A question on metaphors

[Ted]

Does a metaphor have to work completely in every way for it to be successful?

Seremba posted a poem in High titled Bear. One of the problems I had with it was the metaphor (gardener as bear) only seemed to apply to certain aspects of the gardener, rather than everything the gardener did. Apologies to Seremba, but is it acceptable to use a metaphor only for drawing "partial" similarities?

Ted

[Kim]

Originally posted by Tedward:

Does a metaphor have to work completely in every way for it to be successful?


Ted

This is just off the top of my head, Ted, but I'd say no. I'm fine with reading a metaphor that uses only selective traits in the comparison. As long as the comparison is not so remote that the metaphor seems contrived or seems to be an extreme stretch of the imagination, I don't think it's a problem when it's one metaphor in a whole poem. To use an example from a song, John Prine says, "Broken hearts and dirty windows make life difficult to see." Clearly, broken hearts and grubby windows don't have an extraordinary amount of things in common, but the metaphor still works in the context of the piece. However, if the whole poem is dependent on an extended metaphor, there better be some substance to the comparison for me to buy in to it. Does that make sense? I think I may be rambling.
Kim

[Howard Miller]

Actually, Kim's "rambling" isn't really rambling at all but perfectly good sense.

When a poet drops a metaphor (or a simile) into a single line of poetry, most often he is after a single clear point of resemblance between the two things compared; in such cases, it isn't necessary that the vehicle (that which is used for comparative purposes) and the tenor (that which is actually being talked about) correspond in every detail, and often there is only a single point that is important. For instance, when Keats says,

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,"

the only point of similarity he's interested in between an astronomer's discovering a new planet and his reading Chapman's Homer is the excitement of discovery; the word "felt" clearly emphasizes that single point as the important one. Keats makes nothing of any other potential similarities, e.g., that reading and astronomical observation are both essentially solitary activities, nor do they need to be shown or even to exist for the metaphor to be successful in achieving what it was intended to.

Certainly, it's to the writer's advantage if his metaphor possesses more than a single dimension. Burns' "My love is like a red, red rose," for example, has several possible points of similarity: first and foremost, the idea of "beauty" is fundamental; however, a budding rose is suggestive also of youth; it also possesses a pleasant fragrance; its petals are soft. All of these attributes of the vehicle ("rose") may be transferred to the tenor ("you"), and we perceive a more multi-dimensional "you" in the process. This doesn't mean that vehicle and tenor need correspond at every point, however; roses also have thorns, suffer from blight, and may be infested with aphids, but we somehow doubt that Burns intended any of these similarities to be brought to mind by his comparison. The same applies to Pope's couplet

'Tis with our judgements as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

Here, he makes use of two points of similarity: first, that no two clocks or watches keep exactly the same time (i. e., metaphorically, no two individuals use exactly the same standards for measuring value); and, second, that each of us relies on his own watch rather than someone else's (i. e., each of us trusts his own judgement rather than someone else's). Again, one could find other points of similarity but Pope doesn't emphasize those in any way, so that they (or any differences, as well), are unimportant in context. Usually, as here with Pope, the poet will give us some degree of guidance as to which correspondences are those we should pay attention to and, by implication of the unstated, which we should ignore.

However, when we come to an extended metaphor, that is, a situation in which an entire poem or a lengthy section of a poem is based on a single comparison, then we expect--and have every reason to expect--that the correspondences are going to be far more complex and numerous. Donne's comparison of two lovers who are separated by distance to the two legs of a compass (the kind used for drawing circles, not the kind for finding magnetic north) is one of the most famous:

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, make no show
To move, but doth, if th'other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Here, Donne develops just about every possible detail of the compass and shows its various correspondences to the separated lovers.

As another example, here is Samuel Daniel's "Sonnet XXXIX":

Look, Delia, how we 'steem the half-blown Rose,
The image of thy blush and Summer's honor,
Whilst in her tender green she doth enclose
That pure sweet Beauty Time bestows upon her.
No sooner spreads her glory in the air,
But straight her full-blown pride is in declining;
She then is scorn'd that late adorn'd the Fair;
So clouds thy beauty after fairest shining.
No April can revive thy wither'd flowers,
Whose blooming grace adorns thy glory now;
Swift speedy Time, feather'd with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
O let not then such riches waste in vain,
But love whilst that thou mayst be lov'd again.

Here, unlike Burns' rose/lover metaphor, the comparison is developed in far more detail with more correspondences. In the first quatrain, Delia's youthful beauty is compared to that of a just-opening rose. In the second, the rose's beauty begins to fade just as it fully opens, as Delia's beauty will begin to fade just as it peaks. In the third, the rose--having faded and withered--can never regain that beauty, just as Delia won't once hers has faded because she will only grow older, not younger. The degree of detail and correspondence is much greater here than in Burns' simple one-line reference.

Basically, the more central to a poem a particular metaphor is, the greater should be the correspondence between tenor and vehicle.


Howard



[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 03-15-2002).]

[Ted]

Thank you very much, Kim and Howard. Hie this thread to Blurbs, methinks.

Ted

[debi z]

Interestingly enough Ted, and as an aside, I didn't read the bear as a metaphore. I think that Seremba has written a poem about a bear gardening, (which I keep meaning to comment on). I know that what I got may not be what she intended, but I found the traightforward presentation as I read it in the poem to be intended as a factual view, precisely because I didn't get any sense of metaphor. Now she may say, (Seremba?) that I missed the entire point (which is easy enough for me to do) or others may say, it has to be a metaphor because bears don't garden. But they can in a poem, and that's the way I read it. And enjoyed it very much.
So maybe this isn't too much off of a tangent, because it may say something about how we define metaphor and how we recognize it?


debi

[Ted]

That is interesting, Debi. Above all things I am a student of writing, and of poetry in particular, so the idea that a bear could be anthropomorphized simply didn't occur to me; I assumed it had to be a metaphor because "bears don't garden." Thank you for providing another - probably more accurate - perspective on this piece.

Ted

[Seremba]

Originally posted by Tedward:

Does a metaphor have to work completely in every way for it to be successful?

Seremba posted a poem in High titled Bear. One of the problems I had with it was the metaphor (gardener as bear) only seemed to apply to certain aspects of the gardener, rather than everything the gardener did. Apologies to Seremba, but is it acceptable to use a metaphor only for drawing "partial" similarities?

Ted

No Apologies neccessary Ted, In the said piece 'Bear' I was using the animal as a metaphor for the end of hibernation, the closing of winter,'the house' - 'a cave': 'the hand'-' a paw' etc, I could have used a hedgehog but bears have been humanised through story telling; Goldilocks etc;
The metaphor was always only hinted at,
so as Debi said it could have been a bear
doing the gardening and not a person
with a sore head!

That aside it was my intention not to
stretch the metaphor and I am asking myself
Why Not ? The piece may have been more successful if I had used the bear to draw
full similarities. Using metaphors
can always be tricky because once you have
openly utilised them it seems only right
to carry them through the piece, perhaps
it is only what we as readers accept or
expect - sometimes though extending metaphors can be obvious.

Seremba

[gecian]

An extreme example of metaphors not being kept is the Protean metaphor, as in this example from Bill's Tempest, where Antonio,

"having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i’ the state
To what tune pleas’d his ear."

When the speaker begins this, he is using "key" as in "keys of the office" with the metaphorical connections of power etc. Halfway through, "key" changes meaning -- it becomes a musical key (key-note), to which hearts are "set". This pun changes the metaphorical sense as well: Antonio is not just powerful, but also a manipulative bastard.

[Howard Miller]

gecian--

I would consider your example an excellent instance of an effectively mixed metaphor, one where the mixing/change is significant in context. However, the standard warning needs to be issued in conjunction:

Performed here by a professional metaphor mixist under controlled circumstances; should not be attempted at home by the average beginning writer.


Howard

[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 03-18-2002).]

[Ted]

Seremba, thank you for responding. In this case it helps to get info straight from the bear's mouth. It seems I still have much to learn.

Gecian and Howard (again), thanks for your responses.

Ted