MORE THAN “PALE SHADOWS”: NEW EKPHRASTIC POSSIBILITIES IN EFRÉN HERNÁNDEZ’S FICTION

This article will examine both descriptions and references to photography and sculpture in an early short story by the Mexican writer Efrén Hernández, “El señor de palo” (1932), with the objective of exploring how the ekphrastic moments in this text shed light on the author’s own avant-garde concerns regarding interartistic relations and the possibilities (and limitations) of different kinds of artistic representation. In our analysis of Hernández’s story, we will see how the narrator’s verbal approximations to the visual arts function as active interpretations and even as independent and supplementary creations, thereby challenging the notion of ekphrasis as a passive or faithful verbal copy of “original” art.