This is so much the case that the phenomenon is referred to as a transfer of properties, as mentioned above (peak becomes more human and or-ganic, tooth acquires the property of being mineral). What makes theories of ‘transfer features’ questionable is always the fact that we can-not tell who gains what and who loses instead something else. More than of a transfer, we could speak of a ‘back-and-forth’ of properties. This phenomenon is what in 3.6 will be called ‘condensation’ as it was called by Freud, and it is the phenomenon that characterizes the fourth type of metaphor. At any rate, what likens the metaphor of the third type with the fourth type is that mere identifications or absorptions (from species to genus) are no longer the rules of the game: now it is both ‘similarity’ and ‘opposition’, or identity and difference, that are in question.
3.5. Aristotle: the proportional scheme
The metaphor by analogy or by proportion is a metaphor with four terms, which are no longer A/B = C/B (for example, peak is to the genus of sharp things in the same way as tooth), but A/B = C/D. The cup is to Dionysus as the shield is to Ares, suggests Aristotle. In this way, the shield can be defined as the cup of Ares or the cup as the shield of Dionysus, And again: old age is to life as sunset is to day, and thus old age can be defined as the sunset of life and the evening as day’s old age,
Aristotle’s definition has always seemed superb for its concision and clarity.
In fact, it is; and undoubtedly the idea of finding a sort of prop-ositional function, in which infinite concrete instances can be inserted, represented a stroke of genius. Even more so given that this proportional formula permits the representation of even those cases of strict cata-chresis where the vehicle stands for a tenor that, lexically speaking, does not exist: A/B = x/D, Aristotle provides his own, linguistically complex example, but we can also turn to two familiar catachreses, the leg of the table and the neck of the bottle, A leg is to a body as an unnamed object is to the body of a table.
It becomes clear right away that the way leg is related to body is not the same way in which neck is related to body. The leg of a table re-sembles a human leg provided we have a frame of reference that puts into relief the property of ‘support’, whereas the neck of a bottle is not exactly the support of a cork nor, on the other hand, of the entire con-tainer. It seems that the analogy of leg plays on functional properties at the expense of morphologic similarities (themselves reduced to very abstract equivalences, and quantity having been put aside as nonperti-nent), while the analogy of neck drops the functionally pertinent fea-tures and insists on those that are morphological. Which is to say that, yet again, different criteria for constructing a Porphyrian tree are in question —if it were even still possible, though, to speak of Porphyrian tree tout court. Consider the typical situation of a metaphor of the fourth type, such as cup/Dionysus = shield/Ares. How can we accommodate it into any Porphyrian tree?
To begin with, the relation cup/Dionysus, according to the criteria of
the later theories of rhetoric, is of a metonymic type. Cup and Dionysus are commonly associated by continguity, through the relation subject/ in-strument, through a cultural habit (without which cup could stand for many other objects). This relation is not at all amenable to being ex-pressed by a Porphyrian tree, unless we want to draw broadly inclusive equivalencies (of the following type: cup belongs to the class of things characterizing Dionysus, or, alternatively, Dionysus belongs to the class of all beings that use cups). And the same goes for the relation shield/Ares. In other words, it is very difficult to recognize in this rela-tion a case of embedding of genus within species.
The case of man/animal presents us with analytic properties, whereas that of cup/Dionysus presents us with synthetic properties. Man is ani-mal in virtue of its definition, whereas cup does not necessarily refer to Dionysus, except in a very restricted co-textual situation in which the various pagan gods are listed iconographically along with their char-acteristic attributes. Panofsky and Caravaggio would both hold that if Dionysus then cup; but they themselves would agree that whereas it is not possible to think of a man who is not an animal, it is always possible to think of Dionysus without thinking of cup. Even if one should grant that it is possible to group together the relations cup/Dionysus and man/ animal, a new problem surfaces: why should Dionysus be placed in a relation with Ares and not, for example, with Ceres, Athena, or Vulcan?
While it is prudent to exclude the speaker’s intuition from this type of consideration (since the speaker’s intuition is determined by cultural contexts), it is to an extent intuitive that Aristotle himself would find it difficult to name the spear of Athena as the cup of Athena and the wheaten sheaves of Ceres as the shield of Ceres (even if baroque contexts where that is possible are not excluded). Intuition says that shield and cup can entertain a relation because both are round and concave (round and concave in different ways, yes, but therein is the metaphor’s cleverness, in making us see a certain resemblance between different things). But what matches Dionysus and Ares? In the pantheon of pagan gods, it is their diversity that unites them (strange oxymoron). Dionysus the god of joy and of the peaceful rites, Ares the god of death and war: a play of similaritieSy then, mingling with dissimilarities. Cup and shield become similar because of their roundness, dissimilar because of their functions; Ares and Dionysus are similar because both are gods, dissimilar because of their respective domains of action.
Before this nexus of problems, a few observations immediately arise. What was not clear and evident to Aristotle was thereafter developed at different stages of later metaphorology.
3.6.Proportion and condensation
The metaphor with four terms does not set into play verbal substances alone. No sooner has the proportion been established than it is possible to see, as something incongruous, Dionysus actually drinking out of a shield or Ares defending himself with a cup. In the first two types of metaphor, the metaphorizing term absorbes (or confuses itself with) the metaphorized term, much as a figure enters a multitude — or leaves it—without our cognitive habits coming into question. At best, the re-sult is something impoverished, both conceptually and perceptually. In the third type of metaphor, instead, a superimposition of plant and girl is created that is almost visual, as in the fourth type.
Albeit confusedly, Aristotle realizes that, by naming one thing with something else’s name, one denies the first thing those qualities proper to it. Ares’ shield could also be called cup without wine (Poetics I457b32). Henry (1971) notes that this is no longer a metaphor, but instead a «sec-ondary phenomenon,» as a consequence of the preliminary metaphor. That is true, but it means that, as the metaphor starts to be understood, the shield becomes a cup, even as this cup, while remaining round and concave (though in a different way from the shield), loses the property of being full of wine. Or, in reverse, one forms an image wherein Ares possesses a shield that acquires the property of brimming with wine. In other words, two images are conflated, two things become different from themselves, and yet remain recognizable, and there is born a visual (as well conceptual) hybrid.
Could it not be said that we have before us a kind of oneiric image? The effect of such a proportion having been established is quite like what Freud (1889) called «condensation»: where noncoincident traits can be dropped while those in common are reinforced. The process is typical not only of dreams but also of jokes (Witzen), that is, of those puns or compound words (ψυχρά) (Rhetoric 1406bI ) or, even better, of those witticisms (‘αστεϊα) (ibid., I4iob6) which seem so similar to some of the categories of Witze, Kalauer, and Klangwitze analyzed by Freud (1905). If the Freudian typology can be compared to a typology of rhetoric, there can be no doubt that, at least, the final result of the Aristotelian proportion is a process very much like Freudian condensa-tion, and that this condensation, as will be better demonstrated later, can be described as far its semiotic mechanism is concerned in terms of the acquiring and losing of properties or semes, however we should wish to call them.
3.7. Dictionary and encyclopedia
According to what has been said in chapter two of this book, clearly the properties set into motion by the third and fourth types of metaphor do not have the same logical status as those set in motion by the first two types. To obtain the condensation cup/shield, it is necessary to activate properties or semes such as ’round’ and ‘concave’, ‘war’ and ‘peace’, life’ and ‘death’. It is clear here that a difference is being outlined be-tween a semantic description
