The ambassadors of death : the sister arts, western canon and the silent lines of a Hebrew survivor / Shahar Bram ; translated by Batya Stein ; poems co-translated by Lisa Katz and Shahar Bram.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 180-192) and index.

Introduction: Achilles' shield: Ekphrasis, ut pictura poesis, and Tuvia Rübner -- The fall: Peter Breughel's The fall of Icarus, Marc Chagall's The fall of Icarus, and Tuvia Rübner's The fall. Poetry and painting: basic questions of comparison; the museum of words: Rübner's book -- The ambassadors of death: Hans Holbein's The ambassadors and Tuvia Rübner's The ambassadors. The portrait: The ambassador of death, a guide to the silent museum of words -- Horse and rider: Simone Martini's Guidoriccio da fogliano and Tuvia Rübner's Horse and rider. The paradoxical animation of death in poetry. Rübner's voyage towards death. The photograph in Rübner's world -- The silence of words: Tuvia Rübner's two zen paintings. Rübner's use of haiku and zen. The image in poetry. Imagism. Poetics of space -- The structure of narrative: Casper David Friedrich's Chalk cliffs on Rueben and Tuvia Rübner's Chalk cliffs on Rügen. Renaissance vs. romanticism. Narrative poetics in painting and poetry -- The chaos of colors and the order of words: Joseph Mallord William Turner's Peace - burial at sea and Tuvia Rübner's The ship. The language of paintings. Painting as text. The inseparable world of word and image -- The fallen angel and the survivor's burning eye: Rembrandt Harmensz Van Rijn's Descent from the cross and Tuvia Rübner's Descent from the cross. Word and image in the religious world. The survivor and the story of redemption. Past, memory and the survivor as a living dead. Walter Benjamin. The end of the journey is in the beginning: Rübner, the heavenly beauty of the dead image, and the fallen angel -- Epilogue: ekphrasis, mimesis, and the difference between word and image.