The wind blows in, made manifest in muslin, an aether.
Certain relationships between analogy, interpretation and form, complicated by different existing levels, embeddings, derivatives. Formalism may be understood as separate from interpretation, depending on the use of formalism. Probably though in all the uses there is some sort of relationship between the two. I'm coming to think that interpretation can fundamentally be reduced to analogy. The idea of analogy is in essence the idea of reference, but abstracted to a higher level. Roughly, here are a few of the main levels. The literal consists of the signified and signifier: the reference and the word. (Only true for proper names; I will ignore complex referents and sense distinction for now). The metaphorical, at its most basic level, consists of a signifier, here at its most basic I will consider the word, which refers to a non-conventional reference by an association through similarity of the two referents. Metonymy acts the same in a slightly different fashion. For now I will skip the level of the sentence because it eludes me. At the level of the narrative is the analogy. Firstly, literal:metaphorical :: literal:analogical, left side being the sign and right being the narrative. Analogy defers the meaning from a conventional to a non-conventional referent, just as metaphor does, but on the level of the narrative. For conventional form, a narrative can be said to 'mean' if it fulfills the demands of conventional form (a tautology I will skip over because I haven't yet explored the nature of conventional form) in either a literal or analogical fashion. Hence if it does not fit the demands literally, the interpreter will immediately look to the analogical. Now, comprehensiveness is the issue. It often transpires that no single analogy will fit a whole narrative, but there are analogies or metaphors that fit signs or narrative pieces of the work. Here, though not entirely satisfied, the interpreter who is forced to search for analogical meaning becomes sated by these analogical fragments, these many meanings of a narrative. This, of course, breaks down the narrative as a whole, but establishes a successful mode of interpretation.
An electric fan blows white sand across the table. The grain is coarse and traps fellow grains within. Womblike, the antechamber of an afterlife, this cessation of eternal motion becomes, by lack of other reference, entirely fulfilling.
