The Comic Muse

As obliterating fire lights up a vast forest

along the crests of a mountain, and the flare shows far off,

so as they marched, from the magnificent bronze the gleam went

dazzling all about through the upper air to the heaven.

Homer, Iliad, Book II, lines 455-458 (translation Lattimore)

It is older even than the craft of written story: the desire to compare this to that; to illuminate the perception of one thing by juxtaposing it to some other. This is metaphor, a word derived from a Greek word which literally means “a bearing across” or a “transfer.” My father once saw in Athens a moving van with the company title painted across it: METAPHORA.

One Thing and Another

To understand how transference works in literary terms, consider the passage from Homer in my epigraph. The Achaian army is on the move. The poet wants us to clearly perceive how the dazzling gleam from their bronze armor lights up the sky, so he borrows a perception from elsewhere: a forest fire lighting up the (presumably) night sky along the crest of a mountain. In technical grammatical terms this is a simile (as the poet says “As obliterating fire….”), but we won’t fuss over that distinction. The more intriguing question is, why does the poet bother about “transferring” the image of the forest fire to the image of the marching army? We can imagine a lesser poet describing the marching army by using only the last two lines from the quoted passage:

so as they marched, from the magnificent bronze the gleam went/dazzling all about through the upper air to the heaven.

But the effect in this case would be diminished. The “transference” of the forest fire image helps make vivid the gleam from the bronze armor. It is not so much, perhaps, that the forest fire image is in itself more vivid than the image of the bronze gleam from the armor. After all, can’t we imagine a poet describing the flare of a forest fire along a mountain crest by comparing it to the gleam from the bronze armor of a marching army? At one level, it seems it is the juxtaposition, or collection, of images that vivifies the image of the marching army. The more perceptions there are, the more intense our literary delight. But not just any perceptions will do. Among the images there needs to be likeness in the midst of unlikeness. For the metaphor to work, the flare in the mountains must be like the gleam of the bronze.

The Attraction of Metaphor

In his esteemed work of literary criticism, the Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle asserts that of all the modes of literary expression metaphor is the greatest. He even goes on to contend that he doesn’t think the craft of making metaphors can be taught; it is a mark of genius. Whatever we may think about that, Aristotle concludes his tribute to metaphor by saying that in making good metaphors one is “contemplating” the likenesses of things.

Here is the attraction of metaphor: we love to contemplate the likenesses of things in the midst of their unlikeness. But why? Because in perceiving likeness amidst unlikeness, we deepen our knowledge of the world.

In Homer’s metaphor, the knowledge we gain is mainly perceptual. We understand better the visual effect of the bronze armor’s gleam by comparing it to a forest fire. But the comparison of the armor’s gleam to the fire’s flare also brings with it a sense of awe. For only a vast and terrible army could produce that kind of gleam from its armor, just as only a vast and terrible forest fire could light up the night sky above a mountain.

All human beings desire to know, Aristotle says in another famous text. And we come to know reality, he continues, first of all by making comparisons through our senses, comparisons which ultimately inspire the mind to make deeper distinctions between things. To make a distinction is to discern how one thing is both like and unlike another, a discernment which helps reveal what is essential to each.

So the making of metaphor, in which we ponder likeness amidst unlikeness, is one way in which we express our desire to know; and if Aristotle is right that it is the most important mode of literary expression, then it seems that writers must attend to the making of metaphors.

Learning from The Master

Enough, however, of these minor thinkers. Let’s turn finally to a classical source: the work of the humorist P.G. Wodehouse. Evelyn Waugh, who bowed to no one in his admiration of Wodehouse’s craftsmanship, once praised Wodehouse for being able to produce two to three striking similes or metaphors per page. Such as:

The butler loomed in the doorway like a dignified cloudbank.

Here the obvious unlikeness between butler and cloudbank opens up an enormous gap. But the brilliance of the simile is found in the fact that in a certain skewed, over-the-top perception, there is a sense that a beefy butler looming quietly in a doorway is like a cloudbank. Just as a man’s dancing style can resemble a man giving alms:

“Can you dance?” said the girl.

Lancelot gave a short, amused laugh. He was a man who never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing.

Metaphor, however, whether serious or humorous, is not restricted to local description and color. It can also work for larger thematic purposes. In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, bullfighting serves as a metaphor for grace under pressure. T.S. Eliot’s image of “waste land” serves as a metaphor for moral and spiritual decay. Metaphor is in fact the key to all imaginative writing. Indeed all thought and language, if Iris Murdoch is correct, is metaphor. “The development of consciousness in human beings,” Murdoch affirms, “is inseparably connected with the use of metaphor. Metaphors are not merely peripheral decorations or even useful models, they are fundamental forms of our awareness of our condition.”

* The image at the top of this post is of the 4th-century Greek philosopher Aristotle.