Metaphorical Excess

First appeared in The GuardianWriters like Flaubert have been accused of over-using metaphor, but is it possible to have too much of such a good thing?An angry question hounds my appreciation of the novel, like a hungry hyena: To what degree can metaphor be used before intruding on realism's capacity to replicate life experience? In other words, how many metaphors can weigh on the text without breaking the emotional connection between reader and character necessary to achieve what James Wood has called "lifeness."The reason this troubles so, is that it sets two of the three criteria I use to evaluate greatness up against one another in a sort of zero sum game where too much metaphor subtracts authenticity from the lives lived by fictional heroes and heroines - attracting attention to the skill of the style, the cleverness of the prose, pulling us out of an emotional absorption essential to the most satisfying reading experiences.I read novels for the following reasons: to find and revel in funny, beautiful, thought-provoking phrases and metaphors; to dwell on profound paragraphs that contain useful truths about life and human nature; and to lose myself in, and connect emotionally with, the lives of exceptional characters. Few authors come baring all three gifts.Imagine the dishevelment then when I read Wood declaring that Flaubert's use of metaphor actually undermines his claim to greatness, puts him beneath Tolstoy and Chekhov in the canonical hierarchy. The image of the "smoke of a railway engine stretched out in a horizontal line, like a gigantic ostrich feather whose tip kept blowing away," may be beautiful, says Wood in The Irresponsible Self, "but it is nevertheless a stylist being a stylist. It is how Flaubert sees the world. Yet in Tolstoy, as in Chekhov, reality appears in his novels as it might appear not to a writer, but to the characters."I daresay Flaubert does use reality as a toy when he writes: "Life was as old as an attic facing north, and the silent spider boredom wove its web in all the shadowed corners of her heart." Perhaps overly clever metaphor does poison the plot ... does undermine the reader's connection to character. But is artistic quality objectively quantifiable when comparing apples and oranges, as, to an extent, we are here? Or is it simply in the eye of the beholder? The answer, I'd say, depends on what you're hungry for. If it's style and metaphor alone, then the fruit found in Flaubert, realistic or not, is succulent indeed.Be it describing pharmacists' charisma: "Charles' conversation was as flat as a street pavement, on which everybody's ideas trudged past in their workaday dress, provoking no emotion, no laughter, no dreams," the desire of lovers "...wishing for a thousand eyes to gaze upon each other," or life lessons "Idols must not be touched; the gilt comes off on our hands," Flaubert's metaphors play with reality in ways that make it delicious.As for useful truths about life and human nature, try this: "To feel nobly and to love what is beautiful - that's our duty. Not to accept all the conventions of society and the humiliations society imposes on us...No! Why inveigh against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing there is on earth; the source of all heroism and enthusiasm, poetry, music, art, everything?" And for descriptive power, I've yet to come across a better paragraph on the idle rich than: "They had the complexion of wealth, that clear white skin which is accentuated by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the finish on handsome furniture, and is maintained at its best by a modest diet of exquisite foods ... Their nonchalant glances reflected the quietude of passions daily gratified; behind their gentleness of manner one could detect that peculiar brutality inculcated by dominance in not over-exacting activities such as exercise strength and flatter vanity - the handling of thoroughbreds and the pursuit of wantons."Character? Although one might not really connect with Emma, is this not the most divine little portrait you've ever read: "But she was too familiar with the country: with the bleating of the flocks, with the dairy and the plough. Accustomed to the peaceful, she turned in reaction to the picturesque. She loved the sea only for its storms, green foliage only when it was scattered amid ruins. It was necessary for her to derive a sort of personal profit from things - she rejected as useless whatever did not minister to her heart's immediate fulfillment - being of a sentimental rather than an artistic temperament, in search of emotions, not scenery."Realism be damned if it means passing up on these sublimities.