An Afterthought about Metaphor

The word “metaphor” has travelled quite a distance. It comes to us from Middle English, arriving via Old French, Latin, and, originally, Greek. Metapherein, means “to transfer” … meta meaning “beside” or “after,” and pherein, “to carry. ” But we can extend its travel further back and further away, to the Indo-European root, bher- 

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has an index of Indo-European roots—one of the reasons I like it so much—and it tells me that bher- means “to carry; also to bear children.”  It is the root of a wonderful assortment of English words: bear, burden, birth, bring, fertile, differ, offer, prefer, suffer, transfer, furtive, and metaphor. 

I think one might write a small essay on metaphor letting those words dance through it, but at the moment that’s not what I’m doing. As a poet I’m struck immediately by the prevalence of  “f”, and wonder if that echoing is an accident or has some significance. But it’s the second meaning of bher-, “to bear children” that seems particularly resonant for my thinking about metaphor.

American poet Clayton Eshleman, in introducing Gary Snyder at the University of Michigan in 1996, noted the weave of metaphor in Snyder’s poems, citing among other instances “Four thousand years of writing equals the life of a bristlecone pine.” Eshleman described how metaphor works this way: “let’s say the truth is in the synapse between the parts of a metaphor.”

I wonder if, in that synapse, that small gap between the two parts of a metaphor, something isn’t brought to birth, the progeny being the momentary conjunction of, say “writing” and “a bristlecone pine.” As if for an instant they become something other than what they were separately – singular but inheriting/sharing characteristics of both parts of the image in a way that can’t really be diagrammed or explained. Maybe a version of “both/and,” rather than “either/or”. Or perhaps something like Carl Jung’s concept of “the third thing” that, given enough patience and attention, will emerge (be born) to resolve a psychological struggle between opposites.

It strikes me a metaphor that joins four thousand years of writing and the life of a bristlecone pine is linking the imagination and the material world—overlaying one upon the other, making them continuous for an instant, bringing inner and outer realms together. Through that bringing together perhaps we, as readers of the metaphor, perceive the world and ourselves a little differently than we did before—the world seems less fixed, and we are somewhat porous. 

This thought wants to continue itself ... but hasn't yet become clear. More in another post, one day.