Like buttah
Aug. 2nd, 2004 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaA well-crafted simile is a pleasing thing, and not at all easy to write. The presence of the word "like" is an almost sure-fire recipe for cliche.
Her eyes were like twin pools of midnight.
Feh.
Instinctively, we prefer metaphors--they are meatier, more muscular creatures. The fey little simile seems like a weaker thing altogether, more hesitant, more diffident.
But when it works, a good simile is like a sock in the jaw. The best ones have an element of surprise: the thing that is like the other thing is not really like it; the comparison is odd, quirky, unexpected, jarring. And even humorous.
"The friar smiled. It was like a rat diving into a hedge." (Dorothy Dunnett, Race of Scorpions, chapter 2)
"He smiled at her like a light going out." Cassandra Claire, Draco Veritas, chapter 15)
"Like a bird on a wire, like a drunken midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free." (Leonard Cohen)
"Arkady said nothing. Over the field were the triumphant screams of small birds mobbing a crow; they looked like a bar of music moving through the air." (Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park)
By some alchemy of prose, a simile may be transformed into a metaphor:
"As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste" (Song of Songs, 2:3)
Or a metaphor into a simile and then back into a metaphor and then back into a simile:
"Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream, hearken to us, who are immortal beings, ethereal, ever young and occupied with eternal thoughts.." (Aristophanes, The Birds)
A simile has a punchline:
"As countless swarms of flies buzz around a herdsman's homestead in the time of spring when the pails are drenched with milk, even so did the Achaeans swarm on to the plain to charge the Trojans and destroy them." (Iliad, Bk II)
"But when he raised his voice, and the words came driving from his deep chest like winter snow before the wind, then there was none to touch him, and no man thought further of what he looked like." (Iliad, Bk. III)
It can be extended beyond all reason, and still work (as the Simile Master shows):
"Thus high in hope they sat through the livelong night by the highways of war, and many a watchfire did they kindle. As when the stars shine clear, and the moon is bright--there is not a breath of air, not a peak nor glade nor jutting headland but it stands out in the ineffable radiance that breaks from the serene of heaven; the stars can all of them be told and the heart of the shepherd is glad--even thus shone the watchfires of the Trojans" (Iliad, Bk. VIII)
OK, sometimes a simile can go off the rails:
"Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them." (Song of Songs, 4:2)
But sometimes even that works:
"Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." (Song of Songs, 4:4)
I really like a good simile.
On a separate subject: Will the LJ community please learn to spell "definitely"? Please?
Her eyes were like twin pools of midnight.
Feh.
Instinctively, we prefer metaphors--they are meatier, more muscular creatures. The fey little simile seems like a weaker thing altogether, more hesitant, more diffident.
But when it works, a good simile is like a sock in the jaw. The best ones have an element of surprise: the thing that is like the other thing is not really like it; the comparison is odd, quirky, unexpected, jarring. And even humorous.
"The friar smiled. It was like a rat diving into a hedge." (Dorothy Dunnett, Race of Scorpions, chapter 2)
"He smiled at her like a light going out." Cassandra Claire, Draco Veritas, chapter 15)
"Like a bird on a wire, like a drunken midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free." (Leonard Cohen)
"Arkady said nothing. Over the field were the triumphant screams of small birds mobbing a crow; they looked like a bar of music moving through the air." (Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park)
By some alchemy of prose, a simile may be transformed into a metaphor:
"As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste" (Song of Songs, 2:3)
Or a metaphor into a simile and then back into a metaphor and then back into a simile:
"Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream, hearken to us, who are immortal beings, ethereal, ever young and occupied with eternal thoughts.." (Aristophanes, The Birds)
A simile has a punchline:
"As countless swarms of flies buzz around a herdsman's homestead in the time of spring when the pails are drenched with milk, even so did the Achaeans swarm on to the plain to charge the Trojans and destroy them." (Iliad, Bk II)
"But when he raised his voice, and the words came driving from his deep chest like winter snow before the wind, then there was none to touch him, and no man thought further of what he looked like." (Iliad, Bk. III)
It can be extended beyond all reason, and still work (as the Simile Master shows):
"Thus high in hope they sat through the livelong night by the highways of war, and many a watchfire did they kindle. As when the stars shine clear, and the moon is bright--there is not a breath of air, not a peak nor glade nor jutting headland but it stands out in the ineffable radiance that breaks from the serene of heaven; the stars can all of them be told and the heart of the shepherd is glad--even thus shone the watchfires of the Trojans" (Iliad, Bk. VIII)
OK, sometimes a simile can go off the rails:
"Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them." (Song of Songs, 4:2)
But sometimes even that works:
"Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." (Song of Songs, 4:4)
I really like a good simile.
On a separate subject: Will the LJ community please learn to spell "definitely"? Please?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 09:13 am (UTC)Interestingly, IIRC, that line about the teeth being like a flock of sheep is one of the principle examples Augustine gives of beauty, and how it resides in the relationship between the image and its divine meaning. What he thought the divine meaning of Song of Songs was I dunna know--a thousand years before Bernard of Clairvaux, and a hell of a lot less batty!
My favorite from your fine list:
"But when he raised his voice, and the words came driving from his deep chest like winter snow before the wind, then there was none to touch him, and no man thought further of what he looked like." (Iliad, Bk. III)
Just fantastic. Whose trans?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 12:15 pm (UTC)Yeah, Augustine... well, his views on sex are mighty odd, at the best of times. I love watching how Christian commentators have struggled to assert that the Song of Songs belongs within the biblical canon because it's all, see, a Metaphor for the love of Christ for the Church. Or vice versa. Or something.
The teeth-white-as-sheep image works fine up to the point where they all have twins. Then it goes off the deep end and one gets the image of a Beloved with a mouth full of double rows of teeth, rather like poor Keats's toothful Greedy Shark Ear. Really, when poets are in lurve, their judgment is sometimes unsound.
Those overwrought epic similes turn up in some other ancient literature too--Egyptian and Assyrian epic poetry, IIRC. Your beauty is like an orchard of apples that in the spring is perfumed and sweet and in the fall yields good harvest, yea, many apples and each one glossy and beloved of the bees and small boys who vye together to outwit the farmer and steal away his bushels before he can get them to market.
I made that one up, but it renders the idea.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 03:04 pm (UTC)Ahahaha. Don't know that one. And ha ha to your epic simile also. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 10:04 pm (UTC)Mmm. Milton! Though they go on so long that I lose track of them.
Also Dante:
As turtle-doves, called onward by desire,
With open and steady wings to the sweet nest
Fly through the air by their volition borne,
So came they from the band where Dido is,
Approaching us athwart the air malign,
So strong was the affectionate appeal. (Inferno, V, Paolo and Francesca, Longfellow's pretty good translation)
And Isaiah:
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but
God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall
be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and
like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. (17:13)
My God, there is a whole website devoted to similes. The world is a very strange place.