Aren't metaphors relationships?

Well if thing a isn't actually identical to thing b then any metaphor which relates them breaks down at some point, I guess.

P

I don't want to get precious about this but I have just observed one of my cats thinking. She was thinking, 'If I go out there by an indirect route through the bushes I can get close enough to that pigeon to KILL it.' I watched her eyes swivel from the pigeon to the indirect route and back again. She had already tried the direct approach and it didn't work.

The indirect approach didn't work either. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

Aristotle's ship and plough are related by the shape of their movement, and what they move through are related by what is done to them. The metaphor doesn't break down (though the water and the earth are broken through).

Because the parts are in relation, it makes no sense to say the plough is a metaphor for the ship (or vice versa). To do so is to miss the startling particulars of how they have been brought together -- not as the same things, or as stand-ins for each other, but in a relation that reveals something about all the elements, which is not an identity.

Comparisons work only when there are both similarities and differences. That's the joke in a rose is a rose is a rose.

Best,
Marcia


Adding in: Bringing together the fields and the ocean would be apt for the Greeks, who spent their time on both. Imagine the men being called from the farms to go to war, or, on return, Odysseus proving himself to Laertes by knowing the family trees. English, but not Greek I'm guessing, has the added pleasure of tilling and tiller.

Ah, the complexity of the simple.

Metaphor: Mind's Mistake
 

Anne Carson says, in "Essay On What I Think About Most", "Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself // in the act of making a mistake." (I can't find the original quote -- anyone know it?)

I like the idea whether it came from Carson or Aristotle. Someone back in the days of neighborhood carpentry comes across a problem and temporarily mistakes for another difficult problem he faces: wayward nails. For a moment in his mind, the two conflate, and the metaphor is born.

It sounds good so he shares it at the pub. The people listening immediately get it. They think about and use it later. Other people hear and like. Now it's a metaphorical meme.

But its memological success is its undoing: it gets flabby, overused, until people have stopped even using nails in their everyday life. Weakened, it cannot stand challenges by new-fangled language. It's a cliche.

So people stop using it and it dies (but soft!). Centuries later, some doctoral student in etymology discovers the obscure phrase in some source material, researches its meaning, and thinks, what an amazing metaphor! I must translate this into Mandarino!.

Cheers,
Scott

Welcome to the Sphere, Scott. This might be the Aristotle quote you mean. It’s from Rhetoric 1410b:

I found a reference to it reading in an excellent book called Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions, by Peter Dronke, where he talks about the difference between a view of poetic metaphor as largely ornamental and a view of it as having a unique function. Dante most definitely has the latter approach:

And Dronke quotes Dante himself on this, who wrote in one of his letters:

Dronke says that Aristotle is one of the ancient writers usually said to have the “luxury” view of metaphor, although the above quote from Rhetoric suggests that Aristotle admits its fundamental and profound usefulness as well. The qualities that Aristotle says that metaphor gives or should give are:

delight
strangeness
claritas (Metaphor should clarify meaning, says A.; if it is too far-fetched, it obscures.)

About the middle one there, in Rhetoric 1404b, he writes (in Dronke’s stilted translation): “It is necessary to use alien [strange] expressions, for men wonder at newcomers, and what is wondrous is delectable.” In other words: “It is good to give everyday speech an unfamiliar air: people like what strikes them, and are struck by what is strange and unexpected.”

Andrew, I've found Aristotle flirting with the Carson statement but never quite getting there. I wonder if she inferred it. I know I've heard people attribute it to Aristotle, but they may have gotten it second-hand. Oh well...

I cannot get on board with the notion that metaphor is anything but fundamental to poetry. Certainly bad, purple, or artless metaphor ruins the experience, but that only bolsters the argument for its importance. Strip poetry of metaphor and what you are left with is versified didacticism.

Metaphor conveys what language cannot, by forcing the reader to experience the same "mistake" the writer did.

Furthermore, I think we're hardwired for metaphor. Our best understanding of the brain currently holds that it performs distributed processing, collecting and linking sensory inputs into a (hopefully) cohesive picture. It's not linear. We think in metaphor. In fact, certain brain injuries have resulted in the victim experiencing synaesthesia (mixing up senses).

Scott,

First, welcome to the 'Sphere. Oh, and I promise not to make any mathematical assertions, ever again! ;)

But I do wonder whether we actually think in metaphor. All I have, of course, is my own experience, but I can't say I ever actually do any "thinking." My mind is completely blank almost all the time. Things simply emerge out of the fog, as required. Oddly, I almost never even know, when I begin a sentence, how it will be finished.

So where do metaphors come from, and why do we delight in them? Why do we spend time fabricating them? I heard a pretty interesting interview on Fresh Air yesterday. The article doesn't reflect what I found fascinating, all that was in the interview. First, you have to remember what Emily Dickinson said - that she had a specific physical sensation when reading a true poem, and by extension when experiencing a delightful metaphor. Others have said the same: a tingling, a shiver, etc., something that triggers the pleasure centers of the brain.

Anyway, the guy says there's an underlying biology in the pleasure circuit, and when you strip away the details, the results of pleasurable activities are the same. Some people excite their pleasure circuits through prayer, others through meditation, others through running, etc.

So Emily Dickinson creates a metaphor, and feels a delight both in creating it and experiencing it. It triggers the dopamine centers, and gets her to feel delightfully light headed. I think she describes it this way: 'If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.' She also describes other physical sensations.

But if poets, or anyone susceptible to aesthetic experience, are in some way addicted, what does it take to continue the reward? In other words, do we always need newer, fresher, more elaborate metaphors to get the same high? Does this explain why 'the shock of the new' is so valued in art? Do we begin to need different combinations, ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds?

It's an interesting thought, and it's absolutely in conflict with Dutton, who said there are certain things which always delight us, no matter how often we experience them.

Is it possible, then, that metaphors are not "mental mistakes," but rather that we take delight in new and unusual combinations, that creating or viewing these combinations gives us a nice shot of dopamine, and all of these discussions about the nature or ethics of art are simply smokescreens for an addictive desire to stimulate pleasure centers... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the warm welcome. Everyone here has been so gracious. And by all means, assert mathematics: I still have trouble with basic arithmetic.

I did not mean to say that we think in metaphor all the time. Most of my thinking is fairly dull. But every once in a while, I mistake one thing for another momentarily. I feel what I imagine is a similar reaction to that you recount through Dickinson - a pleasure at the mistake, and I try to bring it into a poem somehow.

By "mistake", I really mean "happy accident", like penicillin or velcro. They are only mistakes in the sense of strict realism.

In addition, for the Empson-oriented (in literary fashion, that is), metaphor trumps simile by creating intentional ambiguity. The simile means what is says. The metaphor is less clear. Did Breton really have a "wife with the centres of crucible of the ruby"? I guess not, but for a moment we might believe...

I certainly buy the dopamine link here. Unfortunately, that would mean biology does appear to differ with Dutton (and Keats), or at least add a caveat that makes beauty in some ways an addictive quality (this actually raises another point, that of links between addiction, creative personality and mental illness).

Certainly the MAKE IT NEW axiom suggests that repeated exposure to poetry may result in increased tolerance and dependence :)

Scott

'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things.
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot,
And whether pigs have wings.'

I think you will find few metaphors in the poetry of Lewis Carroll. And it IS poetry, isn't it?