Metaphor
 

It is a rainy day in Sweden, so what I can do to get out of housework. To talk to my fellows and ask their opinions seems a good idea.

I've been reading up on theories of metaphor, because I want to know more. I've gone through the books I already have and ordered some new ones.

I am interested in how Spherians think about metaphor, how they employ them (or don't), or any excellent metaphors that anyone wishes to quote.

To get the ball rolling, I'll just excerpt from M.H. Abrahms "A Glossary of Literary Terms" a brief discussion of competing theories of metaphor. (Only naming them, without M.H.A.'s discussion.)

Metaphors, Theories of.

1. similarity view. (by which he means Aristotle.)

2. The interaction view. (I.A. Richards, i.e. vehicle and tenor. Also Max Black, system of associated commonplaces).

3. pragmatic view. (Donald Davidson, pragmatic not semantic. John Searle, speech-act theory).

4. cognitive (or conceptual theory): (George Lakoff and Mark Turner), mapping conceptual domains.

MHA doesn't discuss them but I've also been peeking at Julia Kristeva, and Paul Ricoeur, alas in a second-hand way, i.e. referencing them through others. But I've ordered the relevant books, along with some others that seemed interesting.

I'm especially interested in the question of "when is a metaphor dead, and can it be revived, and if so how?! But I don't want to shunt this into a narrow corral, so free association, folks, all thoughts are welcome.

Don Paterson's "The Empty Image: a new model of the poetic trope" used to be on his site, but it's gone now. A shame. I've a few misc quotes and a page about metaphor/simile with examples and further reading.

Hi Janice,
Would you mind letting me know what a Spherian is?
Thanks,
Jonathan

You're one now, Jonathan. Welcome to the Sphere.

David R.

A Spherian is a member of Eratosphere, a metonym, as it were.

Welcome to the Sphere, Jonathan, you are now a Spherian.

Great topic, Janice. I'll be back to this thread but for now I'll just say that I'm fond of thinking of the topic along the lines of Baudelaire in his famous poem "Correspondences." What did the postman say to the Neruda character in that film Il postino? "Everything is a metaphor for everything else" (or something like that). And how the mother of the girl he was writing love poems for was terrified by the power of metaphor over her daughter. That's the kind of metaphor that is definitely not dead.

Baudelaire's poem is certainly a contact point.

Good sighting about Il Postino. That was a lovely movie. Have you also read the novel, Antonio Skármeta? I have it in Swedish translation.

A rich topic, Janice.

In Dave Mason's book Western Wind, in the chapter on metaphor and simile, he has a photograph of a Greek delivery truck with the word METΑΦΟΡΑ on the side.

Emerson, of course, is always reaching for the next metaphor himself, and so it would be hard to pin him down to a straightforward answer to "if so, how?!" But the start of an answer, at least, is implicit in his famous definition. If language is fossil poetry--dead metaphor--then making it live again is no more than returning our attention to that original "brilliant picture," away from surface meanings and the habits of linguistic convention, and back to the moment the word first "symbolized the world."

A metaphor, etymologically speaking, is a "carrying over" or "carrying across," but even knowing that obscure little fact does little to bring the moment of symbolic insight back to life. At that rate, we're stuck at the level of mere intellection. But let a poet, grizzled and icy-eyed, come down to the valley across the high mountain passes, laden with a precious cargo of vision in a battered old pack, and you have metaphor again . . . as alive and kicking as ever.

Naturally, not every metaphor need be etymological. But Emerson's great insight, I believe, was to remind us that all etymology is metaphorical. Language itself, then--there right under our noses (under our tongues!)--is a boundless source of metaphorical insight and inspiration, if only we choose to look beneath the surfaces of the words we use everyday. Listen to the words, as old Ralph Waldo himself might have put it. Listen to what they have to say.

P.G. Wodehouse is a dab hand at dead metaphor revival. As here:

I forget how the subject arose, but I remember Jeeves once saying that sleep knits up the ravelled sleave of care. Balm of hurt minds, he described it as. The idea being, I took it, that if things are getting sticky, they tend to seem less glutinous after you've had your eight hours.

Janice,

This is a fascinating topic for discussion, and the one which interests me most in poetics.

I echo 100% what Cathy has written above. I spend most of my day-dream contemplating metaphor - how apparently obvious, how impenetrably mysterious, is the nature of metaphor. It's the pulse of all poetics, and of life, to me. If I can think of something useful to say here, I will, but till then, I will be reading this thread with all my windows and doors open.

Thanks for starting it, Janice!

Cally

Apropos of Steve C.'s posting, a book called Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, is well worth checking out. A big excerpt from it is available here.

I learned in school that there is an important difference between simile and metaphor--simile posits that something is like something else, metaphor is bolder. The example for simile was "love is like a rose," while metaphor simply stated: "a rose." But I don't think the distinction is nearly so clear. A powerful simile can work with all the force of metaphor. The word "like" does make an association between two or more things more explicit, but the two things associated can have all kinds of peripheral associations and reverberations not controlled by the terms set up by the simile.

For instance, Pound's famous finish to canto 17:

Sunset like the grasshopper flying.

He’s referring to a green tint in the sky before sunset, but the sentence is busting at the seams. Of course, it's a lot more surprising to say what Pound says here than to say "love is like a rose."

I've taught the Lakoff and Johnson in IB Theory of Knowledge classes.
Their assertion is so simple it's revolutionary: metaphors aren't embellishment. They are the engine that drives the train. From Aristotle through the 20th century metaphors were given short shrift. L and J bring them to the epistimological forefront. Even the most abstract expressions are fodder for L and J. For example:

Who put that idea into your head?

Here "your head" is a container. "Idea" in an object that goes into the container.

This type of statement falls into their "conduit category" which applies to but doesn't exhaust abstract thought.

In general the mind is filled (metaphor) with metaphorical domains
The domains may or may not inter-relate. Take "fishing."

He took the bait.
He's a sucker; just reel him in.
He's a shrink. He fishes in deep water.

and so on.

THinkl of the language we use to deal with an argument:

I blew him out of the water.
I destroyed him.

To argue we use the language of war. L and J put the question: what if we used the language of dance? Instead of destruction we might talk about in synch, harmony, moving together, in rhythm.

I don't think L and J are engaging the "what is a metaphor" discussion per se. As the name "cognitive" suggests, they're claiming that we think by metaphor.

Just to be contentious for a moment (contentious, moi?)

The problem with formulating theories about how we think based on the language we use is that the language we use is, so far as I can see, mostly a poor attempt to externalise a sanitised version of how we think.

I do not think totally, or even primarily, in language, and my observation of others leads me to believe that that is common, if not universal. I think in pictures. When I dream I see only pictures, because the conscious mind has switched off and stopped trying to make sense of it all linguistically.

I definitely don't think in metaphors. They are purely linguistic constructs which may or may not help to eff the ineffable internal goings-on.

I'm fortified slightly in my argument by the fact that the current U.S. Poet Laureate said something similar, in connection with his decision to cease punctuating his poems. He sees (or saw) poems as recorded thought, rather than speech, and thought isn't punctuated. He also thought all poems fail, because language is imperfect.

Philip

Philip,

If you go here, and move to the second video (the interview portion) you can find a pretty concise discussion of Merwin's thoughts on knowledge, form, and punctuation. You may be surprised by what you find about punctuation, and I think most people here may be surprised to find he thinks of himself as primarily a formal poet.

On your other point, I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree. Does language come first? Can thought exist without language? I have no idea.

On the primary subject, here's Aristotle on Metaphor:

"It is a great matter to observe propriety in these several modes of expression, as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words, and so forth. But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances. "

Off to dine...

Thanks,

Bill

An interesting aside:

I've just finished reading Frederick Turner's essay, "The Art of the Symbol" in the Spring 2011 American Arts Quarterly, one of the many gifts received at West Chester.

After a rather lengthy discussion of Wittgenstein's hermeneutic circle and how the "problem" is most significant in the "realm of words" (as opposed to a musical composition, a painting, or a sculpture), and the uselessness of "cutting a blaze" either within or outside the circle of the known world, Turner posits that the word "yet", though unsayable, unknowable, irrational and chaotic is, in fact the place, the only place "at the exact edge of the circle" where a true blaze can be cut. It is " . . . the space of art, of new scientific hypothesis, of grace, or moral discovery. .. It is still in itself unknown and unexplored, but its contents can be located, referenced and identified by metaphor, which acts as a sort of verbal triangulation or trigonometry, providing their direction and distance, so to speak, in terms of a new relation between fixed points within the known world."

As for metaphor:

"It is well known to etymologists and linguists that languages grow — that is, develop vocabularies for talking about new things and ideas — by means of metaphor. A visual metaphor is the compelling significant image, a musical metaphor is a connection between different musical elements that melodically expresses an emotion. Metaphors, especially grand metaphors — chinjikijilus — create new language for us to think in."

Phillip et al.

Even when you say: "I don't think in metaphors" you're thinking in a metaphor. There is a literal meaning beneath the sentence we don't normally recognize. There are two ways to read this statement as L and J see it: One "in metaphors" literally means inside of a container--a container which you label metaphor. You, the thinking subject, are sitting, standing inside a container. A second way to read it is "in" functions as an ablative of means. You're using the metaphor to think. The visual picture here might be a pair of scissors or a wrench or a hammer. I cut with a pair of scissors or I'm using a pair of scissors to cut. In either reading there is a literal meaning underneath "I don't think in metaphors" that let's you know you are, in fact, thinking in metaphors. Again, L and J would say metaphors aren't a figure of speech, as is traditionally understood. They drive the train.

I am stealing time to share this with you.

Today some po-books arrived. One by Jo Shapcott (Of Mutability) who our UK friends will know.

In a poem called Somewhat Unravelled, I found this wonderful series of metaphors.

(...) She says, nurse told me I
should furniture walk around the house, holding on to it.
I say, little auntie you are a plump armchair
in flight, a kitchen table on a difficult hike without boots,
you do the sideboard crawl like no one else, you are a sofa
rumba, you go to sleep like a rug. (...)

It ends with a dead metaphor that the preceding revived.

(...) and we'll follow the sun
with our faces until the cows come home.

Thanks, Lance, for your concise and clear summary of L and J's thesis. You obviously remember it in much more detail than I do.

Do they say anything about the difference between metaphor in this sense and what's usually called metaphor? I think their basic thesis is fascinating and true, but at the same time I recognize that a strong metaphor in poetry feels very different than the experience of "I don't think in metaphors." It's the power of imagery in the poem, so diluted in the "abstract" statement. Think of Pound's interest in the relatively concrete nature of Chinese language compared to English, which led him to imitate its effects with so-called Imagism. In other words, while L and J point to the implicit literalness or concreteness of all our language, the power of a metaphor in a poem lies in part in the unfiltered immediacy of the image. And I'm wondering what L and J say about that difference, if anything.

Well, you see, that's my point. When I say "I don't think in metaphors" I'm not thinking in metaphors, although I may, conceivably, be saying in metaphors something which approximates, in some way and to some degree, to what I'm thinking.

Experience is private. Language is public. Metaphors are a linguistic convention. The great value of metaphors, it seems to me, is that, while I cannot convey directly the colours of objects a and b as I see them internally (to use a crude example), I can say that, for me, I am having a similar experience, colour-wise, when I view a and b. For some people that will be a recognisable similarity; for others, not. I, for instance, no matter how hard I try, cannot get the idea of a green sky looking like a grasshopper.

P

metaphor
 

I think what Pound could be referring to is an atmospheric phenomenon sometimes called 'the green flash' - a very small, very quick flicker of green you see on the horizon at the instant the sun sets in the sea (if you blink you miss it - and it certainly doesn't colour the sky green). It's rare, but I have seen it so I know it exists! Looking at the Canto, I think he's looking for a metaphor to express impermanence, perhaps of beauty? power?

I agree, Mary. Surely the grasshopper's flying suggests fleetingness. The image is (for me) powerful in part because it juxtaposes the great with the small, sky with insect, so suddenly and surprisingly. "Sunset" evokes an image of oranges and reds and yellows, and then there is that flash of green. Pound's side-by-side placement of the seemingly incongruous images is an instance of how he applied to poetry what he learned about Chinese from Ernest Fenellosa (however mistaken he or Fenellosa may have been, as some have pointed out), as in the famous ur-Imagist poem:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.


And his famous statement about the poetic image: "An image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."

Well, there you go, you see. Another image of Pound's I have never got.

Whether a metaphor works for you depends so much on experience. I could just about go for faces as petals, but I have no idea where the bough comes into it, and petals aren't in any case connected to boughs, so the whole thing falls apart for me.

When a metaphor really hits home for me is when one relatively obvious quality of a is connected to the same quality of thing b, but then by extension other non-obvious comparisons between the qualities of the two are implicitly invited. I want to hear myself saying, mentally, "yes, of course it's like that".

P

I've always been ok with it: petals blown/fallen on a black bough = ghostly faces against the darkness of the Metro. Solidity (death?) vs beautiful transience, the darkness showing through.

A Korean lady I met, several years ago, came to Australia to study English.
This puzzled me at first due to her astounding vocabulary and excellent
pronunciation. But it was not a formal education she sought, but a
colloquial understanding. Her first attempts to gain insight into Australian
English came from the nightly news, of which she understood very little.
Whether considered idioms or metaphors, often interchangeable, one needs
a lot of colloquial exposure to understand the broadcasts.

One example was a thief who was caught red handed. Whether a metaphor
or an idiom is not really an issue; it is an extreme example of what I find
difficult about reading metaphor laden poetry. It was pointed out that
everyone speaks in metaphorical terms, language is a metaphor, and that
everyone can not help but think this way. I tend to agree.

But I also agree that I do not think in a true metaphorical sense because I
usually “don’t get it.” A rose is love – I know this because I have leaned it.
When reading some new association, I find it most difficult to find meaning.
Comments about which part of a train is a metaphor, or if the metaphor is
the driver, becomes so confusing to me that all meaning is lost.

There are many jokes about men having rules relating to direct thought. “It
is possible to answer every question with either a yes or a no,” being one
of my favorites. Perhaps my brain is wired wrong; bypassing some emotive
center. It was said of me during high school, “You’re dirty.” Hours of
confusion passed before I realized it was my clothing that was dirty and
not my mind or body. While this is not a metaphor, it is how literal I view
the world.

I have only met a few people who can relate to that story and each one
agrees that a rose is a rose and love is love unless there is a specific
purpose for a rose meaning love and it is presented in a suitable manner.

The example of the sky being as a grasshopper or something (see, I’ve
forgotten already) is not something I can relate to having never seen such
a green sky or bothered to catch the hue of a flying grasshopper. No
matter the effort, I cannot imagine either as a clear mental image.

To address two of points posed by Janice, it is my opinion that the death
of a metaphor occurs slowly with the passing of those people who had
direct contact with the original source. As mentioned, “Until the cows
come home.” Actually, come to think of it, I have no clear idea what this
actually means! Damn, will look that up soon.

The other point was about person opinions regarding metaphors. While I
cannot truthfully say that I don’t like them, for they do have a place,
provided I can identify them, but I find myself hardly ever using them.

I’d like to know when a metaphor becomes cliché.

I am honestly not sure if I could tell the difference between what is happening in my mind when I am "thinking" as opposed to when I am "saying"
other than some obvious things about opening my mouth and making sounds, or typing, or whatever. Although, I often speak out loud when I am thinking alone aw well.

I seem to think in linguistic conventions all the time, by which I mean all of the time -- I cannot think of a counterexample.

Anyone ever read The Origin of Consciouness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind byt Julian Jaynes? It is a fun read.

David R.

Andrew

L and J--surprisingly--have little to say about what we call metaphors here at the sphere. They seem to be feeling their way towards an argument against any truth claim on the basis that the ubiquitous and arbitrary nature of metaphor in the language undermines any such claim. I'm using truth claim here in a non technical sense. Lakoff is quite the political activist and that posture seems to motivate a lot of what he does.

I think you have to catch yourself off-guard. The minute you attend to what you are thinking you begin to translate it into language. Then you mistake the language for what you are thinking. I'm pretty sure thinking came before language. And I'm pretty sure William Golding had it near enough right in The Inheritors. What is a dream but pure thought, unsullied by the conscious mind's insidious desire to make everything look neat and tidy?

P

Off guard from what? I don't think I understand what you mean. I have no evidence to suggest there is a difference between the language and what I am thinking.

Wow. I am not sure at all. Sometimes I think that language is our species' mode of thought, or perhaps consciousness, or something. Or maybe effects of the same cause. I am not sure, but I can't think of any evidence in my own experience that thought precedes language.

Really? Dreams strike me as far more linguistic, and for that matter metaphorical, than "ordinary" language or thinking, not less so. In fact they seem sort of uberlinguisticometaphoric.

David R.

I must say that none of this - fascinating though it sometimes is - has anything at all to do with what it seems to me that I do when I write a poem, or make a poem. One thing I don't do is THINK it. The poems have nothing to do with thinking at all. They are constructs. What they are constructed out of I couldn't say. I was watching a cricket match yesterday and the fairly unreflective sportsmen were saying that once you start THINKING about what you are doing then you do it wrong. I think so too and try to think as little as possible. As a poet, I mean. My thinking is concerned with getting through life, catching trains, dodging taxes and so forth.

Yes really. Robert Graves says he thinks in broken images, but that doesn't strike me as what most people call thinking at all. Also, thinking sounds active. most of what I do as a poet isn't active at all. It happens to me.

How can I know what I think until I see what I say? I didn't say that. I read it somewhere, but it's true, isn't it

I certainly agree with you, John. It may be possible--some folks say they can, and do, do it--but I can't make a poem by thinking the way David says he thinks (and it's conceivable that both claims are right for us, individually; what do any of us really know about other minds?)

I need a certain amount of "given" material, but then I have to make a picture out of it. If I can't visualise it, I can't write it.

Interestingly, I don't often consciously use metaphors. I posted a poem here a bit ago called "8 Lines", which is actually about a piece of music of that name. Now apart from the (hardly brilliant) thought that the poem itself ought to have 8 lines, I had no idea how to render it. Anyway, shuffling through my mental library of images, I remembered a painting of (of all places) my beloved Southwold, in Suffolk. It's an expansive canvas, half sky, half sand, but with all the distant detail concentrated into a fine line in the middle, which must have been painted with a one-haired brush.

Without thinking about it too much, I wrote:

His is a country which will not be high.
Slight scenery repeats: a single line...

Aha! some would say. You were thinking in metaphors.

Well, no. I was thinking of a picture that gave me the same hypnotic sense as the music, and which demanded the same degree of attention to small details. But when I turned that into words it became a music/landscape metaphor. The connection between the image and the music is an entirely personal, private one, but the only way I could express that publicly was by using a linguistic convention.

Not that I analyze these things much--where poems come from--except when they don't seem to be coming!

Oh, well. Back to the drawing, painting, writing board!

Philip

Well now wait a minute. What di I say about how I think? Just that I can't tell the difference between the mental processes going on when I "think" vs. when I "use language." That doesn't necessitate any conclusions about how I come up with poems.

Meanwhile I think I get what John means by this:

But I am not sure if I agree with it in a literal sense. I think thoughts are constructs, and I think they are constructed from the same stuff from which language is constructed. I do agree generally about trying to "think as little as possible" in the sense of trying not to intellectualize too much (despite the impression one might get from posts like this).

As for this:

I keep hearing people say things like this, but I just don't experience it that way. I mean bit and pieces -- lines, conceits, images, metaphors, etc. -- "come to me," but that is just a metaphor for a complex precess of association that build salience and resonance for me about said bits and pieces. When I actually write a poem, I have to work at it. It doesn't just come or happen. It is more like midwifery than surgery, to be sure, but it is active work.

But this moves away from the topic of the thread. I do agree with John that this discussion, and discussion from which we have diverged, and perhaps the other discussions in this thread, have little to do with how I write poems.

David R.

"I have can't think of any evidence in my own experience that thought precedes language."

David, there are many people who have severe communications disorders that make them unable to learn verbal language, but if you spent some time with them you would be hard pressed to deny that their heads are full of thoughts. If the looks on their faces and in their eyes did not convince you, the purposeful way they negotiate their environment would bring home the point. Language is an incredibly important cognitive tool that assists us in utilizing our power to think, and for verbal people like us it is almost impossible to imagine thought without language. But in my opinion language is like a flashlight. It lets us see the thoughts in our brains and hold them up and discuss them with others, but that doesn't mean that just outside the beam, where we cannot see, there is nothing in the dark that is real.

Bob,

I have had a fair amount of experience working with kids with various degrees and kinds of communicative and language disorders. I am fully aware of the rich cognitive life people with impaired language have. I hope I am not seeming flippant or ignorant in my posts.

I still don't think it is obvious that thought precedes language. I think that they are made of the same stuff. In fact, just the sort of cases you mention contribute to making me think that. I think that when the apparatus functions "properly" there is little noticeable difference between the mental operations of "thinking" vs. "language." That seamlessness between thought and language is very noticeable when it breaks down.

Essentially where I'm coming from is a notion that "language" and "thought" are results of the same processes played through different post-production equipment. I resist the assertion that either one precedes or necessitates the other. I probably do not have reasons for that resistance that would be acceptable as evidence for an argument. Plus, much of the argument hinges on some sort of broad meaning of "language" that comprises all manner of meaning-making procedures, and is therefore hopelessly nebulous and idiosyncratic.

Anyway, I do know about communicative and language disorders, and I do not mean any of these basically philosophical arguments of mine to be interpreted as dismissive of the minds and experiences of people living with such disorders.

David R.

P.S. -- I went back and edited out the extra "have" in the sentence you quoted. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

I meant that thought preceded language in human history, and language, not in some nebulous sense, but in the sophisticated sense of that which we consciously, intentionally use to convey ideas, including abstract ideas, metaphors even. One doesn't even need to consider language impairment to see that thought precedes language in that sense. Human infants quite clearly demonstrate thought long before they can express ideas, let alone abstract ones.

As for examples of metaphor, here is one which cleverly reuses a cliche but makes it fresh by extension:

Lovesick by Rose Kelleher

Don’t look away, you gave me this disease.
A carrier, you passed it unawares.
My every cell is altered now; each bears
your stamp, a mutant, every drop of me
adulterated. If I could, I’d squeeze
the stinging poison out. It’s in my hair,
my fingernails, each microscopic pair
of spiral strands, corrupting by degrees.

Geneticists who study me on slides
could piece you back together. My remains
will carry traces, in these scalded veins,
of your warm hand; in my triglycerides,
and in the deepest etchings of my brain,
they’ll find the you my body memorized.


Philip

Philip,

I am no more sure that thought preceded language in human history. But I do mean something less easily defined by "language." I also think the infant example doesn't rest the case. But I do not have stamina or the time right now to make my argument, so I will cop out for now. Sorry.

David R.

David,

You're right, people always trot out Piaget at this point, and make him jump through a few hoops, along with brain damage, beetles in boxes, and anecdotal testimony. Personally, I wonder about the practical value of the question. How would we even know? ;)

On the original subject though, and from a pragmatic point of view, we're stuck with Morton's fork. Either we go with direct statement, or head for metaphor. But direct statement is never clear, if the Richards/Emerson crowd is right, and all we're left with is misunderstanding.

And if we decide to go with metaphor, then we're really in trouble. Either no metaphor is true (after all, one thing is not another thing), or every metaphor is so true (since all is one, and everything is everything else) that any particular metaphor is meaningless.

But there must be a third choice, something besides misunderstanding and meaninglessness. It's the only pragmatic option. I just have no idea what it is... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

That's right - the third choice is the pragmatic one. Let me draw from science: the description of an atom's nucleus and electrons being like a mini solar system was a misunderstanding (sometimes knowingly so). Use of the simile helped us ask further questions and come up with new similes that revealed the old ones as suggestive but meaningless. Meanwhile, a new vocabulary of theories was invented which we used to make even better similes. But we know they're not "right", that they're a provisional rather than accurate description. And on we go.

Bill

I'm not sure it is right to talk about a metaphor being "True" or "False". "Apt" or "inapt", "effective" or "ineffective" maybe, but, even then, every metaphor is more or less so for a given reader. To use a metaphor is not to say, thing a is thing b, but to speak of it as if it were, for the purposes of illuminating some aspect(s) of it, no?

Philip