Instead, in its
ubiquity and hushed constancy of purpose, water is overlooked, ignored by human
eyes, replaced by other elements or fluids that are strange, special, unusual,
out of the ordinary. We have already
seen one such set of examples presented by blood, yellow bile, phlegm and the
completely fictitious ‘black bile’. For
centuries, they were together thought to hold sway over human character or
‘humour’. Yet, at the same time, water per
se or as an ingredient of these ‘humours’ was totally ignored despite
being, without doubt, the most important, fundamental and ubiquitous liquid[2].
Additionally, within the traditional mind-body dualism, the body has
traditionally been seen as earth, even though we know it is basically made of
water. At the same time, tradition has
it that the mind, or spirit, is basically made of air or fire, while wetness is
considered alien and alienating: it
leaves one drunk, dull and dim-witted.
We need only recall Heraclitus’ views.
Water does not seem to make any positive contribution to the symbolism
surrounding the mind or spirit either.
It seems genuinely surprising that the fourth element has suffered such
a fate within the prevailing popular imagination of the West. Yet, without
minimising this surprising marginalisation in any way, it must nevertheless be
seen as merely relative. This is because
water has traditionally been granted at least two roles that are highly
significant, essential, even indispensable.
These two roles relate to two systems or complexes of metaphors with
enormous and wide-ranging implications.
Go-between, vehicle, access provider, mover, purifier
One of the key
roles that traditional symbology has granted water is the role of go-between,
mediator, access provider, transport, vehicle, mover. Water’s unquestioned
ability to move things, helping to carry what is critical to life (both within
the body and in the field of commerce), is outstanding. Yet once again, that is often forgotten. It is so easily taken granted that water is
the real key here. After all, what is
carried is more visible than the carrier itself, and the end result appears to
stand out more than the means or enabler.
Water also
performs the task of carrying things away, especially those of a negative
nature: filth, evil, sin. It is widely
known that water is purifying in its symbolic uses in ritual, religious
contexts. That is, it is able to wash
away (bodily and spiritual) ills, readying mind and body to receive the spirit
of goodness. Carrying away evil and sin,
it purifies. So much so that the
obsession with cleanliness, which was not as serious for primitive man as it is
today, gave rise to the paradox of ‘washing the body while leaving the soul
unclean‘[3].
Recall that, in many religions, water plays an essential role in ritual
ablution, and such ablution can wash away serious crime: ‘It takes forty
fountains to purify one of murder’[4], relates Bachelard. Water can also
symbolically carry and deliver spiritual virtues in the case of Christian
baptism or through ’blessed’ or ’holy’ water.
‘On the Stygian waters‘: between the world of the living and the world
of the dead
Precisely because
it has the virtue of linking the earthly, bodily world with the divine,
spiritual one, water also plays a critical role in mediating between the world
of the living and the world of the dead.
Rivers are dynamic because water is dynamic and this dynamism has
definitely helped them serve as a metaphor for places of crossing over, at the
boundaries of life. Notice that once
again we find ourselves thoughtlessly turning to talk of the virtues 'of
specific, concrete waters' in place of water per se. We think, for instance, of the river Lethe
and Charon ferrying across the souls of the dead who, drinking of its waters,
lose all memory of their past lives, according to legend[5]. Or we think of Hades, the Greek
underworld with its Stygian waters. On
the banks of its dark, deadly currents wandered the ghosts of the dead who had
not been buried (which was a terrible crime against nature, as can be seen in
the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone).
Hence, pledges and oaths made 'on the Stygian waters!' were particularly
solemn and even the gods themselves would make them.
Within the
paradigm of spiritual communication between humans and gods, many springs have
been seen as magically bestowing spiritual gifts, simply by partaking of or
bathing in their waters. Thus legend has
it that, through the spring of Castalia at Delphi
(where a chaste maiden running from Apollo had drowned herself), the muses
inspire the poets. Water—or rather,
certain waters—can grant inspiration, creativity, talent, genius.
Place, area and medium of generation and decay
The second great
symbolic role that water has been given by tradition is as the place, area and
medium (again, the decisive role of mediator) in which generation takes place,
in which the lifeless or inert comes alive.
Here, metaphorically, water is simultaneously semen and uterus. In other words, it is both the generating
seed (traditionally the masculine principle) and also the womb where generation
takes place (the feminine principle).
The latter, however, is the more advanced and decisive, since it is only
in the moist womb where new life can begin.
Only in the womb, only according to the feminine principle, can the
lifeless or inert begin to pulse with life and the mineral become vegetable,
animal or even human. A watery medium—a
moist uterus—is essential for life to come about—and not just in the case of
the human fetus, which we all have in mind.
The theory of spontaneous generation, speaking generally, was accepted
from Aristotle until the discoveries of Pasteur[6]. And it is again scientifically accepted
today that the origin and early stages of life on Earth required such a watery
environment.
Thus water has
always been thought of as a feminine principle:
‘the deep maternity of the waters. Water makes seeds swell and springs issue
forth. Water is a substance we see being
born and expanding on every side. A
spring is an unstoppable birth. It is a continuous
birth.’[7] At this point in the argument, it cannot
be excluded (as many feminist thinkers will already have suspected) that the
feminine associations of water have been critical in downplaying or denying
water’s place in the symbolism and collective imagination of our most
widespread traditions. This has, after
all, been rather dominated by a certain residual patriarchy.
'My thought sinks ever drowning, and it is sweet to shipwreck in such a
sea'
Just as water
gives life, it is also the watery or humid medium—the magma—where life turns
into death[8], since water speeds up rotting, corrosion,
decay, chemical decomposition and mental perversion[9], biological fermentation and spiritual
subversion[10], infection and contamination. What is more, it is often said to speed the
passage of time and the process of ageing.
Socially, it is a matter of daily experience that dryness conserves or
preserves, while humidity degrades and often penetrates inside, causing rot to
work outwards from within. Many of these
ideas and symbologies have been drawn out and made use of by the gothic
novel. For instance, some of its
favourite settings are swamps and bogs, wastes and ruins covered by mosses and
lichens, cold dank chambers, cellars, tempests and rainshowers, and so on. The psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte[11] correctly associates Edgar Allan Poe’s
devotion to stagnant waters with the morbidity of his literary art and
genius. In this regard, Poe’s key
confession from “Romance” is relevant:
Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath—
And water is ever
present where beauty comes into the world and beauty/age takes the life lent
it.
Similarly, the
corrosive force of water is seriously jeopardising the remnants of industrial,
machine-based culture. Although it is a
matter of concern for modern industrial archeologists, water is—as we will see
further on—wreaking rather poetic vengeance on our proud industrial
apparatus. Iron is much less resistant
to the corrosion of water than stone or other traditional, ‘noble’ building
materials[12].
Thus, many modern metal structures and machinery have a much shorter
life expectancy than very ancient stone buildings. It looks as if the romantic, damp ruins of
ancient temples and cathedrals will outlast the modern, equally damp ruins of
metal.
Water is also
linked through all the symbology connected with drowning and shipwreck to death
or the peril of death. This is explored
in Hans Blumenberg’s fine short work , Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of
a Metaphor for Existence.[13] It
is also clearly evident in that infinite, disquieting ‘Cemetery by the Sea’ of
Paul Valéry[14], which begins somewhere between anguish
and melancholy:
The sea […], the sea perpetually renewed!
O how rewarding after a thought
Is a long gaze on the calm of the gods!
And it ends with a
renewed vitalism and the startling outcry:
Break waves, break with rejoicing waters
… my thought sinks ever drowning,
And it is sweet to shipwreck in such a sea.
Surprisingly, the
symbolic and metaphoric role given to water by western tradition here is not
solely one of contempt. However, this
nuance is not sufficient to invalidate our thesis that it has not been done
justice, philosophically speaking. This
is especially so if we take into account how such injustice—as we will show—has
only grown as we move away in time from Greek philosophy and literary symbology
and explore other symbologies (with their significant cultural and literary
facets). Medieval, renaissance, modern
and contemporary philosophy have all certainly accentuated this injustice. The aim here is to explain (or start to
explain) how water, principle of all life, came to be treated with growing
ignorance, contempt, deconsecration and even banalisation.
[1]
I see this significant cultural and social phenomenon as one of the most important
arguments in support of the current conference cycle organised by the Joan
Maragall Foundation, of which this paper is a part.
[2]
Nowadays, the supposed influence of ‘humours’ over character can be seen to
have a terribly weak basis in science, which cannot account for the
distinctions made. Apparently, the
success of this symbolism will have to be explained by factors that are not
scientifically proven today.
[3]
Bachelard, 1999.
[4]
Bachelard, 1999. On one hand, the
quotation clearly emphasises the difficulty of purifying one of terrible crime
(the concrete number 40 may stand for an indefinitely large number). Yet, on the other hand, it presupposes that
the water of such fountains can serve to purify in such terrible
circumstances.
[5]
Perhaps they essentially lost the details or the vividness of their
experiences; perhaps they simply
forgot the way back to their former lives.
[6] Made in the last decades of the nineteenth
century.
[8]
This leaves aside, for the moment, the fact that death winds up begetting new
life, because from that perspective, we are back at the already mentioned
generative feature.
[9]
There are many examples that underscore the negative effects of a humid
tropical climate on medical or bacteriological health (as well as on the mental
health of the worthy and the hardworking).
Seen through the lens of colonialism, this has traditionally been
considered one of the causes of the supposed cultural and economic backwardness
of tropical countries. This view can be
found in sources as wide-ranging as the well-meaning Montesquieu to some of the
most deplorable racist theories.
[10]
Traditionally, the wet nature of sex (sweat, secretions, bodily fluids etc) has
been noted. It seems that the oriental
world (basically Japan
[11]
According
to Bachelard (1999) in what he develops into the theme for an entire chapter,
’it is necessary when trying to understand Edgar Allan Poe to examine all the
decisive moments in the poems and short stories and make the synthesis of
Beauty, Death and Water.’
[12] Obviously wood and other organic materials do
not enjoy this advantage.
[13] The details of the English translation
are: The MIT Press (1979), 1997.
[14] ‘La mer, la mer toujours recommencée! / Ô récompense après une pensée {...} Rompez,
vagues! Rompez d’eaux réjouies! / Ce toit tranquille’ a ‘Le cimentière marin‘,
Paul Valéry, Cemetery by the Sea.
Translation from the Penguin edition of French Poetry 1820-1950, London
[15] Where the poet takes cover from the
rain. It thus has some sense of lair,
hiding place, shelter.
[16] ‘s’annega il pensier mío: / El il naufragar
m’è dolce in questo mare.’ ‘L’infinito’ (’The Infinite’),
Giacomo Leopardi Poems and Prose, Princeton
1997. The translation of this poem by
Henry Reed appeared in The Listener, 25 May 1950 .
“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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