Motive For Metaphor

"You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning...."(The Motive For Metaphor, Wallace Stevens)

In my opinion, there are two motives for metaphor. One reason is to imbue a taste of the aesthetic sublime into one's art in order to elevate another's awareness of sense, of how something felt (be it horrid or wonderful), and to enrich meaning beyond the ordinary of realism.

But the other motive for metaphor is as highly important, for it serves its purpose during times of repression and regression. When dictators, despots, and social movements control even the air one breathes; it is metaphor that serves as a kind of secret code or underground for the few who are able to understand. This is why certain types of art and creativity are feared by repressive governments. They are always afraid of the hidden message within the art and of how it may encourage and inspire its audience.

Most choose not to see the metaphor, but those who do, live in an even more real world. A world more harsh, more beautiful, more intricate and unexplainable to those who only see the surface.

Metaphor shows one that there is more than the rote "A B C of being" (Stevens). When we can see beyond those symbols we see that often words repeated by our society are like cripples "among the leaves," and "without meaning."

"....The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound -
Steel against intimation - the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X" (Motive For Metaphor)

image: David and Goliath, Caravaggio