Theopoetics at OriginsNet

THEA/OPOETIC, METAPHORIC AND SYMBOLIC
METHODS

Thea/opoetics - A method of interpretation in the field of religion (mythology, theology and comparative religions) developed by Stanley Romaine Hopper and David L. Miller in the 1960's. This method is used to articulate the spiritual import or meaning of a text or symbolic object, especially, by deriving and amplifying 'radical metaphor' ('ontological metaphor'; 'antimetaphor') for 'ontic' experiences, i.e., experiences of existence, being, becoming, iterativity, or aftermath. Such experiences are 'concealed' with experiences of everyday objectness or activity in the life-world. The criteria for the validity of an interpretation is not its 'falsifiability' but its 'compellingness.' Thea/opoetics names and characterizes the divinity that manifests itself in a particular material object of symbolic sacred significance.

"What . . . theopoiesis does is to effect disclosure [of Being] through the crucial nexus of event, thereby making the crux of knowing, both morally and aesthetically, radically decisive in time."

"[Like Rilke] . . . we must learn, with trust, to be one with, a breathing with the inhale and exhale of Being, in order that "the god" may breathe through us, and we, through the translation of its breath into song, may be . . . the eyes of becoming and a tongue for Being's utterance."

Hopper, S. R. (1967). Introduction. In S. R. Hopper and David L. Miller (ed). Interpretation: The poetry of meaning. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. pp. xix, xxi.

Metaphor - In considering the role of metaphor in interpretation it is crucial to distinguish "two ways of metaphor." The purpose of 'epiphor'--"metaphor in the conventional Aristotelian sense--is to express a similarity between something relatively well known or concretely known (the semantic vehicle) and something which . . . is less known or more obscurely known (the semantic tenor)." "The other and complementary kind of semantic movement that metaphor engages maybe called diaphor. Here the 'movement' (phora) is 'through' (dia) certain particulars of experience (actual or imagined) in a fresh way, producing new meaning by juxtaposition alone." The relation is presentational not representational.

Wheelwright, P. (1962). Metaphor and reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 70-91.

Wheelwright's notion of 'diaphor' is equivalent to the notion's of 'radical metaphor' and 'antimetaphor'.

Further, because the 'left-brain' seems to have such a problem with metaphor, viewing it as some kind of 'groundless speculation', both avoiding it and failing to grasp it--as Freud noted in distinguishing 'secondary process' from 'primary process'--it is essential to observe that the metaphoric and especially diaphoric poetic imagination operates by its own peculiar yet rigorous natural law. This is how Dylan Thomas describes the procedure:

"I make one image--though 'make' is not the word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual and critical forces I possess; let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make of the third image, bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict. Each image holds within it the seed of its own destruction, and my dialectical method, as I understand it, is a constant building up and breaking down of the images that come out of the central seed, which is itself destructive and constructive at the same time . . . The life in any poem of mine cannot move concentrically round a central image, the life must come out of the center; an image must be born and die in another; and any sequence of my images must be a sequence of creations, recreations, destructions, contradictions . . . Out of the inevitable conflict of images . . . I try to make that momentary peace which is a poem."

Whalley, G. (1967). Poetic process. New York: World. pp. 146.

A wonderful example of this metaphoric creative process may be found in Pablo Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu.

Symbol - The term 'symbol' may be used as the complement of the term 'sign' and the overarching category may be termed 'semiotics' or 'symbolics' or both. An excellent approach toward defining 'symbol' as complement to 'sign' or 'language' may be found in the writings of Ernst Cassirer and Susan K. Langer. Painting, music and other types of art are primarily symbolic forms; they are "non-discursive and presentational" rather than discursive (linguistic) and representational. "A work of art is a single symbol" and not a system of elements, though it may be secondarily paraphrased in language. "It lacks the cardinal virtue of language, which is denotation." "To understand the 'idea' in a work of art is therefore more like having a new experience than like entertaining a new proposition," or proof.

Langer, S. (1942). Philosophy in a new key. New York: New American Library. pp. 75-94, 221.

A work of art or symbol "gives us forms of imagination and forms of feeling, inseparably; that is to say it clarifies and organizes intuition itself. That is why it has the force of a revelation, and inspires a feeling of deep intellectual satisfaction, though it elicits no conscious intellectual work (reasoning)." ". . . formal significance, or [vital] import, is seen intuitively." It is as Freud noted 'primary process' and is characterized by over-determination (multiple levels of meaning), ambivalence (fusion of opposite affects) and condensation, i.e., "fusion of forms themselves by intersection, contraction, elision, suppression, and many other devices. The effect is usually to intensify the created image, heighten the 'emotional quality'; often to make one aware of the complexities of feeling" and the real master of this is Shakespeare. "In poetry there is no negation, but only contrast."

Langer, S. (1953). Feeling and form. New York: Scribner. pp. 397, 379, 144, 243.

Paul Ricouer hints at the complementary and paradoxical relations between sign, symbol and metaphor: "The symbol gives rise to thought." "The symbol . . . only gives rise to thought if it first gives rise to speech." Yet while "metaphor is the appropriate reagent to bring to light this aspect of symbols that has an affinity for language," "real metaphors are not translatable."

Ricouer, P. (1976). Interpretation theory: Discourse and the surplus of meaning. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press. pp. 55, 52.

Because, as Jung observes, a symbol is alive, and a metaphorical, i.e., poetic, hermeneutic may amplify the meaning of a symbol, but not 'interpret' it reductively, nor displace it. In contradistinction to Pierce's triadic model for the sign and Derrida's infinite chain of signifiers, a symbol really has no 'interpretant' or translation. It simply has its presentation or event, its being attended to, and hopefully intuited and felt 'in the heart' or 'core' of one's being, and its transformations. In a sense, the prehistory and history of art and religion and their symbolic forms is the prehistory and history of symbolic transformations.

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