LessonsImplicit and Imaginative Metaphor: Competing Accounts and al-Sakkaki’s DefinitionsQuiz

صحا القلب عن سلمى وأقصر باطله
The heart recovered from its infatuation with Salmā and ceased its misguided preoccupation.

The expression “ṣaḥā” evokes waking up or becoming sober. The heart was not literally intoxicated by wine; excessive attachment is pictured as intoxication, and release from it is represented as becoming sober.

The technical problem is to determine whether a word has been shifted to a new meaning or whether an image is first mentally posited and its attributes subsequently expressed. Actual intoxication, the compared emotional condition, and the borrowed wording are analytically distinct.

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The poetic example of awakening from desire

Implicit and Imaginative Metaphor: Competing Accounts and al-Sakkaki’s Definitions

صحا القلب عن سلمى وأقصر باطله
The heart recovered from its infatuation with Salmā and ceased its misguided preoccupation.

The expression “ṣaḥā” evokes waking up or becoming sober. The heart was not literally intoxicated by wine; excessive attachment is pictured as intoxication, and release from it is represented as becoming sober.

The technical problem is to determine whether a word has been shifted to a new meaning or whether an image is first mentally posited and its attributes subsequently expressed. Actual intoxication, the compared emotional condition, and the borrowed wording are analytically distinct.