Aristotle, The Poetics

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance.

Aristotle

Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.

Chesterton on slang and idiom

Breaking the ice

FROST

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don’t know the metaphor in its strength and weakness. You don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you.

Frost

They don’t know what they may safely like in the libraries and galleries. They don’t know how to judge an editorial when they see one. They don’t know how to judge a political campaign. They don’t know when they are being fooled by a metaphor, an analogy, a parable. And metaphor is, of course, what we are talking about. Education by poetry is education by metaphor.

Matter and Spirit

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.

To think is putting this and that together; it is just saying one thing in terms of another. The greaest of all attempts to say one thing in terms of another is the phil attempt to say matter in terms of spirit or spirit in terms of matter, to make the final unity. That is the greatest attempt that ever failed. We stop just short there. But it is the height of poetry, the height of all thinking, the height of all poetic thinking, that attempt to say matter in terms of spirit and spirit in terms of matter.

Judgment

All metaphor breaks down somewhere—looking for likenesses and unlikeness (space between tenor and vehicle). IT is touch and go with the metaphor and until you have lived with it long enough you don’t know when it is going you don’t know how much you can get out of it and when it will cease to yield. It is a very living thing, it is life itself.

Materialism

Materialism cannot say all in terms of matter. The only materialist—be he poet teacher scientist Politian or statesman—is the man who gets lost in his material without a gathering metaphor to throw it into shape and order. He is the lost soul.

Emerson• It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are

emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope. The world is emblematic parts of speech are metaphors bc the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. Nature, 1836

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Walker Percy

• Metaphors aren’t just pleasing or shocking but they discover an aspect of the thing which had gone unformulated before.

• • We can only conceive of being by comparison, we sidle up to it

by laying something else alongside. We approach the thing not directly but by pairing, by opposing symbol and thing

• • The wrongness of metaphor is seen to be not a vagary of poets

but a special case of that mysterious error which is the very condition of our knowing anything at all. We know one thing through the mirror of another.

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Mother to Son, Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor --Bare.But all the timeI'se been a-climbin' on,And reachin' landin's,And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the darkWhere there ain't been no light.So boy, don't you turn back.Don't you set down on the steps'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.Don't you fall now --For I'se still goin', honey,I'se still climbin',And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

We grow accustomed to the Dark --When light is put away --As when the Neighbor holds the LampTo witness her Goodbye --A Moment -- We uncertain stepFor newness of the night --Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --And meet the Road -- erect --And so of larger -- Darkness --Those Evenings of the Brain --When not a Moon disclose a sign --Or Star -- come out -- within --

Cont.

The Bravest -- grope a little --And sometimes hit a TreeDirectly in the Forehead --But as they learn to see --Either the Darkness alters --Or something in the sightAdjusts itself to Midnight --And Life steps almost straight.

Love III, Herbert

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin.But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in,Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here"; Love said, "You shall be he.""I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear, I cannot look on thee."Love took my hand and smiling did reply, "Who made the eyes but I?”

Love III, cont.

Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve.""And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?" "My dear, then I will serve.""You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat." So I did sit and eat.