The History of the Metaphor

[Johnny Marr]

Bragg's accompanying email, which he writes as a follow-up to the programme
every week (and it's very much his own effort, far too idiosyncratic to be
ghostwritten) includes a briefing on the post-recording discussions, and the
inevitable regrets over what else they could have inbcluded. From last week:

 Hello
What I really wanted to say at the end of the Today programme trail, as I
handed back to James Naughtie, was, “all the world’s a studio and every man
in it merely a microphone”.  Tom Morris, the producer, came up with a much
more elegant “Time’s wingèd chariot” quotation.  Nevertheless, I think that
“all the world’s a studio” might have raised a laugh.
There was something of the anthology of the world’s best quotations about
the programme which I relished.  So, it seems, from the members of their
Lordships’ House whom I bumped into when I whipped down there, did others.
An unusual rush of complimentary remarks led by Lord Winston, he of medical
and television fame, who said he could have wished it to go on forever.
There were the usual, let us not say moans, but sad sighs after the
programme that this was not said and that was not said and the other was not
said.  It’s what it is.  We do a conversation which lasts for forty-five
minutes and types up into about eight and a half thousand words.  Not a
book.  Not a lecture.  A form of its own.  Nevertheless, I
too, like Steve Connor, was sorry we did not get in a lot of more
commonplace metaphors.  He spoke of somebody being “as much good as a
chocolate teapot”, or “as an ashtray on a motorbike”.  And there was a great
deal of discussion about Richard II and the way that he turned the whole of
his dungeon life at the end of the play into metaphors of the mind.
One of the fascinating things about ancient history is that the evidence is
so patchy.  Nowadays, if you want to know what happened a few years ago, the
evidence is a deluge.  You need some sort of ark.  Everything, it seems, is
recorded and in several ways, from several different points of view.  Back
then, we had little splotches, little blobs.  The great plays of Aeschylus,
for example, were requested by Alexandria from the Greeks.  They said no but
were eventually persuaded on a surety of much gold.  So the plays of
Aeschylus went to Alexandria who then refused to return them and paid off
the gold instead, thinking they were worth that price.  Alexandria then
burned down and we have scarcely any plays of
Aeschylus left to us.  I still think that in the as yet unexcavated holiday
home of a literate Greek nobleman there will be the full works of Aeschylus
and of the other Greek dramatists available.  Just as I hope that in some
Tudor country manor, someone who entertained Shakespeare will have jotted
down notes about the man and give us secure information about what most nags
people; and that is the early years, the time when he may or may not have
been an actor and came to London and wrote the sonnets and then achieved
instant success on the stage.
There are still people who doubt whether Shakespeare existed.  They should
go to Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.  He built a wonderful
monument to himself in that church.  He is buried in front of the altar, as
are his wife and children.  A friend of his lies in stone beside him.  There
is a copy of the King James Bible which he would probably have read from,
being an eminent gentleman of Stratford by that time.
There was also a comment, I think, that science dispensed or tended to
dissolve metaphors.  I just thought it brings in new ones.  Black holes is a
prime example.
I seem to be wandering around all over the place.  At the moment the
pre-Christmas production rush has already started and you dart around the
West End from meeting to meeting.  The best way, of course, is to dart
(pathetic attempt at a metaphor; time to be gone).
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg

PS: The last time I met B S Johnson, the novelist, was outside White City,
the BBC headquarters in the west of London.  He was in a severely agitated
mood and I wish I’d taken much more notice of it.  But what he wanted to
tell me, very, very forcefully, was that nothing was “like” anything else.
That there were no metaphors, there were no similes.  Each thing was the
thing it was and nothing else.

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 1:17 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  Thank you for this.....kept me procrastinating the rest of the
> day........
>
> From it, I put together this: Extended metaphors in some writers, like TRP,
> tend toward thematic allegory.....
>
> I missed only Aristpt;e's quote that metaphor-making is the sign of a
> writer's genius................
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com>
> *To:* Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Tue, November 30, 2010 3:47:57 PM
> *Subject:* The History of the Metaphor
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl
>
> Not sure whether you can listen to this outside of Britain, but for anyone
> who can access it and hasn't already done so this is a superb edition of In
> Our Time (one of the very best radio programmes in the English language, as
> far as I'm concerned) on the history of metaphor, how it developed from
> Homer through to Shakespeare, the 18the century repudiation of it as
> illusive and insubstantial, and the reinvention and revitalisation under
> Dickens and the modernists. Enjoy.
>
>
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