Literary Portrait

The literary portrait is the description of a personage's appearance (face, figure, clothing, gait, facial expression, gestures) as a means of their artistic characterization. The portrait not only individualizes the image but also reveals character, social status, psychology, and sometimes the author's evaluation of the personage. One distinguishes the static portrait (a detailed one-time description) and the dynamic (features of appearance are given gradually, in the movement of the action); the descriptive portrait and the psychological portrait, in which the external is directly linked to the internal (a telling detail, 'the eyes are the mirror of the soul'). Historically, the portrait evolved from the conventionally idealized in early literature to the deeply psychological in realism and the impressionistically fragmentary in modernism. Masters of the literary portrait in Ukrainian prose are Ivan Nechui-Levytsky (the vivid portraits in 'The Kaidash Family') and Ivan Franko.