Daily life shows
that water is qualitatively defined through human senses and perceptions in a
basically negative way: it is colourless, tasteless, odourless,
transparent and shapeless (this last one being true of all
liquids and gases). On the macroscopic level, water only assumes the form of
the receptacle that receives and contains it.
As the psychologist Jean Piaget showed, an understanding of the
conservation of matter is only acquired at a specific stage of infantile
development. Only at that point do
children stop making the mistakes commonly made in the previous stage. The following experiment can be easily
reproduced.
Take a glass pitcher full
of water and pour it into a long, thin test-tube. Ask a child which contains more water, the
original pitcher or the filled test-tube.
Any children who have not yet developed the idea of conservation of
matter say that there is more water in the test-tube, even though they have
seen it only being filled from the pitcher.
The experiment can be done again, pouring the water in the test-tube
back into the pitcher and starting from scratch. Even so, the children do not change their
opinion. Water’s lack of macroscopic
form disorients the senses and we too would be confused if we did not know that
matter is neither created nor destroyed simply as a result of movement in
space, which is, after all, what switching receptacles amounts to.
Water itself has
no form, but it can assume any form.
Frozen, it will crystallise, turning into either fluffy, wonderful,
kaleidoscopic snowflakes or heavy, rigid blocks of ice. One might well think that the same thing happens
with all liquids, and that is the case.
When speaking at the level of metaphors and symbols, however, care
should be taken of the significant differences between water and other
liquids. It is quite surprising, for
instance, that the human body is composed of more than 90% water; yet water
has, throughout history, been largely ignored when considering bodily fluids
and their influence on character, temperament or human ‘humours’. Not a single humour is specifically ‘watery’.
As missing ‘humour’
The doctrine of
the ‘humours’ (from the Greek umorem for liquid) was important in the
time of Hippocrates (fifth century B.C.), and it continued to have supporters
until the beginning of the 19th century.
Disease was seen to be the result of an imbalance between one bodily
humour and the other three. Beyond
disease, however, it was also thought that a slight tendency or preponderance
of bile generated a bilious personality type or temperament, which was violent,
short-tempered, irascible, irritable, even rancourous. If it was blood that predominated, then one
was sanguine, buoyant, always ready to be tested, ready to push the
limits. Today this is linked to athletic
achievement, but also to hypertension.
If phlegm[1] was more predominant, then the personality
type was phlegmatic (listless, complacent, unaspiring); if black bile[2], then the type was melancholic
(despairing, self-absorbed, solitary, always preoccupied but never occupied[3], which is nowadays linked to
hypochondria).
So where in the
world is the watery humour or temperament? The absence is glaring and
that says a great deal! Certainly, water
has been given better treatment in the field of astrology. There it shares 'power' equally with the
other three elements: fire, air and earth.
It is astonishing, though, that the essential ingredient of life and the
key component of our physical bodies did not even get a mention in the way
Greeks developed the theory of bodily humours and corresponding emotional
states. As we saw before, culturally
speaking, plural 'waters' drew attention from water itself, and here it appears
to be the turn of the bodily 'humours'.
After all, what are blood, bile and so forth, but water and little else? Yet water, the liquid par excellence,
is once again conceived as totally lacking its own specific characteristics or
attributes.
As dampener of desire
Conversely, this state of affairs is
precisely what has made water so vital, ubiquitous and—it must be
said—practical. We all know that nothing
quenches thirst like water for the very reason that the tiny level of salts in
it (as well as the sugars) fits very well with the liquid requirements of the
human body. Yet it does not arouse the
tastebuds. It is like the apple consumed
by wine tasters when cleaning the palate so as to be able to appreciate taste
and smell more discerningly. By its very
nature, water is the great dampener of desire.
Its aim is not to relish something sublime (such as a fine vintage
wine), but rather simply 'to quench thirst'.
(We could say 'to dampen' it.)
Obviously, today’s predilection for soft drinks that are sugary,
coloured water, fortified with vitamins and minerals, spiced up with herbs and
laced with all kinds of additives is further proof of a society whose genuine
goal is not the simple satisfaction of needs but rather boundless, unending
consumption. A soft drink that simply
killed thirst would strike a terrible blow at the unholy cycles driving today’s
consumer society.
As lacking epic grandeur:
purity, transparency, peril
Let us, however,
return to water’s surprising tragedy.
Its poetic and metaphoric losses contrast sharply with the enormous
wealth of water’s plural, concrete instances:
rivers, springs and fountains, seas and oceans. Throughout history, singular ‘water’ has been
divested of its vast poetic and metaphysical qualities. In a certain sense, it has become just as
transparent as diamond or glass. Yet,
diamond and glass—and not water—will always conjure up deep poetic imagery for us. For instance, there is a scene in
Mankiewicz’s fine film Sleuth[4], in which a diamond is hidden in a glass
of water. The best way to hide something
transparent, after all, is to leave it out in plain sight, making it disappear
in something else which is also transparent.
It works best if the something else in question is humble, ordinary and
everyday, something it would take a stretch to associate with anything as
valuable or extraordinary as a diamond.
After all, who would search for a diamond in a glass of water? Precisely because we have forgotten or
undervalued water’s purity and transparency (as well as constantly getting it
dirty), it is a pleasant surprise to come across pristine Mediterranean coves
and alpine lakes. Their infinite clarity
fills us with wonder.
To the consternation
or annoyance of some, water may even be purer than a maiden or the innocent
gaze of a child. We all know the misery
and frailty of the human condition. It
comes through even in our traditional archetypes of purity and innocence (the
maiden and the child). However much they
may be beloved, neither of them—no human being, in fact—could ever be as pure
as water. Yet it is they—however
unoriginal it may sound—who will always stand as symbols of purity. At another level, sailors and coastal fishing
villages know that water can be wantonly cruel or dangerous. But, inevitably, it is the crimson of blood
and not the colourlessness of water that symbolises danger and death[5]. We have seen that water is essential for
life and come to an understanding that blood, physically, is little more than
water. Yet not just danger and death,
but life too is traditionally symbolised by the crimson of blood. It somehow seems inconceivable that water
could provide an equally powerful symbol.
Looking at the
changing conceptualisations of water through history, we can see that they have
tended toward banality, water’s powers belittled. A rather significant symptom of this can be
seen in the decline of a lovely, archaic myth:
the fountain of eternal youth. It
has lost ground to later, darker myths such as vampires. Not only more modern but now much more in the
forefront of the popular imagination, the vampire myth[6] attributes the uncanny prolonging of
vampire life to the power of the blood sucked out of, stolen from other human
beings, even to the point of murder. It
is as though, in today’s society, life could not possibly be considered a
natural, inexhaustible gift. Nor could
anything as banal as water be its vehicle, the same water that tamely flows
from certain springs. (Historically
there have been many for which rejuvenating powers were claimed.) Conversely, the power of blood is becoming
more and more plausible in this regard, especially if it is the result of a
violent, criminal act of appropriation.
In this sense, the life that the vampire ‘wins’ is equivalent to the one
the victim has lost. (It is a zero-sum
game[7], unlike the mysterious and inexhaustible
wealth of the fountains of eternal youth or the free, overflowing, life-giving
spring[8], to which one only needs to bend and
partake.).
The insubstantiality of water, the substantiality of rivers and seas
Beyond the
post-Socratic undervaluation of water as symbol—which is to be explained
later—it is plain to see that our systems of metaphors, our symbols and models,
our paradigms and archetypes have all been constructed with an emphasis on
rarity, sublimity and specificity. That
has marginalised this primeval, ubiquitous element, water. As is so often the case, the lowly and
mundane are no source of inspiration for a certain kind of epic poetry that
seems to seek only the grandest gesture and the most sublime
distinctiveness. That may well explain
why, in human metaphor, the ocean and the sea lend themselves much more to
epic. They are much more frequently
treated as subjects than water, despite water being their principle
ingredient. Oceans and seas have always
been little more than an immense mass of water drops!
Rivers are also much more common epic subjects. They are defined by their power and
impetuousness (especially when they burst their banks). As the most visible and dynamic part of the
water cycle, rivers have always been the most common metaphor for the cycle of
life. Our spirits or souls are rivers that run to the sea, which
represents death. The wonderful
permanence of life amid and through change has been connected to the flow of
rivers, into which we could never step twice—in Heraclitus’ classic example. Yet again, flowing water scandalously seems
from all appearances to be mere accident, while the river (which is only the
flow or the empty channel) appears to have substance. We have raised the channel where the water
flows to the level of substance, whereas the water itself has become
nothing. For this reason, we commonly
say that ‘the river is dry’, despite a part of us exclaiming, ‘No! A river
without water is not actually a real river!’
[1]
Related to the Latin pituita, as in the pituitary gland; also related to
mucous.
[2]
In English, black bile gives rise to the adjective atrabilious, which
refers to somebody who is very irritable or dyspeptic.
[3]
It goes without saying that my sympathy lies with those spirits associated by
tradition with melancholy: philosophers,
poets and the deeply self-conscious Hamlets of the world.
[4]
The English term ‘sleuth’ here has clear overtones of contempt not conveyed by
the title given to the film on release in Spain
[5]
It is obviously a different matter to refer to ‘the sea’ or ‘the ocean’, as we
will see later.
[6]
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was published in 1897, starting a trend in
the West. The myth, however, certainly
has forerunners which are more distant in time and space.
[7]
Perhaps suggesting that competition is an increasingly central part of
contemporary culture and of existence as a whole.
[8]
From the countless examples of the vampire genre and other, similar genres, I
especially recall the filming of one in particular, based on medieval legend, The
Virgin Spring by Ingmar Bergman.
“Metaphorologism of Water (a Praise)” de Gonçal Mayos, Capítulo 2 de Disasters and Socio-environmental Conflicts: violence, damage and resistance de André Luiz Freitas Dias; Maria Fernanda Salcedo Repolês; Brunello Stancioli e Lucas Furiati de Oliveira (Organizadores), Rio de Janeiro, MC & G Editorial, Fundo PROAP do Ministério Público Estadual – MG, 2020, 272 pp. ISBN: 978-65-89369-08-0
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