Borges and Manganelli on Metaphor: A Literary Inquiry

An essay in artpress examines the nature of metaphor through the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Giorgio Manganelli. Borges wrote two texts on metaphor: one appended to his 1952 "History of Eternity" and another from a series of lectures at Harvard (1967-1968). He cites examples from Tennyson, Cummings, Manrique, Chesterton, and Shakespeare. Manganelli's essay describes Borges as "a wound on the face of history" and argues that metaphor, like the unconscious, is socially hostile, destabilizing reality. Borges maintained that art matters only to the individual, not society. The essay also notes that metaphors are largely banned from journalism and literary criticism, and that contemporary literature often avoids stylistic creation. References include Borges' conversations with Ernesto Sabato, Nabokov's "Ada," and Manganelli's "Hilarotragoedia."