The Rhetoric of Imagism in the Cinepoetry of Jean Cocteau and Abbās Kīyārustamī: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This article examines the shared Imagistic principles of two poet-filmmakers in the experimental genre of cinepoetry. On the one hand, Jean Cocteau, the French poet-turned-filmmaker, epitomizes the Imagistic experimentations of a French filmmaker with the narrative framework of poetry to create a “page-based” movie. On the other hand, Abbās Kīyārustamī, the Iranian filmmaker-turned-poet, typifies the cinematic aesthetic of modern Persian poetry to offer visual images that rely entirely on the creative engagement of the reader. The rhetoric of Imagism, that short-lived modernist movement of the early twentieth century, is what these poet-filmmakers similarly employ in their cinepoetic study cases, namely Tempest of Stars (1997) by Cocteau and A Wolf Lying in Wait (2005) by Kīyārustamī. Following a comparative approach to their common Imagistic foundations such as economical wording and phrasing, cinematic adaptation of visual imagery, rigor and clarity of vision, the poetic prerogative of subject matter, the avoidance of vague and ambiguous descriptions, and the writerly approach to the rhetoric of the poem, this article proves that Cocteau and Kīyārustamī are respectively the epitomes of Imagistic cinepoetry in French and Persian literature.