On The Nature of Metaphor
On the Nature of Metaphor
(This is a work-in-progress. I shall post now what I have so far, for the benefit of someone who is writing a paper,
http://www.online-literature.com/for...7&page=1&pp=15
but I hope to add to it during the coming days.)
We have all heard the ancient saying “Natura Abhorret Vacuum,” which means, obviously, “Nature dislikes a vacuum or emptiness or absence”.
Silence is a vacuum which speaks loudly. That which is absent, or not said creates a vacuum in our mind. The nature of our mind is such that it hates silence and absence and hence, something rushes in to fill that void or missing piece. What the mind really hates is lack of meaning, purpose, order. When the mind senses such a gaping void, it hastens to fill it by imposing meaning, order, agenda.
If I say to you “Home again, home again jiggety jig” and remain silent, then, IF you are familiar with the nursery rhyme to which I refer, you mind fills that vacuum with “To market to market to buy a fat pig.” The concepts of marketplace, economics, pigs, food and overweight are now present in your mind. If I am writing or creating something with a certain agenda in mind, then I may HARNESS the power of those conjured concepts, and do something further with them in your mind which has now become my canvass for a painting using words as the pigments of color. When Vonnegut, as an opening line to "Cat's Cradle" says "Call me Jonah," then, instantly, we think of the opening line of Moby Dick, "Call me Ishmael," and our mind ushers in a heavenly host of noetic allusions to Melville and the Bible.
The word “metaphor” comes from two ancient Greek words meta which means “with” or after, and “phor” comes from “phere”, which means to carry. Metaphysics referred to that book by Aristotle which was always placed AFTER his book called physics or nature.
Now we all know the textbook definitions for metaphor and simile and metonymy and the rest. If our teacher gives us an exercise to write something using metaphor, and we say that our teacher is LIKE the dungpile of Job (whatever such a statement might mean, and it is fertile with possibilities), well, we shall promptly be scolded for having created a SIMILE rather than the metaphor of saying that our teacher IS a dungpile. And if our teacher should give us a list of all known genres of fiction, and ask us to write an example of each genre, then we mechanically proceed to grind out the rules much like some “paint-by-number” set which were so popular in the 1950’s.
But the real nitty gritty of metaphor is far more complex that any “paint-by-number” mentality can encompass. And someone like, oh, lets say, a Vonnegut or a Melville, will write in their own unique voice in a genre that is all their own and defies the “paint-by-number” mentalitity of Aristotelian classification.
What Frost said is quite profound , in his address to Amherst, in “The Mathematics of Physics,”
http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page023.htm
about Parmenides; about NUMBER being a metaphor for reality.
Our mathematical physics is a grand metaphor for reality and it has the power, with its weapons of mass destruction to “take us out” of reality in a very literal, not literary, sense.
A profound question is whether reality is digital in nature, allowing EVERYTHING to be precisely expressed as number, or whether it is analog in nature with something incommensurable which ever escapes the sisyphean labor of digitization. Is reductionism or holism the truer expression of reality.
The existence of rabbits in no way violates the laws of quantum and relativity, yet there is no way that we can inductively proceed from such laws and arrive at or predict Bugs Bunny. Games such as poker certainly obey the laws of probability and statistics but we would not study probability and statitics and expect from that study to learn how to play poker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism
Milan Kundera has a chip on his shoulder against kitsch (cheap imitation knock-offs of something which is genuine and artistic). Our educational systems are unwitting machines to churn out generation of kitsch artists armed with their paint-by-number educations and their Adobe Photo Shop. Software attempts to make everyone an artist, but software cannot give us the eye of the artist or the heart of the artist nor can it give us something profound to say which needs to be said.
A metaphor is a device. A machine is a device. There are machines which do nothing important, such as a Rube Goldberg machine (though it makes us laugh and laughter is sometimes important.) Then there are machines which serve some purpose and do achieve something important. An automobile is a machine which transports us or carries us from one place to another. Of course, the automobile cannot do this feat alone, but requires a drive, and not just any driver, but someone who knows what they are doing and is not an idiot or a maniac.
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Let's take a look at the opening pages of Wallace Steven's essays, "The Necessary Angel."
ISBN 0-394-70278-6
Vingate Books
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wallace Stevens
In the Phaedrus, Plato speaks of the soul in a figure.
He says:
Let our figure be of a composite nature - a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of noble breed, while ours are midex; and we have a charioteer who drives them in a pair, and one of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble origin; and, as might be expected, there is a great deal of trouble in managing them. I will endeavor to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature. The soul or animate being has the care of the inanimate, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing; - when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and is the ruler of the universe; while the imperfect soul loses her feathers, and drooping in her flight at last settles on solid ground.
(end of Phaedrus quote)
We recognize at once, in this figure, Plato's pure poetry; and at the same time we recognize what Coleridge called Plato's dear, gorgeous nonsense. The truth is that we have scarcely read the passage before we have identified ourselves with the charioteer, have, in fact, taken his pace and, driving his winged horses, are traversing the whole heaven. THen suddenly we remember, it may be, that the soul no longer exists and we droop in our flight and at last settle on the solid ground. The figure becomes antiquated and rustic.
