Metaphoric Reality

Oregon Lottery Poster 2014

Sucking blood from a stone?

Over the past several years I have been musing upon the usage of metaphors. They inundate our daily life: rain = sorrow, a rose = love, a wedding ring = eternal love, and yes, I could continue for a very long time; I possess a (economically useless) Masters in English Literature. The question for the day is if the constant, longstanding use of a metaphor -- such as that of a blood-sucking vampire -- as a stand-in for a regular Jane/Joe human behaving in a way which denudes the impacted "victim"-- somehow waters down the original word / idea / entity.

The secondary question would be, if the word "vampire" as metaphor does indeed water down the idea/word/entity, why would it matter? Science tells us, empirically, that real undead, revivified, returned to life vampires do not exist.

Certainly a wide field of literature and media play with this willful assumption of disbelief. Most notably (if my memory serves), Bram Stoker had Helsing argue in Dracula that the most effective way to hide ones existence was to make people believe you are fiction. I do not think he took it the concept far enough. Far to say one is hiding ones existence is still to posit that one exists.

 I have thought, for a fair length of time as I've worked on the idea of vampire as a metaphor, that the best way to hide ones existence it to water it down, to make the very idea of ones existence so used as an everyday noun/verb that it no longer refers to anything specific. The noun "vampire" becomes synonymous with any person sucking the life -- economically, physically, or emotionally -- from another person. 

They are behaving "vampirically" (adverb describing a verb). And if any Joe/Jane can be a metaphoric vampire; pouf goes any concept whatsoever that these fictional beings might actually share the earth with us for we are all, at one time or another, vampires ourselves.

I will pause to reassure anyone who happens upon this post -- I am not positing the existence of the real creature. Nor do I discount it. I am just noting that one function of a cliche is to water down the power of the idea being cliched. Let's look at an almost useless, but very societally meaningful, cliche: The dark and stormy night. Does the rendering of the concept into an overused, almost meaningless cliche actually water down, make less valid -- less real -- the torrential downpour pushed by high winds that the cliche represents?I do suggest that the overuse of the metaphor is rendering it a cliche with a check-list attached, and that the overuse of the metaphor waters down the original in our collective consciousness. We humanize our concept of the vampire, taming them in our minds, and then use it as a pejorative name for each other.

What do you think? Does overuse of a metaphor water down the reality of the vampire?

Kicking Ass! Kipling's "The Vampire"

While perusing really really old material today so that you, beloved readers, wouldn't need to do it, I ran into three responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." Then I ran into several more. Then I dug deeper yet and discovered there are more than 2200 extant and readable recountings and responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." And I searched only from 1897 to 1940.

The reactions run from story to play to poem and range from vampire as economic metaphor to vampire political statements to vampiric gendered roles to vampire at work. I've rarely seen such a widespread use of vampire.

The version I'll sharing this time is by William Rex, called -- you guessed it! -- "The Vampire!"
It is from a magazine called The painter and decorator, Volume 23 -- 1909

The Vampire (Laborer’s Version.)

(With Apologies to Kipling)

A fool there was and he toiled away

(Even as you and I).
For a cage and crumb, with nothing to say --
(Some call it worse than death grim and gray) —
But the fool he called it his full day's pay—

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the life we waste and the strife we taste—
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to this world, which does not know—

(And now we know that it never can know)
And does not understand.

A fool there was and he lived a slave—

(Even as you and I.)
To a master who drove him remorseless to grave—
(And the master did not heed the wounds he gave)—

But the fool never dreamt that his life he could save

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the miseries he lived for the crumbs he received –

And the kicks which a dog would abhor:

He took from the man who cared not to know why –

(And now we know he never cared why)

And did not understand.

The fool was stripped of his bloodsucked hide –

(Even as you and I).

Which he might have saved if he only had tried –

But a fool is a fool, though wise men he may chide)

So some of him lived, but the best of him dies

(Even as you and I).

And it isn’t the blow, or the red-blood flow,

That stings like a white-hot brand –

It’s coming to know that he never did try

To conquer his lord and make him know why –

And force him to understand.

(Sweet Goth here. Doesn't a poem kick ass when it can be re-purposed so endlessly yet still have relevance in its new incarnation?)