Филологические науки/2. Риторика и стилистика

К.ф.н. Telegina N.I., Yeroshenko J.O.

Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University

Conceptual metaphor in Irwin Shaw’s novel “Evening in Byzantium”

Metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon has attracted the attention of many researchers in traditional linguistics, but with the appearance of Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive approach to metaphor new space for research was revealed. The scholars of cognitive trend, studying metaphor, suppose that it is primarily a conceptual phenomenon, not exclusively, linguistic. Conceptual metaphor in their opinion creates frameworks of our experience. Modern cognitive linguists such as G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, N.D. Arutyunova, A.N. Baranov, Y. M. Karaulov, E.S. Kubryakova consider metaphor as a mechanism by means of which people understand abstract concepts and ponder on them. From this point of view metaphor is an instrument of cognition of the world as it is based on establishing associative links, similarities and differences between the phenomena of the world and on this basis creates new individual meanings that represent a person’s subjective attitude to the world, his/her vision and interpretation of a certain fragment of reality.

According to the adherents of the cognitive approach metaphor is a linguistic reflection of the extremely important analogue processes and that’s why it actively participates in the formation of an individual model of the world as the basic mental operation that combines two concept spheres and provides an opportunity of structuring the source domain conceptualizing a new sphere.

The recognition of metaphor as an indispensable part of everyday thinking and everyday speech provided new ways of interpreting the nature of metaphors that are used in fiction. Cognitive schools have proved that poetic thinking is based on the mechanisms of everyday thinking while by the mechanisms of everyday thinking the conceptual metaphor is primarily meant.

The title of the novel "Evening in Byzantium" is a phrase with metaphorical meaning. The figurative nature of this phrase is immediately perceived by the reader. In the title of the novel two metaphorical images "evening" and "Byzantium" can be distinguished. Gradually these images are filled with specific content and are conceptualized in the reader's mind.

The image "evening" is associated with the sunset, the end of the day. Its metaphorical interpretation is recorded in the dictionaries (the evening of life [2]), and thus is a phenomenon of national culture. The first acquaintance with the main character, a famous American film director, Jesse Craig, arouses a feeling that his circumstances are far from being good that it is not the best period of his life. During the flight to Cannes Film Festival, when the aircraft entered the zone of turbulence, his first thought was: “How comfortable it would be if we crashed, how definitive” [1; 7]. Jess Craig’s purport of life had been in his work that had brought him both pleasure and money. But after some failures in his career, beset by problems in personal life (divorce, misunderstandings and quarrels with children, illness), he got disenchanted, lost faith in his abilities, walked away from the world of cinema and theatre, lost his aim in life and began to think about the sunset of his career and about the evening of his life: “The reasons for his retreat are obscure. Disgust? Disillusionment? Weariness? A feeling that his work was done and the time had come to enjoy its fruits in peace in places where he had neither friends nor enemies?” [1; 41]. He feels that he loses his strength. The feeling is hightened by the meeting with a young journalist, Gail Makkinon. It makes him think about the inevitability of growing old. He believes that beside a 22-year-old girl he, a 48-year-old man, looks like a ruin: “He is forty-eight now and looks it…What does a forty-eight-year-old man look like to a twenty-two-year-old girl? Ruins. The walls of Pompeii. The trenches of Verdun. Hiroshima” [1; 39]. The underlined author’s metaphors deepen the meaning of the conceptual metaphor (the evening of life). Jess Craig is going through a midlife crisis, that’s why failures and stresses make him diffident, and he begins to worry about his age and feels growing old sharply. At a party during Cannes Film Festival, he sees his old friend, an actor who played in one of his first films. Despite the fact that Craig is a few years younger, seeing this handsome, healthy, successful, energetic, athletic man he feels so uncertain that doesn’t want to come up and greet him: “There was a small commotion at the doorway and Frank Garland came in with his wife and another couple. Garland was an actor who had starred in one of Craig’s early movies. He was several years older than Craig but looked no more than thirty-five, dark-haired, athletically tall, strong-jawed and handsome. He was a very good actor and an imaginative businessman and had his own company which produced not only his own films but the films of others. He was a bouncingly healthy, jovial, extroverted man with a pretty wife to whom he had been married for more than twenty years. He had been superb in Craig’s picture and they were good friends, but tonight Craig didn’t want to be exposed to that glorious health, that sensible intelligence, that flawless luck, that unfaked and all-embracing cordiality” [1; 250]. Realizing the transience of time and the inevitability of the end Craig worries about his health less and less. He drinks more and more and it aggravates his problems with health. He drives himself to a condition when his health "betrays" him:“He awoke in pain. His stomach was contracting spasmodically. The bed was soaked in sweat. The pains came and went, sharp and stabbing…He knew he should be afraid but all he felt was disgust at his body’s betrayal” [1; 449]. The doctors advise Craig an operation, but his chances are fifty-fifty, so he is between life and death: “When Craig asked him what the chances were after an operation like that, the surgeon said flatly, without hesitation, “ Fifty-fifty” [1; 454]. Thus in the text of the novel we find the author’s individual elaboration of the conceptual metaphor “evening of life”.

The second image from the title of the novel – the image of Byzantium is traditionally associated with the decline of morals, as we know from history that the decline of morals was one of the reasons for the fall of the flowering and rich state.

In the novel the state of society in the 70s of the XX-th century is revealed through the events of Cannes Film Festival and through the films shown at it. They demonstrate the moral decline of the society, which is reaping the fruits of the sexual revolution and social upheavals of the 60s: “He watched in disbelief… He hoped that the fathers of the four students who had been shot at Kent State would never see Woodstock and know that a work of art which had been dedicated to their dead children contained a passage in which nearly half a million of their children’s contemporaries had mourned their death by shouting F…! in unison” [1; 48]. Numerous reviews of the festival films in the novel are negative: “Murphy rambled on about the decline of the movie industry.” “Dirty movies, dirty business, dirty politics, a succession of orgiastic howls, ingenious sets, an orgy of sound, primitive words”. In Irwin Shaw’s interpretation Cannes Film Festival does not resemble an elegant and exquisite event where people come to evaluate works of art. In the novel it gets a specific evaluation – "a disaster area". The author shows that every year during the festival the city becomes a centre of debauchery, drinking and orgies. Gradually in the novel the place of action, Cannes, expands its meaning and becomes an image that embodies the features of the Film Festival and the film industry and later, a symbol of the decline of morals: “Whores everywhere. In the audience, on the screen, on the streets, in the jury room. I tell you, Jess, this is the living and eternal capital of whoredom for two weeks each year. Spread your legs and take your money. That ought to be printed on every letterhead under the seal of the city of Cannes” [1; 137]. The evaluations of the heroes are sharp and nowhere in the novel are denied, and therefore they may be considered the author's point of view expressed by the heroes. Cannes Film Festival is traditionally accompanied by parties, where famous actors, producers, directors and people who do business in the sphere of cinema gather. One of the visitors of such a party, an English girl compares it with the Fall of the Roman Empire: “I used to hear about the parties in Cannes,” the English girl said. “Wild. Everybody smashing glasses and dancing naked on the tables and orgies in the swimming pools. The fall of the Roman Empire” [1; 223]. Thus, the reality is conceptualized and the author’s individual metaphor emerges: Cannes is Byzantium, where Byzantium is a source domain and Cannes is a target domain.

So, thanks to the author’s interpretation of the conceptual metaphors his picture of the world is constructed and rendered to the reader. In the title I. Shaw presented the content of the novel through metaphors conceptualizing the major topics and problems of the work.

Bibliography:

1. Shaw Irwin Evening in Byzantium. – СПб.: КАРО, 2007. – С. 512.

2.TheFreeDictionary [Електронний ресурс] - Режим доступу: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/