Representing the Vortex: Delacroix's Critique of Poe's Sublime.

When Eugene Delacroix read Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' in French translation, he found it tasteless and tedious. In a larger context, his objection seems aimed beyond Poe at the Burkean and Kantian qualities of the sublime exemplified in the story and implies his preference for a restrained and classical standard of sublimity. It also implies his dissatisfaction with the extension in time required for literature to work its effects, as opposed to the singleness and instantaneity of the impression made by painting. The traditional view of Delacroix's development from romantic beginnings to the tame neo-classicism of his final years is reassessed in light of the literary devices that Poe used to heighten the sublime terrorof his maelstrom. In the sketches and final versions of paintings executed over a period of thirty-five years, Delacroix is shown to have adopted the painterly equivalents of Poe's hyperbole and litotes as means of evoking the sublimity of the vortex. His attitude towards the wild, romantic sublime was conflicted, and remained unresolved throughout his career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]