In the little spare time I have, I’ve been reading a collection from a few years ago of Best American Essays for that year, as well as Hungarian writer László Földényi’s book Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears. What they have in common is a fondness for “ekphrasis.” It’s a Greek word, “ek” meaning “out of” and “phrasis” meaning, of course, “phrase” but also something like “description.” So it is rhetoric in which a feeling or meaning comes from a detailed description of something, as if someone was pausing to reflect or meditate on a painting or other scene. Something like that. Which put me to thinking why “ekphrasis” is favored so much in a lot of contemporary essays and short fiction. In centuries past, it was used in essays because there wasn’t an easy way to convey a visual image (pre-television and all that, and even engravings costly), so words would be needed. Sometimes it was metaphorical, as showing an unfolding allegory. Some of the chapters in Melville’s Moby-Dick are good examples of this. Dickens developed his fondness for description and caricature in part from starting out as a legal reporter (as well as studying Addison and Steele and others who had come before him). Part of the increased use of “ekphrasis” in recent decades seems to be a desire for feelings of transcendence in an increasingly soulless society. The writer is saying, hey, stop for a moment, consider this. It’s not a bad thing to slow down and consider the scenes around us, and the folks around us, too.