THE MEANING OF METAPHORS PART I

(The full title of this entry used to be The Meaning Of Metaphors, Or Original Versus Reproductive Speech. I have settled on the shorter version, though, not to overburden my titles with too much text, as long as I can present my original longer version in this preambular note.)

This is an important entry, as it opens up an all new direction in my attempt to address the philosophy of linguistics, as well as the whole epistemological (or, perhaps, gnoseological?) section of classical philosophy, in a fresh and meaningful way, based on my findings in the fields of comparative and political linguistics, once, the central components of my IUSAC research on the Non-Traditional Methods of Political Analysis. Importantly, I ought to pay proper tribute here to the great scholar, and a one-man science, Grigori Lvovich Permyakov, the founder of structural paroemiology, based on his unique definition of proverb as a “sign of a situation.”

(This entry for right now will be a collection of short sketches, memoranda to myself, to be developed into a lengthy essay in the future, but in the meantime it is to be continuously revised and added to, and each time improved, so that at the end my thoughts on this subject may be well-organized and collected in one place, to be able to write a coherent and continuous piece, although hardly claiming to be comprehensive, which task is to be left to scholars-organizers, who might be tempted to develop these ideas into a scientific undertaking. I am sure there are plenty of these around.)

…There is a particular reverence for the metaphor among the noble minds with a talent for good writing, be that Schopenhauer, or Nietzsche, but it all starts with Aristotle:

“The greatest thing in style is to have a command of metaphor. This power cannot be acquired; it is a mark of a genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.” (Poetics, xxii.)

“Metaphor is the highest value in both prose and poetry, but one must give a special attention to the use of metaphor in prose, for the resources of prose are less abundant than those of poetry.” (Rhetoric, iii.)

Schopenhauer in his Parerga und Paralipomena (the section often rendered as Art of Literature), continues the lavish praise: “Metaphors and similes are of great value, in so far as they explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even more detailed similes which grow into parables or allegories are nothing more than exhibitions of some relations in their simplest, most visible, and palpable forms. The growth of ideas rests, at bottom, upon similes, because ideas arise by a process of combining the similarities and neglecting the differences between things. Furthermore, intelligence, in the strictest sense of the word, ultimately consists in seizing relations; and a clear and pure grasp of relations is all the more often attained when comparison is made between cases which lie wide apart from one another, and between things of quite different nature. As long as a relation is known to me as existing only in a single case, I have but an individual idea of it --- in other words, only an intuitive knowledge of it. But as soon as I can see the same relation in two different cases, I have a general idea of its whole nature, and this is a deeper, and more perfect knowledge… Since, then, similes and metaphors are such powerful engines of knowledge, it is a sign of great intelligence in a writer if his similes are unusual, and, at the same time, to the point. Aristotle also observes that, by far, the most important thing to a writer is to have this power of metaphor; for it is a gift that cannot be acquired, and it is a mark of genius.”

What is, then, a metaphor? Here is our old friend Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary’s much down-to-earth definition:

“Metaphor: a transferring to one word the sense of another; a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing, by being spoken of as if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word, or phrase, ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another, and distinguished from simile, in which this comparison is made explicit by the use of the words like, as, etc.”

It is generally assumed, as Webster’s is stating here, that the presence of an explicit comparison will make a metaphor technically false, turning it into the inferior quality of a simile. (If we compare the following two phrases: “She is a fox,” and “She is like a fox,” their difference should clarify this last point.) I must agree that the metaphor does have a greater flair than a simile. But, otherwise, this school textbook rule of thumb does not go to the heart of the matter, which is excellently captured by Schopenhauer in the passage above. (He starts it by lumping together ‘metaphors and similes,’ but then goes on with metaphors only, implying that the technical difference between these two is of little interest to him!) Now, assuming that a metaphor always goes beyond the literal sense, what is the meaning of “literal”? The answer is by no means obvious, and it depends in large part on the level of sophistication of the language. Furthermore, the question of true versus false, raised here, is also far trickier than it seems at first sight. It certainly has something to do with what I call ‘the truth of created fiction.’ There are two types of speech: ‘reproductive,’ where we use words and phrases in existence to reproduce reality in strict linguistic terms, like in a chess game played by today’s players, yet repeating move by move a certain game (or games) played in the past; and ‘productive,’ that is, ‘original,’ which creates its own expressive medium, revitalizing old words by giving them new meanings, sort of metaphoric speech, which nourishes the culture and helps it develop by the continuous renewal of its language. The most obvious example of this function is when new words are invented, to apply to the new terms and phenomena which had just come into existence and do not have a corresponding “reproducible” tag in the linguistic bank of a particular society. But creative speech, sometimes called ‘poetic’ speech (this term, actually, does not go far enough to cover the whole spectrum of specific cases of this nature) is by no means limited to such instances of deficient terminology. It is a means of progress and cultural renewal, it is one of the worthiest deposits into the treasury of national refinement and wisdom. It is mostly (or, some will say entirely) through the words which we use that we see the world, and the critical difference between the advanced and the primitive species of human civilization lies in the quality of the vocabulary that each of them uses to describe their reality and their spiritual condition.

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)