human dog metaphors (3)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:

> Thanks to Terrance for providing stimuli. Some response:
>
> 1) Could I please have an actual example of a dog-metaphor in the narrower
> sense of the word - something like "a dog is a wedding-cake on the moon"?
> Lars proposed an - I believe tenable - analogy between the state of Vanya's
> consciousness and the condition of the human mind during wartime. But I
> cannot really see "all those dog-metaphors" he also spoke about (which is
> not to say that they aren't there, I just don't have the time to re-read the
> relevant passages, and perhaps I just don't remember the metaphors, Lars?).

 First, these posts of mine on dogs are very disjointed ramblings with lots of
quotes that I felt might generate Positive dialogue. Sorry Thomas, the Johnson on
Shakespeare may be some cross wired confusion on my part. My objective was to
simply provide stimuli. Thank you for responding. In the middle of a fury, Lars
continued to discuss the text and introduced a new thread (introduced previously
by Mark Wright but not taken up by the group) on human dogs and referenced GG's
Dog Years. We can almost toss  "metaphor" (maybe better discussed during free for
all discussion between texts) out.  Doug provided additional quotes on dogs we can
discuss. Note I rambled on and off topic and have not discussed dogs much at all.
I think Pynchon and Grass--as I noted in my first post on this topic--open all
sorts of interesting doors.  Its seems odd that we complain about nothing new to
discuss and the absence of sages from the past while we engage in flame wars and
run a guy like Max off the list.

>
>
> 2) File under nitpicking: Ferdinand de Saussure's "arbitrariness of the
> sign" does not refer to "the absolute conventional pairing of sound and
> meaning", as you wrote, but to the absolute conventional pairing of the two
> parts of a sign: the signifier (a sound-image, or its graphic equivalent)
> and the signified (concept or meaning). Both are phenomena of the psyche:
> "signifier" does not refer to an actual sound, "signified" does not refer to
> a real dog. Saussure was neither interested in actual speech (parole) nor in
> the real objects people speak about. And I'd like to add that I find his
> idea of arbitrariness highly debatable, because I believe that there are
> much more words of onomatopoetical origin in language than Saussure's theory
> would allow for. This is speculation, yes.

OK, nitpicking is cool. Yes, I'll agree that the idea of arbitrariness may not be
as solid (given onomatopoetic etc..) as Pinker sets it out to be. Note Pinker
writes books etc. for his peers,  and others and  he writes books for National
BestSeller lists--'The language Instinct' that I quoted from is an example of the
latter. The quote from Chomsky on "science" and linguistics sums up my own
skepticism towards current trends in linguistics. Note, that with tongue in cheek,
I suggest that Chomsky advise humanities departments--English departments that
might feed Shakespeare into a computer and generate a new and final "scientific"
theory of metaphor. Note also, that the quote from Rushdie, while relevant as an
introductory comment on his affinity with Grass, is typical.

>
>
> 3) You quote Johnson saying about Shakespeare that his words flew "like sap
> from a tree." This is very interesting for me. Where in Johnson can I find
> this statement?

Sorry to blame this on my faulty memory, it might be from Johnson's Shakespeare,
anyone?

>
>
> 4) The stuff you quoted about Melville and Pynchon was quite interesting.
> But what about the highly significant explicit statements on metaphor
> Pynchon's narrators put forward:
>
> "Living as he does much of the time in a world of metaphor, the poet is
> always acutely conscious that metaphor has no value apart from its function;
> that it is a device, an artifice. So that while others may look on the laws
> of physics as legislation and God as a human form with beard measured in
> light-years and nebulae for sandals, Fausto's kind are alone with the task
> of living in a universe of things which simply are, and cloaking that innate
> mindlessness with comfortable and pious metaphor so that the 'practical'
> half of humanity may continue in the Great Lie, confident that their
> machines, dwellings, streets and weather share the same human motives,
> personal traits and fits of contrariness as they." (V., 326. I think, this
> is absolutely brilliant, by the way.)

This on 349 in my book. "The dog days have ended, the maijstral has ceased to
blow. Soon the other wind called gregale will bring the gentle rains to solemnize
the sowing of our red wheat." Is on page 332 in my book. I have not been able to
get much feedback on V. posts, but as I have said in the past, I think a chapter
from V. can be read as a short story and discussed as such. Someone sent me a post
off-line and we discussed chapter 8. Chapter 11 is dense and difficult, but, as
you note very relevant.

The novel has nothing to do with plot; we know that originally not even the drama
had anything to do with it, and it is questionable whether the drama was well
advised to take the rigid form it did. To simplify, pound, and carve reality into
the shape of a plot is not the business of an epic writer. The novelist's
watchword is ‘Classify, accumulate, rearrange and disarrange’; that of the present
day impoverished, plot-obsessed dramatist is ‘Get ahead!’ ‘Get ahead’ can never be
the watchword of the novel.
--Alfred Doblin,  “Observations on the Novel”

> Any comments on Driblette's statement on plays and scholars (end of Ch 3 in
> TCOL49) would be helpful to me.

Thank you Thomas,

Terrance

>