From the Tree to the Labyrinth (30 page)

Precisely on account of this dramatic impasse, which will lead to its collapse, the
analogia entis
has less cognitive value than a good metaphor.

The poetry and prose of the Middle Ages abound in metaphors, while contemporary theory, be it philosophical or poetic and rhetorical, is inadequate to account for this richness. This should not surprise us, as it is a commonplace that the culture of the time frequently shows a dichotomy between theory and practice. The typical example is music, a field in which the doctrinal discussion is extremely abstract, based on Pythagorean models,
relicto aurium iudicio
(“setting aside the judgment of the ears”), as Boethius remarked, and as a result deaf to the evolution of musical practice (see Eco 1987 and Dahan 1980: 172). But at least in the case of music there is an explanation, which is, as we mentioned, the weight of the Pythagorean tradition as transmitted by Boethius. Can we find a similar reason in the case of the theory of metaphor?

We can, and it lies in the weight that the commentary on Aristotle’s
Categories
had throughout medieval doctrinal culture thanks to the mediation of Porphyry.

Let us take another look at what we said in Chapter 1 (
section 1.2.1
) apropos of the
Arbor Porphyriana:
that it makes it possible, in other words, to classify, but not to define. In order to define, the tree would have to introduce many more differences than it actually does, or it would have to resolve itself into a network of differences. Every time Aristotle is faced with explaining a metaphor he has recourse to local “ontologies” that are far more flexible than a tree of genera and species.

Now, the doctrinal thought of the Middle Ages is unable to wean itself away from the model provided by the
Arbor,
and as a consequence, while it can easily understand and justify substitutions from genus to species and vice versa, it finds itself in difficulties when it comes to talking about the multiplicity of properties that enter into play in metaphorical substitutions. It is worth noting that Geoffrey of Vinsauf, who was not a philosopher, was not the only one to point out the need to take into consideration
all
of the possible properties of an object: philosophers and theologians too, when it came to analyzing a metaphor, were perfectly well aware of what, often peripheral, characteristics formed the basis of the amalgam of the two sememes. But when it came to constructing a theory of metaphorical invention (considering the subtleties they were capable of when discussing problems of logic), they found themselves without a sufficiently flexible semantic model, and they were loath to call into question the canonical model of the Porphyrian tree that had been such an integral part of their intellectual formation.

Why this instinctive reluctance to challenge the world order established by the
Arbor Porphyriana?
If what we said at the conclusion of
Chapter 1
is true, resorting to flexible, even unexplored, “ontologies” to explain metaphorical expressions meant admitting that ontologies, like the Porphyrian tree itself, were practical, provisional tools, and not definitive images of the structure of the world and the Great Chain of Being. And not even the most faithful devotees of Aristotle in those centuries could escape the influence of Neo-Platonism (Thomas Aquinas himself commented not only on Aristotle but also on Dionysius).

To construct or suggest the possibility of an unexpectedly adequate ontology, we do not have to start with the supposition that the universe must always be seen according to a single organizational model according to preordained genera and species. But it was precisely this idea of an “ontological revolution” that could not even cross the mind of a medieval thinker, because their very image of the world was conceived along the model of a stable
Arbor Porphyriana.

This helps us understand, I believe, why a historical period so rich in extraordinary metaphors (audaciously proposed by its poets) found itself unable to elaborate a theory of metaphor as an instrument of fresh knowledge.

This is a shorter, edited version of a paper delivered at a seminar at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici of the University of Bologna in March 2001 in the context of a series of talks on the fortunes of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor. It appeared in Lorusso (2005).

1
. “Tropus est dictio translata a propria significatione ad non propriam similitudinem ornatus necessitatisue causa.… Metaphora est rerum uerborumque translatio. Haec fit modis quattuor, ab animali ad animale, ab inanimali ad inanimale, ab animale ad inanimale, ab inanimali ad animale: ab animali ad animale, ut
Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae
; nam et auriga et gubernator animam habent: ab inanimali ad inanimale, ut
ut pelagus tenuere rates
; nam et naues et rates animam non habent: ab animali ad inanimale, ut
Atlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput
et cetera: nam ut haec animalis sunt, ita mons animam non habet, cui membra hominis ascribuntur: ab inanimali ad animale, ut
si tantum pectore robur concipis
; nam ut robur animam non habet, sic utique Turnus, cui haec dicuntur, animam habet” (
Ars maior
III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 668–669). “A trope is an expression taken out of its proper meaning to a similar improper one for the purpose of embellishment or necessity.… Metaphor is the transformation of things or words. This takes place in four ways, from the animate to the animate, from the inanimate to the inanimate, from the animate to the inanimate, from the inanimate to the animate—from the animate to the animate, as
Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae
[P. Terentius Varro Atacinus,
Argonautae
]; for both
auriga
‘driver’ [or ‘charioteer’: Lewis and Short] and
gubernator
‘guider’ [steersman,’ ‘pilot’: Lewis and Short] have souls—from inanimate to inanimate, as
ut pelagus tenuere rates
(Aeneid 5.8) ‘when the ships gained the deep’; for neither
naves
‘ships’ nor
rates
‘rafts, ships’ are alive—from animate to inanimate, as A
tlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput
; (Aeneid 4.248) ‘Atlas, whose pine-wreathed head is always encircled by black clouds,’ for these are animate,
mons
‘mountain,’ to which human members are attributed, is not alive—from the inanimate to the animate, as
si tantum pectore robur concipis
(Aeneid 11.368) ‘if in your heart you nourish such strength,’ since
robur
‘strength’ is not alive; likewise also Turnus, to whom these things are said, is a living being” (Trans. Jim Marchand, online at
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/donatus.3.english.html
).

2
. “Allegoria est tropus, quo aliud significatur quam dicitur, ut
et iam tempus equum fumantia soluere colla
, hoc est ‘carmen finire’… Aenigma est obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum, ut
mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me
, cum significet aquam in glaciem concrescere et ex eadem rursus effluere” (“Allegory is a trope, in which one signifies something different from what one says, as in “and now it is time to unyoke the necks of our smoking steeds” (Virgil,
Georgics
, II, 542), in other words, to finish the poem. An enigma (or riddle) is a proposition that is obscure because of a secret resemblance between things, such as ‘my mother gave birth to me and she will soon be born out of me,’ which means that water is changed into ice and then will flow once again from the ice”) (
Ars maior
III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 671–672).

3
. The Virgilian simile is from
Aeneid
, I, 589.

4
. The idea probably comes from Demetrius Phalereus (
On Style,
79): not all metaphors are interchangeable: the
auriga
may be called
gubernator
and vice versa, but, though we may call the lower slopes of the mountain
the foot of Mount Ida
we cannot call human feet
slopes.

5
. Ab inanimali ad inanimal, ut Zachariae undecimo:
Aperi, Libane, portas tuas
. Item psalmo VIII:
Qui perambulat semitas maris
. Translatio est enim a civitate ad montem, et a terra ad mare, quorum nullum animam habet. Ab animali ad inanimal, ut, Amos I:
Exsiccatus est vertex Carmeli
. Homines enim, non montes, verticem habent. 4, Ab inanimali ad animal, ut, Ezech. XI:
Auferam a vobis cor lapideum
. Non enim lapis, sed populus animam habet (PL 90, 179D–180B). “From inanimate to inanimate, as in Zechariah 11, 1: ‘Open thy doors, O Lebanon.’ And likewise in Psalms 8, 8: ‘whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.’ In fact the metaphor is from the city to the mountain and from the land to the sea, and neither of these things is animate. From animate to inanimate, as in Amos 1, 2: ‘and the [head] of Carmel shall wither.’ In fact, men have heads, not mountains. From inanimate to animate, as in Ezekiel 11, 19: ‘I will take the stony heart out of [your] flesh.’ In fact, the stone is not animate, but people have a soul”. Examples follow of transferrals to birds, beasts, and so on.

6
. The Latin quote is from Cicero 1954, p. 345.

7
. “Undecumque licet ducere translationes? Nequaquam, sed tantum de honestis rebus. Nam summopere fugienda est omnis turpitudo earum rerum, ad quas eorum animos qui audiunt trahet similitudo, ut dictum est
morte Africani castratam rem publicam
et
stercus curiae
: in utroque deformis cogitatio similitudinis” (“Are we free to make metaphors out of anything we choose? Not at all, only from decent things. In fact we must avoid at all costs any vulgarity in the things to which the simile draws the attention of one’s listeners, as when someone said ‘The republic was castrated by the death of Scipio Africanus’ or the expression ‘the dung of the senate’; in both cases the conception of the comparison is dishonorable”) (Halm 1863: 38).

8
. See McGarry 1955, p. 56.

9
. For the citations from Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, see Faral (1924).

10
. “Considerandum est verbum, quod debet transferri, de quibus dicatur proprie; et, si ad aliam rem debeat transferri, cavendum est ut in ea proprietate sit similitudo. Sic autem debet inveniri similitudo: perscrutandum est in illo verbo quiddam commune, quod pluribus conveniat quam illud verbum; et quibuscumque aliis commune conveniat proprie, conveniet illud verbum traslative” (“You have to consider what the word to be used metaphorically can appropriately be used for; and if it is to be used metaphorically for something else, you must make sure that the comparison fits with its proper use. The comparison is to be found in the following way: one must seek carefully in that word something in common, something that fits other things in addition to that word ; and whatever other thing what they have in common is suited to, that word will also be suited metaphorically”) (Faral: 286).

11
. “For if you now put this property of the smiling of the meadows together with its antecedents, concomitants and consequences, you will generate so many witty propositions and enthymemes that the fields themselves in springtime do not produce so many flowers. I call antecedents the causes of this metaphorical Smile: that is, the return of the sun from the hibernal tropic to the sign of Aries. The wafting of Zephyr fecundator of the earth. The warm Austral winds. The rains of Springtime. The retreat of the snows. The autumn seedtime. Thus you will say: Amico SOLI arridentia prata reditum gratulantur. Vis scire cur prata rideant?… Suavissimis Austri delibuta suauys, subrident prata.Dubitas cur prata rideant? Imbribus ebria sunt
”
(“The laughing meadows salute their friend the sun on his return. Do you want to know why the meadows are smiling?… Smothered with the cloying kisses of the Auster wind, the meadows smile. Do you not know why the meadows smile. They are drunk with the rains”).

12
. Pépin (1958, 1970) and Auerbach (1944) have demonstrated with a wealth of examples that the classical world, too, understood “symbol” and “allegory” as synonyms, just as their patristic and medieval exegetes did. The examples, in which the term “symbol” is also used for those didactic and conceptualizing representations that in another context will be called “allegories,” range from Philo to grammarians like Demetrius, from Clement of Alexandria to Hippolytus of Rome, from Porphyry to the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, from Plotinus to Iamblichus.

13
. We encounter various formulations of this maxim, as a definition of trope or allegory, in Cicero (
De oratore
, 3.41.166):
ut aliud dicatur, aliud intelligendum sit
(“so that one thing may be expressed and another understood”); Donato (
Ars maior
III, 6), Ambrose (
De Abraham libri duo
, I, 4, 28):
Allegoria est cum aliud geritur et aliud figuratur
(“We have allegory when one thing is presented and we imagine another”); Augustine (
Sermo
272):
Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur sacramenta, quia in eis aliud uidetur, aliud intelligitur
(“These things, brethren, are therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing appears and something else is intended”); Cassiodorus (
Expositio Psalmorum
, VII. 1,80):
schema quod dicitur allegoria, id est inversio, aliud dicens, aliud significans
(“The figure called allegory, that is, inversion, says one thing and means another”); Bede (
De schematibus et tropis
, II.2.12):
Allegoria est tropus quo aliud significatur quam dicitur
(“Allegory is a figure that signifies something different from what it says”); and Isidore (
Etymologiae
I.37.22):
Allegoria est alieniloquium. Aliud enim sonat, et alius intelligitur
(“Allegory is other-speech, because it says something literally and something else is understood”).