The Literary Mind.pdf

CREATIVE BLENDS 63
kind of badness. To be sure, a sophisticated reader of this passage in its context
may have already concluded that Bertran has sinned, given that he is in hell, and
that his sin is of a particular sort, given his location in hell. But even such a reader
may derive the central inferences from the portrayal itself rather than from an
abstract definition of the sin.
Where does the inference arise that this scene signals this kind of badness?
Let us consider the background metaphoric projection. In the source space, there
may be nothing at all wrong with separating a joined physical object, like shelling
a pistachio nut. In the target space, there may be nothing wrong with setting
two people against each other, or, more specifically, in setting son against father
(perhaps the father is an evil infidel warrior, for example). The background
metaphoric projection does not necessarily carry the implication that division is
wrong—social "parting" can be good. Many readers, informed of the relevant
history, would not even agree that Bertran de Born's actions were sinful, much
less treacherous. But we all know there is something ghastly and horribly wrong
about a decapitated human body that operates as if it were alive. We see the
amazing spectacle of Bertran carrying his detached head and interpret this division
as symbolizing something unnatural, ghastly, violent, and inappropriately
destructive. The inference is established in the blended space before Bertran de
Born begins to tell his story to Dante in hell—which is to say, before we are told
the history of the target space.
As we will see often, blending is not restricted to combining counterparts. In
the set of metaphoric correspondences, the divided object in the source is the counterpart
of the "divided" father and son in the target, not of Bertran de Born in the
target. But in the blend, the divided object and Bertran de Born are combined.
Blends arise often in Dante. "Mahomet," regarded as the great schismatic who
"divided" Christianity, has split himself in hell. The adulterers Paolo and Francesca,
who yielded to the "forces" of passion, are blown hither and yon in hell by a forceful
wind over which they have no control. The "uncommitted," whose sin was that
they never took a "stand" or a "position," must scurry ceaselessly over a place that
is—in Dante's scheme of cosmic geography—nowhere, lacking all status.
In all these cases, a source story (division, being swept away by wind, moving
without stopping) has been projected onto a target story of a particular sin as
a way of conceiving that sin. The punishment of that sin resides in a blended
space that is fed by source and target input spaces. The punishment comes from
the specifics of the source. The damned human being comes from the target.
The specific information from the source is applied to the human being from
the target in a blended space of retribution.
Dante's Inferno is an encyclopedic display of local blended spaces, but additionally,
at a higher level, it is a single monumental synoptic blended space. Its