The Function of Metaphor

The Function of Metaphor
Author(s): Ron Bontekoe

Source: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1987), pp. 209-226
Published by: Penn State University Press
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The Function of Metaphor
Ron Bontekoe
In the Poetics Aristotle says of metaphor first, that it "consists in

giving the thing a name that belongs to something else"1 and sec-
ond, that for the poet it is the greatest and most difficult thing by
far to hve a command of.2 Why is it, we might ask, that the
inappropriate attribution of a name- something that looks remark-
ably like the commission of an error- should be such a difficult
thing to do? The answer, of course, is that it is not at all difficult to
do if we intend to be satisfied with just any inappropriate naming,
but that if we expect our metaphor to somehow "make sens" in
spite of the "error" involved in its construction, a very special
talent is required of us- the ability to recognize resemblances
which ordinarily pass unnoticed. While the importance of this ca-
pacity for recognizing similarities has been agreed upon by almost
everyone who has written on the subject of metaphor since Aris-
totle, considrable diffrences of opinion hve arisen concerning
the way in which thse recognized similarities are brought into play
in metaphor. There has been, in other words, a long debate over
how successfully metaphor manages to convey meaning.
It is not the purpose of this paper to enter into that debate in any
but the most indirect of manners. Rather I propose to focus upon
the work of certain thinkers who hve implicitly assumed that in
giving an account of how metaphor means they have also provided
an answer to th more generai question: How does metaphor
work? At first glance it may appear that nothing could be more
naturai than to equate thse two questions. Metaphor, after ail, is
a phenomenon of language and language's first task is to make
possible communication. Thus insofar as metaphor succeeds in
meaning, its purpose, surely, must be the conveying of meaning.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it considers meta-
phor in th abstract, divorced from the setting in which it is most
typically found if it is still innovative and alive- the poem. The
poem too is a phenomenon of language. In spite of this, however,
it is a work of art before it is a piece of communication. We must
Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1987. Published by The Pennsylvania
State University Press, University Park and London.
209
210 RON BONTEKOE
consider then, whether metaphor, as one of the distinctive features

of poetry, may not have some other function to fulfill at least as
basic as the conveying of meaning.
Should we find that there is such an additional function, more-
over, I do not feel that it would be an altogether irrelevant discov-
ery for those engaged in the debate over how metaphor means. For
that additional function must surely influence the context in which
metaphor makes its Statement, and context, as Wittgenstein re-
minds us, has a significant role to play in determining meaning.
I. A. Richards is not guilty of having identified the function of
metaphor with the conveying of meaning, but since all of the men
whose work I wish to consider- Philip Wheelwright, Paul Ricoeur,
George Whalley and Michael Polanyi- owe a debt to Richards, it
might be worthwhile to begin by examining how Richards ac-
counted for metaphor 's capacity to mean. Richards was a vigorous
Opponent of the rhetoricians who considered metaphor to be a
trope in the same sense that metonymy and synecdoche are tropes.
As a trope, metaphor was thought to involve a twist in the meaning
of a particular word, a twist in meaning effected by an act of
Substitution. Thus if we consider Aristotle's sample metaphor,
"the sunset of life," the rhetoricians would have argued that the
word "sunset" undergoes a change in meaning as a resuit of its
having been substituted for the missing phrase "last years." This
phrase, "last years," is supposed to have for its literal meaning
what "sunset" acquires as its figurative meaning because of the
Substitution.
Richards attacks this substitution theory of the rhetoricians at its
foundation by denying the validity of the distinction between lit-
eral or proper meanings and figurative meanings. If a word has a
stable meaning, he argues, it is only because of the constancy of
the contexts in which it has appeared. This is so because meaning is
carried not at the level of words, but rather at the level of the
discourse taken as a whole. What this implies, of course, is that
metaphor, insofar as it is a way of conveying meaning, is not a
phenomenon that can be thought of as applying to words in isola-
tion. We cannot focus on th word "sunset" as if this were the
metaphor and the phrase "of life" were extraneous. Richards
stresses that a metaphor is always composed of two parts, the part
that prsents th background against which an "improper"naming
occurs, which he calls the tnorf and the "improper"naming itself,
THE FUNCTIONOF METAPHOR 21 1
which he calls the vehicle. Neither the tnor nor the vehicle carries
with it, merely by virtue of being composed of words, an unalter-
able meaning of its own; but each of them does carry with it a
sries of associations tying it in our mind to the sort of context that
this word or phrase has previously appeared in. Thus what occurs
when the tnor and vehicle are brought together is an irruption of
one context upon another. Metaphor, as Richards defines it, is
what results from the interaction of thse two contexts.
In this interaction, however, something more and something
other is said than could hve been said without recourse to meta-
phor. In order to understand why this is th case, we must recog-
nize that meanings, insofar as they pre-exist their own embodiment
in discourse, hve the potential to lie outside the boundaries of
what is expressible by means of words used in their customary
fashion. There are, in other words, semantic lacunae- meanings
for which there are, as yet, no words. If we consider again our
"sunset of life" example, it is clear that "last years" only roughly
approximates the intended meaning of "sunset." What this meta-
phor conveys, after all, is not only th idea of an ending, but also,
and more importantly, th idea of fullness, of naturai completion.
In the sunset of life there is an appropriateness to the approach of
death that parallels the appropriateness of the coming on of night
at th end of a day. By th transference of th word "sunset" from
its ordinary context to a context relating to the subject of human
life, its connotations of due completion are put to work in a new
way, what Ricoeur calls "a commerce between thoughts"3has oc-
curred, and a meaning which could not hve been effectively or
elegantly stated by means of words used in their customary fashion
has nonetheless achieved expression.
Because in many instances metaphor provides a more precise
way of saying something than plain speech affords, certain critics,
among them T. E. Hulme and J. Middleton Murray early in this
Century, and Philip Wheelwright more recently, hve concluded
that the purpose of poetic metaphor is to provide th most accurate
possible description of the real nature of things. In Metaphor and
Reality Wheelwright explains:
As man gropes to express his complexnatureand his sens of the

complexworld, he seeks or crtesrepresentationaland expressive
forms . . . whichshall give some hint, alwaysfinallyinsufficient,of
212 RONBONTEKOE
th turbulentmoods withinand the turbulentworldof qualitiesand

forces, promisesand threatsoutsidehim. His life oscilltesbetween
contrarypulls, and out of his Dionysiac condition he seeks, and
sometimesfor lingeringmomentsattains,an Apollonianvision.But
if the vision is not to be escapist . . . it will bear traces of the
tensions and problematiccharacterof the expriencethat gave it
birth.4
These traces of tension, Wheelwright contends, are to be found in

the clash of contexts that defines metaphor. The reality that meta-
phor attempts to describe, however, is always insufficiently repre-
sented because of its extreme subtlety. It is "intrinsicallylatent and
unwilling to give up its innermost secrets."5 As a resuit, metaphor
can only provide us "partisanglimpses" ofthat reality, each glimpse
failing finally to represent the whole but offering nonetheless an
approachtotruth.
The "reality" that is represented by the poet in writing, for exam-
ple, "nature is a temple where living columns . . ." is not, of course,
the world of physical things, nor even of the principles that govern
the behavior of those things. As Wheelwright uses the term, "real-
ity" refers to the content of immediate individuai exprience. "The /
who am aware and the that of which I am aware are but two aspects
of a single sure actuality," he writes, and it is ultimately this single
actuality "to which every [philosophical] category tries to refer and
which every philosophical statement tries to describe, always from
an intellectual point of view and always with ultimate inadequacy."6
It seems then, that while metaphor may not refer to the physical
"stuff" of exprience, insofar as it too aims to represent the natureof
exprience, metaphor and the philosophical/scientific use of lan-
guage each refer to the same reality. And metaphor, hearing about
it the traces of its struggle to achieve an adequate expression, may
even be considered the more successful in expressing the truth.
Wheelwright's position is provocative, but its provocativeness
seems to arise from faulty reasoning. There is a tendency in his
thought that leads to an oversimplified view of "what is," a ten-
dency which Paul Ricoeur in The Rule of Metaphor has labeled
"ontological vhmence."7 If it is true that metaphor and the philo-
sophical use of language both refer to the same reality, it is also
true that a distinction must be made between the inadequacy of
metaphor and the inadequacy of philosophy or science. We must
ask whether the poet 's description of nature as a temple, for exam-
ple, is to be taken in the same sens as the physicist's description of
THE FUNCTIONOF METAPHOR 213
matter as a composition of molcules. Ricoeur stresses that there is

a significant diffrence. To say metaphorically that nature is a
temple is not to deny that in an important sens (indeed, in com-
mon sens) nature is not a temple. To overlook this implied "is
not" leads us, not to metaphorical truth, but into mythic absurdity.
Ricoeur, like Richards and Wheelwright, holds that metaphor is
tensional, but he suggests that if we are concerned with determin-
ing what sort of truth metaphor has access to, the way to under-
stand that tension is in terms of the relational and existential func-
tions of the verb "to be." "The verb to be does not just connect the
predicate temple to the subject nature. . . . The copula is not only
relational. It implies besides, by means of th predicative relation-
ship, that what is is redescribed; it says that things really are this
way."8This takes us directly back to Wheelwright's problem, if we
understand the verb "to be" itself in its literal sens. But Ricoeur
contends that there is a metaphorical sens of the verb "to be" as
well, and that, when it is used in this metaphorical sens, a tension
is maintained between our acceptance of the claim that A is the
case and our rcognition that at the same time A is not the case.
AH metaphor, whether th copula explicitly appears in it or not,
implies that something is th case. Thus in ali metaphor this ten-
sion in the use of the verb "to be" must be recognized.
Wheelwright's position demonstrates one way in which this ten-
sion can be lost. There is another. Just as it is possible- in taking
metaphor too literally- to hve too much faith in its truth-
determining powers, so too it is possible- if one feels compelled to
reduce metaphor to a mere comparison- to hve too little faith in
those powers. Ricoeur reminds us that Aristotle, for one, thought of
simile as a weakened form of metaphor and not of metaphor as an
abbreviated simile. What he wishes to stress by thus appealing to
Aristotle's authority is that something is lost when a metaphor is
reduced to a simple comparison. In order to determine precisely
what it is that is lost we might return for a moment to the passage
quoted from Wheelwright earlier. Metaphor is arrived at, we are
told, "as man gropes to express . . . the turbulent moods within and
the turbulent world of qualities and forces . . . outside him."
Ricoeur's criticism of Wheelwright's "ontological vhmence" has
indicated that metaphor may not be the most trustworthy way of
expressing the nature of "the turbulent world" outside. But is there
a more effective means of giving voice to the "turbulent moods
within"? Metaphor prsents, much more vividly than simile, the
214 RON BONTEKOE
"feel of things," and the reader who would insist upon reading "is
like" for "is"in every metaphor he encounters must be cramped by a
most unpoetic fear of getting his facts wrong.
Following Heidegger, Ricoeur laments the effects that the tech-
nological viewpoint has had upon modern man's sense of belong-
ing to the world, and he sees in metaphor's concentration on "the
textural feel of things" at the expense of the "actual things-of-
feeling"9 a way of counterbalancing those effects. "Poetic dis-
course brings to language a pre-objective world in which we find
ourselves already rooted but in which we also project our inner-
most possibilities." Metaphor promises to be the means by which
we may "dismantle the reign of objects in order to let be, and to
allow to be uttered, our primordial belonging to a world which we
inhabit, that is to say, which at once prcdes us and receives the
imprint of our work."10The quality which uniquely fits metaphor
for this task is its fusion of the powers of discovery and cration.
(In every metaphor there is both a creative leap and a discovery of
the resemblance without which that leap would be meaningless.)
This fusion of powers enables us, through metaphor, both to do
justice to the nature of the world in which we find ourselves and
yet creatively to establish our own relationship to that world. Fi-
nally, while the technological viewpoint reduces all things to a
standing reserve waiting for our use,11thus deadening our sense of
their value, metaphor, as lively expression, "is that which ex-
presses existence as alive,"12thus guaranteeing for us the value of
the world and ensuring that we belong to it, and not it to us.
The sweeping altrations in man's relationship to his world
which Ricoeur feels metaphor has the power to bring about are, of
course, not going to be effected by the occasionai use of metaphor
in everyday speech. What is needed is for man to adopt a meta-
phoric case of mind- to think and communicate like a poet. Here,
however, it seems to me that we encounter a gap in Ricoeur's
treatment of metaphor. He has not seriously enough considered
the implications of the fact that metaphor is only one aspect of
poetic discourse. If we are to think like poets, we must first recog-
nize that the poet not only produces metaphor, but he uses and
subordinates it in order to arrive at what is of final interest to him,
the compie ted poem.
What is it precisely that the poet is attempting to do in the
writing of a poem? Until we hve an answer to this question it
seems to me that we cannot possibly expect to arrive at an ade-
quate understanding of how metaphor functions- for we will have

no clear idea of how metaphor can contribute to the achievement
of the poet's aim. George Whalley, in Poetic Process, addresses
this question of the poet's aim by means of an extended metaphor.
Let us imaginethat man and nature(or 'subject'and 'object')meet

andembraceeach otherat an interface,the interfacebeinga pliable
and permablemembraneextendinginfinitelyboth upwardsandon
eitherhand. This membraneis to be regardedas a mediumjoining,
not separating,subjectand object; as I conceiveof it the interface
has depth, some spatialcharacteristics - one can move aboutin the
interface. In actual life, subject and object interpenetrateeach
other;but since for purposefulactionwe mustprtendthat subject
and object can be separated,the interfacealso reprsentethis as-
sumed sparation.Let us then suppose that life, naked living, oc-
curs at this interface- that it is hre that man meets and shapes
'nature'and is himselfshapedby nature. . . . At the interfaceand
within it everythingis in continuaiflux, in a complicatedinvolute
movementof mutuaiadjustment.AHvaluesclusterat the interface
andare not to be foundelsewhere.13
As Whalley continues to develop his metaphor, he accounts for the

various classes of men by describing how each comports itself in
relation to the interface. The scientist conducts a succession of
raids through the interface and deep into the objective sphre on
the other side. The philosopher is represented as flying in an air-
craft, "trying to understand the whole situation better by examin-
ing it from a great height."14The "ordinary man" has no taste for
the interface at ail and constructs for himself at a safe distance
from it a shell into which he can retreat whenever he catches a
disturbing glimpse of it. The mystic and th poet alone, of the
various classes of men, try to remain involved at the interface. The
mystic, "using the interface as though it were a sort of optical
instrument, looks through rather than at the interface"15in order to
see the transmundate, which belongs to neither the objective nor
the subjective sphre. The poet, on the other hand, being con-
cerned to reveal "what it is like" at the interface, looks at it directly
and along its length.
To be involved at the interface, as the mystic and poet are, is to
exprience and engage in an event of reality- an event which
Whalley calls "paradeigmatic" so as to convey both its archetypal
status and the fact that it "carries its own proof within itself, is at
once an event of value and of knowing."16Having examined what
216 RON BONTEKOE
Whalley means by thse two terms, "interface" and "paradeig-

matic," we are now in a position to understand what he considers
to be th task of th poet.
[It]is to discoverand fashionin wordsan quivalentfor th complex

state of feeling and awarenesswhich accompaniesparadeigmatic
exprience.[Thepoet] mustgive a precisebodyto thosefeelings;he
is not concernedto describeeither the feelingsor th physicalob-
jects with which those feelings may have been historicallyassoci-
ated.17
The reason why description is not part of the poet's task is because
description is the characteristic activity of scientists.18Thus if the
poet engages in description, he is drawn away from the interface
where it is his duty, as poet, to remain. Reality, as Whalley sees it,
"is immersion or relationship, [and] for a person, relationship is
feeling."19The poet is the man whose contemplative nature com-
pels him to sustain- through th medium of highly organized
language- his richest states of feeling until they are fully devel-
oped and they have discovered themselves to him in all of their
complexity.
How is this accomplished? Whalley, following the lead of T. S.
Eliot,20 suggests that poetry should be understood as a kind of
music- a music, however, primarily of meanings rather than of
sounds. In his essay on "Hamlet," Eliot argues that
the only way of expressing motion in the form of art is by

findingan 'objectivecorrelative';in other words, a set of objects,
a situation, a chain of events which shall be th formulaof that
particularmotion; such that when the externalfacts, which must
terminatein sensoryexprience,are given, the motionis immedi-
ately evoked.21
The poem as a whole can be thought of as an objective correlative,

but so too can th individuai images of which the poem is com-
posed. According to Whalley, each image in the poem works as a
"feeling vector": it carries a "charge" of feeling in a particular
direction. It is the poet's responsibility to recognize what kind of
"charge" a given image carries, and to weave the vectorial charac-
teristics of his chosen images together into a rhythmic whole much
as the composer of music weaves together his chosen thmes and
motifs into a symphony or concerto. This weaving together of
images carrying separate particles of feeling "makes it possible for

the poet to convey very accurately and vividly the interwoven pat-
terns of paradeigmatic feeling."22
The feeling itself is a complex whole. In his reprsentation of it,
the poet uses th distinctness and power of his images to preserve
the sens and the dtail of its complexity, while with the pattern of
relationships between the images- the pattern which fuses the
separate lments into a single poem - he conveys the unity of the
feeling. None of this is possible, however, if the images the poet
chooses to use fail as objective corrlatives, that is, if they lack any
associated "particles of feeling." It is hre that metaphor makes its
particular contribution to the process. Whalley maintains that, be-
cause "few single words . . . make an immediate and particular
impact, metaphor arises ... as a concentrated means of making
words clear or startling,"23as a means, in other words, of strength-
ening the "charges" of feeling associated with them. Metaphor
becomes, in Whalley 's scheme, "the fundamental mode for trans-
muting feelings into words."24
Clearly this represents a significant departure from the way in
which Wheelwright and Ricoeur hve been speaking about meta-
phor. For while they are primarily concerned to explain what sort
of "truth" metaphor possesses, Whalley dnies that the expres-
sion of truth has anything more than an incidental rle to play in
the functioning of metaphor, if by "truth" we mean something
along the lines of a correct description of a state of affairs. It is
possible y of course, that a metaphor may provide an accurate or
informative picture of something, but it is not essential to its
being a metaphor that it do so. What is essential, at least from the
poet's perspective, is that it hve a "value,"25a "charge" of feel-
ing which it can contribute to the musical pattern of meaning
which is the poem.
Whalley suggests, in one of his end-of-chapter notes, that "im-
age" is a misleading term to use as the name for the smallest
articulate unit or irreducible lment of poetry. He himself uses
the term in his discussion of "feeling vectors" so that his position
will be properly understood, but he argues nonetheless that the
connotations of "image" are misleading. "The visual analogy is not
only inadequate for understanding poetry: it is altogether inappro-
priate. For the relation between word and event in poetry is much
more obscure and indirect than the relation between image and
'thing' in painting."26A poem is not a succession of pictures but a
218 RONBONTEKOE
succession of interrelated sounds and meanings. According to

Whalley, the urgent forward movement of poetry "actually sup-
presses or dissiptes visual clarity."27Because of this, he suggests,
we should search for a word with sonic connotations to represent
th basic unit of articulation in poetry. Nor is Whalley alone in his
criticism of the term "image"; in The Philosophy ofRhetoric Rich-
ards too argues that it is especially misleading.
[It] bring[s]in a confusionwith the sense in which an image is a

copy or revival of a sense-perceptionof some sort, and so [has]
made rhetoriciansthinkthat a figureof speech, an image,or imagi-
native comparison,must hve somethingto do with the prsence
of images, in this other sense, in the mind's eye. . . . But, of
course, it need not. No images of this sort need come in at any
point.28
If, as Whalley and Richards contend, "image" is a term that we

had best eliminate from our thinking about poetry, it follows that
we should check as well to see whether any of our current presup-
positions about the nature of poetry might be traceable to the
influence of this term, and either give up or critically re-examine
any such notions we may uncover.
One such "tainted" presupposition, it seems to me, is th idea
that metaphor in generai, because of what it is, conveys some sort
of truth. It is always possible, of course, that nothing more is
meant hre by "truth" than that the metaphor "touches" us or
"strikes a chord" in us or pntrtes somehow to the "deeper"
layers of our nature. But this is to use th word "truth" only
figuratively. When we find ourselves thus touched or struck or
penetrated it is because the metaphor is functioning as a vehicle for
feeling, just as a musical thme might. A visual image, on the other
hand, typically bears a relation to some represented thing, a rela-
tion which may invite us to look for agreement of some sort be-
tween the reprsentation and the thing itself . Hre it is possible to
speak literally of the truth of the image- the truth consisting in the
agreement of image to thing. This sort of truth is a possibility for
metaphor,29but not in any way either a prerequisite or an invita-
ble consquence. Where is the truth, the accuracy of reprsenta-
tion in:
When the evening is spreadout againstthe sky

Like a patient etherizedupon a table.
And yet there can be no doubt that within the context of "Pru-
frock" this metaphor works. As Whalley points out (and hre
again we find Richards making a comparable claim),30 "in Poetic
the most outrageous inconsistencies can be the most characteristic,
and often secure the most powerful effects. In Poetic there is only
one test: it must 'work', it must 'fit'; every lment must drop
inevitably and finally into place to fulfill a purpose which is not
fully known until it is fulfilled."31Hre again poetry demonstrates
its affinity to music, where one chord follows another because it is
called for, not by a need accurately to represent the thing, but by
the nature of our emotional response to various patterns in sound.
Poetry, like music, is finally inaccessible to logic. To see ratio-
nally why a particular metaphor should or should not work in a
poem is no guarantee that it will or will not. And precisely because
metaphor is a nonlogical phenomenon, Whalley argues,32the at-
tempt to analyze it in terms of an "A is/is not " schema will
necessarily prove fruitless. But why is this? Is it not possible that
metaphor may be, in some respects, nonlogical and yet still be
illuminated by Ricoeur's schema? I think not. Consider, for exam-
ple, the difficulties encountered when we attempt to analyze in this
way the most problematic (which is to say the most antilogical)
type of metaphor, the Oxymoron.
Life is death.
The "is" hre, as in all metaphors, is itself to be understood meta-
phorically according to Ricoeur. What this involves is a rcognition
of a tension between the declared Statement "life is death" and the
implicitly understood "life is not death." This seems reasonable,
but it is important to bear in mind that this tension between the
declared is and the implicit is not is meant to account for metaphor,
and not to incorporate it. In other words, as Ricoeur sees it, the
metaphor is constituted by the declared affirmation, the implied
ngation and the tension maintained between them. If the meta-
phor is composed (in part) by an affirmation and a ngation, how-
ever, neither the declared is nor the implied is not can itself be
meant metaphorically without rendering the account of metaphor
circular.
Bearing this in mind, let us return to our example. We have, of
course, no difficulty in accepting literally the implied "life is not
death." Is it possible, however, to take the declared "life is death"
in anything other than a metaphorical sense? What could we mean
by this if we intended it to be taken non-figuratively? That, all
220 RON BONTEKOE
appearances to the contrary, there is no real diffrence between

life and death: that they (along with all other contraries perhaps)
actually rsolve into some Parmenidean One? As far as I can see,
this is the only possible literal interprtation, and yet it bears no
relationship at all to the poet's intended meaning. One might reply
that what we are meant to understand literally in the affirmation is
that "life is (in certain respects like) death." There are two reasons
why this solution will not work. First, insofar as the affirmative
component of metaphor is now to be understood as a simile, simile
becomes a more primary figure than metaphor. Ricoeur, however,
takes great pains to demonstrate that Aristotle was correct in con-
tending that simile is derived from metaphor and not vice versa.
Thus this could not be how he meant us to understand the declared
component of metaphor. Indeed, he writes, almost defiantly, "Our
primary focus . . . must truly be on the 'is' of quivalence."33(But
how does one dclare non-figuratively the quivalence of logicai
contraries without descending into gibberish?) Perhaps Ricoeur is
wrong, though, to insist as he does on metaphor's primacy. Maybe
we should understand the declared component of metaphor as a
simile. If we do this, however, what becomes of the tension that is
supposed to exist between the is and the is not? If someone an-
nounces that life is like death, we hardly feel compelled to correct
this dangerously unbalanced view with the reply, "Yes, but life is
not death." The tension is lost; simile is too flaccid a figure to off er
any real rsistance to the factual. This tension, however, this rsis-
tance to the literally true, is of the essence of metaphor.
A great deal rests, of course, upon my having chosen an oxymo-
ron as an example hre. It is always possible, as Richards has
stressed, to employ a word in a new way and thus to extend or alter
its range of associations. Thus with respect to Ricoeur's example,
"Nature is a temple," it is possible for us to argue that on one level
we do mean this literally. There is a limit, though, to how far we
can go in our innovative handling of words if we still expect to
make sens. This limit is hazy and difficult to establish but, as we
hve seen, to attempt to mean an oxymoron literally is clearly to go
beyond it. And yet the oxymoron falls within the range of meta-
phor. What this implies, I would contend, is that metaphor can
function in more subtle ways than the "A is/is not fi" schema is
capable of representing.
Let us take one more example before leaving this subject. Con-
sider the following lines from Wordsworth's The Prelude:
THE FUNCTIONOF METAPHOR 22 1
But huge and mighty Forms that do not live

Like living men mov'd slowly through my mind.
How could we apply Ricoeur's schema to this metaphor- for meta-

phor it is, although not of an obvious variety? The declared compo-
nent hre is a ngation- thse Forms do not live like living men.
Are we to conclude, then, that the implied component is an affir-
mation that in fact they do live like living men? And that the
metaphor's tension rests on the question of whether or not Words-
worth is telling the truth, as it were? Clearly this is not how the
passage works. The metaphoric tension hre has nothing to do
with the conflict between what is asserted and what is literally true.
It arises rather from our uncertainty as to precisely what it is that is
being asserted. Do the Forms live at ali? Do they live in some
manner diffrent from th way in which men live? We are not told.
But the fact that we are uncertain as to what is being affirmed (or
denied) in no way interfres with the metaphor's effectiveness. As
a vehicle for feeling it works admirably.
The idea that metaphor provides an unusually precise descrip-
tion of a thing or a state of feeling or of a thing-as-it-is-felt is not
wrong. It is merely incomplete and not universally applicable.
There are metaphors- most of those used in science and casual
conversation, and even some poetic metaphors- which do very
little more than describe. These George Whalley calls "pointing"
metaphors. When poetic metaphors are "pointing" metaphors,
however, it is because they hve failed to achieve their fll poten-
tial. They make their appearance in the poem and yet they fail to
harmonize with the poem. The feelings they evoke are not made
use of in the poem's music, and so those feelings either atrophy or
jar us like a false note. The fll process of metaphor, on the other
hand, the "ringing"metaphor, as Whalley calls it, "makes for rso-
nance, a pervasive tone which spreads outwards in rings of sound
and light to bring into sympathetic vibration other or ail features of
the poem."34
The reader who is at all sensitive to the possibilities of poetry
will recognize, I believe, that Whalley is correct- that it is primar-
ily metaphor's capacity to carry a charge of feeling which accounts
for its importance in the writing of poems. But how does metaphor
acquire this capacity not merely to describe (whether it be a thing
or a state of feeling) but also to move us, to evoke feeling?
Whalley, unfortunately, does not address this question. Someone
222 RON BONTEKOE
who does, however, is Michael Polanyi, and it is to his work that I

now wish toturn.
In order to understand Polanyi's explanation of how metaphor
functions, we must grasp the distinction he makes between subsid-
iary and focal awareness. Polanyi argues that at every step in the
acquisition of knowledge - no matter what kind of knowledge it
may be- personal, tacit assessments of th things hearing upon
that knowledge must be made.35 Thus in reading a sentence, for
instance, we must make judgments concerning the figures that
appear before us on the page: first, that they in fact represent
words; second, which particular words are represented by th indi-
viduai figures; third, which of the various meanings associated with
thse words are relevant to the meaning of the sentence; and so on.
If we are literate, ail of thse judgments will be made more or less
unconsciously. Our attention is focussed, not on the written fig-
ures, but on the meaning of what we are reading. Were it not for
the subsidiary awareness we hve of those figures, however, and of
the range of meanings associated with the words they represent,
our focal awareness would draw a blank- we could neither read
nor understand the sentence on the page. Between the things that
we are aware of subsidiarily and the things that we are focussing
upon, then, there is a from-to relationship. The former are the
grounds of our coming to know or realize the latter.
Polanyi points out that in ordinary speech, where we wish
merely to convey information, the language we use is compara-
tively transparent- it effaces itself before the meaning that is being
conveyed. Thus "an accomplished linguist may not even be able to
say in what language a particularly interesting communication
came to him."36What is of intrinsic interest to him is the informa-
tion being offered, not the words and lexical meanings which are
the grounds of his coming to possess that information. In ordinary
speech, then, it happens that what we are focally aware of is also
an object of intrinsic interest, while those things that we are
subsidiarily aware of lack any such interest for us.
It is not always the case, however, that language is transparent in
this sens. The function of a national anthem, for example, is not
to convey information but to stand for, to symbolize, a particular
nation. Thus what the anthem actually says is not usually th focus
of our awareness- its literal meaning has comparatively little intrin-
sic interest. Rather, what we are inclined to focus on is the anthem
itself (its pure sound, perhaps) as the symbol of our nation. If the
anthem as symbol is th focus of our awareness, though, what are

we to take as the subsidiaries- the things which serve to convey its
meaning? According to Polanyi, "what bears upon the [anthem],
as a word bears upon its meaning, is th integration of our whole
existence as lived in our country."37 The subsidiaries, in other
words, are the memories, diffuse and unique for each individuai,
of what life in one's homeland is like. These subsidiaries, thse
memories- which hve considrable intrinsic interest and emo-
tional value for us- do more than simply bear upon the symbolic
meaning of the anthem, however; they actually become embodied
in that meaning. This clarifies the secret of surrendering oneself.
If, on solemn occasions, one holds oneself aloof from the anthem,
its meaning becomes a paltry abstraction- the empty notion,
"America" or "France." By entering into the moment, however,
the meaning of the symbol becomes personalized. One's own
memories, one's own existence, is integrated into it- and as a
resuit one is "carried away" by the symbol.
Metaphor, Polanyi argues, acquires its power to move us in much
the same way . The process is slightly more complicated in the case of
metaphor, however, because of its two-part structure of tnor and
vehicle. According to Polanyi, the tnor bears on the vehicle as a
subsidiary lment bears on its focal object. Thus, to return to our
familir example, the tnor (and subsidiary) "of life" establishes the
context that dtermines the meaning of the vehicle (and focus)
"sunset." The vehicle, however, "returnsback to the tnor . . . and
enhances its meaning, so that the tnor, in addition to bearing on,
also becomes embodied in the vehicle."38Thus in our metaphor the
sens of "life" is integrated into the meaning of "sunset." So far this
is simply a restatement of what Richards has said. But at this point
Polanyi adds another level involving ourselves.
As in symbol,so in metaphor:the subsidiarydues- consistingof ail

those inchoateexpriencesin our own lives that are relatedto the
two partsof a metaphor- are integratedinto the meaningof a tnor
and a vehicle as they are relatedto each other in a focal object (a
metaphor).The resuitis that a metaphor,like a symbol,carriesus
away, embodies us in itself, and moves usdeeply as we surrender
ourselvesto it.39
Precisely because metaphor involves a sort of category mistake-

an inappropriate naming of a thing- it is not transparent in the
way that ordinary speech is. There can be no instantaneous and
224 RON BONTEKOE
automatic assignment of meanings hre. On th contrary, th

meaning of a metaphor poses a problem for us which must be
solved before the meaning of the poem as a whole can be under-
stood. We solve this problem, Polanyi argues, by drawing on "ail
those inchoate expriences in our own lives" that relate to either
the tnor or the vehicle. By matching up the right expriences, we
corne to recognize how the metaphor makes sens. But since we
cannot know in advance which aspects relating to the tnor or
vehicle may be relevant to the metaphor's meaning, we must hold
open our responses to it. As long as it remains "fresh"- that is, as
long as we suspect that the metaphor may still contain some unde-
termined meaning, any and ail of the thoughts and feelings that its
two parts arouse in us must be entertained.
It is this initial suspension of judgment which allows the meta-
phor to take on its charge of feeling. Virtually anything is capable
of arousing some feeling in us if we approach it receptively and
give it time to affect us. What strips ordinary transparent speech of
ail but the most blatant of its emotional overtones is the haste with
which we grasp what is meant and pigeonhole the various ideas
that are presented. The feelings associated with a tnor and vehi-
cle, then, are preserved in the overall effect of the metaphor for
the simple reason that the suspension of judgment gives them time
to establish themselves in the reader's mind. Because thse feel-
ings are spcifie to the reader, however, because they derive from
his own exprience, the metaphor, as Polanyi puts it, embodies the
reader in itself and carries him away.
Polanyi points out that "metaphors, like jokes, lose their effec-
tiveness if they are explained in dtail." He accounts for this by
observing that "a semantic integration is destroyed if we switch our
attention from ... th [focus] to the subsidiaries which bear on
that focus."40This is a reasonable explanation, but another occurs
to me- one that would confirm what has just been said about
feeling. Let us understand, to begin with, that if a metaphor loses
its "effectiveness," what it loses is not its ability to convey mean-
ing, but its ability to move us, to carry us away with it. (If I explain
in dtail how "the sunset of life" works, you may not be enam-
oured of the metaphor, but you will certainly know what it means.)
Why should a detailed explanation destroy this kind of effective-
ness? Because the explanation, insofar as it preempts the working
through for oneself of the meaning of the metaphor, does away
with that suspension of judgment which allows the reader's feelings
THE FUNCTION OF METAPHOR 225
about th metaphor to emerge. The explanation may, of course,

include some rfrence to the emotional value of the metaphor,
but the feelings focussed upon in this way are either hypothetical
or those of the person doing the explaining. The feelings of the
person for whom the metaphor is being explained are left unen-
gaged until he begins to think for himself about the metaphor's
meaning. (In this respect, he is just like a concert-goer who must
stop reading th program and listen to the music- thus engaging
his own feelings - if he is to appreciate the music.)
It is precisely the fact that the metaphor poses a problem that
each reader must solve for himself which enables it to function
effectively as a vehicle for feeling.41For this reason, ail attempts to
analyze and overcome the problem which metaphor poses- to
specify explicitly the relations which exist between its two parts-
are in principle misguided. If we could reduce metaphor to some
sort of formula, our ability to deal with it automatically, instantly,
would strip it of its prsent power to evoke feelings in us. Our
interest in metaphor, as a poetic device and source of pleasure,
would immediately end. Fortunately, there is no possibility of such
a formula being found. The ways in which two ideas can be com-
bined are far too various to yield to any meaningful formula; the
best that one could hope to achieve is a taxonomy or classification
of types. And a taxonomy, of course, would in no way dissipate the
problematic character of metaphor: in order to classify any given
metaphor, one would first hve to understand it.
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Notes
After this article was accepted for publication hre, it appeared (with our permis-
sion) in Information/Communication 6 (Phonetics Laboratory Working Papers),
Toronto, 1986- ED.
1. Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, d. Richard McKeon (New York:
Random House, 1941), 1457b 6-7.
2. Ibid., 1459a 5.
3. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Robert Czerny (Toronto: Univer-
sitv of Toronto Press, 1977), 80.
4. Philip Wheelwright, Metaphor and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press. 1962), 46.
5. Ibid., 172.
6. Ibid., 166-67.
7. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 249.
8. Ibid., 247-48.
226 RON BONTEKOE
9. Douglas Berggren, "The Use and Abuse of Metaphor," Review of Metaphys-

ics 16 (1962): 255. Ricoeur acknowledges that Berggren's article had considrable
influence on his own critique of th complementary errors of ontological naivete
and fear of metaphor.
11. See Martin Heidegger's essay, "The Question Concerning Technology."
12. Ricoeur, The Rule f Metaphor, 308.
13. George Whalley, Poetic Process (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), 27-28.
14. Ibid., 30.
15. Ibid., 29.
16. Ibid., 31.
17. Ibid., 139.
18. Ibid.. 145.
19. Ibid., 148.
20. "My purpose nere is to insist that a 'musical poenV is a poem which has a
musical pattern of sound and a musical pattern of th secondary meanings of th
words which compose it. . . ." T. S. Eliot, "The Music of Poetry" in Selected Prose
of T. S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), 113. Eliot
goes on to suggest that, in a certain sens, thse two patterns are one and th same.
Whalley would agre, but he emphasizes the greater significance of the second
pattern.
21. Eliot, Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, 48.
22. Whalley, Poetic Process, 141.
23. Ibid., 144.
24. Ibid., 141.
25. In much the same wav that a colour or a musical tone has a "value."
26. Ibid., 161.
27. Ibid., 156.
28. I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1965), 98.
29. Consider, for example, Robert Bridges's metaphor "the proud nostril-curve
of aprow'sline."
30. See The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 106.
32. In his article, "Metaphor" in the Princeton Encyclopedia f Poetry and Poet-
ics, ed. Alex Preminger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 494. Richards
makes a similar point in his Principles of Literary Criticism (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1925), 240. "There are few metaphors whose effect, if carefully
examined, can be traced to th logicai relations involved."
35. Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosen, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1975), 31.
36. Ibid., 71.
37. Ibid., 72.
38. Ibid., 78.
39. Ibid., 78-79.
40. Ibid., 79.
41. We might speculate, then, that the "dead" metaphor (e.g., "sift the vi-
dence," "the heart of the matter") carries no emotional charge because it has lost,
through familiarity, whatever problematic character it once may have had.

The Function of Metaphor

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The Function of Metaphor

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The Function of Metaphor

Author(s): Ron Bontekoe

In the Poetics Aristotle says of metaphor first, that it "consists in

consider then, whether metaphor, as one of the distinctive features

As man gropes to express his complexnatureand his sens of the

th turbulentmoods withinand the turbulentworldof qualitiesand

These traces of tension, Wheelwright contends, are to be found in

matter as a composition of molcules. Ricoeur stresses that there is

quate understanding of how metaphor functions- for we will have

Let us imaginethat man and nature(or 'subject'and 'object')meet

As Whalley continues to develop his metaphor, he accounts for the

Whalley means by thse two terms, "interface" and "paradeig-

[It]is to discoverand fashionin wordsan quivalentfor th complex

the only way of expressing motion in the form of art is by

The poem as a whole can be thought of as an objective correlative,

images carrying separate particles of feeling "makes it possible for

succession of interrelated sounds and meanings. According to

[It] bring[s]in a confusionwith the sense in which an image is a

If, as Whalley and Richards contend, "image" is a term that we

When the evening is spreadout againstthe sky

appearances to the contrary, there is no real diffrence between

But huge and mighty Forms that do not live

How could we apply Ricoeur's schema to this metaphor- for meta-

who does, however, is Michael Polanyi, and it is to his work that I

anthem as symbol is th focus of our awareness, though, what are

As in symbol,so in metaphor:the subsidiarydues- consistingof ail

Precisely because metaphor involves a sort of category mistake-

automatic assignment of meanings hre. On th contrary, th

about th metaphor to emerge. The explanation may, of course,

9. Douglas Berggren, "The Use and Abuse of Metaphor," Review of Metaphys-

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