Every day, every person speaks a few hundred words. Speech of different people differs depending on education, well-read, communication situation, profession and even mood. Colorful, juicy words unwittingly attract our attention. This is because the speech of such colloquial virtuosos is figurative and saturated with metaphors. In simple words, a metaphor can be characterized as a change in the meaning of a word or expression, a transfer of the meaning of a word to another phenomenon or object. This linguistic property is actively used in speech, sometimes we don’t even notice that we use this or that expression in a figurative meaning. What could be such an “erased" metaphor? Examples are quite obvious: the leg of a chair, the head of a nail, bitter disappointment, the neck of a bottle, the sole of a mountain. In these expressions, the figurative meaning is already lost.
Fiction is a metaphor. Examples from literature, especially poetry, are the most extensive and interesting. Of course, gifted poets do not just insert a metaphorical word, but consistently develop an image or complicate it by contrasting two metaphors.
“Bitter to me is the honey of your words” by Blok.
“I Want Dagger Words” from Balmont.
Tyutchev, using personification and metaphor, represents winter in the image of an angry and angry woman: "Winter is not without reason angry …".
Not only Russian poets tend to resort to such methods of revitalizing poetry as a metaphor. Examples from English poetry. Shakespeare, for example, compared the eyes of a beloved woman with twinkling stars, and Burns wrote about seething, raging blood.
Wordsworth, an English romantic, draws an amazing parallel between the human and the natural. He compares the daisy to “with a modest nun who has lowered her gaze”, or with “a queen hung with a ruby crown”.
In literary criticism, the term authorial or individual metaphor exists. Examples of such a transfer perfectly illustrate the linguistic flair and the special penetration into the living world of the poet from the people of Sergei Yesenin. That is why it is so difficult to translate Russian authors into European languages. Esenin's metaphors are truly unique: snow compares to silver, the cry of a blizzard reminds him of lingering melodies of a gypsy violin, autumn leaves are the color of copper, flying around the color of a bird cherry is associated with cold snow.
It is no coincidence that in the work of Russian poets the metaphor received a particularly powerful development. The relationship of poets with society and government has always been complex in Russia. This is one of the reasons why we enjoy the intricate beauty and sophistication of poetry. Joseph Brodsky, through all his lyrics, carried the image of the movement to death through a series of suffering and expressed it with a unique metaphor about plains and hills. "Death is only plains, life is hills, hills."
No less coloristic is Russian folklore, especially an abusive (obscene) metaphor. It is advisable to give examples from folklore, since the Russian mat does not need examples.
Fate will come, will bring legs together, and will bind hands. Beats like a fish on ice.
Folk poetics accurately marks the brief moment of female youth, which flies by a "falcon", whistles a nightingale, and croaks with a "black crow".
It can be confidently stated that the metaphor is an example and confirmation of the deep poetry of the Russian language and its subtle connection with the whole world.
