Kyriakos
04-03-2012, 03:40 PM
The use of metaphors presents, in my view, a very interesting ability of the human mind. It is to present something as something else, ie to find common characteristics in two differing objects or states, which means the mind has (consciously or unconciously) broken them up into something deeper; points of thought, particles of a scheme.
Let me give an example of what i mean:
In the famous Homeric metaphor of the sea, likening it to wine ("the wine-dark sea") you find a simple metaphor, which seems to work at least on two levels. First it replaces water with wine, and this leads to the sea acquiring many new traits, such as being tempestuous as the emotion that wine brings, or dangerous as if it was really made out of wine and you were going to sink in it. Secondly it creates an image, a color, that of wine, and describing the sea in an arguably more interesting way than just naming it with the respective color without the metaphor.
However that is indeed (on some level) just a simple metaphor. There are other metaphors which include not only a few words, but entire passages, or even a full work. Those are called allegories, meaning they have an "altered meaning" a hidden meaning; below the meaning they appear to speak of you get the metaphorical one, which might be a lot deeper.
Allegories, as groups of metaphors, appear to work by the use of symbols, and connections between symbols, parallels between the state of the symbol and the the state of the actual object. For example: In F. Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" at one point you read of Gregor Samsa, who has been transformed into a human-sized insect, being unable to move back to his room since he has to coordinate the tens of movements of his innumerable, weak feet.
On the surface this means just that; Gregor is an insect, and has trouble moving as an insect, supposedly due to his previous nature as a human. But if we look a bit below we might examine a hidden meaning.
This meaning, for this particular piece, is that Gregor moves with great difficulty due to his many feet, which are a lot more than the human ones, much like a man of complicated thoughts can appear to move with great difficulty in a discussion, or in a subject, because he has to perform multiple mental movements which are simply not done by the other people.
Of course in other works by this author the metaphors multiply themselves, until the whole piece is an allegory. I could go into that, but i would wish to see if there is any interest in a discussion of metaphors here. :)
Let me give an example of what i mean:
In the famous Homeric metaphor of the sea, likening it to wine ("the wine-dark sea") you find a simple metaphor, which seems to work at least on two levels. First it replaces water with wine, and this leads to the sea acquiring many new traits, such as being tempestuous as the emotion that wine brings, or dangerous as if it was really made out of wine and you were going to sink in it. Secondly it creates an image, a color, that of wine, and describing the sea in an arguably more interesting way than just naming it with the respective color without the metaphor.
However that is indeed (on some level) just a simple metaphor. There are other metaphors which include not only a few words, but entire passages, or even a full work. Those are called allegories, meaning they have an "altered meaning" a hidden meaning; below the meaning they appear to speak of you get the metaphorical one, which might be a lot deeper.
Allegories, as groups of metaphors, appear to work by the use of symbols, and connections between symbols, parallels between the state of the symbol and the the state of the actual object. For example: In F. Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" at one point you read of Gregor Samsa, who has been transformed into a human-sized insect, being unable to move back to his room since he has to coordinate the tens of movements of his innumerable, weak feet.
On the surface this means just that; Gregor is an insect, and has trouble moving as an insect, supposedly due to his previous nature as a human. But if we look a bit below we might examine a hidden meaning.
This meaning, for this particular piece, is that Gregor moves with great difficulty due to his many feet, which are a lot more than the human ones, much like a man of complicated thoughts can appear to move with great difficulty in a discussion, or in a subject, because he has to perform multiple mental movements which are simply not done by the other people.
Of course in other works by this author the metaphors multiply themselves, until the whole piece is an allegory. I could go into that, but i would wish to see if there is any interest in a discussion of metaphors here. :)