasis in the poetics of the trilogy by D. I. Rubina “People of Air”

Ekphrasis is one of the most recognizable poetic-stylistic devices of Rubina. It forms the cultural background of her literary works. Rubina’s experiment is to extend the “sphere of influence” of ekphrasis. Her ekphrasis is a chronotope rather than a digression. It is not decorative but dramatic technique, not only an aesthetic but also a psychological tool. Rubina goes beyond the “classical” ekphrasis. She does not stop at the stage of description but goes to the stage of verbal “creation” of works of art, and then distributes opportunities of ekphrasis to temporal and spatiotemporal arts: music, dance, circus, puppet theatre. Ekphrasis in Rubina’s prose becomes a means of designing a character and vice versa - the character becomes a psychological “lens” of ekphrasis. Rubina prefers performance to installation. By means of ekphrasis, she takes the reader behind the scenes, in dressing rooms, workshops, and further to the psychology of masters. The popular art forms as a new object of ekphrasis in Rubina’s novels acquire a particular authority. Entertainment shapes attract the writer by their originality, elusiveness, fluidity, and variability. With the help of ekphrasis, mass culture comes into contact with elite art, becoming more meaningful, historical, psychological. Therefore, ekphrasis is a kind of gaming technique to create a collage from various cultural sources. Ekphrasis has the effect of condensing time and space: it “imbues” the texture of the chronotope. Ekphrasis, being a multi-channel image of an image, connects the polyphony of the arts to the dialogical nature of discourse.

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