by Umberto Eco
We can, and it lies in the weight that the commentary on Aristotle’s Categories had throughout medieval doctrinal culture thanks to the mediation of Porphyry.
Let us take another look at what we said in Chapter 1 (section 1.2.1) apropos of the Arbor Porphyriana: that it makes it possible, in other words, to classify, but not to define. In order to define, the tree would have to introduce many more differences than it actually does, or it would have to resolve itself into a network of differences. Every time Aristotle is faced with explaining a metaphor he has recourse to local “ontologies” that are far more flexible than a tree of genera and species.
Now, the doctrinal thought of the Middle Ages is unable to wean itself away from the model provided by the Arbor, and as a consequence, while it can easily understand and justify substitutions from genus to species and vice versa, it finds itself in difficulties when it comes to talking about the multiplicity of properties that enter into play in metaphorical substitutions. It is worth noting that Geoffrey of Vinsauf, who was not a philosopher, was not the only one to point out the need to take into consideration all of the possible properties of an object: philosophers and theologians too, when it came to analyzing a metaphor, were perfectly well aware of what, often peripheral, characteristics formed the basis of the amalgam of the two sememes. But when it came to constructing a theory of metaphorical invention (considering the subtleties they were capable of when discussing problems of logic), they found themselves without a sufficiently flexible semantic model, and they were loath to call into question the canonical model of the Porphyrian tree that had been such an integral part of their intellectual formation.
Why this instinctive reluctance to challenge the world order established by the Arbor Porphyriana? If what we said at the conclusion of Chapter 1 is true, resorting to flexible, even unexplored, “ontologies” to explain metaphorical expressions meant admitting that ontologies, like the Porphyrian tree itself, were practical, provisional tools, and not definitive images of the structure of the world and the Great Chain of Being. And not even the most faithful devotees of Aristotle in those centuries could escape the influence of Neo-Platonism (Thomas Aquinas himself commented not only on Aristotle but also on Dionysius).
To construct or suggest the possibility of an unexpectedly adequate ontology, we do not have to start with the supposition that the universe must always be seen according to a single organizational model according to preordained genera and species. But it was precisely this idea of an “ontological revolution” that could not even cross the mind of a medieval thinker, because their very image of the world was conceived along the model of a stable Arbor Porphyriana.
This helps us understand, I believe, why a historical period so rich in extraordinary metaphors (audaciously proposed by its poets) found itself unable to elaborate a theory of metaphor as an instrument of fresh knowledge.
This is a shorter, edited version of a paper delivered at a seminar at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici of the University of Bologna in March 2001 in the context of a series of talks on the fortunes of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor. It appeared in Lorusso (2005).
1. “Tropus est dictio translata a propria significatione ad non propriam similitudinem ornatus necessitatisue causa.… Metaphora est rerum uerborumque translatio. Haec fit modis quattuor, ab animali ad animale, ab inanimali ad inanimale, ab animale ad inanimale, ab inanimali ad animale: ab animali ad animale, ut Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae; nam et auriga et gubernator animam habent: ab inanimali ad inanimale, ut ut pelagus tenuere rates; nam et naues et rates animam non habent: ab animali ad inanimale, ut Atlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput et cetera: nam ut haec animalis sunt, ita mons animam non habet, cui membra hominis ascribuntur: ab inanimali ad animale, ut si tantum pectore robur concipis; nam ut robur animam non habet, sic utique Turnus, cui haec dicuntur, animam habet” (Ars maior III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 668–669). “A trope is an expression taken out of its proper meaning to a similar improper one for the purpose of embellishment or necessity.… Metaphor is the transformation of things or words. This takes place in four ways, from the animate to the animate, from the inanimate to the inanimate, from the animate to the inanimate, from the inanimate to the animate—from the animate to the animate, as Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae [P. Terentius Varro Atacinus, Argonautae]; for both auriga ‘driver’ [or ‘charioteer’: Lewis and Short] and gubernator ‘guider’ [steersman,’ ‘pilot’: Lewis and Short] have souls—from inanimate to inanimate, as ut pelagus tenuere rates (Aeneid 5.8) ‘when the ships gained the deep’; for neither naves ‘ships’ nor rates ‘rafts, ships’ are alive—from animate to inanimate, as Atlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput; (Aeneid 4.248) ‘Atlas, whose pine-wreathed head is always encircled by black clouds,’ for these are animate, mons ‘mountain,’ to which human members are attributed, is not alive—from the inanimate to the animate, as si tantum pectore robur concipis (Aeneid 11.368) ‘if in your heart you nourish such strength,’ since robur ‘strength’ is not alive; likewise also Turnus, to whom these things are said, is a living being” (Trans. Jim Marchand, online at http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/donatus.3.english.html).
2. “Allegoria est tropus, quo aliud significatur quam dicitur, ut et iam tempus equum fumantia soluere colla, hoc est ‘carmen finire’… Aenigma est obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum, ut mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me, cum significet aquam in glaciem concrescere et ex eadem rursus effluere” (“Allegory is a trope, in which one signifies something different from what one says, as in “and now it is time to unyoke the necks of our smoking steeds” (Virgil, Georgics, II, 542), in other words, to finish the poem. An enigma (or riddle) is a proposition that is obscure because of a secret resemblance between things, such as ‘my mother gave birth to me and she will soon be born out of me,’ which means that water is changed into ice and then will flow once again from the ice”) (Ars maior III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 671–672).
3. The Virgilian simile is from Aeneid, I, 589.
4. The idea probably comes from Demetrius Phalereus (On Style, 79): not all metaphors are interchangeable: the auriga may be called gubernator and vice versa, but, though we may call the lower slopes of the mountain the foot of Mount Ida we cannot call human feet slopes.
5. Ab inanimali ad inanimal, ut Zachariae undecimo: Aperi, Libane, portas tuas. Item psalmo VIII: Qui perambulat semitas maris. Translatio est enim a civitate ad montem, et a terra ad mare, quorum nullum animam habet. Ab animali ad inanimal, ut, Amos I: Exsiccatus est vertex Carmeli. Homines enim, non montes, verticem habent. 4, Ab inanimali ad animal, ut, Ezech. XI: Auferam a vobis cor lapideum. Non enim lapis, sed populus animam habet (PL 90, 179D–180B). “From inanimate to inanimate, as in Zechariah 11, 1: ‘Open thy doors, O Lebanon.’ And likewise in Psalms 8, 8: ‘whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.’ In fact the metaphor is from the city to the mountain and from the land to the sea, and neither of these things is animate. From animate to inanimate, as in Amos 1, 2: ‘and the [head] of Carmel shall wither.’ In fact, men have heads, not mountains. From inanimate to animate, as in Ezekiel 11, 19: ‘I will take the stony heart out of [your] flesh.’ In fact, the stone is not animate, but people have a soul”. Examples follow of transferrals to birds, beasts, and so on.
6. The Latin quote is from Cicero 1954, p. 345.
7. “Undecumque licet ducere translationes? Nequaquam, sed tantum de honestis rebus. Nam summopere fugienda est omnis turpitudo earum rerum, ad quas eorum animos qui audiunt trahet similitudo, ut dictum est morte Africani castratam rem publicam et stercus curiae: in utroque deformis cogitatio similitudinis” (“Are we free to make metaphors out of anything we choose? Not at all, only from decent things. In fact we must avoid at all costs any vulgarity in the things to which the simile draws the attention of one’s listeners, as when someone said ‘The republic was castrated by the death of Scipio Africanus’ or the expression ‘the dung of the senat
e’; in both cases the conception of the comparison is dishonorable”) (Halm 1863: 38).
8. See McGarry 1955, p. 56.
9. For the citations from Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, see Faral (1924).
10. “Considerandum est verbum, quod debet transferri, de quibus dicatur proprie; et, si ad aliam rem debeat transferri, cavendum est ut in ea proprietate sit similitudo. Sic autem debet inveniri similitudo: perscrutandum est in illo verbo quiddam commune, quod pluribus conveniat quam illud verbum; et quibuscumque aliis commune conveniat proprie, conveniet illud verbum traslative” (“You have to consider what the word to be used metaphorically can appropriately be used for; and if it is to be used metaphorically for something else, you must make sure that the comparison fits with its proper use. The comparison is to be found in the following way: one must seek carefully in that word something in common, something that fits other things in addition to that word ; and whatever other thing what they have in common is suited to, that word will also be suited metaphorically”) (Faral: 286).
11. “For if you now put this property of the smiling of the meadows together with its antecedents, concomitants and consequences, you will generate so many witty propositions and enthymemes that the fields themselves in springtime do not produce so many flowers. I call antecedents the causes of this metaphorical Smile: that is, the return of the sun from the hibernal tropic to the sign of Aries. The wafting of Zephyr fecundator of the earth. The warm Austral winds. The rains of Springtime. The retreat of the snows. The autumn seedtime. Thus you will say: Amico SOLI arridentia prata reditum gratulantur. Vis scire cur prata rideant?… Suavissimis Austri delibuta suauys, subrident prata.Dubitas cur prata rideant? Imbribus ebria sunt” (“The laughing meadows salute their friend the sun on his return. Do you want to know why the meadows are smiling?… Smothered with the cloying kisses of the Auster wind, the meadows smile. Do you not know why the meadows smile. They are drunk with the rains”).
12. Pépin (1958, 1970) and Auerbach (1944) have demonstrated with a wealth of examples that the classical world, too, understood “symbol” and “allegory” as synonyms, just as their patristic and medieval exegetes did. The examples, in which the term “symbol” is also used for those didactic and conceptualizing representations that in another context will be called “allegories,” range from Philo to grammarians like Demetrius, from Clement of Alexandria to Hippolytus of Rome, from Porphyry to the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, from Plotinus to Iamblichus.
13. We encounter various formulations of this maxim, as a definition of trope or allegory, in Cicero (De oratore, 3.41.166): ut aliud dicatur, aliud intelligendum sit (“so that one thing may be expressed and another understood”); Donato (Ars maior III, 6), Ambrose (De Abraham libri duo, I, 4, 28): Allegoria est cum aliud geritur et aliud figuratur (“We have allegory when one thing is presented and we imagine another”); Augustine (Sermo 272): Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur sacramenta, quia in eis aliud uidetur, aliud intelligitur (“These things, brethren, are therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing appears and something else is intended”); Cassiodorus (Expositio Psalmorum, VII. 1,80): schema quod dicitur allegoria, id est inversio, aliud dicens, aliud significans (“The figure called allegory, that is, inversion, says one thing and means another”); Bede (De schematibus et tropis, II.2.12): Allegoria est tropus quo aliud significatur quam dicitur (“Allegory is a figure that signifies something different from what it says”); and Isidore (Etymologiae I.37.22): Allegoria est alieniloquium. Aliud enim sonat, et alius intelligitur (“Allegory is other-speech, because it says something literally and something else is understood”).
14. “Every created thing in the world is like a book or a painting or a mirror to us. A faithful image of our life, of our death, of our state, of our fate. The rose depicts our state, and on our state provides a fitting commentary, a teaching for our lives. Though it blossoms in the early morning, it fades a petalless flower in the old age of evening. Thus the flower expires respiring, while it withers pale and wilting, dying as it is born. At once a dotard and a damsel, at once a maiden and an ancient, the rose is rotting as it rises. So the springtime of mankind blossoms briefly in the early morning of our youth.”
15. Cf. De Lubac 1959–64, Compagnon 1979, Bori 1987, and, on the twelfth century, Valente 1995.
16. On Augustine’s semiotics, see Manetti 1987, chap. 10, and Vecchio 1994.
17. See, for instance, Jerome (In Matt. XXI.5) cum historia vel impossibilitatem habeat vel turpitudinem, ad altiora transmittimur (“When the story speaks of impossible things or turpitudes, we are being directed toward higher things”); or Origen (De Principiis, 4.2.9, and 4.3.4), according to whom the Holy Spirit interpolates into the text superfluous little details as a clue to its prophetic nature.
18. See too Epistola 102.33: sicut humana consuetudo verbis, ita divina potentia etiam factis loquitur (“Just as it is the custom of human beings to express themselves in words, so the divine power expresses itself in actions”).
19. On the use of myths in twelfth-century philosophy (by William of Conches, Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, and others), cf. Dronke 1974, who in his first chapter points to a series of keywords connected with symbolism (or allegorism), such as aenigma, fabula, figura, imago, integumentum, involucrum, mysterium, similitudo, symbolum, and translatio.
20. “Expositio tria continet, litteram, sensum, sententiam. Littera est congrua ordinatio dictionum, quod etiam constructionem vocamus. Sensus est facilis quaedam et aperta significatio, quam littera prima fronte praefert. Sententia est profundior intelligentia, quae nisi expositione vel interpretatione non invenitur. In his ordo est, ut primum littera, deinde sensus, deinde sententia inquiratur. Quo facto, perfecta est expositio” (“Exposition involves three things: the letter, the sense and the inner meaning. The letter is the congruous arrangement of words, which we also call construction. The sense is a certain plain and straightforward meaning that the letter presents on the surface. The inner meaning (sententia) is the deeper understanding that can be discovered only through interpretation and commentary. Among these the order is: first the letter, then the sense and lastly the inner meaning. And when this is done, the exposition is complete”) (III, 8).
21. “De parabolico intellectu dicendum quod reducitur ad historicum. Sed historia dicitur dupliciter secundum rem et secundum rei similitudinem. Secundum rem, sicut in rebus gestis: secundum similitudinem sicut in parabolis. Parabola enim est similitudo rerum, cum per rerum differentem similitudinem ad id, qod per ipsam intelligitur, pervenitur” (“As for the meaning of parables it must be said that it can be reduced to the historical narrative. But the narrative is defined in two ways, with respect to the thing itself and with respect to the likeness of the thing. With respect to the thing, as in what actually happened; with respect to the likeness of a thing, as in the parables. In fact the parable is a relation of likeness among things, when, through the different resemblances among things, we arrive at the knowledge of what it is intended to convey”) (Summa, Tractatus Introductorius I, 4 ad 2).
22. “Divinae paginae libros, quorum singuli apices divinis pleni sunt sacramentis, tanta gravitate legendos forte concesserim, eo quod thesaurus Spiritus sancti, cujus digito scripti sunt, omnino nequeat exhauriri. Licet enim ad unum tantummodo sensum accommodata sit superficies litterae, multiplicitas mysteriorum intrinsecus latet. Et ab eadem re saepe allegoria fidem, tropologia mores variis modis aedificat. Anagoge quoque multipliciter sursum ducit, ut litteram non modo verbis, sed rebus ipsis instituat. At in liberalibus disciplinis, ubi non res, sed duntaxat verba significant, quisquis pro sensu litterae contentus non est, aberrare mihi videtur, aut ab intelligentia veritatis, quo diutius teneantur, se velle suos abducere auditores, Polycraticus VIII, 12. Quod aliter legendi sunt libri divini, aliter gentilium libri” (“I would perhaps concede that the Holy Scriptures, whose every tittle is filled with holy signs, should be read with such solemnity for the reason that the treasure of the Holy Gho
st by whose hand they have been written cannot be entirely plumbed. For although on the face of it the written word lends itself to one meaning only, manifold mysteries lie hidden within, and from the same source allegory often edifies faith and character in various ways. Mystical interpretation leads upward in manifold ways, so that it provides the letter not only with words but with reality itself. But in liberal studies where not things but words merely have meaning, he who is not content with with the first meaning of the letter seems to me to lose himself, or to be desirous of leading his auditors away from an understanding of truth that they may be held by him for a longer period”) (Pike 1938, p. 264).
23. “Illa vero significatio qua res significatae per voces, iterum res alias significant, dicitur sensus spiritualis, qui super litteralem fundatur, et eum supponit” (“The meaning, however, whereby the things signified by the words in their turn also signify other things is called the spiritual sense: it is based on and presupposes the literal sense”) (Gilby 2006: 37–39). “Deus adhibet ad significationem aliquorum ipsum cursum rerum suae providentiae subjectarum” (“God uses the very course of the things subject to his providence to signify certain other things”) (Quodlibet VII. q. 6 a.3 co).
24. “Sensus spiritualis … accipitur vel consistit in hoc quod quaedam res et figuram aliarum rerum exprimuntur” (“The spiritual sernse can be grasped or consists of this: that certain things are expressed in a figurative way through other things”) (Quodl. VII. q. 6. A. 2 co.; see also I Sent. 3.3 ad 2).
25. “Quia in figurativis locutionibus non est sensus verborum quem primo aspecto faciunt, sed quem proferens sub tali modo loquendi favere intendit, sicut qui dicit quod partum ridet, sub quadem rei similitudine intendit significare prati floritionem” (“Because figurative locutions do not have the meaning they seem to have at first sight, but the meaning the person speaking in that way intends to give them: such as when someone says, The meadow smiles, intending to express the flowering of the meadow using a similitude”) (Cf. Dahan 1992).