Inter-semiotic Reading of Expressionist Poetry and Painting in &quot;Earthly Verses&quot; and &quot;The Night Cafe&quot;

Kamali, Mahmoud; Asadi, Somayye

doi:10.22054/ltr.2025.85139.3987

Inter-semiotic Reading of Expressionist Poetry and Painting in "Earthly Verses" and "The Night Cafe"

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Mahmoud Kamali ¹
Somayye Asadi ²

¹ Assistant Professor of Persian literature and language, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

² Master of Persian literature and language, Payame Noor University

10.22054/ltr.2025.85139.3987

Abstract

This study employs a comparative and semiotic analysis of Forough Farrokhzad’s poem “Earthly Verses” and Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Night Café”. Drawing on interdisciplinary frameworks from art criticism and literary theory, to examine how each medium conveys themes of human degradation and downfall. Highlighting shared semiotic codes, the study identifies key Expressionist techniques—distortion, vivid contrasts, and fractured forms—that convey psychological distress and societal decay. The study also argues that van Gogh’s The Night Café and Farrokhzad’s Earthly Verses employ parallel Expressionist strategies to expose modernity’s dehumanizing effects, despite their distinct mediums and cultural contexts. Van Gogh’s swirling brushstrokes and Farrokhzad’s visceral syntax exemplify a shared emphasis on subjective emotion over objective representation. Beyond formal parallels, this interdisciplinary approach reveals how both artists critique modernity: Farrokhzad through gendered bodily metaphors, van Gogh through masculine alienation. By employing inter-semiotic analysis—examining how signs function across visual and verbal systems—this study illuminates transnational aesthetic strategies without positing false equivalences. The paper thus models cross-cultural art-literature comparisons that respect medium specificity while uncovering shared rebellions against modernity’s alienation.

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