Definition:
A metaphor (or figurative comparison) in which one of the terms (the tenor) can't be readily distinguished from the other (the vehicle). The concept of absolute metaphor is often associated with the writings of certain modernist poets, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
Etymology:
A term popularized by the philosopher Hans Blumenberg in Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (1960)Observations:
- "The content of an absolute metaphor cannot be stated explicitly, that is, without using the metaphorical wording. In these cases, the metaphor is the only means of expressing the information contained in it."
(Ulrich Baltzer, "The Cooperative Principle and the Speaker's Belief in Conversational Implicatures," in Saying, Meaning, Implicating, ed. by G. Meggle and C. Plunze. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2003) - "The absolute metaphor would be one in which the original situation, the experience which should call to mind the comparison, no longer appears. A concrete situation fades behind a weight of metaphorical associations: it is as though a noun were lost behind its attributive adjectives . . .. An extreme subjectivity would result here, where the poet's metaphors (or epithets) replace the actual existing situation or object; the metaphor would then exist in its own right as an image, often juxtaposed with other images to create a world remote from the real. The metaphor (or image) becomes expressive rather than imitative, existing as a powerful, autonomous figure of speech from which radiate a host of evocative meanings. An example often quoted here is the last line from Guillaume Apollinaire's 'Zone' . . . where the link between sun and cut throat is indeed tenuous, and it is for the reader to grasp the point of comparison--the idea of termination, finality, sunset, redness and blood."
(R. S. Furness, Expressionism. Routledge, 1973)
Also Known As: antimetaphor, paralogical metaphor
