SOURCE: Carrington, Laurel. “Erasmus on the Use and Abuse of Metaphor.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, edited by Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi, and Richard J. Schoeck, pp. 111-20. Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991.

[In this lecture read at a 1988 conference, Carrington links Erasmus's work on metaphor and ideal language to his theology. She contends that, for Erasmus, metaphor is both the sign of a fallen language and the means through which divinely inspired understanding of scripture can occur.]

Although my paper's title points to Erasmus's concerns about metaphor, my actual subject draws on a series of issues of which this is only a part. To begin with, the place of metaphor in the classical discipline of rhetoric is extremely important, as is Erasmus's complex relationship to that tradition. Erasmus's use of metaphor in his own writing, as well as his explicit statements about metaphor, likewise bear upon my immediate concern. Above all, however, I am interested in showing how the question of metaphor can throw light on Erasmus's work and on the many areas in which Erasmus was involved with using and writing about language.

For when we look at Erasmus, we see a man who wore many hats: educator, biblical scholar, writer, and religious reformer. All of his roles reveal him as deeply concerned with the use and power of language, yet because the tasks that occupied him were so varied, often the attitudes he professed toward language seem to be at odds with one another. Erasmus the writer embraced an approach to prose writing that can only be described as that of the virtuoso practitioner, as we detect in his opening to the De Copia: “Ut non est aliud vel admirabilius, vel magnificentius quam oratio, divite quadam sententiarum verborumque copia, aurei fluminis instar, exuberans. …”¹ Works such as De Copia, Parabolae, and De Conscribendis Epistolis combine a lively admiration for fine writing with a workmanlike concern for the tools needed to write well. As a biblical scholar, Erasmus showed another kind of concern with language, focusing on the priority of purifying the text of Scripture in order to base interpretation on biblical language that was accurate and capable of being read in its own linguistic context. Thus, understanding the Greek of the time of the New Testament became for him the key to solving problems of biblical exegesis, along with a painstaking attention to detail in comparing manuscripts.

In contrast with these concerns, however, we find Erasmus as a religious reformer embracing the philosophia Christi, an inner sense of Christ's message that depends on personal piety and a pure and humble spirit. Language is important here in the form of good preaching, for as Erasmus writes in his paraphrase on Romans 10:17,

Porro fides concipitur in animo, non per experimenta, sed per Apostolorum praedicationem, hoc est, non per oculos concipitur, sed per aures, per quas in animum obedientem transfunditur Evangelium Christi.²

Yet the success of good preaching depends not on its being a commanding verbal performance, nor on the listener's ability to understand in detail the meaning of each word, but rather on the hearer having an appropriate frame of mind, represented in this passage by the “obedient soul.”

Thus Erasmus shows in three of his roles three varying levels of concern with language. It is my belief that the question of metaphor as it appears in Erasmus's work can bring new perspectives to a study of his different approaches. My plan is first to show how Erasmus's definition of the term “metaphor” is consistent with the classical tradition, then to speak more of the position of metaphor within that tradition, and finally to explore the ways in which Erasmus responds to these aspects of the tradition in his own writing and commentary.

Let me first of all define “metaphor” itself. In its technical sense, metaphor is a rhetorical figure in which a term is used to designate something other than its literal meaning. Erasmus in De Copia defines it this way:

Alia vero varietatis ratio ex Metaphora nascitur, quae Latine Translatio dicitur. Propterea quod vocem a genuina ac propria significatione, ad non propriam transfert.³

A broader use of the term refers to the extended metaphor, in which a comparison between two phenomena is drawn out over one or more sentences. Erasmus refers specifically to these kinds of statements in his Parabolae, a work offered for the express purpose of providing writers with a comprehensive list of such comparisons drawn from ancient authors:

Cur enim non sic appellem has “ὀμοιώsειs,” ex opulentissimo summorum authorum mundo selectas? … non nitorem modo, sed universam prope sermonis dignitatem a metaphoris proficisci. Nihil autem aliud est παραβολὴ, quam Cicero collationem vocat, quam explicata metaphora.⁴

Although my interest is in both levels of metaphor, it is at the level of the word that I would like to focus primarily.

Quintilian mentions that the Stoic rhetoricians of Greece looked upon metaphor with some suspicion: “Quid enim, inquiunt, attinet circuitu res ostendere et translationibus, … cum sua cuique sint adsignata nomina?”⁵ The Stoics had adopted two premises about language: that words are signs for things, and that language, like a proper mirror, should reflect the world in a one-to-one correspondence between words and things. Although such a view might seem extreme in its inflexibility, the first of the two premises became a commonplace of all rhetoric. Cicero's Crassus in De Oratore shows his agreement when in reference to literal names he writes, “quae propria sunt et certa quasi vocabula rerum, paene una nata cum rebus ipsis. …”⁶ Crassus goes on to say that Latin, unlike Greek, suffers from a deficiency of vocabulary, so that not all things had names from the very beginning. Metaphor was adopted to remedy this lack:

Nam ut vestis frigoris depellendi causa reperta primo, post adhiberi coepta est ad ornatum etiam corporis et dignitatem, sic verbi translatio instituta est inopiae causa, frequentata delectationis.⁷

Out of necessity came the added advantage of delight. Part of metaphor's effectiveness, Crassus maintains, comes from its ability to call to mind the resemblances among different things: “illustrat id quod intellegi volumus eius rei quam alieno verbo posuimus similitudo.”⁸ Yet the metaphor, relying on similitude, is nonetheless alienum, out of its proper place. There is a one-to-one correspondence between word and thing that metaphor supplements and temporarily disrupts.

Since, then, metaphor was seen as a kind of disruption even by an author like Cicero, who championed its use, it was important for writers and rhetoricians to determine exactly what level of disruption was tolerable in order to protect the representational function of language. Derrida's White Mythology describes this task first of all in terms of a mapping out of linguistic territory for the discipline of philosophy. Pure philosophy, which seeks the truth, can use language only in a way that leaves no room for metaphor or word play: nouns in their proper sense name things, and this is the foundation of all philosophy.

A noun is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. No philosophy as such has ever renounced this Aristotelian ideal. This ideal is philosophy.⁹

What univocity accomplishes is a doubling so perfect that the language is ultimately self-cancelling. Aristotle's careful distinctions between rhetoric and philosophy on the one hand and rhetoric and poetics on the other are an attempt to control, through the separation of disciplines by linguistic practices, the disruption of all tropes in language-use. Good rhetoric is designated as the art of persuasion; or, more specifically, “the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion.”¹⁰ Unlike philosophy, it must deal with signs and names. It shares with philosophy the recognition that language is purely conventional, not natural,¹¹ yet it must avoid becoming false rhetoric by refraining from any exploitation of the contingency of signifiers, concerning itself rigorously with the truth. In cases where the truth is not determined, rhetoric must soberly negotiate among the levels of probability applying to competing propositions. In the course of these duties, the use of ornament is introduced to decorate and to delight.

It is as an ornament that Erasmus describes metaphor in Parabolae. In so doing, he is speaking along lines established by the ancient rhetoricians, who classify metaphor as a trope or figure of speech, all of which are described as ornaments. Thus it should be our task at this point to understand something about the role of ornament in classical rhetoric. Both Cicero and Quintilian see it as something added on to plain speech: as Cicero's Crassus specifies,

tantum significabo brevi, neque verborum ornatum inveniri posse non partis expressisque sententiis neque esse ullam sententiam illustrem sine luce verborum.¹²

According to this passage, one should first determine in basic form what one wishes to say, and then afterward embellish one's speech. In other words, ornament does not enter into the first stages of putting an idea into speech. Neither should it seem detached from the language in which it appears: for example, in speaking of metaphor, Quintilian writes,

Quae quidem cum ita est ab ipsa nobis concessa natura, ut indocti quoque ac non sentientes ea frequenter utantur, tum ita iucunda atque nitida, ut in oratione quamlibet clara proprio lumine eluceat.¹³

The ornament of metaphor is rooted here in a concept of speech that is “natural.” What Quintilian appears to mean by “natural” in this passage is something along the lines of “spontaneous” or “unstudied,” in spite of the fact that elsewhere he recommends a careful, three-step approach to ornamentation.¹⁴ Metaphor has the peculiar advantage that it is at the same time distinguished, and yet natural—it is an ornament that does not seem to be.

This rather contradictory desire that speech be at the same time distinguished and natural haunts the imagination of writers long after Quintilian. Erasmus picks up on Quintilian's ideal of “natural” speech when he writes a letter to Anthony of Luxembourg, praising his style:

maiorem in modum delectavit stilus ille simplex et naturalis; verba non ascita sed una cum ipsis sententiis cohaerentia; sensus sani ac solidi, nihil neque in verbis neque in sententiis aut portentosum aut distortum aut coactum aut imminutum denique aut redundans.¹⁵

According to Erasmus, there is a neat conformity between word and thing evident in Anthony's writing. Like the classical rhetoricians, Erasmus holds that words are signs for things, and that language mirrors the world, although he does not examine systematically the relationship between words and things, and at times is quite casual in his allusions to that relationship.¹⁶ In saying here that the words altogether cohere with the sententiae, Erasmus is assuming that he can entirely discern his friend's thoughts from the words he has chosen. Such a judgment rests on an assumption of common understanding of words, a community of discourse. The mirror reflects well, with the use of natural and simple language; in the case of a distorting mirror, language could be monstrous, unnatural, misshapen, twisted, forced, or strained.

Let us for a point of contrast turn to Erasmus's evaluation of another correspondent, Guillaume Budé. In answering Budé's request for a judgment of his book, De Asse, Erasmus writes:

Iam animadverto te metaphoris ac parabolis impendio delectari, quas habes plaerasque mire raras et insigniter argutas; sed quam semel amplexus sis, ab ea vix unquam divelli potes: unde fit ut cum totus sermo gemmeus sit potius quam gemmis distinctus, nonnihil videatur a naturali simplicitate recedere.¹⁷

It is on the basis of metaphor that Erasmus criticizes Budé. Metaphor is a gem, but when the sermo becomes gemmeus, completely covered with gems, it ceases to be simple and natural—the virtues Erasmus has attributed to Luxembourg's writing. The boundaries between what is proprium and what is alienum have been violated. Thus, metaphor as a distinctive ornament is permissible only if the sense of propriety—what is each word's “proper” place—remains.

Erasmus elaborates further on what it is about nature that is so attractive, using here the adjective nativum to contrast with artificium:

Utque cum in iis quae constant artificio alios alia capiant, quod nativum sit, id occulta quadam vi tangit et allicit omnes, nec paulo iucundius irrepit et illabitur in animos hominum veluti cognatum.¹⁸

Here Erasmus hints at a relationship between language and man, the creature who uses it, yet he backs away from pure identification of the two when he writes veluti cognatum, “as if related,” implying, of course, that they actually are not. This subtlety points to the problem involved in speaking of language, agreed by all to be a convention, as a product of nature. Obviously, words like natura and nativum are themselves being used metaphorically—language that is “natural” resembles the simplicity of nature, which should serve as a model for good speech. Man, a creature of nature himself, should look inside his own soul to find that model, which is perhaps what Erasmus has in mind when he writes in another letter to Budé, “sermo praecipua mentis imago est.”¹⁹

What, then, is Erasmus's concept of the role of metaphor in speech that is natural? We can see that unlike the Stoics, Erasmus does not reject metaphor, yet his definition in De Copia and critique of Budé rest on a clear understanding of metaphor as a transgression of a direct word-to-thing correspondence. Like all writers, he must confront the question of what level of disruption is tolerable. We can turn to the German philosopher Heidegger, who in an early work explains what he thinks is behind the drive to keep the “proper” distance between metaphor and literal speech, thus keeping metaphor carefully in its place:

The notions of transposition and of metaphor rest on the distinction, not to say the separation, of the sensory and the non-sensory as two domains each subsisting for itself. This kind of separation between the sensory and the non-sensory is a fundamental characteristic of what is called metaphysics, which confers upon Western thought its essential characteristics. … The metaphorical exists only within the borders of metaphysics.²⁰

Heidegger asserts here that metaphysics strives to eliminate the concrete from its language; thus, what metaphor does is apply concrete terminology in an abstract sense. In other words, remembering Cicero's contention that Latin lacked vocabulary, we can imagine that those terms that are missing from the language are terms that could render abstract meanings literally. Somehow, the universe of concrete experience needed first to be recruited into the cause of metaphysics, and then to be expunged from metaphysics. Metaphysics thus blanches out the concrete associations that linger on and appropriates terminology that is in effect no longer evocative of the sensory world. It is such a step that allows Erasmus to refer to language as “natural” without its having anything to do with physical nature.

This, according to Derrida, is the “Aristotelian ideal,” to which philosophy aspires. I suggest that this ideal plays a paradoxical role in Erasmus's writing. We can gain insight into the matter by looking at Erasmus's portrayal of two stages in the evolution of language. The first occurs as a result of catastrophe, or falling from grace. That perfect emblem of fallenness, Folly, puts the case as follows:

Siquidem simplex illa aurei seculi gens, nullis armata disciplinis, solo naturae ductu, instinctuque vivebat. Quorsum enim opus erat Grammatica, cum eadem esset omnibus lingua, nec aliud sermone petebatur, nisi ut alius alium intelligeret? Quis usus Dialectices, ubi nulla erat pugnantium inter se sententiarum dimicatio? Quis Rhetoricae locus, cum nullus alteri negotium facesseret? … At labente paulatim aetatis aureae puritate, primum a malis, ut dixi, geniis inventae sunt artes. …²¹

We see that the sciences of which she speaks are those of the trivium, imposed on mankind by evil forces who saw and exploited man's falling away from a community of understanding and transparent use of language. Fighting and troublemaking were the cause and the result of the fall, which is charted in the language that prevails before and after. Of course, Folly's voice is deliberately intended to be suspect—the very least one can say about this passage is that it shows Erasmus poking fun at his own immediate areas of concern, and thus that the passage is a playful attempt at self-denigration. Yet behind the exaggeration there is an ideal of language asserting itself that has more than a hint of Stoicism to it. There is no need for sciences of language in the Golden Age because language already does exactly what it ought to do: communicate meaning. At the same time, people also do what they ought: live in harmonious community, understanding and reflecting one another's best interests, so that no persuasion is necessary.

Fantasies of a golden age are commonplaces of both Renaissance and classical writers, although what is striking about this one is the extent to which it focuses on language as the sign of an early state of health and the symptom of subsequent decay. Another example of such a fantasy appears in Cicero's De Oratore, which mourns a similar loss of innocence, also attributable to a corruption in the use of language. Here, Cicero holds Socrates responsible for the decline:

hoc commune nomen eripuit, sapienterque sentiendi, et ornate dicendi scientiam, re cohaerentis, disputationibus suis separavit. … Hinc discidium illud exstitit quasi linguae atque cordis, absurdum sane et inutile et reprehendendum, ut alii nos sapere, alii dicere docerent.²²

In this passage, the sciences of language are not seen as evil; rather a misuse of such science of right speaking, in detachment from right thought and right action, is seen as dangerous. What is consistent is that both Folly and Cicero's Crassus assert an ideal of integrity—between man and man in community, or between heart and voice in speaking one's soul. The fall is a falling apart, a disintegration.

In Cicero's complaint, metaphor occupies a curious position. First, in looking especially at the case of Socrates, one can see that Socrates' distrust of language in the Cratylus, his admonition to look for truth not in words, but in things themselves,²³ is analogous to his distrust of the physical world and the senses that reveal it, and his seeking of a truth beyond the sensory. Metaphysics was born when Socrates took the step of looking elsewhere for truth than in sensory reality, or when he separated truth from appearance. A language fashioned to communicate things about the sensory world would not do to explore the domain of truth, and so metaphor in turn was born from metaphysics; resemblances were exploited to fill in where literal language could not go. Language, expressing one meaning through its resemblance to another, became not the communicator of meaning but the veil over meaning, that had to be lifted in order to see the truth. In this scheme of things metaphor is not a remedy so much as a stop-gap, which could cause mischief if the displacement were to turn into a usurpation.

Cicero, even though he criticizes Socrates for bringing about this state of affairs, still lives in a world where metaphor and literal speech are kept carefully distinct. The same is true of Erasmus who, although he indirectly criticizes the Stoicism of his own creation Folly in works such as De Copia, yet accepts the divisions and distinctions upon which Folly's vision is based: that is, that a perfect language would reflect perfectly the meaning it communicated. In fact, De Copia itself may be seen as a rule-book for how to survive well linguistically in a post-lapsarian world.

As a kind of summary, I would like to turn briefly to Erasmus's biblical exegesis, where he holds to the view that God's word can be understood only through the departure from literal meaning. In thinking thus he stands well within a tradition established by the ancient Greek theologians, whom he greatly admired. The spiritual sense, looking beyond the literal, gives insight into that which is beyond language to express. Scriptural language is thus a sign not directly of divine things, but of itself, the covering that must be bypassed in order to view divine things. Erasmus bids Christians to think in these terms when he writes in the Enchiridion,

Ex interpretibus divinae scripturae eos potissimum dilige, qui a littera quammaxime recedunt. Cuiusmodi sunt in primis post Paulum Origenes, Ambrosius, Hieronymus, Augustinus. Video enim neotericos theologos litterae nimium libenter inhaerere et captiosis quibusdam argutiis magis quam eruendis mysteriis operam dare, quasi vero non vere dixerit Paulus legem nostram spiritualem esse.²⁴

Here we have the opposite extreme to Folly's vision of a pure form of communication that can be accepted at face value. It also represents what I see as the second turn in Erasmus's vision of the evolution of language. As we have seen, Folly describes the first as a fall from an early state of moral and linguistic innocence. But corresponding to Folly's description of the fall is Erasmus's construction in Enchiridion and other pietistic works of the path to redemption, through a right understanding of scriptural language. Proper understanding occurs when language that is not purely transparent miraculously becomes so to the divinely inspired, or to him whose education in the right use of figurative language enables him to read it. Thus, if metaphor is one of the marks of fallenness, it is also through an educated reading of metaphor that man must work out his redemption.

Notes

1. Desiderius Erasmus, Opera omnia, ed. J. Clericus (Leiden, 1703-1706, henceforth cited as LB), vol. 1, 3A.

2. LB VII, 812B-C.

3. LB I, 17D-E.

4. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1971-), vol. 1-5, 88-90.

5. The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, with an English translation by H. E. Butler (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936), 12.10.41.

6. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, ed. A. S. Wilkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 3.37.149.

7. Ibid. 3.38.155.

8. Ibid. 3.38.155.

9. Jacques Derrida, White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy, from Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), 247.

10. The Rhetoric of Aristotle, trans. Lane Cooper (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1932), 1.1.2. Aristotle's refinement of this definition is intended to avoid the undesirable conclusion that rhetoric could participate in persuading someone to believe a falsehood; thus in the case of a falsehood, there would be no proper means of persuasion available to the art of rhetoric.

11. Aristotle, Categories and De Interpretatione, trans. E. M. Edgehill (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1928), 16a20.

12. Cicero, De Oratore 3.6.24.

13. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 8.6.4.

14. Ibid. 8.3.61: “Ornatum est, quod perspicuo ac probabili plus est. Eius primi sunt gradus in eo quod velis [concipiendo et] exprimendo, tertius, qui haec nitidiora faciat, quod proprie dixeris cultum.”

15. Erasmi Epistolae, ed. P. S. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906-1958, henceforth cited as EE), 1:354, lines 4 ff.

16. For example, in De Copia Verborum ac Rerum, where one would most expect to find such a discussion, he merely refers to the fact that although verbum and res are so intimately connected that it would seem impossible to separate them, he has elected to treat them separately here for pedagogical purposes. See LB I, 6A.

17. EE 2:369, lines 243 ff.

18. Ibid., 369, lines 247 ff.

19. Ibid., 467, line 323.

20. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, quoted from Derrida, op. cit., 226, n.29.

21. LB 4:433D-434A.

22. Cicero, op. cit., 3.16.60-61.

23. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), Cratylus 439b.

24. Desiderius Erasmus, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Hajo and Annemarie Holborn (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1964), 33-34.