5. Poetry and Figurative Language

Out of the three main kinds of literature (poetry, narrative fiction and drama) we are going to start out here with the study of poetry, which is usually a subjectively engaged, expressive representation of a personal state of mind. As has been explained under the theory of genres, it represents the close, subjective, personally involved attitude to reality, and it maintains a very close distance to the represented (possible) world.

In order to be as expressive as possible, poetry employs language in a special way. This is, of course, true to all genres of literature, but it is especially applicable to poetry, where we find the greatest number of linguistic devices that help the speaking voice convey an expressive representation in a condensed and intensified manner.

Since literary texts do not have to correspond to the actual reality, they can be fictitious, made up, invented, that is: they can use language in a special way. The writer of literature enjoys a special “poetic license.” In poetry, we very often realize that the words in the text have to be understood “differently”, because the literal meaning makes no sense. We are used to this because we are aware that literature in general and poetry in particular employs figurative language. When we read in a poem “My love is a rose, and I love her truly”, we will realize that the poetic voice is actually not talking about a flower. Instead, the flower as a rhetorical device stands for the woman that is the object of love in the poem. In this case, the rhetorical figure is called a metaphor. Rhetorical figures may be less or more complicated, for example, the same metaphor will be a little more difficult to recognize when we read “I went to see my rose at midnight” – here, we have to realize that the rose stands for the love of the speaker. Upon closer look, we may also realize that saying “my love” is already a rhetorical figure that stands for “the woman I am in love with.” The metaphor is perhaps the most important element of figurative language, since metaphorical understanding is often the key to understanding poetry or literature in general.

In the process of metaphorical understanding we realize that language is used in a way that something is standing for something else: we have to understand it differently, not literally. In the case of the metaphor, we have an act of identification by which two seemingly distant, incompatible things are identified. The first element of the metaphor is the tenor, and the second element is called the vehicle: the vehicle “carries” some special information about the tenor.

Observe the following metaphor: “She is a candle in my room.”

In this case, a woman (she) is identified (is) with a candle, which she obviously is not. Why is this possible? The metaphor works on the basis of a field of shared attributes: characteristic features that are common to both the tenor and the vehicle, even if normally we think they are different elements of reality and not identical at all. The woman is beautiful, tall, slim, white, fragrant, blonde, elegant, red-lipped, lonely, and her eyes are glittering as if she was emanating some light. The candle is small, slim, white, made out of wax, it does not smell nice, but it is standing lonely on the table or in the corner and it gives light. We see that there are some attributes that are common to both elements (loneliness, light, slenderness, whiteness), and on the basis of these the two things are identified, even if the woman is obviously not a candle.

In this metaphor, we have both the tenor and the vehicle, it is an explicit metaphor. The situation is somewhat more difficult when the tenor is missing, and we only have the vehicle: here, we have to realize that this is a metaphor and find out what it stands for. When we read “I was enchanted by the diamonds in her face”, we will realize that the person the text is talking about does not wear jewelry in her face – the diamonds (vehicle) stand for the glittering, beautiful and mesmerizing eyes of the person (vehicle). This is an implicit metaphor, and in literature we very often have to work to find and understand these metaphors. Of course, our everyday, colloquial language (and very often even scientific language) is also full of metaphors that make our communication more expressive. We use a whole lot of dead metaphors: when we say, for example, that “we are going to meet at the foot of the bridge”, we identify the bridge with an animal or a human being and say that it has a foot. When astronomy says that “black holes tend to swallow up red dwarves when they collapse”, we see that science employs metaphors for elements of the universe we have no original names for. When we read in a newspaper that “the Asian tigers are again dominating the automobile industry”, we will understand that the tigers here refer to Asian countries with a powerful and growing economy.

In what follows we are going to survey the most important rhetorical figures and the logic they are based on.

To start out with, we need to see that there are two basically different ways in which rhetorical figures can work.

Perhaps you felt already after the first reading that there is an important difference between No. 1 and No. 2: the first example will have an effect even on those readers who do not speak Hungarian. The repetition of the “b” sounds and the flow of the rhythm make the sentence pleasing to the ear, even if we do not understand the meaning. There is some strong regularity, order, repetition in the sentence. As opposed to this, the second example will have no effect on somebody who speaks no Hungarian, because here it is only the meaning that is special: you need to understand the content of the sentence which employs a metaphor, and identifies the night with a spider. This is strange, irregular, but it will produce a poetic effect if we “solve” the riddle of the metaphor.

In No. 3 we have both kinds of effect: the repetition of the “t” and “b” sounds and the rhyme (bright / night) will have an effect even on those who speak no English, but we have to speak English to understand that the tiger is burning and that the night is identified with a forest. These are metaphors which produce a special effect only if we understand the meaning of the words.

No. 4 again will have an effect only if we speak the language: the metaphor identifies the country with a garden full of weeds, but we are not able to appreciate this if we do not understand the English words.

On the basis of this, we can posit that rhetorical figures can operate on the basis of two different principles.

SCHEMES work on the basis of intensified regularity at the level of form or expression.

TROPES work on the basis of intensified irregularity at the level of content or meaning.

The following list will give you a list of the most important schemes and tropes: