VI.

VEHICLE INTERPRETATION

THE INDEX OF
FIGURAL DISPLACEMENT

In chapter 5, I developed some of the ways in which the kinds and degrees of figural tension in poetic metaphor function in its semantic and aesthetic interpretation. Specifically, we have seen that the degree of figural tension depends, in part, upon the kind of boundary the metaphor crosses (conceptual, existential, or conventional) and that these kinds and degrees of dissimilarity facilitate the interpretation and re-interpretation of iconic possibility. However, figural tension only partly depends upon the kind of boundary crossed, and the interpretive significance of the Peircean Index in metaphor is only partially accounted for as conceptual, experiential, or linguistic displacement. The kind of boundary crossed is only one of three factors mentioned in chapter 4 as affecting the quality and degree of figural tension:

1. nature of boundary crossed;

2. number of boundaries crossed;

3. direction of the crossing(s).

Having discussed the first factor in chapter 4, I now turn to the second and third factors which also figure prominently in shaping and re-shaping poetic metaphor’s meaning and delight.

It should be immediately clear that there is no way to consider the second factor (number of boundaries crossed) unless such boundaries exist in some sort of numerical sequence, or at least in some countable order, with respect to one another. Similarly, we cannot discuss the direction of boundary crossing (the third factor) without an ordered set of boundaries. The reason, as we will see, is that poetic metaphor seldom crosses just a single boundary between contiguous categories or semantic domains; rather, it characteristically makes radical leaps (though often in subtle stages) between widely separated domains, the semantic space between which is not empty, but occupied and organized by other implicit domains that have been leapt over; while these implicit domains are not always apparent during figural displacement, their intermediating reality and order tacitly mark and condition both the direction and the outcome of the displacement which has been made across them. Moreover, poetic metaphor is typically a complex of tropes inside of tropes; if an ordered sequence of major type boundaries can be hypothesized, we may then use it to “chart” the direction of figural displacement in the metaphoric complex as a whole, rather than just the direction of displacement effected by a single trope within the metaphorical complex.

Complex metaphors in poetry are not mere clusters of icons bound together by free association; rather, they are like highly structured molecules, the iconic atoms of which build logically and hierarchically upon one another to form one main substance whose molecular identity is greater than the individual identities, or even the mere sum of identities, in its parts. In fact, it is the hierarchical combinability of metaphoric icons into complex Icons which is partly responsible for the growth of new dimensions and qualities of meaning in poetry. I will argue—following Peirce—that this growth of meaning is teleological, that the creation of a new semantic molecule in complex metaphor is but a discovery or re-discovery, in miniature, of a universal semeiosis to which the growth of all meaning conforms.

Considered ad hoc, the properties of a given metaphoric molecule appear distinct from every other. After many are considered over a period of time, however, the apparent novelty of the processes by which they come into being and grow begins to acquire a sensed pattern of movement between ordered stages of growth. Still, the evolution from one stage to another is so subtle and rapid, and the implied pattern so organically continuous, that it is difficult to codify the pattern of stages by merely continuing to examine individual metaphors at the microscopic level. This motivates the construction of a hypothetical model for further testing against a diversity of individual metaphors. The hypothetical model I will offer in this chapter is based loosely on Peirce’s theory of Being; it is an effort to sketch only the broadest outlines of what I believe is a semantic macrocosm to which the microcosm of the metaphorical molecule often conforms in its structure and evolution.

Here, I will treat this evolution as “short-term” growth reflected in patterns of instantaneous figural displacement in poetic metaphor. By “figural displacement” in this sense, I mean to suggest that the “tension” of the metaphor (temporarily and imaginatively) “moves” or “pulls” the literal object in the direction suggested by its figural icon. To be sure, this is only a partial treatment of the growth or evolution of meaning in metaphor; we will see in chapter 7 that much more is involved. Nevertheless, as we have already seen, it is figural predication across semantic boundaries which produces semantic tension in metaphor; semantic tension, the indexical component, significantly configures and re-configures our perception of the iconic content. Just as the semantic tension of a single trope crossing a single boundary is an index of its icon, so the semantic tension of a metaphorical complex crossing a sequence of boundaries is an index of its more complex iconic structure and more radical evolution. This sort of figural displacement, considered alone, does not constitute the semantic growth of poetic metaphor; it is simply one index of that growth. Still, it affects the final outcome of that growth as surely as it indicates its direction.

Again, however, if the figural displacement—the sequence of “object > icon” movements across type boundaries—is to be considered even as an index of growth (as opposed to random change), then the sequence of boundaries crossed must be ordered with respect to one another. I would not presume to offer an exhaustive catalogue of such boundaries, let alone to delineate their final order or hierarchical arrangement. Such an undertaking is most likely impossible. As we have already seen with examples like knife and fork (chapter 5), a boundary (perceived dissimilarity) which has little relevance or interest in most contexts of discourse may have a peculiar relevance or importance in a special context. The context of each poem or literary work is special. Therefore, perhaps sensitive readers freely construct or dismantle hierarchies of perceived type boundaries to fit the possible world of the text they are reading. My objective is simply to sketch the broad outlines of a “master hierarchy” which I believe has manifold power for charting major figural displacements across type boundaries widely recognized in Western thought and poetry. Within the overarching frame of this hierarchy, I believe, there exists a multitude if not infinitude of possible refining categorical distinctions which I will of course not attempt but which are readily activated by the contexts of individual literary works.

Nevertheless, the implication of my turning to Peirce for some general suggestions for the design of this hierarchy should be clear. I believe that the boundaries and their arrangements are real, not merely the idiosyncratic creations of individual contexts or even of Western thought in general. Some of them, to be sure, reflect Western “habits” of mind—especially some of my own extensions, at the lower end of the hierarchy, from Peirce’s ontology. But because I believe that these are logical extensions, I think they are what Peirce might call “future facts of Secondness” (CP 1.26). That is, the proliferation of distinctions they represent is consistent with Secondness, subsuming Actuality, just as Actuality (as we have already seen) is subsumed by Reality. Even those boundaries of the hierarchy which are perceived to be matters of Western linguistic or cultural convention have at least a basis, I believe, in reality.

The consistently dualistic principle upon which I will delineate the categories of the hierarchy requires some comment. A more detailed “map” of type boundaries would of course not be restricted, as this hierarchy is for simplicity’s sake, to merely binary distinctions. The purpose to which I wish to put the hierarchy, however, is mainly to account for the Secondness of metaphorical oppositions; the map is designed to provide a general indexical framework for charting only the latitudinal movements of metaphor across broadly recognized type boundaries. While complex metaphors cross many boundaries, often more than one at a time, we need not chart more than one at a time—that is, the crossing of a single boundary between two contiguous categories by one figure, and then of another by another, and so on—in order to get a preliminary index of the complex metaphor’s overall displacement of its object(s) in semantic space. In no way is this map intended to account for all that is going on in a given metaphor; whatever usefulness it has is precisely its limitation to the principle of Secondness, the indexical function of gross binary opposition.

With this limitation in mind, let us turn now to the structure of the hierarchy. I begin with a few pointers from Peirce. (It is beyond the scope of this study to reconstruct his theory of Being in its totality; readers who wish a more thorough treatment of this subject are referred to the readings suggested in my Preface.)

One of Peirce’s notions about the nature of abstract truth was “that of everything, being is true universally” (CP 6.352). This is “universal Firstness,” or “the mode of being of itself” (CP 1.531). Naturally, then, I will use Being as the supervening node of the hierarchy.

This Being, however, is not limited to existence; rather, existence is a special mode of reality, as reality is a special mode of being (CP 6.349). The actually existing world is thus an off-shoot of a larger world, as Peirce wrote: “From this point of view we must suppose that the existing universe, with all its arbitrary secondness, is an off-shoot from, or an arbitrary determination of, a world of ideas, a Platonic world” (CP 6.192). Without attempting to settle the debate of whether Peirce was (finally) a Platonist or a Realist, I will simply note that Ideas, as such, were Real for him when he wrote his “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” in 1908; and he thought Ideas were real before they came into existence, even before they were thought (at least by humans):

Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within the mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody’s Actually thinking them, saves their Reality. (CB 1166: 91, emphasis CSP’s)

This “first” Universe, or universal Firstness, might then be described as the realm of “Possibility”—except for one subtle but very important difference. As Peirce explained, “The word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation to what exists, while universal Firstness is the mode of being of itself” (CP 1.531, emphasis added). Indeed, as we have already seen in earlier chapters, while “every general idea has more or less power of working itself out into fact” for Peirce, some ideas have this power “more so,” while others “less so” (CP 2.149). Ideas, as possibilities, have different degrees of persistence, or tendencies to get thought/actualized (CB 1166: 104; W 3:317-319). Thus, while the whole Platonic world is “real” (CP 6.200) in a sense, Peirce seemed to be more interested (as I am) in those modes of ideal reality which exhibit persistence: “The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is persistence, is regularity” (CP 1.175). It is this way of thinking about Reality which allowed Peirce to say that things “are getting less dreamy and more real” as the universe evolves (CP 1.175, emphasis added).

Thus I wish to consider Being in its most general sense to include all ideas, from indeterminate or “dreamy possibilities” to “positive” and “irresistible possibilities” (chapter 3), which do imply a (potential) relation to actual existence. I believe this is what Peirce had in mind when he began defining his Categories for Lady Welby by “giving to being the broadest possible sense, to include ideas as well as things, and ideas that we fancy we have just as much as ideas as [sic] we do have” (PW 24).

In order to bifurcate Being in accordance with these suggestions from Peirce, I will borrow his definitions of two kinds of possibility:

Mere possibility: that of a state of thing which might come to pass, but, in point of fact, never will . . . .

Metaphysical possibility ought to mean a possibility of existence, nearly a potentiality. (CP 6.371)

Peirce may not have presented these two definitions, here, as describing mutually exclusive kinds of possibility in his own theory of Being; that is simply the use I wish to make of them in the hypothetical model I am presenting. “Mere possibility,” as I conceive it, would include my “paradoxical” and “negative” possibilities (kinds 1 and 2, figure 3.3), or ideas which (though possible) are unmotivated towards the entelechy of Being. Conversely, “metaphysical possibility” would include my “positive” and “irresistible” possibilities (kinds 3 and 4), or ideas which have an innate capability (in the case of the positive) or tendency (in the case of the irresistible) to get actualized in nature or in thought. Since this “capability” or “tendency” may or may not have yet actually emerged (in nature or in thought), I will treat the Actual as a subset of Metaphysical Being. Thus the Metaphysical in this scheme would include the Actual and the Potential (the latter as opposed to the “merely” possible). Perhaps these relations will seem clearer in figure 6.1.

The Actual, as we have seen, was for Peirce the realm of “force and resistance,” the domain of “brute” physical (though not necessarily material) reality (CP 1.24). Thus anything that moves, including material mass or pure energy, I will take as an example of the Actual. However, since it is possible for two opposing (actual) forces to be in equilibrium, or for a thing to exist in a (dualistic) state without actual motion, I will further divide the Actual into the Motive versus the Stative. Of course physical bodies or materials which are apparently in a “state of rest” are actually in motion, as we would know if only we could see the vibrations of their molecules, but I have in mind something else in my distinction between Motive and Stative Actuality. I will consider a thing’s being in a certain position in space as a case of Stative Actuality, not by reason of its materiality or molecular motion, but by reason of its predicability of position alone. For instance, I wish to consider even a point in (prescribed) space as an actual thing, not simply a potential thing; though I recognize that a point can be considered a hypothetical abstraction, the “mark” of which on a piece of paper is but a physical instantiation, it seems to me that a point in space, at least in the sense of a “coordinate” point, meets Peirce’s fundamental criterion of Actuality: It is at the intersection of two dimensions, a kind of Secondness, whether these dimensions or their intersecting point are plotted on a physical graph or not. At least in the study of metaphor, things which are literally predicable of position in space possess a kind of Actuality lacking in pure or true abstractions (even those which suggest potential relations to the actual). Thus to say that a point is here or there in space is literally either true, false, or approximate. But to say that an abstract thing like “Truth” or “Beauty” is here or there in space is to speak figuratively.

Figure 6.1

Position or Stative Actuality, then, is (for me) the primal instance of Actuality or the first occurrence of Secondness, although for Peirce position may have been a case of Firstness. He said, “Position is first, velocity or the relation of two successive positions is second” (CP 1.337). Still, my division of the Actual into the Motive and the Stative preserves Peirce’s notion of the relation between position and velocity; under my classification, all things literally predicable of motion are also (redundantly) predicable of position; however, not all things predicable of position are also predicable of motion. A point in space, for in stance, has position, but it cannot (literally) move; the appearance of such is the discovery of a second point. Thus to say that an energy wave is moving or changing is to speak literally; but to say that the “peak” of the wave is moving or changing is to speak figuratively. These distinctions are summarized and placed within the hierarchy, as so far developed, at figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2

The latter distinction, by which mere position in space is brought under the notion of Actuality, may seem overly technical or semantic, but it turns out to be quite useful in plotting the figural displacement of the so-called “metaphor of ascent” in Western poetry. By considering position in space as Actual, on a ground which excludes abstractions from that category, I formalize a condition that helps to explain why so many poets tend to treat abstractions as “beyond space.” This condition, as we will see, semeiotically initiates a sense of spatial sublimity or expansiveness in the poetic metaphor of ascent.

In any case, this quibbling about whether a “point” is Actual or only Potential indicates something very interesting and important about the nature of this hierarchy. When attempting to classify any given object in one of these categories, we will sometimes encounter an ambiguity: does the object in question belong to this or that class? Such ambiguity, far from negating the logic of the categories, actually affirms it. At least, the logic that it is supposed to reflect is a general teleology in Being: Future facts of Secondness follow the Firstness of Possibility. Since any higher node in the tree precedes all lower nodes and branches, placing an object under any given node automatically places it after all higher nodes in the hierarchy. For instance, placing a “point” or “position” under Actual [Stative] automatically places it under (indicating its “history” as) Metaphysical and Being; placing position in the Actual also leaves it (now) only one step removed from abstract Potentiality, two steps removed from Mere Possibility. We should therefore follow the general rule of placing any given object in the lowest category of which it is (under our present conceptions) literally predicable; that redundantly gives the object a “pedigree” in all categories directly in line above it.

Additionally, when an ambiguity arises over which of two categories really is the lowest possible, we should take heart from the fact that the two categories under consideration will always be (I predict) at least contiguous in the proposed hierarchy. For instance, though I have engaged myself in the above debate over whether the lowest category of “position” is Actual [Stative] or only Potential, at least the Stative and Potential are hypothesized to be contiguous categories. This suggests that they are strongly related (which is, after all, what I mean by “potential” as opposed to “mere possibility”), thereby making it natural that the territory along this boundary should sometimes be in dispute. Keeping in mind that the purpose of this hierarchy is to index the overall movement of figural displacement between categories, the occasional “fuzziness” that occurs near a type boundary should not be alarming; it should simply remind us, first, that it is a model of organic phenomena we are constructing, and second, it should encourage us to believe that the model may be coming close to something real. That is, I predict that cases of ambiguity will occur only at boundaries between categories which the model supposes to be contiguous; thus the ambiguity itself is one indication that the phenomena represented by the categories really are organically and ontologically continuous or adjacent. I believe this is more or less in harmony with Peirce’s doctrine of continuity or synechism in natural classes (see Hookway 1985: 174ff.).

Conversely, a serious debate over which of two non-contiguous categories is the lowest predicable of a given object would seriously undermine the model hierarchy, suggesting that the phenomena these categories are supposed to classify are not organically continuous or ontologically adjacent in the way the model represents them to be. But that kind of ambiguity, I am suggesting, will never occur. The model consistently predicts (as illustrated in the following discussion) exactly where ambiguities and debates will arise over how to classify a given object: namely, between categories which are contiguous in the model. This predictive capability attests to the model’s (psychological and, I believe, ontological) reality.

Next, having “narrowed” Being through Metaphysical > Actual > Motive, we may continue in the same direction to bifurcate Motive as Inertial versus Energial, in order to account for the two general kinds of motive phenomena: those which have mass (with literal predicability as Inertial) and those which do not (the pure energies, as Energial). Again, the “fuzziness” in some cases: Is light a particle (Inertial) or a wave (Energial)? But again the fuzziness occurs between hypothetically contiguous categories where, if the phenomena they formalize really are that strongly related, we should naturally expect the ambiguity to occur. Now note that a serious debate among scientists over whether light is Inertial particles or a only a Potentiality (non-contiguous categories in the model) might seriously undermine this hierarchy; conversely, the particle/wave debate actually tends to confirm this portion of the hierarchy. The hierarchy suggests precisely why scientists studying the Motive qualities of light might find it useful to think of light sometimes as waves and sometimes as a stream of particles, but not sometimes as particles and sometimes as an abstract possibility. For my purposes with metaphor, I will consider light as Energial which is literally predicable of motion (it flashes, sparkles, speeds, crosses) but not literally predicable of inertia (pushes, pulls, settles, sits—all of which are literally predicable only of masses). Thus “light pushes” or “light settles” are mildly figural, mildly so because Energial and Inertial are representations (as contiguous categories) of phenomena which are strongly and organically related.

The Inertial I will further subdivide as Objective versus Amorphous, to capture the distinction between those masses which have, or do not have, shape (by which I mean a full set of contours in three-dimensional space) or which are, or are not, literally predicable of such. I have in mind that important category of change-of-shape verbs (crack, shatter, warp, break, and so on). Things which are Objective (solids) are literally predicable of such changes in shape, but Amorphous matter (water, dust, gas, antimatter) are not. The mild figural tension of “The surf shattered against the rocks” is mild because Amorphous and Objective form a continuum which nonetheless seems to divide itself at an important juncture in our language and conceptions of the universe.

Following well-known semantic subcategorizations in linguistics, I will further divide Objective into Living versus Non-Living, Living into Animate versus In-animate, and Animate into Human versus Faunal The distinctive features I have in mind are, respectively, life (complex biological organism), feeling (including but not being limited to neuro-muscular capability), and intellection (including the “higher” emotions as distinct from mere feeling; see Savan 1981 for a thorough treatment of Peirce’s semeiotic theory of emotion). The anthropocentrism of these distinctions does not disconcert me, nor has scientific inquiry seriously threatened these boundaries (so far). New scientific data on plants, animals, and humans appear to uncover ambiguities exactly where the hierarchy predicts they would be: on the boundaries between categories which are contiguous in the model. New data may therefore have the effect of adjusting the “rights of membership” of a given organism to a given category, but not (yet) the existence or the hierarchical arrangement of the categories themselves.

The Human/Faunal distinction, for instance, has been under attack for centuries, as have (more sporadically) the Human//Plant distinction, and much less frequently the Human///Object distinction. The model thus predicts where and how often the attacks will come: where the “walls are thinnest” (/, //, /// indicating width). Moreover, the distinctions have so far stood up rather well to these attacks (which, not incidentally, have produced some fruitful scientific and poetic investigations of the effects which obtain by crossing these boundaries; the “brute Secondness” of the boundaries in no way precludes the cross-predicative function of Thirdness, which is precisely the fact of evolutionary growth—literally organic or figurally semantic—from one category to another). I say that the boundaries have stood up well to attacks (or to crossings) because they persist in our thought and culture despite our changing conceptions of individual objects within them. Of course, some “habits” of thought or culture have no ontological ground; as I have already noted in chapter 5, we typically reserve many predicates for the Human category alone, by linguistic or cultural convention alone: for instance, denying Fauna the literal rights of “comfort.” Nevertheless, the defining predicates of Human intellection and language seem to be grounded in something more than convention alone. At least I am not among those who talk to their house plants, nor do I think I will ever “hear” an ape “talk” freely and creatively to me, via spoken words, American Sign Language, or computer push-buttons. This is not meant as hostility towards that fascinating study of animal semeiosis; quite to the contrary, the hierarchy suggests precisely where the most productive investigations of such ought to take place: with animals whose brain/body ratios, social characteristics, or other features are correctly perceived as closest to the Human. It is clear that animals use signs to communicate; but I, for one, am not yet convinced that animal semeiosis really approaches linguistic semeiosis (epitomized, by the way, in creative poetic metaphor) in its capacity for growth. Perhaps I will be proved wrong in this; perhaps someday soon I will be forced to “hear” some ape use “language.” As a matter of fact, I rather hope such an opportunity may come. But if and when that day does come, I would not expect to abandon the Human/Faunal distinction; I would expect only to be much more careful about when and where I call the animal in question an “ape,” as he might not appreciate that.

We can now put together the entire hierarchical framework as shown in figure 6.3.

The right branches of the tree in figure 6.3 might also be bifurcated (or trifurcated, and so on) to accommodate the finer distinctions relevant to many metaphors, but that is not to my purpose here. First, note that any further division of a given right branch would only delineate the semantic territory along the branch immediately to its left, exclusive of the nodes immediately to its left. For instance, if we further divide Amorphous phenomena into liquids, gases, and so forth, these would only constitute refinements of the rather large domain (that is, the branch) between Inertial and Objective; no matter how many different kinds of amorphous substances we name, they are bounded by the notion of mass (Inertial) at one extreme, and by the concept of shape (Objective) at the other: they must all be more or less shapeless masses. Since my purpose is to capture only the broad outlines of this “metaphor map,” I will forego these finer distinctions.

Figure 6.3

There is a second and more interesting reason for attending to the bifurcation of only the left branches: They lead ultimately to the Human. Since the purpose of the model is to explore the relationship of human semeiosis (poetic metaphor in particular) to the larger semeiotic, the left branches provide the channel in which to trace the connection we are looking for; as Robert Weimann (1974: 149-150) put it, “that poetic statement by which man . . . imaginatively comprehends his relation to time and space and, above all, to the world around him.” I would add only that the “world around” the human also of course includes the human. The “imaginative comprehension” of that world (one peculiar type of Thirdness which intermediates the categories of brute Secondness at the lower reaches of the hierarchy in discoveries of the Firstness at the top) is only possible because of human membership in the major categories of Being. Thus tracing only the left-branching path in the hierarchy puts the poet at “center stage,” as it were, without granting human semeiosis an inordinate importance in the universal semeiotic: Human intellection is here depicted as but a token, a tiny circle at the center of a vast circumscribing Reality.

Of course it is entirely possible that the delineation of the enclosing categories of this Reality is itself but the figment of the human imagination, that it is an imposition on Reality of that peculiarly human habit of classification, and that the classifications themselves are hopelessly flawed by human egocentricism. I will not debate this possibility; since I believe that it is not debatable without undermining the very instrument of debate (human intellection), I will simply admit the possibility and then cheerfully ignore it. And I would invite those readers for whom this “possibility” seems more of a likelihood to ignore it, too, for the time being, and to consider the model as one hypothesis that might, at least, turn out to have some basis in objective reality. While Peirce might not have accepted this particular model of classification, he said that “it is a shallow and sciolistic metaphysics which declares a ‘real class’. . . to be an impossible thing” (CP 1.204). In view of my own notions of possibility (chapter 3), it is therefore enough for me if my readers will consider this hypothesis at least as one version of a “positive” possibility, motivated by the study of metaphor.

In any event, as I have tried to show elsewhere with a similar but flawed model (1975), something like this hierarchy does have a degree of psychological reality for many speakers of English. The test of such reality I currently have in mind is to see how well the model formalizes our natural sense of higher or lower levels of semantic tension in various metaphors and metaphor-like expressions. That is, how well does the hierarchy explain sensed increases in figural displacement as a function of increasing distances between semantic categories crossed by various metaphors, or as a function of the increasing number of type boundaries so crossed? Consider the paradigm in figure 6.4.

Figure 6.4

Test your sense of figural displacement against mine. For me, as the nouns 1-7 (finger, leaf, diamond, . . .) are sequentially combined with the predicate “trembles,” there is a (near) sequential increase in semantic tension. A trembling finger is entirely literal, showing no indexical tension. This would be accounted for in the diagram of figure 6.4 by the hypothesis that a finger belongs to the same general semantic class [+ Animate], or the domain on the plus side of that boundary, to which the predicate “tremble” also belongs. A trembling leaf, conversely, possesses for me a very slight metaphorical tension, which the diagram accounts for by placing the leaf on the [-] side of the Animate boundary; thus “a leaf trembles” crosses a single boundary in the hierarchy (though in the case of “leaf trembles,” the boundary may have been nearly erased). In the case of a trembling diamond, the tension is increased to a factor of at least two because two boundaries are crossed by that predication, and so forth through the rest of the combinations of a trembling vapor (three boundaries), a trembling light (four boundaries), a trembling point (five boundaries), and a trembling idea (six boundaries).

As much as possible, I have tried to keep other factors equal. All boundary crossings are from right to left, or down, in the hierarchy. However, I should note that “a point trembles” and “an idea trembles” cross conceptual boundaries (as discussed in chapter 5), whereas all the other predications cross merely existential boundaries. There is no reason why, in some possible world, leaves, diamonds, vapors, or even light might not actually or conceivably possess organic animation; but in no possible world of (my) imagining is it literally conceivable that a thing might at once be Static (points) or Abstract (ideas) and yet at the same time exhibit any kind of literal Motion (trembling). This variation in my paradigm at figure 6.4 is therefore unavoidable in the case of points and ideas; it is impossible to think of any noun example belonging to these categories, which by definition are non-Motive and non-Actual, that might be combined with “trembles” without crossing conceptual boundaries. Since the crossing of conceptual boundaries produces higher tension than the crossing of merely existential boundaries, this predication of points and ideas produces a higher level of tension than may be predicted from the mere number of boundaries crossed. Clearly, though, the number of boundaries crossed appears to be one factor which determines the level of semantic tension.

Next, note that the hierarchy also formalizes figural tension as a function of the direction of boundary crossing(s). All of the crossings in figure 6.4 are down in the hierarchy; we can also predicate up Consider figure 6.5.

Figure 6.5

Again I invite you to test intuitions with me. Figure 6.5 presents, for each sub-Being domain in the hierarchy, examples of nouns, general predicates, and hyponymic predicates belonging to each domain. (By a “hyponymic” predicate I mean a peculiar concrete token of the “general” predicate type, as for example crumbles is a very specific mode of the more general “breaking.”) You may select from the chart in figure 6.5 any noun example for combination with any general or hyponymic predicate in order to test for varying degrees of tension. I believe that the figural tension will vary (partially) depending on whether we combine a noun with a predicate higher or lower than the noun’s own level in the hierarchy.

First, consider the case of the noun-to-general-predicate combinations. Note that predication up produces no tension at all. For instance, all the general predicates above man are literally predicable of a man. Someone may object that “a man breaks” is figural, and when we mean a man’s “spirit” or “emotional stability” as prescinded from the man, I agree that it is figural; that, however, would be predication down When we consider the man’s physical being, his body (which is part of what is implied in this case by placing the man beneath the encompassing category of Objective), then the predication “a man breaks” can be entirely literal, as when the man’s body is broken. This condition of literalness in the up predications is no surprise when we remember the hierarchical arrangement of the semantic domains in the model: A noun referent’s membership in one category automatically includes it in all directline higher categories, whereby it is literally predicable of all general predicates which span those categories.

Conversely, note that all predications down between nouns and general predicates produce moderate-to-high tension. I may be understood (believed or disagreed with) literally if I say that “circularity is real”; but if I say that circularity is here or there, that it moves, pushes, resists, breaks, lives, feels, or thinks, I may only be understood figuratively Notice that the further down we predicate a given noun of the general predicates, the more the tension increases. This is a result of the other factors already discussed—the kind and number of boundaries crossed. The further down we predicate, the greater the number of intermediating domains we cross; and in the case of the highest domains in the hierarchy, predication down crosses conceptual boundaries in addition to existential boundaries. For instance, “Circularity pushes” crosses down over three boundaries—Stative > Energial > Inertial; these are all conceptual boundaries with respect to circularity, since in no possible world could something be an abstraction (which is by definition not physical) and at the same time possess a physical position, movement, or mass. Conversely, “light pushes” crosses down over only one boundary, Inertial; this is only an existential boundary with respect to light, since it is obvious from light science that the “particle theory” of light is at least conceivable. Light is not (by definition) necessarily immaterial in all accounts of it; it is only immaterial in ordinary experience.

Thus we may summarize the noun-to-general-predicate conditions as follows:

Noun (referent) > up > General Predicate = no tension

Noun (referent) > down > General Predicate = moderate-to-high tension

The case of the hyponymic predicates is more interesting, however. Here, predication up apparently goes against the model’s prediction by creating at least a low level of tension. For instance, while “a man[’s body] breaks” produces no figural index, the hyponymic parallel of “a man[’s body] crumbles” does seem to produce a slight strangeness, even when the breaking apart of the man’s body is meant. This is probably the result of two factors: one, purely arbitrary, perhaps existential, constraints habitually placed upon hyponymic predicates; and, two, the lower level of generality among the hyponymic predicates. With reference to the first of these factors, note that crumbles is reserved not just for Objective noun referents in general but specifically for nouns whose objects are more usually “dry” or “brittle”; thus to say that “the man crumbled into dust”—even when the physical destruction of his body is meant—seems figural (the crossing of an existential boundary). In a more specific context, a context which is itself “hyponymic,” this figural sense disappears; that is, supposing that the man had first been literally calcified (remember Lot’s wife) or frozen, the sentence would not sound figural at all. Apparently, then, crossing a given noun with a hyponymic predicate spanned by a higher general predicate does provoke a figural response unless the context is also highly specialized. This notion accords with the second factor above—the specificity of the hyponymic predicates. This specificity entails that any predication up to a hyponymic predicate also must involve a slight predication back down, as shown in figure 6.6.

Figure 6.6

Therefore, when hyponyms are viewed in this way (as slightly lower predicates within the span of a general predicate) their tension-causing behavior is completely consistent with the model: Predication up to a general type produces no tension; but predication back down to a lower token of the general type would (predictably) produce slight tension. In any case, predication up to a hyponymic predicate seldom produces more than low tension, whereas predication DOWN to a hyponymic token uniformly produces extremely high tension—even higher than predication down to a general predicate (contrast “circularity breaks” with “circularity crumbles”).

The indexical patterns of predication to hyponymic verbs may thus be summarized:

Noun (referent) > up > Hyponymic Predicate = low tension

Noun (referent) > down > Hyponymic Predicate = high tension

These trends of tension accord with those produced by the general predicates to suggest that the hierarchical direction of predication is indeed one factor (among three) regulating semantic indexation in metaphor-like expressions.

The same general patterns obtain in the case of metaphors in the form of “Noun X is Noun Y” (where X and Y are in separate domains of the hierarchy). That is, when two nouns are “general” of their respective domains, predication up produces no appreciable tension (“A man is an object”), whereas predication down produces moderate-to-high tension (“Actuality is something brute”). When the two nouns are hyponymic tokens of their general types, predication up produces low tension (“John is an absolute garbage disposal”), whereas predication down produces extremely high tension (“Relativity is a ping-pong ball”). The same patterns could be redundantly demonstrated for adjectival and adverbial or prepositional predications in metaphor, as well as for nouns in direct, indirect, or prepositional object positions in the syntax of the sentence. In every case, it would seem, the hierarchical logic of “up-predication” is an allowing condition for the imaginative exercise of “down-predication.” Perhaps a computer programmed with extensive lexicons in each of the categories could be used to “generate” an interesting catalogue of potential metaphors.

That exercise does not interest me, however, because the tension or semantic novelty of poetic metaphor is its secondary indexical function, not its primary substance. To say that figural tension is an index, however, is not to minimize its importance. If we use this model hierarchy to draw a “map” of homocentric semantic boundaries and domains (see van Dijk 1975), we can “chart” the major figural displacements of complex metaphor and gain a deeper appreciation of how semantic novelty both marks and conditions the evolution of iconic meaning in poetry. In figure 6.7, I have constructed the sort of “map” I have in mind and charted on it a number of the metaphors and metaphor-like expressions which we have already considered.

Since my objective is to formalize an overall sense of what figural displacement means for poetic metaphor, I will not attempt a detailed defense of my placement of the icons and objects in figure 6.7. The extreme breadth of the categories allows room for plenty of variance of opinion as to where this or that object should be placed in the hierarchy. Instead of arguing these points, I will simply predict that most serious disagreements will focus on a choice between two contiguous categories and will not therefore significantly affect the overall perceived direction of a given figural displacement.

Figure 6.7

When used to chart the indexical function of such displacement, the “metaphor map” suggests some interesting observations. First, notice that what I have called “false metaphor”—mere anomalies such as “an idea trembles” (or “colorless green ideas sleep”) or “triangularity barks”—effect radical leaps across semantic space without “touching down” anywhere in the process. Conversely, poetic metaphors, such as “stars are diamonds trembling” or “syllabic nets of frost,” look somewhat different on the map: While these metaphors also effect radical displacements, they tend to do so in more subtle stages, or at least to “fill in the gaps” with icons that serve a mediating indexical function. The direction of the poetic metaphoric complex therefore appears to be more uniform, sensible, even teleological, serving a helpful indexical function for the nonpoet reader. Of course, much modern (especially surrealistic) metaphor is a clear exception to this rule, as we will see at the end of this chapter, and it must also be remembered that the anomalies can be interpreted as metaphors in appropriate contexts. Now, however, we have a way of understanding precisely what “rescuing context” does for anomaly: it supplies a secondary similarity condition which fills in the anomaly’s “gaps” in semantic space with invented intermediary steps. Conversely, poetic metaphor generally fills in its own gaps; the intermediating similarity condition is its Firstness, the natural outgrowth of one icon into another; the “leap” to that condition, coming Second and occurring in organic stages, actualizes the similarity in a way that makes it more accessible (not merely allowable) to consciousness.

Nowhere is the interplay of metaphor’s indexical function with respect to its iconic condition clearer than in the Keats metaphors charted on the map in figure 6.7. Consider the figural displacement of stars > diamonds > trembling First, diamonds form an intermediating icon between the light of the stars and the trembling of some animate organism. Without this intermediation, we would have great difficulty guessing that stars are the literal object; more important, we would miss that very interesting similarity condition which links the cosmic energy of the stars with the energy of animate life (the diamonds fill the gap in semantic space). Looked at on the map, however, there is even more: What does the overall direction (the index) of this iconic displacement mean to the similarity condition? To answer this question plainly (albeit metaphorically), it almost puts the stars in human hands. Trembling is closer to Human in semantic space than are sparkling diamonds; the sparkling of diamonds, in turn, is closer to the Human than is the pure primal energy of stars. Keats’s metaphor displaces the cosmic phenomenon of starlight into the local object of a diamond, and thence into life and animation, only one step from the Human. Considered as a whole, the trope not only supposes how stars are like diamonds; with trembling it makes that star-diamond likeness more like us. Plotted on the metaphor map, then, the direction of the index gives the complex icon a salient psychological force, if not also a distinctive semeiotic substance.

Why, someone may ask, do I not accord complex anomalies like “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” the same honor? Partly it is because its (hypothetical) index, if plotted on the model hierarchy of type boundaries, would appear irregular, lacking rational direction; it would point in every direction and therefore in no direction. Partly it is because of the lack of a clear icon; there is no primary substance (and in context, only a secondary substance) for the index to color and configure; there is no interpretation to undergo re-interpretation. But in the Keats metaphor, there is a clear Focus Interpretation of Firstness, even out of the poem’s immediate context; there is thus a semantic substance for Vehicle Interpretation to act upon. When Vehicle Interpretation is carried out with a “map” in hand, a map of the territory in which the Vehicle moves, we can see how the Vehicle does more than “carry” its object; it also shapes it, or at least reshapes our understanding of it. To put it in Peircean terms, the index more than indicates a string of icons; in the case of poetic metaphor, it actually “makes an assertion” (like the arrow of a weather vane, NEM 4: 242) about the metaphor as a whole, whereby the index becomes something of an icon in itself, an Icon greater than its mere sum of icons, signifying man’s relation to the cosmos.

In Keats, this iconic force acquired by the overall indexical “arrow” is not always pointing inward on the map, as if everything in the universe were only important as it points to the Human True, that pattern of figural displacement typifies Keats’ early period. (That pattern also seems to typify the early period of an infant’s cognition, as well as the general tenor of the geocentric theory which dominated astronomy in its infancy.) Keats’s later metaphors point outward as well as inward, interpreting cosmic experience in human terms at the same time as it re-interprets human experience in cosmic terms. (See Ronald Lunsford 1980 for a similar treatment of Byron and Shelley.) The result of this simultaneous inward and outward displacement is a special kind of semantic tension in itself, a kind of semeiotic force and opposition with which the figural index acquires a “double-arrowed” iconic significance. This significance, in turn, allows the whole metaphor—even when it consists entirely of images and diagrams—to approach the universal power of the metaicon (chapters 2 and 4). Consider, one final time, the complex metaphor discussed in chapter 5 (Endymion, I, 453-456):

You may wish to refer again to figure 6.7 above, where I have plotted the individual and overall figural displacements of Keats’s metaphor on the map.

First, let us examine the parallel displacements of Magic sleep > comfortable bird and mind > sea. Linguistically, the predication of both tropes is downward or inward: The quasi-abstractions of sleep and mind acquire the motion, substance, shape, life, and animation (with human proximation) in the concrete imagery of the bird at sea. However, the literal experience being captured in the metaphor is that of the human mind in sleep; “Magic” and “the mind,” while lexically abstract, are referential tokens of the human span of predicates. In this respect, then, the figural displacement is outward from the narrow domain of human experience to the broader and more remote domains of the bird (Animate) hovering over the sea (Inertial). This displacement outward reinforces the sense of spatial sublimity implied by the image of a bird at sea (and a huge halcyon, at that, if it “broods” over the ocean).

What is more, the linguistic countermotion (concrete < abstract) merely adds to the semeiotic outward motion (Human > Animate > Inertial), for the next displacement—outward again—is now into the circling kinesthetic force and opposition (Energial versus Stative) of the paradox unconfined restraint, and then outward yet again into the radical oxymoron imprisoned liberty (Stative versus Abstract). Here, then, is an even more vivid way of formalizing the sense (discussed in chapter 5) of how these oxymora properly and dramatically culminate the entire figure. What the oxymora speak of is force and counterforce held in equilibrium; what they are is a linguistic paradox containing an abstract unity; where they come in the metaphorical complex is at the end of an indexical movement beginning in lexical condensation and ending in semeiotic expansion, the simultaneous culmination and release of mounting figural tension—an Index which is in itself an unconscious Icon of sleep.

On the metaphor map, this complex metaphor looks something like a “cosmic funnel,” pointing inward but opening outward. The map even allows us to plot, as if “flowing outward” though this funnel, some possible free associations (the dotted lines on the map in figure 6.7) which reinforce the overall outward predicative motion: “bird > sea > unconfined > liberty,” and so forth. Note also that, within the oxymora themselves, such free associations also duplicate the circling displacement of the explicit predications, as shown in figure 6.8 (where dotted lines show free associations and solid lines show explicit predications).

Figure 6.8

This mirror-image balance of the associative and predicative functions, combined with the linguistic/semeiotic motion and countermotion already noted, gives the whole figure a complex symmetry very nearly approximating (at the indexical level) that of a metaicon. I do not think that the associations of “bird-liberty” or “sea-freedom” are in themselves metaicons; I rather think the sense of symmetry in this metaphor obtains from Keats’s complex indexical patterning.

Specifically, I think that it is Keats’s overall indexical pattern that subliminally implies the (clear) metaicon of

ascent (or voyage) in space = quest for being (or truth)

which perhaps fosters and controls the bird-liberty and sea-freedom connections. Now note that Keats does not explicitly mention either space, an ascent or voyage, a quest, or being or truth. There is no particular object or icon in the complex which instantiates anything like “voyage = quest(ion).” Rather, it is the indexical pattern itself which implies it. We build up to the abstract reconstitution of sleep as imprisoned liberty because the metaphor leads us stepwise through these successively more expansive semantic domains:

human > faunal > energial > stative > potential

Thus, while Keats does not mention space or a quest, his metaphor’s upward and outward pattern of displacement does remind me of the words of Arthur Lovejoy (1936: 139): “The poet takes an imaginary voyage through space and at the same time conceives of this as an ascent of the Scale of Being.” I believe Lovejoy was discussing what I have called the metaicon of “ascent in space = quest for being.” Lovejoy does not mention, however, that this congruence is reversible. In the Keats metaphor, we have evidence that the congruence is indeed reversible. For here, instead of presenting a voyage in space as an icon of ascending the chain of Being, Keats does precisely the reverse: He presents an ascent of the chain of Being as a latent icon for a voyage or flight to spatial sublimity, to a Potentiality beyond space. The fact that this iconic voyage only emerges as the overall indexical pattern of microscopic iconic movements within a complex metaphor only confirms the correspondence between the growth of the poetic “molecule” and the structure of a universal semeiotic suggested by the metaphysics of C. S. Peirce.

Of course, someone ought to notice that, in the Keats example, I have chosen a complex metaphor which is unfairly supportive of my intent—it is unrepresentative of much poetic metaphor. I must admit to this charge; the model works best with the kind of poetic metaphor that very nearly disappeared from Western literature at the end of the nineteenth century. The Medieval, Renaissance, Eighteenth Century, Romantic, and Victorian world views all were much more compatible with the rather obvious Ptolemaic and Platonic character of the model I am proposing. Conversely, in much twentieth-century poetic metaphor, what we see is the virtual disintegration, not the orderly ontogenetic recapitulation, of this “semantic macrocosm.” Consider a final example, this passage from Eliot’s The Waste Land (lines 367-385):

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

Passages like this, while densely and brilliantly metaphorical, defy any effort to reconstruct an indexical sequence of figural displacement to accommodate the hypothetical structure of a logical and hierarchical semeiotic universe. Joseph Frank, in his interesting book, The Widening Gyre (1963: 56), writes that modern poets in general tend to “undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the reader’s normal expectations of a sequence and forcing him to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space.” This captures precisely my sense of what happens in “semantic space” when poets such as Eliot disrupt the “inherent consecutiveness” of semantic domains suggested by an ontological/semeiotic hierarchy like the one I have put forward. Without attempting to show in detail what Eliot’s metaphorical structure would look like if charted on the metaphor map, I will merely sample some of the near havoc to which the second stanza above reduces the map’s prediction of an orderly sequence. See figure 6.9.

Figure 6.9

With only poetry of this kind to read, no one would ever suppose that complex poetic metaphor instantiates an orderly hierarchy of semantic domains. “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” would seem friendly in comparison to the model. Remembering that Eliot’s purpose was to describe a “Waste Land,” however, perhaps we can see the utility of such a metaphor map even here. Reconstructible from pre-twentieth-century poetry and thought, the model hierarchy formalizes precisely how twentieth-century surrealism (Eliot’s term here was Unreal) differs from almost everything that came before it in our literary and artistic tradition. And perhaps the violence done to the hierarchies of Peirce’s philosophical realism by such instances of surrealism may even suggest a cause for modern poetic “dissonance” or “ontological shock.” The non-sequential character of the modern (surrealistic) poetic index is itself a dramatic icon of the rational world view in collapse. In his book Space against Time in Modern Poetry (1972: 28), M. K. Spears must have had something of this sort in mind when he wrote that “abandonment of poetic form is intended as an emblem of abandonment of belief in cosmic form—that is, any principle of order and meaning in the universe.” I would add only one footnote to this fine statement of the case. If Eliot’s Waste Land metaphors together form an “emblem,” a complex icon, of modern semeiotic and ontological disorientation in the Einsteinian universe, they only acquire that force by virtue of the cumulative chaos in their overall indexical pattern. The pattern of that chaos is only measurable in terms of a supervening order, a universal order like that to be found in Peirce’s semeiotic. Although I confess to the hope that poetry will return (I think it is already returning) to the sort of iconic/indexical patterns which gently harmonize with that order, I nevertheless find in much modern poetic dissonance a tacit confirmation of the idea of order and harmony.

Perhaps out of this “chaos” will arise an entirely new order. Peirce’s Thirdness—not limited to the Secondness of gross binary opposition, which is virtually all I have treated in this chapter—would be the least likely of all notions to hold us back from new orders of meaning. Thirdness means change. But I hope, at least, that Peirce was correct in thinking that change ultimately means growth, and that growth means Law. Evolutionary law operates as a general teleology upon fortuitous variation (which is sometimes brought in by violent mutation). If modern science and poetry have shaken the old order of ontological realism to its very foundations, perhaps modern scientists and poets will build a new foundation from the solid stones of the fallen walls. If so, metaphor—as a movement to the unknown from the known—will no doubt be the mortar in the seams.