Finally, we have a total misunderstanding apropos of 1451b 1–14, where Aristotle opposes poetry to history, in the sense that poetry narrates possible actions, either probable or necessary, but always general, while the historian expounds real but particular events. Here Averroes radically misinterprets: he says that the poet speaks of existing and possible matters and that he often speaks about general things, while “the one who invents parables and stories” (in other words, those who for Aristotle were the historians) feign false things, inventing individuals who do not exist and finding names for them (Butterworth 1986: 83–84). Hermann translates “poete vere ponunt nomina rebus existentibus, et fortassis loquuntur in universalibus” (“the poets on the other hand use names for existing [viz. individual] things, and sometimes they also speak in general terms”) (p. 52) and, transforming the historian into a fictor (in other words, a narrator of fables), he says that he “fingit individua quae penitus non habent existentiam in re, et ponitur eis nomina” (“he invents individuals who do not exist at all in reality, and gives them names”).
Averroes seems sensitive to the thematics of metaphor, as he brings it up right away at the start of his commentary (Butterworth 1986: 60–61), whereas Aristotle himself has nothing to say about it and confines himself to discussing imitation. For Averroes, poetic compositions are imitative when they compare one thing to another, and he gives the example of cases in which one thing is described “as if” it were another (speaking of these “particles of comparison,” Hermann will use the term “sinkategoremata similitudinis” (“the syncategorematic terms of the comparison”) (p. 42);11 but he also cites cases of “substitution,” a generic procedure of which metaphor and metonymy are subspecies. Apropos of metaphor Averroes speaks immediately of analogy, that is, of a four-term relationship. In this same context he makes an affirmation typical of Arabic philosophy, which will come to have a notable influence on Latin thought, namely, that poetics belongs to the art of logic.12
In another context, not found in Aristotle, Averroes, discussing sense-perceptible things represented by means of other equally sense-perceptible things, seems to be alluding to metaphors, since he speaks of the knowledge produced by the names of constellations like Cancer (in the sense of “crab”). He appears to be saying that these juxtapositions generate uncertainty (at least they are introduced by expressions of uncertainty) and therefore some kind of cognitive effort, while comparisons that do not generate uncertainty are less interesting (p. 97). Hermann translates: “Quedem earum sunt ut fiat representatio rerum sensibilium per res sensibiles quarum natura sit ut quasi in dubio ponant aspectorem, et estimare faciant eum presentes esse res ipsas” (“Among them is for the representation of sense-perceptible things to be made by means of sense-perceptible things, such that anyone who looks at them becomes uncertain and fancies that they are indeed those things”) (p. 59). Here we could be getting close to a cognitive notion of tropes. But a little earlier Averroes has declared that these imitative pictures must conform to commonly used formulas in a clear fashion, so as not to create difficulties. The doubt is resolved when we realize that he is commenting on 1454b 19–21, where ways of making the recognition or agnition more interesting are analyzed, and therefore the uncertainty is due to the recognizability of characteristic signs or tokens (Aristotle is talking about scars, necklaces, etc.). Perhaps it is because Averroes is not thinking of coups de théâtre that he treats the matter with some hesitancy (otherwise he would never have introduced the Cancer example), and Hermann follows him with the same hesitant confusion.
Metaphor also seems to crop up apropos of 1455a 4–6. Aristotle is concerned with agnition through syllogism, as when, in Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers (Choephoroi), Electra argues that someone identical to herself has arrived, but nobody is identical to her except Orestes. Averroes interprets this to mean that what is being spoken of is an individual who is like another individual because of a similar constitution or temperament (p. 104). Hermann is drawn by this discourse on similarity to speak of metaphorica assimilatio (“metaphorical comparison”) (p. 60), which is quite evidently a misreading.
We do come to metaphor apropos of 1457b et seq. A noun, as Aristotle says, can be “ordinary” or “rare” or “metaphorical” or “ornamental” (along with other categories less interesting from our point of view). Averroes (Butterworth 1986: 121–122) accepts this distinction, as does Hermann (p. 67), who defines metaphor as primarium, intromissum aliunde, transumptum, or facticium (“original, introduced from elsewhere, taken over from an extrinsic usage, or artificial”). Similarly observed is the Aristotelian distinction between metaphors from genus to species and vice versa, from species to species, or by analogy, and even the example of old age as the evening of life is preserved.
Averroes however (as well as his translator) follows the letter of Aristotle: it is certainly useful to use unusual words if one wishes to strike the reader’s imagination, but one must not exaggerate, so as not to fall into riddles. As for the passage in 1459a 8, in which Aristotle introduces the knowledge of the related concept (with the verb theorein), Averroes does not seem to grasp the suggestion and confines himself to saying that “when the similarity in the substitution is very strong, it makes both the imitation and the understanding more excellent” (Butterworth 1986: 134). Hermann translates “quando enim commutatio vehementis fuerit assimilationis, inducet bonitatem imaginationis et comprehensionem complectiorem rei representatae simul” (“when indeed the reciprocal opposition is that of a very strong similarity, it leads to both the good quality of the imagery and a more comprehensive understanding of the thing it represents”) (p. 71). All this is certainly much weaker than it was in Aristotle’s text.
Overall, it is difficult to say what effect Averroes’s commentary might have had on the imagination of the Latins, since what they were confronted with were metaphors taken from Arabic poetry inadequately translated by Hermann. They certainly must have sounded odd to the ears of the Latin reader, and they might therefore have suggested an invitation to be daring. And what can we say of the effect that might have been produced by metaphors such as “Iam sol inclinatur et nondum perfecisti, et subdivisus in horizonte est quasi oculus strabi vel lusci” (“Now the sun is declining but has not completely set, it appears split on the horizon like the eye of a squinter or a person with one eye”) or “Non est denigratus oculos antimonio pulvere, ut nigros habent oculos a natura” (“Someone who has blackened their eyes with kohl is not like someone who has black eyes by nature”) (pp. 59–60)?
In fact we have only to consult the few medieval commentaries devoted to Averroes’s treatise, prior at least to the use made of it by Giles of Rome (Egidius Romanus). These texts are reproduced by Dahan (1980: 193–239) and represent a series of glosses on the Translatio Hermanni, a Quaestio in Poetriam and the Expositio super Poetriam of Bartholomew of Bruges. They consist of fairly pedestrian summaries of Averroes’s text, which add nothing useful either to the comprehension of Aristotle or that of Averroes. At most, in the first glosses, where Hermann speaks of translatio and transumptio as two species of concambium, two examples (taken perhaps from Boethius’s De consolatione) are adduced, “sicut enim se habet liberalis ad pecuniam, sic mare ad aquas” (“just as a liberal person handles money, so does the sea its waters”) and “sicut mare arenis siccis aquas ministrat, sic liberalis egentibus pecuniam” (“just as the sea pours its waters on the dry sands, so liberal persons hand out money to those in need”), which appear to be two instances of transumptio.