representation.í^46 The blurring of boundaries creates a space that
cannot be translated between text and image. This gap between the
visual and the audible represents a slippage between our powers of
perception.
In Paul Klee: Legends of the Sign (1991), Crone and Joseph Leo
Koerner move from art theory into Saussurean linguistics, arguing that
there is a tension in Kleeís work between the impossible desire of the
iconic for the linguistic sign.^47 In a comparable way, drawing on
Kleeís art, Paulinís poetry creates a tension between the impossible
desire of the linguistic for the iconic. Crone says of Kleeís
hieroglyphic paintings: ëwords and images do not cohere: they cancel
one another out in a way that we may never truly fathom.í^48 In
Walking a Line, Paulinís use of the hieroglyph as a title for one his
poems presents a comparable lack of coherence between the vocal and
visual.
Additionally, Arab Song is a painting where a Middle Eastern
face and mouth are composed out of thin lines, enclosed by
borderlines and woven into these borders are hieroglyphic symbols; it
is a ësongí without words. Paulin teases us with Kleeís portrait of the
human figure enclosed by lines where the boundaries and edges
existing in the picture combine with the meaningful yet meaningless
hieroglyphic text that is woven into the picture. The title, Arab Song,
exposes the gap between East and West, and the vocal and visual.
Confronted with Paulinís title page, the reader perceives the artistic
lines of Kleeís picture. S/he turns the page to read the poetic lines of
Paulinís collection where the lines of each letter and combination of
words are strung together like Paulinís hieroglyphics hung on a line
which is imagined in his poem ë í (p.25). In Kleeís art and
Paulinís poetry images and words are put together to play on our
perception of things so as to change the way we see. Klee writes: ëIn
its present shape it is not the only possible world.í^49 The hieroglyph,
the artistic/poetic line, and the visual and conceptual lines drawn by
both artist and poet represent the ëedge of thingsí. That is, the
46 Crone & Koerner, x.
47 Cf. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans., Wade Baskin
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).
48 Crone & Koerner, p.38.
49 Klee, On Modern Art, p.45.