In a recent piece, prompted by Eliot’s line ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’ I suggested that we have constructed a carapace that protects us from Reality much as a spacesuit protects an astronaut or a bathysphere a deep-sea explorer. This in itself is an instance of how metaphor works as a tool of thought … Continue reading The Exploration of Inner Space II : by way of metaphor
Tag: WB Yeats
Passionate intensity : ranting and advocacy
(this painting, which brilliantly captures the theme of this piece, is The Orator by the German expressionist Magnus Zeller - click to enlarge: it's worth a closer look)We live in querulous times: there is a lot of anger about; a lot to be angry about. The lines Yeats wrote in 1919 (about the same time Zeller made his … Continue reading Passionate intensity : ranting and advocacy
The Shadow and the Stone: reflections on the mechanism of metaphor
I mentioned elsewhere that there is a puzzle in our use of metaphor to expand our range of thought: if we think of the unknown in terms of the known concrete, as Vita Sackville-West has it, how does that get us anywhere new? I think I have the answer: it is by a process not … Continue reading The Shadow and the Stone: reflections on the mechanism of metaphor
COMPLEAT TROWZER 