Metaforizavimo strategija J. Baltušio kūriniuose

LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987) II JUOZAS ABARAVČIUS THE METAPHORIZATION STRATEGY IN THE WORKS OF J. BALTUŠIS Much has been written about metaphor. It has been calculated that if the number of works devoted to metaphor continues to grow at the present rate, then by 2039 the total number of metaphor researchers will surpass the number of people in the world that year1. Such a forecast is hard to believe. Yet even individual bibliographies offer impressive numbers of works on metaphor. For example, in V. Shibles’s 1971 bibliography, covering works in Western languages, 3,000 entries are devoted to metaphor2. Therefore, even a prominent metaphorologist cannot always entertain the illusion that they are saying something not yet incorporated into metaphor theory. Without claiming any major theoretical novelty, this paper attempts to examine metaphor in the works of J. Baltušis from the perspective of communicative strategy. Here, strategy is understood as the organization of linguistic units—their arrangement according to the writer’s conception and plan—which not only conveys artistic information but also seeks to influence the reader’s perceptions and responses. “Communication” and “metaphor.” What might these concepts have in common? Can metaphor be a reliable means of communication? After all, to use a metaphor is to use a word other than in its literal function; in J. Pikčilingis’s words, it is “to revolutionize its semantics.” It is a means of secondary naming and characterization. It is rightly said that the semantic duality of metaphor conflicts with the conventional communicative function of the sentence’s principal elements—the subject and the predicate: when used to designate an entity, it is excessively subjective, and when used as a predicate, too “vague” and ambiguous3. Yet from the perspective of artistic communication, a metaphor in a text is a pragmatic instruction to the reader. A. Okopien-Slavinska’s words seem to describe this aptly: I am deliberately speaking in just this unusual (metaphorical) way: I want you to understand what I intend to say by it4. In many instances, metaphor in J. Baltušis’s works could similarly be described by the following pragmatically abstracted instruction to the reader: I write this deliberately in metaphorical terms because I want to convey in this way the essence of the phenomena depicted, as I perceive and feel it in my own way. Reader, take note of what is said through a word used figuratively 1 See Slawiński J. Truly moved by information. — Texts: Theory of Literature. Criticism. Interpretation, 1980, No. 6 (54), p. 1. 2 Shibles W. A. Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History. — Whitewater (Wisconsin), 1971. 3 Arutyunova N. D. Metaphor. — In: Russian Language. Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1979, p. 140. 4 Okopien-Slawinska A. Metafora bez granic. — Teksty..., 1980, Nr. 6 (54), s. 26. 71 and its context. This strategic pragmatic approach to metaphorization, I would say, is based on numerous metaphorical personifications, especially extended ones. A typical example would be: The forest wept. His large, transparent tears trembled on every twig and every leaf, ran down the rough, winding trunk, made the locks of the leverdys gleam, caught in the young pine shoots, and hung for a long time from the drooping tips of the needles, then fell to the ground, landing with a muffled patter on the willowherb. The forest wept R IV 555. To understand why the writer unexpectedly changes the code of thought—instead of depicting a fairly heavy rain (after all, “black, thick clouds are moving” and it has already “begun to drizzle”), he makes the forest “weep,” while the extended metaphor depicts “his tears”—we need to assess all the signals of the semantic importance of such information. These include not only the personification conveyed through its components (“the forest wept,” “his large, transparent tears,” “the forest wept”…) but also the semantic impulses of the broader context (“the sun rises somehow yellowish, drowsy,” “restless crows dart about,” “the grass beside the path rustles so muffledly,” “the rain pattered dully in the foliage,” etc.). Through all these signals of the content’s importance, and through the artistic unity of image and detail, the writer seems to say: the forest mourns the shepherd boy’s “man,” Jonas, better than anyone. Thus, to properly understand what the writer has encoded in a metaphorical context, one must keep in view what text interpreters call the metaphor’s “horizon of meanings,” or, in other words, its “aureole of associations.” Of course, for the writer’s strategic intentions and pragmatic instruction to be meaningfully encoded in the metaphorical context and later bring forth the desired horizon of meanings and associations, certain conditions are necessary. First, reliable signals of semantic cohesion and contextual motivation must be “displayed”6—interrelated components of important meaning formed by the metaphor itself, its surrounding context, and their interaction. Readers need to be especially attentive when metaphorization—as is characteristic of J. Baltušis—takes place simultaneously, encompassing several nominations and names of realities at once, while contextual motivation binds the semantic signals of content importance into a single whole. We find this kind of metaphorization, for example, in “The Tale of Juza.” Let us recall the scenes at the end of the novel, when “another winter arrived.” “Unexpected, uninvited. At first came the clouds, swollen beyond bearing, tin-gray. They did not glide across the sky, but pressed their bellies against the earth and burst, collapsing over the fields beyond Kairabalė and Kairabalė itself. And they did not pour down in gusts or through breaks in the clouds, but roared forth a veritable deluge from their innards.” The narrative goes on to depict how bitter winds overturned and buried Kairabalė, how the rattling cold shackled all that lived beneath its ice, and how all around “the wolves began to howl and wail at night.” And finally, the scenes Juza sees after “losing sleep,” in his “half-sleep”—visions and reality. “Young, brightened by the first frosts [the moon], a true bridegroom, setting out to woo. He edged up to the cottage windows, peered inside insistently. Silent, he gazes. Gazes. And the cottage seems somehow not the same. As if dreaming, as if waiting for someone R VI 248.” 5Here and below, examples are drawn from the writer’s “Collected Works” (R): Baltušis J. Raštai. — V., 1981–1983, vols. 1–8 (the Roman numeral indicates the volume, the Arabic numeral the page). 6 Okopien-Sławińska A. Op. cit., s. 27. 72 In this way, through a somewhat unbalanced personification of reality’s phenomena—more simultaneous, associative, situational, and related to Juza’s feelings—and through extended metaphorization, the reader is prepared for Vinčiūnė’s arrival and her final conversation with Juza. Metaphor particularly intensifies the semantic processes toward which the entire linguistic mechanism of the work is “strategically” oriented. The power of metaphor to strengthen and alter the narrative’s tonal qualities is considerable, for example. Thus, when “the forest burst into tears,” a more sorrowful, lyrical tone replaces the concrete, realistic mode of representation. The personified images of natural phenomena mentioned above, together with the metaphorical description of Juza’s visions, reinforce a tone of uncertain anticipation, which later gives way to the grim tone of Vinčiūnė’s conversation with Juza. It is also characteristic that, through metaphorization, the writer creates an individual “character” for natural phenomena and manifestations: “... stands a white-shirted birch, like a haymaker on a summer morning; the aspen shudders like a girl being scolded, and there, look, a young ash tree has stopped, while the alder draws close to a slender willow...” R IV 42. Such metaphorization is characterized by enumerations of manifestations in the “case of nature” unfolding simultaneously, the sculptural quality of sharply defined visual details, and the individual “characters” of trees, plants, and animals, created through metaphorization and personification of their distinct features, attentively observed (“the white-shirted birch stands,” “the aspen shudders”...). The subjective arrangement of such characters’ distinctive traits and marks of individuality into an object and an overall image makes it individual and inimitable. Sometimes metaphorization activates a word’s semes, giving a detail the meaning of a symbol. According to folk symbolism, this meaning belongs to the blood of the willows—the willows that bloom red in winter, “with real caps of blossoms.” Cf.: The very first summer after the willows’ blood, war came crashing down upon the people R VI 143. The meaning of extended metaphors and symbols can be identified by relying on signals of the importance of artistic information’s content, arising from the potential of a word’s semantics and its interaction with context. It is useful to keep in view the horizon of meanings arising from this interaction, as well as the writer’s strategic intentions, even when editing a single word in a text. For now, these rather abstract claims about strategic intentions can be made more specific. After all, we also have the writer’s own thoughts about individual images, details of works, and so on. One or another such thought of the writer can reasonably be regarded as an explanation of a typical “pragmatic instruction.” Here it would be appropriate to recall the controversy prompted by certain edits to the language of Parduotose vasarose. As is known, Acad. J. Balčikonis corrected, among other things, this sentence in the novel mentioned: “in the shade of the raspberry patch sings (= buzzes, hums) a mosquito drunk on sunshine”⁷. The writer J. Baltušis has recalled this correction on several occasions. “As soon as I wrote the sentence in Parduotose vasarose,” the writer explained, “‘in the shade of the raspberry patch sings a mosquito drunk on sunshine,’ I was immediately told that a mosquito cannot sing; it can only buzz.” The writer is grateful to linguists for revealing “the great secret of a mosquito’s buzzing,” but cannot use their evidence, since once one writes “a mosquito drunk on sunshine buzzes,” it diminishes— 7 Balčikonis J. A Few Words on the Language of “Parduotų vasarų.” — In: Rinktiniai raštai. V., 1978, vol. 1, p. 288. 73 …a work of art portraying “the intoxicating beauty of a midsummer noon, the inexhaustible abundance of the sun’s warmth, the great celebration of all nature.” And the writer needed to bring out the old Dirdos’ insignificance through such an image. It is no coincidence that after this image come Dirdos’ illness and death8. Thus, a very concrete pragmatic “directive” by the writer has been expressed as to how the chosen metaphorical, personified meaning of the word should be understood. The reader, of course, can rely only on an abstracted “directive” of this kind in the work or its fragment. But one must rely on it. The aim here is not to act as some arbiter in a polemic, much less one who has the final word. But it seems that, in the writer’s view, the blackbird can sing. Such a variant of the meaning is suggested here even by the minimal context “drunk on sunshine.” Otherwise—if one disregards the specific nature of belles lettres, the motivation and aims of metaphorization—one could demand, though hardly in respect of the right to personification and anthropomorphization, that creatures of nature “speak” only “in their own voice”: for example, that wolves should not “strike up and howl at night,” but howl, and that the dapple-gray horse should not “sigh, but neigh in the stable”. Yet the writer sometimes motivates and emphasizes his credo—“only...”—more consistently. This is how he begins a chapter of the novel: “And once, at night, he heard: the dapple-gray horse is sighing in the stable. Sighing heavily. In a true human voice” R VI 101. It is rightly said that metaphorization stimulates the properties of realia, not the meaning of the word9. This is especially apt with regard to the stimuli for J. Baltušis’s metaphors. In many instances, the writer seems to “paint from nature,” creating a vivid, three-dimensional metaphorical image prompted by a direct impression. Here is a strikingly plastic image of clouds, seen while flying to America: “... and below, as far as the eye can see, lie calm snowfields of clouds. Here and there, fantastic crags break through, in places mountain ranges stretch out, with deep, dark gorges and gentle foothills; elsewhere, look, good-natured giants raise their emaciated arms toward the sun...” R III 112. Giving meaning to an impression that has arisen spontaneously in the writer, metaphors often convey in condensed form a fact of reality marked by a particular way of perceiving the situation. Here is how an instantaneous impression is given meaning in a passage depicting Juza’s attempt to pull Karusė’s corpse out of the quicksand: Karusė even sighed. As though she had really sighed. And she waited for Juza to lay her in the resinous shavings, in a coffin he had knocked together with his own hands R VI 87. Metaphor helps give meaning to what already holds the reader’s attention. As a kind of dominant idea, it also fits well with real-world concepts. It is understandable that the space of a literary text semantically affected by metaphor becomes an important structural element of the whole’s meaning. The parallelism between the primary meaning of the word being metaphorized and its modified, figurative meaning creates a duality of reference and, at the same time, emphasis, which arises from the juxtaposition of a new metaphorical “vision” with habitual perception. For example: Juza caught a crumb of honeycomb in this mush, and it was in his mouth, on his tongue and under his tongue. And at once lightning flashed in his eyes, so violently that the earth swayed beneath his feet and the night— 8 Baltušis J. Apie kūrybinį darbą. – Kn.: Raštai. V., 1959, t. 3, p. 71–72. 9 Арутюнова Н. Д. Указ. соч., с. 140. 74 storm came crashing down from above. Juza did not even reach the well, having thrown himself face down beside the Pavirvė. (...) he drank for a long time the water that stank of mud, scooping it up with his hands and pouring it over himself wherever he could reach, until the lightning ceased and he saw the sun again above Kairabalė R VI 108–109. As this and many other examples show, metaphor is a means of harmonization that signals the importance of content, arranging its elements in an ascending or descending order of intensity. A considerable proportion of the metaphors in J. Baltušis’s works serve to characterize people, describing their external and inner qualities. For example: Since that evening, Kazytė had been like a sulking child, and so she went about looking gloomy. R V 233. The old woman had turned unpleasant; her face was pure earth, her lips whitish, darkened at the corners. R V 115. Juza has long been silent; anger is swelling within him. R VI 106. As if alive, [Vinčiūnė] stood before his eyes throughout all those years in Kairabalė. For tens of long years, like a sharp nettle, she had grown into Juza’s very blood, impossible to pull out, impossible to wash away even with the saltiest sweat… R VI 148. Synesthetic metaphors, based on the interaction of the meanings of words belonging to different sensory thematic groups, help characterize a person’s perceptions. Their basis is more often “visible” smells (cf.: “...you could catch with your nose the pungent wormwood and bitter rue, submerged in the great resinous haze” R V 141), and more rarely audible images and other “combinations of sensations.” Of course, it would be wrong to say that all of J. Baltušis’s metaphors are highly original. Some of them, especially those associated with depicting the elements of human life (rather than nature), take the form of conventional images. Their underlying image is usually the result of employing folk principles of metaphorization, often in the form of more enduring stereotypes. Yet in quite a few instances the stereotypical image is activated, “renewed,” and acquires suggestive force through an unusual context. Let us recall the metaphorical stereotypes in the example already given—“lightning in one’s eyes,” “the earth would sway beneath one’s feet,” “night came crashing down,” “the lightning ceased”. They are activated by the unusual situation and context, and by the element of hyperbole. The writer does not eschew folk symbolism or the semantics of conventional images. This kind of metaphorization could provisionally be described by the following strategic principle of the writer: he made use of more universal means of folk metaphorization and other forms of expression, since these offer means of expressiveness, condensation of thought, and suggestion that are no less powerful than the most original devices. These means are consonant with the writer’s concrete, object-focused mode of representation and figurative way of thinking. Just a few examples: “Aleksiukas lay until autumn, until the gashes healed R I 235. Laukienė went wild R I 255. And he saw: he (Juza) no longer belonged here; he was a slice cut off R VI 38. One couldn’t say that she had burned all that fiercely with love, and yet it had torn at her and failed to tear her away, nor had it stifled her pity for Juza…” R VI 39. The foundation of such metaphors consists of conventional images and representations. Yet their combination and contextual significance still reflect a particular understanding and interpretation of the phenomena of the world; in many places they reveal a traditional “spiritualization” of everyday and cultural phenomena, and imbue them with a universe different from that of reality. Thus, by combining stereotypical, conventional means of expressing thought with original ones, the writer creates an effect that is by no means stereotypical or conventional. Of course, the tradi- 75 The uncreative use of expressive devices may reinforce inertia of thought. The writer avoids it by developing the figurative foundation of stereotypes and composing them into an artistic whole in a highly subjective manner. Moreover, it is not metaphorization but manifestations of metonymy that more strongly suggest inertia of thought. According to Ziomek, metaphor seeks “to reclassify a world already known,” whereas metonymy is a kind of inscription of cultural texts. For its figurative semantics, with limited and precise connotation, is drawn from the paradigm. Therefore, metonymy is far more conservative10. The view has long prevailed that metaphor predominates in poetry, while metonymy does so in prose. In J. Baltušis’s works, a metonymic mode of thought predominates, and hence so does the semantic figure of metonymy. The greater dangers of the writer’s thought inertia may be associated with its traditional conservatism. But the figure itself may also be entirely innocent. What matters is how it is used. In general, the horizon of metaphorical meanings and associations in J. Baltušis’s works is particularly broad where natural realities are depicted plastically and with vivid stereoscopic clarity, and where they are personified, “imbued with spirit.” Metaphors, especially extended ones, here exceptionally activate the semantic processes of contexts associated with the writer’s strategic orientations. The writer creates fewer original metaphors when depicting people’s everyday life and the lives of characters. The writer also draws heavily on the semantics of conventional metaphorical images and on symbolism of folk origin. The traditional associative meanings of such devices are activated, and their semantics creatively developed. THE STRATEGY OF METAPHORIZATION IN THE WORKS OF J. BALTUŠIS Abstract The article examines the distinctive nature of metaphorization in the works of J. Baltušis. In terms of the author’s communicative strategy, metaphors, especially extended ones, unusually intensify semantic processes—they strengthen or alter the tone (sometimes the code) of the narrative, activate the symbolic meanings and associations of folk names for phenomena, and serve to harmonize signals of the “importance” of the content with the means of its expression. Metaphors render vivid, individualized natural realities. Embodying an impression that arises spontaneously, a metaphor often condenses the characterization of a phenomenon or fact together with its perception in a particular situation. In depicting people’s everyday life, the writer creatively uses and develops the semantics of conventional metaphorical and symbolic images. 10 Žr. ir plg. Ziomek J. Metafora a metonimia. – Pamiętnik Literacki, 1984, XXV, z’ 1, s. 206.