The Literary Mind

by Mark Turner

  These two special cases of EVENTS ARE Ac'r1ONs—Ac'rORs ARE MOvERs and ACTORS ARE MAN11>ULA'rORs—are therefore compatible. If we say of a chess match, “Observers thought that white would take the draw, but his next move made it clear he was beadin g fora win,” we have an example of the overlap of the two special cases. We project physical objects in spatial locations onto draw and win. We project effort to move in their direction onto trying to obtain them. We project boil.) a self—powered mover and a manipulator of physical objects onto the chess player.

  This pattern of overlap might be called ACTORS ARE MOvERs AND MANI1>ULA— TORS. Since shaking is a particularly energetic kind of manipulating, it is not sur-

  prising that highly active and effective actors are colloquially referred to as “movers and shakers.”

  A THINKER IS A MOVER AND A MANIPULATOR

  Eve Sweetser has examined the case in which we project the action-story of movement and manipulation onto the story of thinking. She calls this pattern THE MIND IS A BODY MOVING THROUGH SPACE. Most ofit derives from the more general projection ACTORS ARE MOvERs AND MANIPULATORS.

  For example, when we wish to tell the action-story of a mathematical or scientific discovery, we can say that the thinker beganfrom a certain assumption, was ljeadedfor a certain conclusion, stumbled over difficulties, moved faster or slower at various times, had to backtrack to correct mistakes, obtained part of the solu- tion but was still missing the most important part, had a notion of wlyere to look

  for it, began at last to see it, followed it as it eluded her, finally got one finger on

  44 .8 THE LITERARY MIND

  z't,filt it slip nearly away, but at last got it. Of course, after she has made the dis- covery, it becomes hers. This is a case in which an actor in a nonspatial story of thinking is understood by projection from a spatial action-story of moving and manipulating.

  There is a second highly productive scenario of A THINKER IS A MOVER AND A MANIPULATOR in which the body is not moving through space but rather manipulating objects as instruments, tools, or aids to fabrication. When we talk of cognitive “instruments” or conceptual “tools” or of “piecing together a story,” we are understanding the action of thought by projection from the body action of manipulation, specifically manipulation for the purpose of manufacture. We may “apply” a principle in the way we “apply” a template. We may “carve” out a theory in the way we “carve” a statue out of wood or stone.

  HOMER, DANTE, BUNYAN, SACKS. SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS, PROUST, POUND

  Writers often use A THINKER IS A MOVER AND A MANIPULATOR to create para- bolic stories of mental events. Any work presenting a “journey of the soul,” such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’sProgress or Dante’s Dz'm'na Commea'z'a, uses this projection. Some writers blend the parabolicjourney of the mind with a detailed travelogue: As Odysseus descends to the underworld, as Marlowjourneys deeper down the river into the heart of darkness, or as the various voices of travel in Pounds Czm— to: roam over lands and times, we interpret the travel story as literally spatial for the body of the traveler and parabolic for the mind of the traveler.

  In A Leg to Stand On, Oliver Sacks tells a story of a mentaljourney. It takes place aboard a train. VVhen his real train is stuck in a siding, he considers how neurology is stuck: “I withdrew now from musing and gazing as the train pulled into a siding, and returned to Heads Stua’z'es in Neurology.” When Sacks makes a conceptual breakthrough that allows the old neurology to move into a new era, the train takes off: “And now, I realized, after a long hour of stasis, we had emerged from the siding, and we were moving again.” Those last four words refer to a blend ofthree ourneys: the literal trainjourney, the parabolic journey of the discipline of neurology, and Sacks’s personal parabolicjourney of intellectual discovery.

  Some writers are explicit about the parable. Saint John of the Cross, in

  a poem of eight stanzas titled “En una noche oscura”—commonly translated “The Dark Night of the Soul”—presents the story of his soul’s union with God as a story of ajourney along the path of spiritual negation. His mind, or soul, is a traveler; the mental process is vertical ascent by the secret ladder; the night is a guide; and spiritual union is a bodily embrace against the breast. Saint John of the Cross wrote hundreds of pages, gathered into two books—T}JeAstent qfMozmt Carmel and The Dark Nz'g}Jt—in the form of commentaries explaining explicitly

  FIGURED TALES Q. 45

  that the eight stanzas of this poem are a projection of a spatial action-story of movement and manipulation onto a nonspatial story of religious transformation. The commentary in these two books never advances beyond the first line of the third stanza of the poem.

  Other writers are less explicit about their use of A THINKER IS A MOVER AND MANIPULATOR. Perhaps the most famous representation of mental events in twen- tieth-century literature is the opening of Marcel Proust’szf la recherche du temps perdu, the owuerture, in which he describes his experiences of memory and dream- ing. In it, Proust repeatedly asks us to project the story of a mover in space onto the story of a thinker. Mental states are physical locations, and a change from one mental state to another is a change of spatial location: “I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the world of dreams”; “my mind, striving for hours on end to break away from its moorings, to stretch upwards . . . ” To consider memories is to linger in space above or before them and to view them: “And even before my thought, lingering at the doorstep of occasions and shapes, had identified the dwelling together with the events . . . ”

  At times, he presents the effect of memory on his mind as a story in which an object comes to him, which he then uses as an aid to help his mz'na'mo71efrom one state to another:

  Iwas more destitute than the cave-dweller; but then the memory—not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived and might now very possibly be—would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself; in a flash I would traverse centu- ries of civilisation. . . .

  ]’e'tais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes; mais alors le souvenir— non encore du lieu oi1j’étais, mais de quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et o1‘1j’aurais pu étre—venait a moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’of1je n’aurais pu sortir tout seul; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siécles de civilisation. . . .

  EVENTS ARE BODY ACTORS

  The target story in EVENTS ARE ACTIONS need not be an event performed by an actor. It can be an event without actors, or an event with many indistinct actors, or an event that happens to a human being. Consider, “The recession is coming at me and will hammer me when it gets here; it will beat me to a pulp.” Here, the actor in the source story is projected onto the event, the recession. The physical

  46 .8 THE LITERARY MIND

  object that the actor hammers is projected onto the human being. With a slight shift, we can use a source story with several actors and project those actors onto both the recession and the human beings it will affect: “If we can just dodge it long enough, it may weaken, and we may get away unharmed.”

  EVENTS ARE MOVERS

  VVhen the actor in a story of movement is projected onto an event that is not an actor, we have EVENTS ARE MOVERS, a common variety of EVENTS ARE ACTIONS. It includes projections like the following:

  Events Are Actors (Moving under Their Own Power) and Occurrence Is Motion (by an Actor under His Own Power)

  This recession is an opponent whose progress we cannot stop. Time marches on. The recession crept up on California and delivered an unexpected

  wallop.

  Once the mover is projected onto the event, the rest of the projections fol- low: The event can have goals that are spatial locations it tries to reach; means to those goals will be paths to destinations; and so on.

  EVENTS ARE MANIPULATO RS

  When the actor in a story of manip
ulation is projected onto an event that is not an actor, we have EVENTS ARE MANIPULATORS, a common variety of EVENTS ARE ACTIONS. It includes projections like the following:

  Events Are Manipulators and Occurrence Is Manipulation The recession is spinning us around. The economy is yankin g as left and right. The drought is strangling us. The bad weather this season has picked our pockets.

  Once the mover is projected onto the event, the rest of the projections follow.

  EVENTS ARE MOVERS AND MANIPULATORS

  We saw that parable can project a mover and manipulator onto any kind of ac- tor. Similarly, parable can project a mover and manipulator onto any kind of event: “The recession crept up on us and then put a c/Jokebola’ on the business.”

  FIGURED TALES 6.». 47

  Stories of our interaction with other actors can be projected onto event-stories that include us. Events can help us, hinder us, hurt us. Events can assist some- one, give her a boost, throw her into a situation she isn’t prepared for. Unem- ployment can knock somebody flat. Jealousy becomes a green-eyed monster to be confronted, addiction an opponent to be wrestled. The farmer can steal land from the desert, and every summer the desert can try to take it back. The sailor can fight a murderous sea that tries to steal his life and his livelihood.

  The most ubiquitous special case of EVENTS ARE MOVERS AND MANIPULA- TORS is DEATH IS A MOVER AND MANIPULATOR: it comes upon you, and you become a physical obj ect it manipulates. It takes you away, unless, of course, your friend Heracles owes you a favor, which he repays by physically preventing death from reaching you and seizing you and taking you away.

  Time, too, can be understood as a mover and manipulator. Time catches up with you, wears you down, races against you, stops you, takes your youth away, your beauty away, your friends away, and your family away. Time may also, of course, be on your side and bring you comfort and success.

  PROJECTING SPATIAL STORIES

  Action is not the only kind of story. Everywhere we look, we see spatial stories that do not contain animate actors. We see a wall collapse from age, water run downhill, leaves blowing in the wind. These are spatial stories.

  They also can be projected. I call the general pattern of their projections EVENTS ARE SPATIAL STORIES. It naturally overlaps with EVENTS ARE AcTIONs to such an extent that they may appear to be identical. But EVENTS ARE ACTIONS can project nonspatial action-stories (like a story of thinking or dreaming or suf- fering), and EVENTS ARE SPATIAL STORIES can project stories without actors, so neither is entirely contained in the other.

  Leonard Talmy showed in a series of papers in the 1970s and 1980s that we frequently project spatial stories—especially force- dynamic stories—onto stories of nonspatial events. Eve Sweetser, in an analysis compatible with Talmy’s, con- sidered the special case in which we project spatial stories onto stories of mental events. Some of Talmy’s and Sweetser’s results are incorporated into the work George Lakoff and I did on EVENTS ARE ACTIONS and into the further analysis of whatI call EVENTS ARE SPATIAL STORIES. Some individual facets of EVENTS ARE SPATIAL STORIES were first noticed by George Lakoff and MarkJohnson in 1980. The results summarized below come from many scholars, including, among others, Leonard Talmy, Eve Sweetser, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Jane Espenson, and me.

  EVENTs ARE SPATIAL sTORIES includes all the projections of spatial action- stories we saw in EVENTS ARE ACTIONS, but it also includes projections of spatial

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  stories without actors. These are exactly the sort of proj ections Talmy originally analyzed:

  Changes Are Spatial Movements

  The building has fizllen into disrepair. The market cras/Jed.

  Causes Are Forces

  The global slowdown was like mud forcin gthe American economy to stop.

  Occurrence Is Motion and Cessation Is Stopping

  The drought has been going on for a long time, but we hope it will stop soon.

  Contrary Causality Is Opposing Force

  State decree cannot force the drought to end, and Federal money won’t stop the drought, either. Only rain in the Sierra will put an end to the drought.

  In “The building has fallen into disrepair,” a spatial story of falling is pro- jected onto the rather different spatial story of roof tiles breaking, paint chip- ping, and windows cracking. In “The global slowdown pushed the American economy into recession,” a spatial story of physical forces on physical obj ects: and the consequent change of their spatial location is projected onto a nonspatial story of economics.

  AS TIME GOES BY

  Stories take place in time. Stories of change over time can be understood by projection from stories of body action—time becomes a causal mover and ma- nipulator: “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, / wherein he puts alms for Oblivion.”

  A story of change over time may alternatively be understood by projection from a spatial story without actors. Time is then an object rather than an actor. For example, time might be a river, which moves “current” events along.

  We can oscillate back and forth between viewing time as a moving actor and viewing time or specific times as moving objects. Time can be a moving actor with a wallet at his back or a collection of “approaching” hours and “upcoming” minutes. Time can be viewed as moving toward the past (“The days raced by us”) or as moving toward the future, either as an actor (“But at my backI always

  FIGURED TALES Q. 49

  hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” “Time is a runner we cannot out- run”) or as an object (“Time keeps on slipping into the future”).

  In summary, we have considered the following cases where the projected story is spatial:

  SOURCE STORY TARGET STORY EXAMPLES

  Spatial Action Spatial Action Someone who intercepts a ball is said to “take the ball away from the intended receiver.”

  Spatial Event Spatial Action A warrior is said to “rain down” blows upon his enemy.

  Spatial Action Spatial Event “The sullen wind . . . tore the elm— tops down for spite.” Death inAlcestis. “Time hath a wallet at his back.”

  Spatial Event Spatial Event The roof tiles have cracked, the paint has chipped, the windows have cracked; we say the house has ‘fillen into disrepair.”

  Spatial Action Nonspatial Action “In solving the equation, he leapt over every obstacle known to have stopped previous mathematicians.”

  Spatial Event Nonspatial Action “His concentration blattedaut (or dissipated) his fears.”

  Ezra Pound in the Cantos refers to “Mind like a floating white cloud.”

  Spatial Action Non—Spatial Event "The recession cauglyt up with the university budget and flattenea’ it

  witla a single Ha-w.”

  Spatial Event Nonspatial Event "The economy sank.”

  PROJECTING NONSPATIAL STORIES

  In everyday thought, we routinely project spatial stories onto nonspatial stories of social, political, and mental events. When people agree to act as allies, for example, we say they are aligned, they pull together, they vote as a bloc, they sup-

  port each other, theystandtogether. When they conspire to defeat someone, we

  say they are arrayed againsthim. In these cases, we project spatial stories of force

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  onto nonspatial stories of social, political, and mental alliance. Similarly, when we conceive of people conspiring by banding together to vote against someone, thus forcing him into defeat, we are projecting a spatial story of force onto a nonspatial story of conspiracy.

  But projection can happen multiply, repeatedly, and recursively. A nonspatial story that was the target of proj ection from a spatial story can in turn serve as the nonspatial source story for a further projection. In that second projection, the source is nonspatial (although the original spatial source story stands behind it). For example, conspiring to defeat someone is a nonspatial story; it can serve as a source to be projected onto other stories. We ca
n say, for example, that the national economies are conspiring against a global recovery. A source spatial story of forces was originally projected onto a target nonspatial story of conspiracy; the nonspatial story of conspiracy is then the source projected onto a target nonspatial story of global economics.

  Forces combining reinforcingly -> Conspiring against

  Conspiring against -> Economics

  In sum, the force—dynamic image schemas originally projected to the story of con.;z>iring against are in turn projected to the story of economics.

  Although multiple projections may seem on analysis to be complicated and to require a kind of algebra of the mind, it is only their analysis that gives us difficulty, not their occurrence in thought. When Hamlet says, “How all occa- sions do inform against me,” modern readers sometimes interpret him as por- traying “occasions” as “informers.” They project a social action story of inform- ing onto occasions, making them informers. But it is also the case that a spatial action-story is projected onto informing so that it can be “against.”