The Literary Mind.pdf

MANY SPACES 91
apply to any target to which the generic space is projected. Such projection
underlies category extension: "Axe" can now refer to the blended space that consists
of all axes, including real axes.
WAKING UP THE GENERIC SPACE
We can at will focus on the generic space and wake it up fully. Even when, as in
a basic metaphor, the generic space is fully superimposed upon a conventional
target, we can nonetheless easily turn that generic space into a blended space by
supplementing it with specifics from the source and the target. Underlying a
phrase like "She's making considerable progress as a young adult" is a conventional
projection so deeply entrenched that it may be hard to see blending at work.
The generic space, fully superimposed on the target, is nearly invisible. But this
generic space can be turned into a blended space, as in a television commercial
for an insurance company in which a person is actually on a road, encountering
and going through doors labeled school, college admissions, undergraduate education,
professional school, marriage. As she goes along, passing through each door
on the road, she ages and her clothing changes to suit her present "stage of life."
She acquires fellow travelers in the form of playmates, friends, husband, and
children. Her parents, standing at the side of the road, hand her fistfuls of money
as she trots past. She in turn hands the money to the "bursar" who stands outside
the door of professional school, and so on. This is a fantastic blended space,
constructed by waking up the generic space and adding to it.
Waking up the generic space is a standard tool of literature. Contrast the very
skeletal generic space underlying the phrase "drug trip" with Proust's elaboration:
When one absorbs a new drug, entirely different in composition, it is
always with a delicious expectancy of the unknown. . . . To what unknown
forms of sleep, of dreams, is the newcomer going to lead one? It
is inside one now, it is in control of our thoughts. In what way is one
going to fall asleep? And, once asleep, by what strange paths, up to what
peaks, into what unfathomed gulfs will this all-powerful master lead
one? What new group of sensations will one meet with on this journey?
Will it lead to illness? To blissful happiness? To death?
On n'absorbe le produit nouveau, d'une composition toute differente,
qu'avec la delicieuse attente de 1'inconnu. . .. Vers quel genres ignores
de sommeil, de reves, le nouveau venu va-t-il nous conduire? II est
maintenant dans nous, il a la direction de notre pensee. De quelle fa9on
allons-nous nous endormir? Et une fois que nous le serons, par quel