Abstract: This article is a comparative study of Âmes désertes by Nicolaos Episcopopoulos, and “Le Roi Cophetua” by Julien Gracq, which refer to the painting King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid by Edward Burne-Jones. It highlights an intergeneric peregrination (the effects of dramatization in the account and narrativity in the play), the processes of the ritualization of action evolving into living paintings, and the paradox of a particular poetics of the indeterminate and the lifeless.
