Metaphors are incredibly seductive: they effortlessly slot into the brain, allowing us to seemingly make quick sense of difficult ideas.
But we should heed Nietzsche's warning … that metaphors illuminate as they conceal:
“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”
As much as could be said of Nietzsche’s sister, seen here as a vital old woman in her late eighties, wearing granny glasses and a bonnet welcoming Hitler to the Nietzsche Archives in 1934. She was a dupe to contrived hollow tribute and apparently not a reliable custodian of her brother's legacy.
Then there is the other secret. There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.
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