Metaphor and Metamorphosis

Abstract

The author's English summary from the article:

The study of metaphor, the central trope responsible for the artistic quality of a text, started in the times of Aristotle. Since then, many scholarly opinions have been ventured and several theories have been developed. One of the principle objectives of metaphor studies is admitted to be its relationship with other tropes: simile and metonymy. Along with this, scholars have been exploring interrelationships between metaphor and metamorphosis. The so-called transformations are prevalent in the artistic thought. They offer a vivid picture of the author’s (character’s) spiritual state and very often determine chief merits of artistic images found in a text.

Virtual or imaginary transformations are associated with mythic metamorphoses. It should also be noted that unlike simile and metonymy, rusudan canava metamorphosis is not a trope. Another noteworthy fact is that the majority of scholars draw a clear line between metaphor and metamorphosis. This viewpoint is supported by two arguments: 1. Metaphor implies nothing that could suggest transformation. On the contrary, bidimensionality, conceptual likening of two altogether different ‘items’ is inherent with metaphor. On the other hand, metamorphosis is the repercussion of mythological thought when every type of transformation is perceived as a real fact.

Hence, transformation is a means of world perception. 2. Metaphor is distinguished for its tendency to penetrate the field of semantics, which is not characteristic of metamorphosis. In my opinion, the erroneous conceptual basis of such reasoning lies in limiting metamorphosis solely to the domain of ‘mythological thought’. Close analysis of the nature and kinds of metamorphosis revealed that the latter implies an unanticipated identification of absolutely opposite values (categories, classes). And the myths reflecting a metamorphosis explain the prime cause (etiology) of unanticipated transformations. These universal etiological myths offer a single or several similar versions throwing light on the semantics of a metamorphosal image, turned into a poetic figure.

In fact, ancient creative thinking is mostly based exactly on metamorphosal images. Metamorphosis, an ‘output’ of the earliest, most archaic thinking, is to a greater extent a source of ancient metaphor. This thinking incorporates every manifestation of primeval syncretism – religion, thought, generalization and creativity; integration and disintegration. Naturally, not all metamorphoses develop into a metaphor; sometimes metamorphoses retain their original nature and appear as independent elements. These processes can be compared to the treatment of diamonds. Not every piece of rough diamond will turn into a fine cultivated gem but only those cut by a skillful master.

Metamorphosis is a rough diamond in the hands of a master, who can cut it into a metaphor if he wishes so. The aim of the paper is to determine the function of metamorphosis in differentiating between new and old (ancient) metaphors. Conceptual analysis of Ovid’s Metamorphoses will help to find an answer to the posed question. The Metamorphoses is a most significant break-through in the literary theory. The poet offered to the readers (as well as to the authors) of every epoch and taste an inexhaustible source of poetic tropology – the archetypes of the so-called ‘fixed’ metaphors – etiological metamorphoses – which, to put it metaphorically, never ceases to flow in the veins of ‘old’ as well as ‘new’ metaphors.

Every primary metamorphosis was unexpected, unique and astonishing, having the same effect as a ‘fresh’ metaphor. Metaphor and metamorphosis first met when the idea of the possible transformation was born in human mind, which afterwards generated ‘activated’ word. ‘Activated’ word refers not to the nomination of things but to the ‘readiness’ of a word for ‘activity’. The ‘encounter’ of metaphor and metamorphosis, or their ‘stemming’ from the same origin, points to the deep conceptual cause of the two phenomena. However, the following events took such a turn that metamorphosis remained confined to myth, failing to expand beyond the formalistic aspect of metempsychosis, while metaphor metafora da metamorfoza enjoyed further development and became a means of world perception.

The types of metaphor considered in the article can be conventionally called ‘mythic metaphors’ (in fact, they are epiphors, in which semantic shift is due to its transfer from species to species, from genus to species, from species to genus. These metaphors are especially close to personification and symbol). However, it should not be understood as if the above-mentioned metaphors were used only by ancient authors. The article presents an analysis of a poem by Galaktion Tabidze, which, I reckon, is the example of a ‘mythic’ metaphor: Astride On a Bridge A horse rushes ahead crushing bridges with his hoofs, But suddenly pricked up his ears, His eyes filled up – over there With human misfortune … A light row passed swiftly before his eyes; A fish is playing with streams He was a horseman – an ordinary horseman – a man – like a man, and not Zeus.` The only character of the poem is the horse.

It is him who ‘rushes ahead crushing bridges with his hoofs’; he pricked up his ears and his eyes filled up with ‘human misfortune’. The analysis starts with the following phrase: ‘A light row passed swiftly before his eyes’. What row does the poet speak about? ‘Fish’, ‘horseman’ and ‘Zeus’ mentioned in the following three lines prompt us to think that the well-known metamorphosal phrases transformed in the poet’s mind into a new poetic metaphor: in particular, perspective I: Horse is the animal of Poseidon, the lord of the sea. The zoomorphic iconography of Poseidon is associated with horse in the same way as that of Zeus with bull (the mentioning of the fish intensifies the relationship between the horse and the water element).

Perspective II – as ‘a light row passes swiftly before his eyes’, the steed is the horseman as well. Perspective III – Although bull and horse are the zoomorphic hypostases of the supreme deities, they are of lower nobility than the deities. According to the well-known saying, what is forgivable for Zeus, is not forgivable for the bull. Hence, ‘He was a horseman – an ordinary horseman – a man – like a man, and not Zeus.’ So, through the fusion of three mythic layers, two of which (Zeus and Poseidon, and correspondingly, the horse and the bull) are metamorphoses, a poetic figure is created.

Published in the journal Sjani, vol. 9 (2008), pp. 57–58. Open the paper