Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Significant Moments: A Density of Metaphor

It is interesting that a particular metaphor is used three times in my book Significant Moments.  The metaphor describes an object that is obliterated by a like object of greater intensity.  The following passage quotes the use of the metaphor by Marcel Proust and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs . . . which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their echo . . . 
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. 
. . . the echo of an original identity . . . 
Otto Rank, Art and Artist.

 . . . has never ceased: it is only because life is now growing more and more quiet round about me that I hear them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively drowned during the day by the noises of the streets . . . 
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. 

. . . just as lamplight is nullified by the light of day . . . 
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy. 

. . . that one would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until they sound out again through the silent evening air. 
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.


In a later section of the book I quote Shakespeare who used the same metaphor in Romeo and Juliet.

What if her eyes . . . 
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
. . . Mathilde’s . . . 
Martin Gregor Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century. 

. . . eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night. 
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. 

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