2.22
A good metaphor offers insight that’s surprising and enticing.[1]
A metaphor sets things up, as though on a table, in a particular way: the scene is set for a connection to be made.[2] Metaphors—and aphorisms—focus attention, and reveal and release tension in leading us to see the connection, to see the dawning of aspects.
A metaphor doesn’t point something out exactly, as perhaps an assertion does; a metaphor shows.
With a strong metaphor, we feel its truth. We feel something is the case by how it hangs together. We’re drawn into proximity with it, and if the metaphor is strong enough, we even see how we’re implicated in it; at times, we set parts of ourselves on the table — we must rearrange ourselves for insight to dawn.
I’ve placed many things on this table for us to see.
[1] Zwicky, W&M, LH45.
[2] Charles Simic, “Notes on Poetry and Philosophy,” in Wonderful Words, Silent Truth: Essays on Poetry and a Memoir (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), p. 64, cited in Zwicky, W&M, RH2.