We assemble the representation of bench:
/Bench/ F Horizontal
A M CultureWorked
timber
P
To seat oneself
At first glance, the two sememes have no property in common. Now we carry out a second operation: we look for those among the different properties that can form part of the same Porphyrian tree (Figure 3.8). Hеге we see tree and bench unified at a high node of the stem (both things are vegetal) and opposed at lower nodes. This solution creates a condensation by means of a series of displacements. Cognitively speak-ing, not much is learned, except for the fact that benches are made of crafted timber.
Let us pass to the second riddle, The house of the birds. Here it is pos-sible to assemble a double representation immediately.
Vegetal Entities
Wood Timber Others
Worked Unworked
Tree Bench
FIGURE3.8
/House/ F Rectangular
Closed Covered
A
Culture
MEarth (Inorganic)
P Shelter
Resting on ground
/Birds/ F A
Winged, Nature etc.
MEarth (Organic)
P
Flying in the sky
Obviously, certain semes have already been identified as the most perti-nent here, on the basis of a series of hypotheses. The materials have been characterized according to a logic of the elements (earth, air, water, and fire), and an interesting difference has been found, at this point, between the earthliness or earthbound property of houses and the air-borne nature of birds (suggesting the seme ‘sky’). These are mere hypotheses (since many other alternatives exist); but it is a fact that this metaphor is more ‘difficult’ than the other and, thus, that it requires more daring abductions. So the interpreter can make a ‘fair guess’ out of the opposition between a house (closed) and the sky (open). At this Point we can try to represent /sky/, keeping in mind, obviously, its Possible differences and similarities with house:
/Sky/ FFormless Open
ANature мAir
P Nonshelter
Clearly, among the ends or functions of sky, only ‘nonshelter’ has been identified, since the seme ‘shelter’ exists in house. At this point, though it seems as though all the semes in the comparison house/sky are in opposition. What is there that is similar? If we try a Porphyrian tree on the opposition air/earth, we discover that these two units find a common node in the property ‘element’.
The interpreter is led, then, to draw inferences concerning those semes that have been singled out. One is led, in other words, to take the various semes as th starting points for new semantic representations or compositional analyses (see Eco 1976, 2.12). The domain of the ency-clopedia is widened: what is the territory of men and what is the territory of birds? Men live in closed (or enclosed) territories, and birds in open territories. What for man is something from which he must shelter him-self is the natural shelter for birds. New Porphyrian trees are tried out: closed dwelling or territory vs. open dwelling or territory.
Birds ‘live’, so to speak, in the skies. It is this ‘so to speak’ that creates the condensa-tion. Frames or settings are superimposed. If a man is menaced, what does he do? He takes refuge in his house. If a bird is menaced, it takes refuge in the skies. Therefore, enclosed refuge vs. open refuge. But then the skies that seemed a place of danger (producing wind, rain, storm) for some beings become a place of refuge for others. This is a case, then, of a metaphor that is ‘good’ or ‘poetic’ or ‘difficult’ or ‘open’, since it is possible here to continue the process of semiosis indefinitely and to find conjunctions or contiguities at one node of a given Porphy-rian tree and dissimilarities at lower nodes, just as an entire slew of dis-similarities and oppositions are found in the encyclopedic semes. That metaphor is ‘good’ which does not allow the work of interpretation to grind to a halt (as occurred with the example of the bench), but which permits inspections that are diverse, complementary, and contradictory. Which does not appear to be different from the criterion of pleasure cited by Freud (1905) to define a good joke: thrift and economy, to be sure, but such that a shortcut is traced through the encyclopedic net-work, a labyrinth which would take away too much time if it were to be explored in all its polydimensional complexity.
The problem now is to see whether this model of metaphorical pro-duction and interpretation holds true for other metaphorical expressions, for the most exaggerated catachreses and for the most delicate poetic inventions alike. We shall start by putting ourselves in the position of someone who has to disambiguate The leg of the table for the first time. In the beginning, it must have been a kenning, an enigma. One must know first, though, what a table and a leg are. One finds in a (human) leg a function P of sustaining or holding up a body. In the formal description F of table, one finds the instruction that it is held up by four unnamed elements. One hypothesizes a third term, body, and finds that in F it is held up by two legs. The semes for verticality may be found both in leg and in the object x holding up the table.
One also finds differences and oppositions between semes, such as ‘nature vs. culture’, ‘organic vs. in-organic’. Table and body are joined under a Porphyrian tree that con-siders articulated structures: we find that body and table meet at the higher node and are distinguished from each other at the lower nodes (for example, organic articulated structures vs. inorganic articulated structures). In the end, we might well ask if the catachresis is ‘good.’ We do not know, it is too familiar, we will never again regain the innocence of first invention. By now it is a ready-made syntagm, an element in the code, a catachresis in the strict sense, and not an inventive metaphor.
Let us try out, then, two indisputably genuine metaphors: She was a rose and, from Malherbe, Et rose elle a vécu се que vivent les roses, l’espace d’un matin.
The first metaphor right away says contextually what the metaphoriz-ing term (or vehicle) is and who the metaphorized term (or tenor) is. She cannot be anything other than a human being of the female sex. One proceeds thus to the comparison of woman and rose. But the operation can never be so completely ingenuous. The interpreter’s intertextual competence is already rich with ready-made expressions, with already familiar frames. One already knows which semes to bring into focus and which to drop (Figure 3.9).
The comparison is of unsettling simplicity. The greater part of the encyclopedic semes is similar; there is opposition only on the vegetal/animal axis. The Porphyrian tree is built on that opposition, and we find that, despite opposition at the lower nodes, there is a conjunction at the higher node (organic). But, in order to arrive there, it was necessary, obviously, to know already that, when a woman is compared to a flower, it is in terms of a woman-object, which, like the flowers, lives for its own sake, purely as an ornament to the world.
And, finally, the question of the similarity or dissimilarity between properties becomes clear: it is neither perceptual nor ontological, but, rather, semiotic. Language (the figurative tradition) must already have under-stood ‘freshness’ and ‘color’ as interpretants both of the healthy condi-tion of a human body and of the healthy condition of a flower, even if from a physical perspective the rosiness of a woman’s cheek rarely has the same spectral frequency as the red color of a flower. There is a prfference in millimicrons, but culture has blurred the distinction, nam-ing two shades of color with the same word or representing them visually with the same pigment.
This is a poor metaphor, then, scarcely cognitive, saying something that is already known. However, no metaphor is absolutely ‘closed’: its closure is pragmatic. If we imagine an ingenuous user of language who
Organic
Vegetal
/Rose/ FColor A Nature MVegetal PGratia sui Freshness
Organic
Animal
/Woman/ FColor A Nature MAnimal PGratia sui Freshness
FIGURE3.9
encounters she is a rose for the first time, we will see him caught in a game of trial and error, like the person who were to disambiguate for the first time the house of the birds. There is no metaphor that is absolutely ‘unpoetic’; such metaphors exist only in particular sociocultural situa-tions.
As for absolutely ‘poetic’ metaphors, it is impossible to say how much a user knows of a language (or of every other semiotic system). What, however, is known is what a language has already said, and it is possible to recognize a metaphor that demands unprecedented interpretive oper-ations, and the identification of semes not yet identified.
Malherbe’s metaphor apparently demands the same work of compari-son as did the preceding example. The problem of space is already re-solved; tradition has already made it a metaphor of the passage of time. Tradition has already secured the metaphorical use of life for the duration of nonanimal entities. The relation between duration, young girl, rose, and morning must be inspected, then. The seme of ‘fleetingness’ (al-ready intertextually codified) will be recognized as particularly pertinent to rose (the rose opens at dawn and closes at sunset; it lasts for a very short time).
All the other similarities between girl and rose will already have been reviewed and taken as intertextually correct. As far as morn-ing is concerned, it has the property of being the most beautiful, deli-cate, and active hour of the day. Naturally, then, a maiden, fair as a rose, has lived a fleeting life, and has lived only that part of it that, albeit brief, is the
