Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

The article provides an interpretation of Jolanta Mąkosa’s book, The One Reading a Letter and Other Poems, which references Jan Vermeer’s paintings. This small volume comprises thirty-four drawings and the same number of poems, and every cultural text is an artistic rendition of one of the thirty-four extant pictures of that Dutch artist. In my interpretation of that collection, I employed an earlier work of that poetess (Gardens in the Evening), but also touch on The Pictures by Philostratus the Elder, whose volume is considered “the founding” of the ekphrasis genre. The comparative analysis of The Pictures and The One Reading a Letter… enabled me to trace those aspects in which the present-day poetess does not follow the ancient paradigm and point to the innovativeness of her volume.