Illustration is usually associated with the function of decoration or explanation of a text within which it appears. Still, illustration might have many other functions: representative, descriptive, narrative, symbolic, expressive, aesthetic, playful, connative, metalinguistic, phatic and as punctuation.

Image has a representative function when it simulates the aspect of the being whom it refers to; a descriptive function, when it details that aspect; a narrative function when it puts the represented being in a coming to be, through transformations (in the state of the represented being) or actions (carried through by that being); a symbolic function, when it suggests superimposed meanings to its referent, even in an arbitrary mode, as is the case with national flags; an expressive function, when it reveals feelings and values of the image producer, as well as when it points out the emotions and feelings of the represented being; an aesthetic function, when it emphasizes the form of the visual message, that is, its visual configuration; a playful function, when oriented to playing, including humor as a kind of playing; a connative function, when addressed to the receiver, trying to influence his behavior, through persuasive or normative procedures; a metalinguistic function when the referent of the image is the very visual language or directly related to it, as in the image quotation, etc.; a phatic function, when the image emphasizes the role of its material support; a punctuation function, when oriented to the text within which it is inserted, signaling its beginning, its ends or its parts, creating pauses in it or underlining some of its elements.

More than simply decorating or explaining the text, illustration can, thus, represent, describe, narrate, symbolize, express, play, persuade, give norms, punctuate, besides emphasizing its own configuration, claiming attention to its support or the visual language. It is important to point out that, in few cases, image performs a single function, but in the same way, it occurs with verbal language, functions organize themselves hierarchically in relation to a dominant function.

 

The denotation/connotation pair

The global meaning of an image comprises connotative and denotative meanings: the former refers to the being that the image represents, while the connotative meanings refer to associations suggested by the image. The denotative meaning derive mainly from the representative function, while the connotative meaning result mainly from how the image represents, that is, from the aesthetic function. Thus, the analysis of the illustration must focus both denotative and connotative poles, in other words, meanings coming not only from what the image represents, but also from how it does so.

 

Visual rhetoric

Figures of speech are procedures that alter or emphasize the meaning of words. Some of those figures seem to have similar correspondents in visual language, like hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy and personification.

In visual language, hyperbole comprises the procedures of exaggeration, that occur, for instance, in caricature; metaphor corresponds to transformations in the image – or on its meaning – through the relations of similarity, for instance, in the image of a red pepper at the beach, in an advert for a suntan oil, to suggest the idea of "becoming like a red pepper"; metonymy corresponds to the cases in which a being is represented by an image strictly linked to it, that is, where there is an objective relation between the image and the represented being, as, for instance, in the representation of a part of a particular being representing the whole being, like snap shots for documents, that are interpreted as referring to the whole of the person and not to decapitated heads; personification is the attribution of human attributes to beings of other realms (animals, trees, stones, etc.), as well as to abstract ideas, as the allegorical figures that represent justice, freedom, etc.

 

Relationship between illustration and text: the intersemiotic coherence

If we understand that illustration is an image which accompanies a text, then, it is necessary to recognize that illustration has no isolate function, but only when related to a text. I am not alluding, thus, to the image book without text, but instead, to the picture book. The relationship between illustration and text can be designated as intersemiotic coherence; a naming which borrows and broadens the concept of textual coherence. One can understand intersemiotic coherence as the relationship of coherence, which means, about convergence or non-contradiction between the denotative and connotative meanings from illustration and text.

Since that convergence only happens in ideal cases, we can talk about three degrees of coherence: convergence, detour and contradiction. To appraise, then, the coherence between a certain illustration and a certain text means appraising to what extent the illustration converges to the meanings of the text detours from or contradicts them.

Let us take an example of those three degrees of coherence with three illustrations to a children’s poem by Cecília Meireles (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1901-1964), "The Mosquito Writes". That confrontation will be possible for the book in which that poem appears, Either this or that, had five different editions (besides several reprints), illustrated by five different illustrators. However, as to show the degrees of coherence between illustration and text, three editions will suffice.

 

The Mosquito Writes

 

The fly mosquito
weaves his legs, makes an M,
then, it trembles, trembles, trembles,
makes an O very oblong,
makes an S.

The fly goes up and down
with antics no one sees,
makes a Q,
makes a U and makes an I.

That weird
fly
crosses pads, makes a T.
and then,
it rounds itself and makes another O,
more beautiful one.

Oh!
It is not an illiterate,
that insect,
for it knows how to write its name.

Afterwards it goes looking for
someone it could sting,
because writing is tiring,
isn’t it, child?

Moreover, it is too hungry.

 

The poem "The Mosquito Writes" tells an already known scene from its very title: a mosquito writes its name, the word MOSQUITO. The narration has the liveliness of a cartoon, for its stress on action, which is grammatically translated by the number of verbal patterns. There is an allusion to handwriting: the fly makes an O very oblong, and afterwards, another O, /more beautiful. One could understand that more beautiful as more rounded since the fly rounds itself in order to make the second O. Besides, the first O is not only oblong, but very oblong, something that stresses the contrast with the careful handwriting of the second O. The fly is given human attributes, since it writes its name, something that has a positive connotation, besides making the fly a mimic and the whole scene a pantomime.

Addressed towards children, what is made explicit by the use of the vocative at the last but one verse – isn’t it, child? – the poem tries to awake its sympathy for the fly. The positive connotation of the fly does not aim to suppress notions of health, for instance, the fly as the spreader of diseases, but to stress the playful character of writing.

 

Maria Bonomi’s illustration

Maria Bonomi’s illustration for the poem "The Mosquito Writes" (MEIRELES, 1964), an engraving on wood, with yellow tint upon black, takes a whole page. The illustration represents eight flies, distributed in pairs and in four lines, forming with their bodies and pads the letters MO, SQ, UI and TO, that is, MOSQUITO.

The flies are represented economically and dynamically. The pads were reduced to two, what, in a vertical position, connotes the two pads as legs and the traces at the extremities as feet, making for the personification of the flies.

Most of the flies are front sided. Those that form the letters S and T are side faced. Two of them are turned upside down: those that form letters U and I. The arrangement of the flies throughout the page, the varying positions and its stylization create a playful atmosphere. The distribution of the letters breaks the horizontal reading, transforming reading in a game, what turns out to be another element of playfulness.

The illustration narrates also a scene, the pantomime of a fly that writes with its body the word MOSQUITO, what seems to amuse itself, which suggests that writing can be fun children’s play.

 

Eleonora Affonso’s illustration

Eleonora Affonso’s illustration and the poem "The Mosquito Writes" (MEIRELES, 1977, p.35) divide one page: at the right half, the poem; at the left half, the illustration, which represents a fly in a diagonal alignment at the page, presenting two poetic licenses: the fly is blue colored and has only one pair of wings, not two as it would be correct. Unlike the reduction of pads in Maria Bonomi’s illustration, that reduction does not seem to have a semantic function.

The chromatic stylization, that is, the use of a non-referential color, extends in the stylization of forms. The aesthetic function extends through the emphasis in the visual rhythm: linear, formal and chromatic. Linear, in the lines that detour from the body to the extremities of the wings. Formal, in the symmetry of semi-circular spots placed in the wings and from the tiny points placed to the left and right alongside the upper part of the body. Chromatic, when alternating the shades of blues in the body (light and dark alternate strips) and symmetry of shades in the wings, that is, light blue close to the body and almost transparent at the extremities.

The front pads (at the upper part in relation to the paper margins) seem to form an O, not completely closed and one of the back pads (the low right one, still in relation to the paper margins) forms a kind of Z, which suggests a dancing fly. The fly is more close to the upper margin than the lower one, thus, the inclination and height suggest it is actually flying and, for that reason, a fly that flies while dancing. At Maria Bonomi’s illustration, the vertical way of the fly suggested it was resting on an implicit line of ground and, in this way, it is a pantomime, not a flight.

The color of the fly, blue, a cool color, suggests depth, introversion, calmness, fancy, etc. The blue color thus connotes the fly as an imaginary insect.

 

Beatriz Berman’s illustration

Beatriz Berman’s illustration (MEIRELES, 1990, p.21) is a vignette at the upper right angle, representing a fly parallel to the lateral margins, settled upon – and stinging – a letter Q. The representation of the fly is well detailed. The descriptiveness, however, is unsuccessful, since we do not realize, for instance, if the fly has six or five pads.

The illustration presents a slightly narrative trace: the actions of landing and stinging that, nevertheless, get beneath the narrative character of the poem. Let us note, also, that landing, and, so, stopping contradicts the activity (narrated) and the quickness emphasized by the poem and that, in it, stinging is a secondary action. This way, besides giving value to a secondary instance, the illustration contradicts denotations and connotations of the poem.

 

Relationships between the poem "The Mosquito Writes" and its illustrations

Maria Bonomi’s illustration presents the highest convergence to the poem: the narrative sequence, the quickness, the fly personification, the playing with writing and the repeating of lines, forms and colors, which has an homologous function as to repeating of phonic, lexical and syntactic features of the poem. Among the three illustrations, it is the only one that emphasizes playfulness, converging, then, to the dominant function of the poem.

The illustration by Eleonora Affonso suggests a dancing fly, which converges to the connotation of a mimic-fly in the poem. The movement of the pads suggests the forming of letters, avoiding making the narration of the poem explicit, something that may spur the reader’s imagination. The aesthetic function in the fly representation converges to the poetic function in the poem. However, the blue color – in the illustration – connotes calmness and daydreaming, in contradiction with the extrovert quickness and playfulness of the poem. The illustration, thus, converges to the poem’s meanings, but, from a certain point, it detours from them.

Beatriz Berman’s illustration, with its descriptiveness, has an entomological connotation, right at the opposite direction of the poem’s meanings.

In a word, between the poem "The Mosquito Writes" and Maria Bonomi’s illustration there is a relationship of convergence, between the illustration of Eleonora Affonso and the poem there is a detour, and Beatriz Berman’s illustration is in contradiction with the poem.

 

Conclusion

The illustration establishes a semantic relationship with the text. In ideal cases, a relationship of coherence, here designated as intersemiotic coherence for it articulates two semiotic systems: the visual and verbal languages. There is not a differing nature between contradiction and detour, but a varying intensity, whose limit is hard to determine with precision. Convergence is never an absolute equivalence, due to the differences between both languages, verbal and visual. For that reason, we won’t ask for an illustration to represent everything denoted in a given text, because it can pose a metonymical relationship with the text, which in turn could be more exciting that the minute reference. Not even will we ask from the illustration to translate all the connotations of a text, since that is not feasible, due to the differences between both languages, something that occurs even in the translation of a text from one language to another.

If we grasp that illustration is an image going along with a text and not its substitute, and if we understand that the relationship between illustration and text is not one of paraphrase or translation, but of coherence, then, this opens up a whole new realm of possibilities of convergence toward the text, a convergence that does not limit the exploring of visual language, but, on the contrary, might stimulate it.

 

MEIRELES, Cecília. Ou isto ou aquilo. Il. Maria Bonomi. São Paulo: Giroflé, 1964.
_____. _____. Il. Eleonora Affonso. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1977.
_____. _____. Org. Walmir Ayala. Il. Beatriz Berman. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1990.