This is really fascinating to me and of course I love Malcolm Guite. I work in a different kind of vocabulary which is carved screens so I really rely on literature quite a bit to create my images. I hope you keep these coming because the idea of metaphor in the realm of nature particularly trees, white stags and birds are essential.
I loved this so much!!! What a delightful interview. I learned so much and feel like my soul has been fed. Thank you for doing this. Can’t wait to read your book when it releases!
Nice conversation. I want to point out that Guite’s notion of metaphor sounds very much like the Platonist notion of pure mathematics, or even Einstein’s notion of the Mind of God. “It seems to be an indication that there is a mind behind the cosmos…”. If there are points of concurrency between mathematics and imaginative literature, this is certainly one of them.
It's been ages since I read mere Christianity, but there's a good metaphor(well, simile)/symbol in there: 'If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It would look like one single growing thing-rather like a very complicated tree.'
Language & meaning require metaphor. Just look at the layers of dead metaphors on which the etymology of words lies, like geological strata. Am I mixing my metaphors?
Humans imagined and then created machines (through God's inspiration), so metaphors are inevitable. This is not heresy or idolatry. It becomes so when we take the metaphor, and the machine, as better than God's creation and strive to be more like the machines. For example, "memory banks" are an interesting way to think about our minds. But when we attempt to replace our lifetime experience with memory banks, the metaphor uses us. God Bless, and keep thinking!
