Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics
Author(s): Paul Ricoeur
Source: New Literary History , Autumn, 1974, Vol. 6, No. 1, On Metaphor (Autumn,
1974), pp. 95-110
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/468343
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Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics
Paul Ricoeur
SASSUME IN THIS PAPER that the main problem of hermeneutics is
that of interpretation. Not interpretation in any undetermined
sense of the word, but interpretation with two qualifications: one
concerning its scope or field of application, the other its epistemological
specificity. As concerns the first point, I should say that there are
problems of interpretation because there are texts, written texts, the
autonomy of which (as regards either the intention of the author, or the
situation of the work, or the destination to privileged readers) creates
specific problems; these problems are usually solved in spoken language
by the kind of exchange or intercourse which we call dialogue or con-
versation. With written texts, the discourse must speak by itself. Let
us say, therefore, that there are problems of interpretation because the
relation writing-reading is not a particular case of the relation speaking-
hearing in the dialogical situation. Such is the most general feature of
interpretation as concerns its scope or application field.
Secondly, the concept of interpretation occurs, at the epistemological
level, as an alternative concept opposed to that of explanation (or
explication); taken together, they both form a significant contrasting
pair, which has given rise to many philosophical disputes in Germany
since the time of Schleiermacher and Dilthey; according to that tradi-
tion, interpretation has specific subjective implications, such as the in-
volvement of the reader in the process of understanding and the re-
ciprocity between text-interpretation and self-interpretation. This re-
ciprocity is usually known as the "hermeneutical circle" and has been
opposed, mainly by logical positivists, but also for opposite reasons by
Romantic thinkers, to the kind of objectivity and to the lack of self-
involvement which is supposed to characterize a scientific explanation
of things. I shall say later to what extent we may be led to amend and
even to rebuild on a new basis the opposition between interpretation
and explanation.
Anyhow, this schematic description of the concept of interpretation
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96 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
is enough to delineate the two main
of the status of written texts versus
status of interpretation versus explanat
Now enters the metaphor!
The aim of this paper is to connect
hermeneutics by text-interpretation an
semantics, stylistics-or whatever m
metaphor.
I. Text and Metaphor as Discourse
Our first task will be to find a common ground for the theory of text
and for that of metaphor. This common ground has already a name-
discourse; it has still to receive a status.
One first thing is striking: the two kinds of entities which we are
now considering are of different length and may be compared from the
standpoint of length of the basic unity of discourse, the sentence. Of
course a text may be reduced to only one sentence, as in proverbs or
aphorisms; but texts have a maximal length which may go from
paragraphs to chapters, to books, to "selected works," to "complete
works" (Gesammelte Werke!), and even to full libraries. I shall call a
work the closed sequence of discourse which may be considered as a
text. Whereas texts may be identified on the basis of their maximal
length, metaphors may be identified on the basis of their minimal
length, that of the words. Even if the remainder of the analysis tends
to show that there are no metaphors, in the sense of metaphorical
words, without certain contexts, even therefore if we shall have to
speak of metaphorical statements requiring at least the length of a
sentence, or of a phrase, nevertheless the "metaphorical twist" (to
speak like Monroe Beardsley) is something which happens to words;
the shift of meaning which requires the whole contribution of the
context affects the word; it is the word that has a "metaphorical use,"
or of a nonliteral meaning, or a novel, "emergent meaning" in specific
contexts. In that sense the definition of metaphor by Aristotle-as a
transposition of an alien name (or word) (ivova) -is not cancelled
by a theory which lays the stress on the contextual action which creates
the shift of meaning in the word. The word remains the "focus," even
if this focus requires the "frame" of the sentence, to use the vocabulary
of Max Black.
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS 97
This first remark-merely formal-concerning the differ
length between text and metaphor, that is, between work and
will help us to elaborate our initial problem in a more accurat
to what extent may we treat metaphor as a work in miniatur
answer to this first question will help us afterwards to raise th
question: to what extent may the hermeneutical problem o
interpretation be considered as a large-scale expansion of the pr
condensed in the explication of a local metaphor in a given text
Is a metaphor a work in miniature? May a work-say, a
be considered as an expanded metaphor? The answer to th
question relies on the general properties belonging to discours
both text and metaphor, work and word, fall under one and t
category, that of discourse.
I shall not elaborate the concept of discourse at length, but lim
analysis to those features which are necessary for the compar
tween text and metaphor. For the sake of this analysis, I shal
sider only the following characteristics. All of them present th
of a paradox, that is, of an apparent contradiction.
First, all discourse occurs as an event; it is the opposite of l
as "langue," code, or system; as an event, it has an instant
existence, it appears and disappears. But, at the same time-her
the paradox-it can be identified and reidentified as the sam
sameness is what we call, in the broad sense, its meaning. A
course, let us say, is effectuated as an event, but all discourse is
stood as meaning. We shall see in what sense metaphor concen
on the character of event and of meaning.
Second, metaphor as a pair of contrasting traits: the mea
carried by a specific structure, that of the proposition, which
an inner opposition between a pole of singular identificatio
man, the table, Mr. Jones, London) and a pole of general pred
(mankind as a class, lightness as a property, equality with suc
such as a relation, running as an action). Metaphor, as we s
relies on this "attribution" of characters to the "principal sub
a sentence.
Third, discourse, as an act, may be considered from the poi
view of the "content" of the propositional act (it predicates s
such characters of such and such things) or from the point of
what Austin called the "force" of the complete act of discour
"speech act" in his terms): what is said of the subject is on
what I "do" in saying that is another thing: I may make
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98 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
description, or give an order, or f
etc. Hence the polarity between th
and the illocutionary act (that whic
seem to be less useful than the pre
the structure of the metaphorical
role when we shall have to repla
setting, say, of a poem, of an essay
Fourth, metaphor as a pair of op
as sentence, implies the polarity o
possibility to distinguish between
whole and by the words as parts
something is said. To speak is to sa
polarity will play the central role
this paper, since I shall try to con
the dimension of "sense," that is,
course-and the problems of interp
erence" understood as the power o
linguistic reality about which it says
But, before developing this dichot
ground for the opposition between
us introduce a last polarity which
meneutical theory. Discourse has n
two kinds of reference: it refers t
world or a world, but it refers equ
of specific devices which function
course, such as personal pronouns
In that way, language has both a re
And it is the same entity-the sentence-which has this twofold ref-
erence, intentional and reflective, thing-bound and self-bound. As we
shall see, this connection between the two directions of reference will
be the key of our theory of interpretation and the basis of our re-
appraisal of the hermeneutical circle.
I enumerate the basic polarities of discourse in the following con-
densed way: event and meaning, singular identification and general
predication, propositional act and illocutionary acts, sense and ref-
erence, reference to reality and self-reference.
Now, in what sense may we say that text and metaphor rely on this
same kind of entity which we called discourse?
It is easy to show that all texts are discourse, since they proceed from
the smallest unity of discourse, the sentence. A text is at least a set
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS 99
of sentences. We shall see that it has to be something more
be a work. But it is at least a set of sentences, therefore a disco
The connection between metaphor and discourse require
justification, precisely because the definition of metaphor
position occurring to names, or to words, seems to put it i
of entities smaller than the sentence. But the semantics of the word
demonstrates very clearly that words have actual meanings only in
a sentence and that lexical entities-words in the dictionary-have only
potential meanings and for the sake of their potential uses in sentences.
As concerns the metaphor itself, semantics demonstrates with the same
strength that the metaphorical meaning of a word is nothing which may
be found in a dictionary (in that sense we may continue to oppose
the metaphorical sense to the literal sense, if we call literal sense what-
ever sense may occur among the partial meanings enumerated in the
dictionary, and not a so-called original, or fundamental, or primitive,
or proper meaning). If the metaphorical sense is more than the actuali-
zation of one of the potential meanings of a polysemic word (and all
our words in common discourse are polysemic), it is necessary that this
metaphorical use is only contextual; by that I mean a sense which
emerges as the result of a certain contextual action. We are led in
that way to oppose contextual changes of meaning to lexical changes,
which concern the diachronistic aspect of language as code, system,
or langue. Metaphor is such a contextual change of meaning.
By saying that, I agree partially1 with the modern theory of meta-
phor, from I. A. Richards to Max Black and Monroe Beardsley; more
specifically, I agree with these authors on the fundamental issue: a
word receives a metaphorical meaning in specific contexts within
which they are opposed to other words taken literally; this shift in
meaning results mainly from a clash between literal meanings, which
excludes a literal use of the word in question and gives clues for the
finding of a new meaning which is able to fit in the context of the
sentence and to make sense in this context.
This contextual action creates a word meaning which is an event,
since it exists only in this context; but it can be identified as the same
when it is repeated; in that way the innovation of an "emergent mean-
ing" (Beardsley) may be recognized as a linguistic creation; if it is
I My main disagreement concerns their use of the "field of associated common-
places" or of the "potential range of connotations" which concerns more trivial
metaphors than genuine metaphors. In that case, which is alone paradigmatic,
the contextual effect goes further than mere actualization of the potential range
of commonplaces or connotations. I shall return to this point in the second part.
The theory of metaphor must address itself directly to novel metaphor and not
proceed through an expansion from flat metaphors to novel metaphors.
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100 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
adopted by an influen
become a standard me
entities, contributing
code, or system. But,
phor. Only genuine
"meaning."
The contextual action requires in the same way our second polarity,
that between singular identification and general predication; a meta-
phor is said of a "principal subject"; as a "modifier" of this subject, it
works as a kind of "attribution." The three theories to which I refer
here rely on this predicative structure, either when they oppose the
"vehicle" to the "tenor," or the "frame" to the "focus," or the "modi-
fier" to the "principal subject."
That metaphor requires the polarity between sense and reference
will demand a complete section of this paper; the same must be said
of the polarity between reference to reality and self-reference. You
will understand later why I am unable to say more about sense and
reference, and about reality-reference and self-reference at the leve
of metaphoric statements. Here the mediation of the theory of text
will be required.
We have so far delineated the framework of our comparison. We are
now prepared for the second part of our task, in which we shall answer
our second question: to what extent may text explanation and inter-
pretation, on the one hand, and the explication of metaphor, on the
other hand, be said to be similar processes, only applied at two dif-
ferent levels of discourse, the level of the work and the level of the
word?
II. Explanation and Metaphor
I want to explore the following working hypothesis. From one stand-
point the process of understanding a metaphor is the key for that of
understanding larger texts, say, literary works; this point of view is that
of explanation and develops only this aspect of the meaning which
we called the sense-the immanent design of discourse. But, from one
other standpoint, it is the understanding of a work as a whole which
gives the key to metaphor; this other point of view is that of interpreta-
tion properly, which develops the second aspect of the meaning which
we called the reference, that is, the intentional direction toward a world
and the reflective direction toward a self. Therefore, if we apply
explanation to sense as the immanent design of the work, we may
reserve interpretation to the kind of inquiry devoted to the power of
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS IOI
a work to project a world of its own and to
circle between the apprehension of those
expansion of self-understanding in front of
Our working hypothesis invites us therefo
phor to text at the level of the "sense" and
sense-then from text to metaphor at the
the work to a world and to a self, that is, at
properly said.
What aspects of metaphor explication may
text explication or explanation?
These aspects are features of the work of e
appear when we start from trivial cases, su
fox, or a lion. (You could look at most of the
and notice interesting variations within th
them with examples!) With those example
ficulty, that of identifying a meaning whi
only way of doing it is to construct it so tha
sense.
On what do we rely in the case of trivial metapho
and Beardsley argue that the meaning of a word does no
on the semantical and syntactical rules which govern i
use, but by other rules-which are nevertheless rules
members of a speech community are committed, and wh
what Black calls the "system of associated commonplac
Beardsley the "potential range of connotations." In
"man is a wolf," the principal subject is qualified by on
of the animal which belong to the "wolf-system of re
places" (p. 41));2 this implication system works as a
screen; it does not only select, but brings forward aspec
cipal subject.
What may we think of this explication in the light of our
of metaphor as a word meaning occurring in a new con
I agree entirely with the "interaction view" implied b
tion; the metaphor is more than a mere substitution for
word which an exhausting paraphrase could restitute at
The algebraic sum of these two operations of substitution b
and of restitution by the hearer or the reader equal
meaning emerges and we learn nothing. As Max Blac
action-metaphors are not expandable ... this use of a sub
2 Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca,
1962), page references included in text.
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102 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
to foster insight into
tion"; this is why y
plain language witho
But are we doing bet
and enlighten," by me
in the dictionary an
use of the lexical ter
the cultural rules-I
this system somethin
Of course, this syst
that the contextual a
the construction of t
the possibility that m
systems of implicati
The problem is prec
of implication." We
interaction itself in
novel contexts.
Beardsley's theory of metaphor leads us a step further in that di-
rection when he emphasizes the role of logical absurdity-or of clash
between literal meanings within the same context. "And in poetry," he
says, "the chief tactic for obtaining this result is that of logical absurd-
ity" (p. 138).3 How? Logical absurdity creates a situation in which
we have the choice between either preserving the literal sense of both
the subject and the modifier and concluding to the meaninglessness of
the whole sentence-or attributing a new meaning to the modifier such
as the whole sentence makes sense. Then we have not only a self-
contradictory attribution, but a significant self-contradictory attribution.
When I say "man is a fox" (the fox has chased the wolf), I must shift
from a literal to a metaphorical attribution if I want to save the
sentence. But, where do we have this new meaning from?
As long as we raise this kind of question-from where-we are sent
back to the same kind of solution; the potential range of connotations
does not say more than the system of associated commonplaces; in-
deed we enlarge the notion of meaning by including the "secondary
meanings" as connotations within the scope of the full meaning; but
we keep linking the creative process of metaphor-forming to a non-
creative aspect of language.
Is it sufficient to add to this "potential range of connotations," as
3 Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism
(New York, 1958), page references included in text.
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS 103
Beardsley does in the "revised theory of controversion" (the me
cal twist), the range of properties which do not yet belong
range of connotations of my language? At first sight this addit
proves the theory; as Beardsley says very strongly, "the metaphor t
forms a property actual or attributed into a sense." The shift
theory is important, since we have now to say that "the meta
would not only actualize a potential connotation, but establi
a staple one"; and further: "some of the relevant properties ar
a new status as elements of verbal meaning."
But to speak of properties of things (or of objects) which wer
yet meant is to concede that the novel meaning is not drawn
anywhere, in language at least (property is a thing-implication
word-implication). And to say that a novel metaphor is not dr
all, is to recognize it for what it is, that is, a momentaneous c
of language, a semantic innovation which has no status in lang
as already established, neither as designation nor as connotation
At that point it could be asked how one can speak of a sem
innovation, of a semantical event as of a meaning which
identified and reidentified (such was the first criterion of disco
our first part).
Only one answer remains possible: to take the standpoint
hearer or of the reader and to treat the novelty of an emergent me
as the counterpart, from the side of the author, of the construction
the part of the reader. Then the process of explanation is the
access to the process of creation.
If we don't take this way, we do not get rid of the theory o
stitution; instead of substituting for the metaphorical expressio
literal meaning restituted by the paraphrase, we substitute the
of connotations and commonplaces. This task must remain
paratory task which relates literary criticism to psychology an
logy. The decisive moment of explication is that of the constr
of the network of interaction, which makes of this context an
and unique context. In doing that, we point to the semantic ev
to the point of intersection between several semantic lines; th
struction is the means by which all the words taken together
sense. Then-and only then-the "metaphorical twist" is bo
event and a meaning, a meaningful event and an emerging me
in language.
Such is the fundamental feature of the explication of metaphor
which makes of it a paradigm for the explanation of a literary work.
We construct the meaning of a text in a way which is similar to the
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104 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
way in which we make sens
ment.
Why have we to "construct" the meaning of a text? First becau
it is a written thing: in the asymetric relation of the text and th
reader, only one of the partners speaks for two. Bringing a text
speech is always something else than hearing somebody and listen
to his words.
A second reason concerns more specifically the fact that a text is
only a written thing, but a work, that is, a closed chain of meani
Now a work has to be constructed because a text-especially if i
a literary work-is more than a linear succession of sentences. I
a cumulative, holistic process.
From these two reasons what we may give for the necessity of c
struing the meaning of a text or more precisely of a work, of a literary
work, we may draw more suggestions concerning the "how" of this con
struction. It is at that stage that the pole of text understanding i
homologous to the understanding of a metaphorical statement.
On the one hand, this construction necessarily takes the form of
guess. As Hirsch says in his book, Validity in Interpretation, ther
are no rules. As concerns the place of guessing in the construction
it follows from what we said about the absence of the author's intention
as a guideline and the character of a work as a system of whole and
parts. We may summarize in this way the corresponding features which
are the grounds for the analogy between the explication of a meta-
phoric statement and a literary work as a whole.
In both cases the construction relies on the "clues" contained in the
text itself: a clue is a kind of index for a specific construction, both
a set of permissions and a set of prohibitions; it excludes some unfitting
constructions and allows some others which make more sense of the
same words.
Secondly, in both cases a construction may be said more probable
than another, but not true. The most probable is that which (I) ac-
counts for the greatest number of facts provided by the text, including
potential connotations, and (2) offers a better qualitative convergence
between the traits which it takes into account. A poor explication may
be said to be narrow or farfetched.
I agree here with Beardsley that a good explication satisfies two
principles: that of congruence and that of plenitude. I have spoken
so far of convergence. The principle of plenitude will provide us with a
transition to our third part. This principle reads: "all the connota-
tions that can fit are to be attached; the poem means all it can mean."
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS 105
This principle leads us farther than mere concern for the
It already says something of the reference. Since it takes as a m
of plenitude the requirements raised by an expression which w
be said and to be equated by the semantic density of the te
principle of plenitude is the corollary at the level of the sense
principle of integral expression which draws our inquiry in a
different direction.
A quotation from Humboldt will help us approach this new field of
inquiry: "A language," he said, "language as discourse (die Rede)
stands on the boundary line between the expressed and the unexpressed.
Its aim and its goal is to always repel this boundary a bit farther."
Interpretation conforms to this aim.
III. From Hermeneutics to Metaphor
I. At the level of interpretation, text-understanding gives the key for
metaphor-understanding.
Why? Because some features of discourse begin to play an explicit
role only when discourse takes the form of a literary work. These
features are those which we put under the two headings of reference
and self-reference. I oppose reference to sense by identifying "sense"
with "what" and "reference" with "about what" of discourse. Of
course, these two traits may be recognized in the smallest unity of
language as discourse, in sentences. The sentence is about a situation
which it expresses and refers back to its own speaker by the means
of specific devices. But reference and self-reference do not give rise t
perplexing problems until discourse has become a text and has taken
the form of a work.
Which problems? Let us start once more from the difference between
written and spoken language. In spoken language, what a dialogu
ultimately refers to is the situation common to the interlocutors, that is,
aspects of reality which can be shown or pointed at; we say then that
reference is "ostensive." In written language reference is no longer
ostensive: poems, essays, and fictional works speak of things, event
states of affairs, characters which are evoked, but which are not ther
Nevertheless, literary texts are about something. About what? Abou
a world, which is the world of this work.
Far from saying that the text is there without a world, I will now sa
without paradox that only man has a world, and not just a situation,
Welt and not just an UmZe'clt. In the same manner that the text frees its
meaning from the tutelage of the mental intention, it frees its reference
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o106 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
from the limiiits of ostensive refer
of references opened up by texts
Greece, not to designate any umIore
lived then, but to designate the n
the effaciilelnt of the first and wh
modes of being, of symbolic dimen
This nature of reference in the
portant consequence for the conc
"the meaning of a text is not beh
not something hidden, but som
understood is what points toward
ostensive references of the text.
possible ways of orientating ones
closure becomes the equivalent for
for spoken language. And inter
the world-propositions opened up
text.
This concept of interpretation expresses a decisive shift of emphasis
within the Romanticist tradition of hermeneutics; here the emphasis
was put on the ability of the hearer or of the reader to transfer himself
in the spiritual life of another speaker or writer. The emphasis now
is less on the other, as a spiritual entity, than on the world that the
work displays. Verstehen-understanding-is to follow the dynamics
of the work, its movement from what it says to that about which it
speaks. "Beyond my situation as reader, beyond the author's situation,
I offer myself to the possible ways of being-in-the-world which the text
opens up and discovers for me." This is what Gadamer calls "fusion
of horizons" (Horizontverschmelzung) in historical knowledge.
The shift of emphasis from understanding the other to understand-
ing the world of his work implies a corresponding shift in the con-
ception of the "hermeneutical circle." By "hermeneutical circle"
Romanticist thinkers meant that the understanding of a text cannot
be an objective procedure in the sense of scientific objectivity, but
necessarily involves a precomprehension which expresses the way in
which the reader has already understood himself and his world.
Therefore, a kind of circularity occurs between understanding a text
and understanding oneself. Such is in condensed terms the principle
of the "hermeneutical circle." It is easy to understand that thinkers
taught in the tradition of logical empiricism could only reject as sheer
4 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, tr. Denis
Savage (New Haven, 1970).
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS 10o7
scandal the mere idea of a hermeneutical circle and consider it as an
outrageous violation of all the canons of verifiability.
For my part, I do not want to deny that the hermeneutical circle
remains an unavoidable structure of interpretation. No genuine inter-
pretation which does not end in some kind of appropriation-of
Aneignung, if by that term we mean the process of making one's own
(eigen) what was other, foreign (fremd). But my claim is that the
hermeneutical circle is not correctly understood when it is presented
( I ) as a circle between two subjectivities, that of the reader and that
of the author, and (2) as the projection of the subjectivity of the
reader in the reading itself. Let us correct the first assumption in orde
to correct the second one.
"That which we make our own, we appropriate for ourselves, is not
a foreign experience or a distant intention, it is the horizon of a world
towards which this refers: the appropriation of the reference no longer
finds any model in the fusion of consciousness, in 'empathy' or in
sympathy. The coming to language of the sense and the reference of
a text is the coming to language of a world and not the recognition
of another person."
The second correction of the Romanticist concept of interpretation
follows from the first one. If appropriation is the counterpart of dis-
closure, then the role of subjectivity is not correctly described as pro-
jection. I should rather say that the reader understands himself before
the text, before the world of the work. To understand oneself before,
in front of, a world is the contrary of projecting oneself and one's
beliefs and prejudices; it is to let the work and its world enlarge the
horizon of my own self-understanding.
Hermeneutics, therefore, does not submit interpretation to the finite
capacities of understanding of a given reader; it does not put the mean-
ing of the text under the power of the subject who interprets. "Far
from saying that a subject already masters his own way of being in the
world and projects it as the a priori of his reading . . .I say that
interpretation is the process by which the disclosure of new modes of
being-or, if you prefer Wittgenstein to Heidegger, of new forms of
life gives to the subject a new capacity of knowing himself. If there
is somewhere a project and a projection, it is the reference of the work
which is the project of a world; the reader is consequently enlarged in
his capacity of self-projection by receiving a new mode of being from
the text itself."
In that way the hermeneutical circle is not denied, but it is displaced
from a subjectivistic to an ontological level; the circle is between my
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108 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
way (or my mode) of being-
of it-and the mode (or the
the work's world.
2. Such is the model of interpretation which I want now to transfer
from texts as long sequences of discourse to metaphor as "a poem in
miniature" (Beardsley). Indeed the metaphor is too short a discourse
to display this dialectic between disclosing a world and understanding
one's self in front of this world. Nevertheless this dialectic points toward
some features of metaphor which the modern theories I quoted above
do not seem to consider, but which were not absent from Greek theory
of metaphor.
Let us return to the theory of metaphor in the Poetics of Aristotle.
Metaphor is only one of the "parts" (p~il, mere) of that which
Aristotle calls "diction" (~lti;, lexis); as such it belongs to a family
of language procedures-use of foreign words, coining of new words,
shortening or lengthening of words-all of which depart from common
Sxvotov, kyrion) use of words. Now, what makes the unity of lexis?
Only its function in poetry. Lexis, in its turn is one of the "parts"
( oIE0i, mere) of tragedy, taken as the paradigm of the poetic work.
Tragedy, in the context of the Poetics, represents the level of the literary
work as a whole. Tragedy, as a poem, has sense and reference. In
the language of Aristotle, the "sense" of tragedy is secured by what
he calls the "fable," or the "plot" (ifrto;, mythos). We may under-
stand the mythos of tragedy as its sense, since Aristotle keeps putting
the emphasis on its structural characters; the mythos must have unity
and coherence and make of the actions represented something "entire
and complete." As such, the mythos is the principal "part" of tragedy,
its "essence"; all the other "parts" of tragedy-the "characters," the
"thoughts," the "diction," the "spectacle"-are connected to the
mythos as the means or the conditions or the performance of the tragedy
as mythos.
We must draw the inference that it is only in connection with the
mythos of tragedy that its lexis makes sense, and, with lexis, metaphora.
There is no local meaning of metaphor beside the regional meaning
provided by the mythos of tragedy.
But, if metaphor is related to the "sense" of tragedy by the means
of its mythos, it is related to the "reference" of tragedy thanks to its
general aim which Aristotle calls mimesis (itilg)
Why do poets write tragedies, elaborate fables and plots, and use
such "strange" words as metaphors? Because tragedy itself is related
to a more fundamental project-that of imitating human action in a
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METAPHOR AND THE MAIN PROBLEM OF HERMENEUTICS I O9
poetic fashion. With these master words-mimesis and poiesis
reach the level of what I called the referential world of the work.
Indeed, the Aristotelian concept of mimesis involves already all the
paradoxes of reference. On the one hand, it expresses a world of human
action which is already there; tragedy is bound to express human
reality, the tragedy of life. But, on the other hand, mimesis does not
mean duplication of reality; mimesis is poesis, that is, fabrication, con-
struction, creation. Aristotle gives at least two hints of this creative
dimension of mimesis: the fable itself as a coherent construction of
its own, and above all the definition of tragedy as the imitation of
human actions as better, nobler, higher than they actually are. Could
we not say, then, that mimesis is the Greek name for what we called
the unostensive reference of the literary work, or in other words, the
Greek name for world disclosure?
If we are right, we may now say something about the power of
metaphor. I say here the "power," and no longer the "structure," no
longer even the "process of metaphor." The power of metaphor pro-
ceeds from its connection, within a poetic and work, first with the other
procedures of "diction" (lexis); secondly with the "fable," which is
the essence of the work, its immanent "sense," thirdly with the in-
tentionality of the work as a whole, that is, its intention to represent
human actions as higher than they actually are: and this is mimesis.
In that sense the power of metaphor proceeds from that of the poem
as a whole.
Let us apply these remarks borrowed from Aristotle's Poetics to our
own description of metaphor. Could we not say that the feature of
metaphor that we put above all other features-its nascent or emerging
character-is related to the function of poetry as a creative imitation
of reality? Why should we invent novel meanings, meanings which
exist only in the instance of discourse, if it were not for the sake of the
poiesis in the mimesis? If it is true that the poem creates a world, it
requires a language which preserves and expresses its creative power
in specific contexts.
Link together the poiesis of the poem and metaphor as an emergent
meaning, then you will make sense of both at the same time: poetry
and metaphor.
Such is the way in which the theory of interpretation paves the way
for an ultimate approach to the power of metaphor. This priority
given to text interpretation in this last stage of the analysis of metaphor
does not imply that the relation between both is not reciprocal. The
explication of metaphor as a local event in the text contributes to
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II0 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
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UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
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