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'reasonable', for reasons of a 'musical' sort, the occurrence of the signifier /selva oscura/ in relation to the signifiers /dura/ (hard) and /paura/ (fear). Faced with one possible, although still unthinkable, relation on the level of the form of content, a clear relation stands out on the level of the form of expression, so that we are led to believe that a relation should exist also on the level of the form of content. This metaphor is 'rewarding' because it prefigures a semantic necessity before that necessity has ever been defined and located. |
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When, though, does it happen that a metaphor is 'deceiving' or 'defaulting'? Whenever a weak necessity on the level of the form of expression corresponds to the incommensurable distance between vehicle and tenor on the level of content, and despite this distance the amount of new knowledge provided is disappointing. Many Baroque metaphors are of this type. |
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In Artale's sonnet about Mary Magdalen, the fact that her hair is named /fiumi/(rivers) without a doubt presents a necessity in terms of the form of expressionthe rhyme necessarily links /fiumi/ (rivers) to /lumi/ (lights) and /allumi/ (he lights): |
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L'occhio e la chioma in amorosa arsura
Se' l bagna e 'l terge, avvien ch'amante allumi
Stupefatto il fattor di sua fattura;
Ché il crin s' è un Tago e son due Soli i lumi,
Prodigio tal non rimirò natura:
Bagnar coi Soli e rasciugar coi fiumi. |
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But this necessity serves only to induce a search for the metonymic connection between rivers and hair. When it is discovered (thanks in part to a preceding revelatory verse, which prepared the metaphor with a similitude), we see that the seme «fluency», which could unify the two sememes, is rather peripheral to those semes characterizing the two sememes in a mutually exclusive sense, since hair in effect is dry and solid and rivers are wet and liquid. It is nonetheless true thatstill in the order of contentthe semantic necessity of /fiumi/ (rivers) could be reinforced by its opposition to /soli/ (suns), which has replaced /occhi/ (eyes). But, here too, since eyes seem as 'necessarily' connected to /soli/ (suns) as hair is to rivers, two wrongs clearly do not make a right, and two weak and isolated necessities in the form of metaphors do not reinforce the joint necessity of their chiasmatic and oppositional occurrence. This means that, while we ask the form of expression to guarantee the supposed or proposed semantic necessity, we ask the form of content to insure that the necessity, once discovered, will enrich in some manner the knowledge of either the signifieds of the message or the operational possibilities of the code. |
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