One way that genius with language works means coming up with ways of seeing that no one has thought of and making a metaphor* as a vehicle of that new vision. Shakespeare does this effortlessly, or so it seems in my experience. What does effortless imply? I think it means that for Shakespeare these images surfaced quickly from the flow of thought involved in his writing process. Maybe he asked himself, “What does this feel like or look like or sound like?” Maybe they simply appeared, his unconscious leaping clear into his view with that comparison before falling back into the current of thought.
In Act 1, scene 2 of The Tempest, 3 examples of this ability stopped my flow of reading:
Prospero in line 143: “… with colors painted their foul ends.”
Ariel in line 198: “I flamed amazement.”
Ariel in lines 214-215: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Shakespeare, through Prospero, uses 6 words to describe the universal qualities of treachery and betrayal. They are inherently deceptive, camouflaged by smiles, good cheer, shows of loyalty. Their bright colors were always false, but how would he have known? I especially like the verb “painted” with its connotations of artistry, make-up, a fresh covering – the layer of false held in place by the illusion of true. A thin sheen of something bright that hides the rot but not for long.
But my analysis is no more than a kind of inane scrabbling of fingers through jewels and mumbling, “pretty, pretty.” The language implies all this, but that’s not how metaphors are made. Analysis comes after the fact of creation, and it is Shakespeare’s creation, one he did thousands of times in 37 plays and 156 poems, that is most important. A metaphor is an ‘apprehension’ of a part of life, a part of the world. It is an uncovering of connections that make perfect sense once they are uncovered but connections that no one had put in writing before because no one had seen or felt them.
That is the combination – seeing and feeling. If not instantaneous, that moment of ‘apprehension’ comes after cross outs and rewrites but not through analysis. It arrives, that’s all, it is suddenly there in the forefront of the mind, and as one sets it down, it acquires a precise reality that either feels truthful, or not quite right, or false, that is, untruthful. It feels.
When Ariel describes amazement as a flame, perhaps as the moment when the flame erupts, it feels right. Amazement is that quick, that abrupt, that surprising, and it can both illuminate and burn, bring light or pain or both.
Prospero’s Island as Hell reborn with every devil come there captures the reality of those terrible places ruled by the whim of one man with absolute power, places that attract devils, birth devils, nurture devils. Let your fingers graze the globe and find how often you have to stop and say, “that place and that one and that one ….”
To create such rigorous connections a dozen times or so is an achievement, but to do so thousands of times indicates that the individual possesses a combination of qualities that makes his contact with the world one filled with vibrations that the rest of us just do not experience. Each day Shakespeare walked out into a world that tumbled down upon him with associations beyond our ken. Some days, it must have been exhausting.
*I am using metaphor as a ‘catch-all’ term for any figure of speech – simile, personification, synecdoche, metonymy, etc.
** There were more but these 3 will suffice to help me make my point.
