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Abelard’s point of departure is an annotation in Boethius’s commentary on the Categories, according to which, if one calls the “gubernator” (helmsman) of a ship its “auriga”(charioteer), and if one does so “ornatus causa,” there is no ambiguity. Abelard says he agrees, because in that case the text assumes the transferred meaning only for a limited time, as occurs when one says “ridere” instead of “florere” of a meadow (Glossae super Predicamenta, in Geyer 1927: 121). The transferred meaning does not occur per institutionem but only in a specific context, “per abusionem translationis, ex accidentale usurpatione” (“for an abuse of metaphor, as a result of a casual inappropriate use.” Super Peri herm., in Geyer 1927: 364). What we have here is not an instance of translatio aequivoca based on penuria nominum. The case is instead somewhat similar to that of oppositio in adiecto (“opposition in the attribute”), as in homo mortuus, where homo signifies (here and here alone) “corpse.”

William of Conches (Glosae in Priscianum) will speak of locutio figurativa more or less as Abelard does (Rosier-Catach 1997: 161–164). Robert Kilwardby says that in the case of the trope the expression is not understood as “intellectus primus” but as “intellectus secundus,” not “simpliciter” but “secundum quid.” The Flores Rhetorici (by the twelfth-century Master of Tours) speaks of words united in “decente matrimonio,” and there appears to be a timid allusion to the inferences that can be drawn from a metaphor, so that from “prata rident” one may proceed to “prata luxuriant floribus or prata floribus lasciviunt.” Here Rosier-Catach (1997) speaks of evidence of awareness of metaphorical productivity, but we personally find the allusion if anything quite tenuous. In the same vein the Dialectica Monacensis (II, 2, in De Rijk 1962–1967, II: 561) finds it extravagant and inappropriate to hazard the following syllogism: “Quicquid ridet habet os—pratum ridet—ergo habet os” (“Whatever smiles has a mouth—the meadow smiles—therefore it has a mouth”).

From a logical point of view, the position could not be more reasonable. And yet, if we want to know how to go about making metaphor an instrument of new knowledge and invention, we have only to see what the Jesuit Emanuele Tesauro, in the baroque period, is able to make of a “fair flower of rhetoric” that by his day was beginning “to stink.” We have only to read the lengthy analysis in the Cannocchiale aristotelico (ed. Zavatta, 1670: 116 et seq.) dedicated to the smile of the meadows, where he demonstrates how many new ideas and revelatory images can spring from a productive development of the initial trope. For upward of five pages of variations by inference on the original nucleus, in a virtuoso pyrotechnic display of baroque wit, Tesauro shows how the metaphor can give rise to infinite ways of seeing the fecundity of the meadows: “Iucundissimus pratorum RISUS, RIDIBUNDA vidimus prata, RIDENTER prata florent, Pratorum RISIO oculos beat, RIDENTISSIME prata gliscunt …” (“The most delightful smile of the meadows, we have seen the meadows smile, the meadows smile in flowering, the smiling of the meadows delights our eyes, the meadows rejoice most smilingly”). Whereupon he proceeds to invert the metaphor, “Hac in solitudine MOESTISSIMA videres prata. Sub Canopo squalida ubique prata LUGENT” (“In such solitude you would see the meadows most mournful. Under the bright star of Canopus the mournful meadows are weeping”), or, by the subtraction of human properties, we get, “Prata RIDENT sine ore. RISUS est sine cachinno” (“The meadows smile without a mouth. The smile is without laughter”), and, by the extension of the metaphor to component parts of the meadow or to the whole earth, we get “Virides rident RIPAE. Laeta exultant GRAMINA, Fragrantissimi rident FLORES. Alma ridet TELLUS. Rident SEGETES” (“The verdant banks smile. The grasses exult joyfully. The most sweet-smelling flowers smile. The life-giving earth smiles. The crops smile.”) And Tesauro enthusiastically continues:

Che se hora tu ligherai questa proprietà del rider de’ prati, con le cose Antecedenti, Concomitanti & Conseguenti: tante Propositioni, & Entimemi arguti, ne farai germogliare; che tanti fiori apunto non partoriscono i prati al primo tempo. Chiamo antecedenti le Cagioni di questo metaforico Riso; cioè: il ritorno del Sole dal tropico hiberno al Segno dell’Ariete. Lo spirar di Zefiro fecondator della terra. I tiepidi venti Australi. Le piogge di Primavera. La fuga delle neui. Le sementi dell’Autunno. Onde scherzando dirai: SOLI arridentia prata reditum GRATVLANTVR, Vis scire cur prata rideant?Suavissimis AUSTRI delibuta suauijs, subrident prata, Dubitas cur prata rideant? IMBRIBVS ebria sunt. (Tesauro 1968, pp. 117–118)11

And so on and so forth. And if we may grant a human smile to the meadows, why not grant them also the features that accompany the smile? Hence, “Pulcherrima pratorum FACIES. Et se la faccia ha le sue membra: ancor dirai; Tondentur falce virides pratorum COMAE, CRINITA frondibus prata virent. Micantes pratorum OCULI, flores” (“ ‘The FACE most fair of the meadows.’ And if the face has all its attributes, then you will say: ‘The green LOCKS of the meadows are mown by the sickle. The meadows are green with their COIFFURE of leaves. The flowers are the flashing EYES of the meadows’ ” (ibid., p. 118).

This appeal to Tesauro, however, merely serves to underscore, by way of contrast, the timidity of all medieval theories of metaphor.

3.3.  Metaphor, Allegory, and Universal Symbolism

Why does the Middle Ages confine metaphor to a merely ornamental function and fail to recognize, at least on the theoretical level, its cognitive possibilities? The answer is twofold: (i) for the Middle Ages, our only teacher, who speaks through “real” metaphors (in rebus), is God, and all man can do is to uncover the metaphorical language of creation, and (ii) if man would speak of God, then no metaphor is equal to the challenge, and no metaphor can account for his unfathomable nature any more than literal language can.

If we wish to study this aspect of medieval culture and its implicit semiotics, we must establish precise distinctions between metaphor, symbol, and allegory—which is what we did in Eco (1985), and to which we will return later.12 For now, we may speak generically of figural language for all those cases where aliud dicitur, aliud demonstratur, in which there is some kind of translatio from one term or a string of terms (or better, from the contents they express) to another, which somehow constitutes its secondary meaning.13 What interests us here is how the Middle Ages fixes its attention on phenomena of secondary or figural meaning, which are not those of literary metaphor.

Our starting point is Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:12: “Nunc videmus per speculum et in aenigmitate, tunc autem facie ad faciem” (“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”). The most elegant solution poetically speaking is that supplied by the Rhythmus alter, formerly attributed to Alan of Lille (PL 210: 578C–579C):

Omnis mundi creatura,