The stumbling block is not meaning or representation. Painting has also to represent and to make some comment on representation: even still lifes are not meaningless snapshots.

The difficulty lies in the abstract qualities of painting, the composition and harmonic elements of colour, mass and line, to which painters develop great sensitivity. Colour, though complicated in practice, can be categorized by hue (e.g. red, red-orange, orange), value (i.e. extent of light or dark) and purity (position on the scale from intense red through brown to muddy grey, for example). But what among words corresponds to such categories? We often talk about the intrinsic quality of phonemes, of dark sounds formed in the back of the throat, of the purity of Italian vowels, but these are vague and relative matters. And whereas a Chinese scroll painting can be analyzed in exactly the same abstract qualities as a Renaissance fresco, the Chinese languages use tones whereas the European do not, and some languages have no vowels at all. There cannot be any one-to-one relationship between the elements of colour and those of word-sound, therefore, and attempts to reduce verse to music, or to find a musical basis to verse, have largely been failures.

A painting, furthermore, can be converted into a line drawing, a poster, an etching or even a black and white photograph and still give us some idea of the original and its quality. But unless made into something of the same sort, another poem, a translation is not affective. A paraphrase may certainly tell us something about the sense or content of the original, but is not usually a guide to quality. Removing any major element of a poem (rhythm, word choice, imagery, content) simply destroys it.

So why continue with such parallels? One reason comes from poetry manuscripts. A word, often a striking adjective or vivid description, is not firmly anchored in a particular sentence but seems to travel through the poem in various rewritings. To the poet it clearly possessed some independent value, and just as painter will rearrange the composition to set colours where needed, the word was similarly shifted to obtain the appropriate effect. Poems seem not to be entirely logical sequences of sentences, therefore, but arrangements of meaning that are deployed over the whole workspace or fabric of the poem. Poems are initially read from beginning to end, but their full effect comes by various routes. We often sense the quality by reading just a few lines. A particular expression clicks into place; we are intrigued by a certain phrasing; we begin to understand the interlocking of rhythm with meaning in a line, and to see further structures of thought, etc., until the whole complex interrelationships is divined and appreciated, a process that needs generous taste and perhaps a lifetime of reading.

To pursue the notion, we shall have to accept (contra Dadaism and Postmodernism) that poems must make some kind of sense. And that this sense is an integral part of the poem: remove it and the poem is immeasurably poorer, if a poem at all. Now suppose we equate this sense with depiction or representation in painting. Unless abstract, a painting has to depict something, and how that depiction is achieved is the art of that particular painting.

Under the notion of 'fancy' many eighteenth and nineteenth century writers and thinkers would have gone along with such an equivalence, but we are adding one crucial difference. Anyone who has watched painters working will know how very differently they can depict a scene, even from the same vantage point. And while it's certainly possible to assess accuracy on the basis of photographic verisimilitude, judging the best painting is another matter. Each artist has emphasized different aspects, using their skills and preoccupations to create a unique rendering.

Are we are so used to the language of business, science and the law, that we suppose that there exists a transparent medium capable of describing things simply as they are? Let us hope not. After a hundred years' search, philosophers are no closer to finding such a language. Deconstructionists point to the ambiguous, creative and self-referencing properties of language to show why the search is hopeless. Everyone selects according to their own criteria, and even court witnesses will describe differently what they saw and remember. Certainly we can judge any expression in speech or writing by how well it succeeds in its particular purpose, and that purpose may well be factual accuracy. But 'facts' are still abstractions, matters not directly given to us, and a more honest, authentic and complete description will generally involve the larger context of the situation and our personality. If that is accepted, then we can develop further the notion of a poem as a canvas of meanings, where only one aspect of sense is read sequentially.