From the Tree to the Labyrinth (21 page)

Buridan will allude to the fact that poetics, while it doesn’t put things clearly like rhetoric does, still has the same educative intentions in mind, “scientiam delectabiler obscurare nititur, per verborum transumptionem,” “it endeavors to obscure knowledge delightfully by metalepsis” (cf. Dahan 1998: 186).

But Bacon is the one who points to another reason for the scant currency of these translations and interpretations of Aristotle: they were badly translated and hard to fathom. Bacon says that he knew Hermann personally. In
Moralis philosophia
VI he claims that Hermann confided in him (“dixit mihi”) that he was insufficiently versed in logic to translate the
Rhetoric
well, and for the same reasons had not dared to translate the
Poetics,
confining himself to translating Averroes’s commentary. So, Bacon observed, we can never really know what Aristotle thought about poetics, we can only “get a whiff” of it, not savor it, as is the case with wine that has been poured too many times from one container to another.
¹⁹

Bacon claims in
Opus Majus
I that the moderns neglect two books of logic, one of them translated with a commentary by al-Farabi, the other an exposition of Aristotle by Averroes, translated without reproducing the philosopher’s original text.
²⁰
In
Opus Majus
III he points out once again that there are few Latin translations of Aristotle’s logic and Averroes’s commentaries, and that the few versions extant are not read.
²¹
Again, in the
Moralis Philosophia
(V, 255), he cites Averroes’s commentary on the
Poetics
as the only available source for Aristotle’s text, but he recognizes that it too is known to only a few.
²²
In
Opus Majus
III he complains about the translations of Aristotle’s works, executed “cum defectu translationis et squalore,” (“crudely and with defective translation”)—with the result that nothing can be understood–and he remarks what a loss this has been for the culture of his time.

From these texts we may deduce that Bacon was not yet acquainted with Moerbeke’s translation of the
Rhetoric,
which would not appear in fact until later and which he might perhaps have treated with greater indulgence. But Bacon’s strictures, which are extremely severe on almost all the translators without proposing new criteria for a correct translation (cf. Lemay 1997), indicate to us that, though they may have enjoyed some limited currency, Averroes’s texts were familiar to few, and viewed with suspicion by those who knew them. It appears that the translations were not readily available in university circles, though in any case Bacon operated outside of those circles. Thomas cites a brief excerpt from Hermann’s translation of the
Rhetoric
in the
Contra Gentiles;
and later, in
Summa Theologiae
I–II, 29, 6, he will quote it once more, but this time in Moerbeke’s version. Moerbeke’s translation will in fact enjoy greater popularity, it will circulate in numerous manuscripts, and it will form the basis for the commentary on the
Rhetoric
composed by Giles of Rome between 1272 and 1274.
²³

Precisely because he has available a less improbable translation than those that came earlier, Giles’s theory of metaphor strikes us as unquestionably more mature. In both Marmo (1998) and chapter 7 of Eco and Marmo (2005) (written entirely by Marmo), we see how Giles worked out a strategy of critical collation among the different versions.

But at this point we are nearing the end of the thirteenth century. Giles’s commentary will be followed by those of John of Jandun and Buridan,
²⁴
too late, we might say, for Aristotle’s theory of metaphor to have any decisive influence on scholastic thought. As will be seen in
Chapter 3
, medieval metaphorology will have other founding texts and other outcomes.

What we have attempted to demonstrate here is how the absence of a cognitive theory of metaphor in the golden age of scholasticism was largely due to the inadequacy of the existing translations.

Paper delivered at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici of the University of Bologna in March 2001 as part of a series of lectures on the fortunes of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor. Revised and expanded, especially as regards the contribution of Giles of Rome, and published as a collaborative effort by myself and Costantino Marmo with the title “La teoria aristotelica della metafora nel Medioevo,” in Lorusso (2005). The present version is a reelaboration of my 2001 paper, but takes into account observations and clarifications made by Marmo.

1
. Boethius’s contributions were the
Introductio in syllogismos categoricos, De categoricis syllogismis, De hypotheticis syllogismis, De divisione
and
De differentiis topicis
(PL 64). Only in the thirteenth century would William of Moerbeke bring forth new translations of the Aristotelian treatises, in addition to a translation of Ammonius Hermiae’s Greek commentary on the
De interpretatione.

2
. Boethius’s translation of the
Sophistical Refutations,
for example, was revised by James of Venice in the twelfth century and retranslated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. Its circulation, however, was modest.

3
. It is only with the translation from the Greek by James of Venice (twelfth century), its revision by William of Moerbeke (thirteenth century), together with the translation from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona (end of the twelfth century) and the commentary of Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1230), that this text will enter medieval culture, becoming fully integrated into the so-called
Logica Nova.

4
. Furthermore, only two manuscripts are known from this period. It is not until Giorgio Valla’s 1495 Latin translation from the Greek that the
Poetics
will enter the world of the Humanists. Valla was unaware of Moerbeke’s translation.

5
. The quote from Thomas is from Quodlibet VII, q. 6 a. 3 ad 2 (
http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/q07.html#68283
). We will have more to say on this topic in
Chapter 3
.

6
. The Middle Commentary on the
Poetics
appeared in English in Butterworth (1986). The text of Hermann can be found under the title
Averrois expositio seu Poetria Ibn Rosdin
in Minio-Paluello (1968). Citations from either work are to the pages of these modern editions.

7
. “Postquam, cum non modico labore consummaveram translationem Rhetorice Aristotelis, volens mittere ad eius Poetriam, tantam inveni difficultatem propter disconvenientiam modi metrificandi in greco cum modo metrificandi in arabico, et propter vocabulorum obscuritatem, et plures alias causas, quod non sum confisus me posse sane et integre illius operis translationis studiis tradere latinorum” (“After having completed, with no small labor, my translation of Aristotle’s
Rhetoric,
and wishing to dedicate myself to his
Poetria
, I found myself confronted with enormous difficulties, because of the difference between Greek and Arabic metrical scansion, the obscurity of the terminology, and for a number of other reasons, so that I am not sure I can really offer the translation of that work to the schools of the Latins without misrepresentation”) (p. 41).

8
. P. 42. On the circulation of these canonical examples, see
Chapter 3
.

9
. Borges probably got his information from Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo’s meticulous summary of the two commentaries in volume 1 of his
Historia de las ideas estéticas en España
(1883).

10
. For Averroes, see Butterworth (1986: 75–79); for Hermann, see Minio-Paluello (1968: 48–49).

11
. [
Translator’s note:
The
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
defines “syncategorematic” as follows: “Of a word: having no meaning by itself, but only in conjunction with one or more other words or concepts.”]

12
. For the fortunes of this thesis, see Marmo 1990.

13
. Moerbeke’s translation of the
Poetics
also appears in Minio-Paluello (1968). The page references in parenthesis are to the pages of this edition.

14
. For all this information and the passages cited, see Bogges (1971).

15
. Textual references and page numbers are to Schneider (1978). References to the original are to Aristotle (1926).

16
. See Barney, Lewis, Beach, and Berghof (2006, p. 79).

17
. To find classifications that include poetics in an autonomous position, we must wait for Giles of Rome, though Dahan (1980: 178) already finds anticipations of this position in William of Conches and Richard of Saint Victor.

18
. “Hoc argumentum utitur sermonibus pulchris et in fine decoris, ut rapiatur animus subito in amorem virtutis et felicitatis, et in odium vicii et pene perpetue que ei respondent. Et ideo sermones poetici qui sunt completi et pulchritudine et efficacia movendi animum debent esse ornati omni vetustate loquendi prosaice at astricti omni lege metri et ritmi, sicut Scriptura Sacra … ut decore et suavitate sermonis animus subito et fortiter moveatur” (“This is argument makes use of beautiful and decorous speech so that the soul will be immediately raised to the love of virtue and happiness and to the hatred of vice, and will scarcely ever be attracted to it. And so poetic speeches that are complete, beautiful and efficacious in moving the soul ought to be dressed out in all proper forms of prosaic speech, and abide by all the laws of meter and rhythm, just like Sacred Scripture … so that by the decor and sweetness of the language, the soul may be strongly and immediately moved”), (cf. Hackett 1997: 136, n. 6).

19
. “
Studiosi homines possunt a longe olfacere eius sentenciam, non gustare: vinum enim, quod de tercio vase transfusum est, virtutem non retinet in vigore
” (“Learned men can get a distant whiff of his meaning, but not taste it. For a wine that has been poured into three successive containers does not keep its virtue in all its strength”) (
Moralis Philosophia
VI, 267, cited in Rosier-Catach (1998: 95), to whom we are also indebted for the references that follow).

20
. “Moderni … duos libros logicae meliores negligunt, quorum unus translatus est cum Commentum Alpharabii super librum illum, et alterius expositio per Averroem facta sine textu Aristotelis est traslata” (“The Moderns neglect the two best books on logic, one of which has been translated with the commentary of al-Farabi, while the commentary on the other composed by Averroes has been translated without Aristotle’s text”).

21
. “Quoniam autem libri Logica Aristotelis de his modis, et commentarii Avicennae, deficiuntur apud Latinos, et paucae quae translata sunt, in usu non habentur nec leguntur, ideo non est facile esprimere quod oporteat in hac parte” (“On the other hand, since the books of Aristotle’s Logic regarding these methods, together with Avicenna’s commentaries, are not available to the Latins, and the little that has been translated is not used or read, it is no easy matter to express what needs to be expressed in this part”).

22
. “Quoniam vero non habemus in latino librum Aristotelis de hoc argomento ideo vulgus ignorat modum conponendi ipsum; sed tamen illi, qui diligentes sunt, possunt multum de hoc argumento sentire per Commentarium Averrois et [forse in] librum Aristotilis, qui habetur in lingua latina, licet non sit in usu multitudinis” (“Since we do not have, in Latin, Aristotle’s book on this subject [Bacon is alluding to the
Poetics
], most people therefore do not know the way it was composed; those, however, who are studious can learn much on this topic from Averroes’s Commentary and the book by Aristotle that we do possess in the Latin language, though not many people make use of it”).

23
. Interest in the two Aristotelian texts apparently reawakens in the fourteenth century, when citations from Hermann’s translation appear in several florilegia; see Bogges (1970).

24
. Still unpublished; see Marmo (1992).

3

From Metaphor to
Analogia Entis

In
Chapter 2
we saw how the notion of the cognitive value of metaphor, as outlined in Aristotle, was without influence on the thought of the Latin Middle Ages. Our next step will be to see whether and how a notion of metaphor not directly related to Aristotle’s definitions developed in medieval circles.

Ideas concerning the
figurae elocutionis
reach the Middle Ages from classical rhetoric, especially from the rhetorical works of Cicero, from the
Rhetorica ad Herennium
(formerly attributed to Cicero), and from Quintilian, as well as via Latin grammarians like Donatus and Priscian. To what extent Aristotle’s notions become transformed as they are handed on by these authors is fairly evident from the divisions of metaphor proposed by Quintilian (
Institutio
VIII, 6). Whereas, for the Aristotle of the
Poetics
(1457b), metaphor meant the transferral of the name appropriate to one thing to another thing, Quintilian too (
Institutio oratoria
8, 6, 1) speaks of “verbi vel sermonis a propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio” (“a shift of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another, in a way that has positive value”), in such a way that not only is the form of the words changed, “sed et sensuum et compositionis” (“but also the forms of sentences and of composition”). But Aristotle distinguished metaphors based on transferral from genus to species, species to genus, species to species or by analogy, while Quintilian, though he speaks of comparison (as in
this man is a lion,
which is an abbreviated simile), considers comparisons or substitutions between animate genera (
steersman
for
charioteer
), between animate and inanimate
(he gave the fleet more rein),
inanimate and animate (
the wall of the Argives,
for the resistance they oppose), and the attribution of animation to something inanimate
(the river Araxes, who spurns bridges).
The four modes are further divided into subspecies that contemplate changes from rational to rational, irrational to rational, rational to irrational, irrational to irrational, from the whole to the parts and vice versa.