In elemental instances, things do not have to be transformed in order to serve as real metaphors. Stones may simply be erected or piled, anointed or painted, or they may be set off by bounding; they may be significant by virtue of origin, which might be earthly or heavenly. (Meteorites, stones from heaven, have often been objects of reverence.) Whatever their intrinsic value is thought to be, however, this value must be articulated. These articulations may be minimal and temporary, so that countless shrines - and formative centres - must have slipped into oblivion. A stone regarded as a sacred presence might become just a stone, and pieces of wood might decay. Sometimes, however, real metaphors, like the places that sustain them, may become objects of monumental elaboration, and their identification is preserved by continual use.
4.6 REAL METAPHOR AND RECOGNITION
A real metaphor may effectively be what it stands for simply as a result of placement in its proper context of use. It does not as a whole resemble what it stands for, but it may be specified or empowered by the addition of powerful, resemblant or significant elements, in which case it becomes what I shall call an icon. Actual materials might be added that are thought to have intrinsic qualities, eagle feathers or leopard skins, for example, and if these added materials are represented
- painted or incised, for example - they must be recognizable.
Something may be recognized by someone as referring by convention rather than resemblance, as words do, and a non-resemblant mark placed anywhere on a simple real metaphor might be meant to have the value of an eye or hand, but if there are examples of such significant marking, they are in principle \ unreclaimable in the absence of translators, and even translators might give a number of meanings. For present purposes, recognizability is achieved through resemblance and relation. At base, resemblance is a real spatial (and real tempora.1) relation; that thing, or kind of thing, that appeared there or then now appears here. It is thus related to real metaphor, but stresses appearance, or reappearance, rather than substitution. 'To resemble' means 'to be like', from the Latin similis, 'like', and similare, 'to make like'. When we say something resembles something else, we make an at least implicit comparison.
Non-resemblant marks may be recognizable because of relation, which is relation on a surface (in this case, the surface of a real metaphor). 'Eyes', for example, may be added to a real metaphor with simple marks, gouges or incisions, but these must be comparable to actual eyes in being side by side in the upper part of the form to which they are added. It is this most general anthropomorphic scheme, this minimal set of relations - of one to another, of part to whole
- that makes the marks recognizable. This scheme, or order, which may vary considerably in itself, also allows a characteristic kind of development, since things that are not eyes can become metaphors for eyes as long as the scheme is maintained. Simple incisions might be filled with seashells or precious stones not so much to imitate the appearance of eyes as to state their properties or value, that they are, for example, bright or precious. The eyes of the presence stated by the real metaphor are like precious shells or stones. Although such metaphors may-change, or even be interchangeable, the schema itself is irreducible, and if it is
too greatly altered recognition becomes problematical. 259
4.6 REAL METAPHOR AND RECOGNITION