184 Chapter 4 Table 3: Mappings of life is a journey and politeia is a journey622 Source: Journey Target: life Traveller → Monk (Gregory) The road → Lifespan from birth to death The journey → Lifespan from birth to death; events during life Obstacles encountered → Difficulties experienced Decisions about which way to go → Choices about what to do Destination of the journey → Death (in some cases: heaven) Source: Journey Target: politeia Traveller → Monk (Gregory) Travel companions → People with the same lifestyle or people helping the monk to achieve a particular lifestyle The road/the journey → (monastic, ascetic) lifestyle; ascesis The distance covered → The progress made towards achieving an ideal politeia (ascesis, virtue) Obstacles encountered → Difficulties experienced, temptations Decisions about which way to go → Choosing a particular way of life Destination of the journey → Virtue What do these mappings reveal about conceptions of the target domains? The instances of the life is a journey metaphor conceptualise life broadly in the same way as many speakers of modern-day languages, in which life is seen as a demarcated period of time progressing from the starting point (birth) to the endpoint (death), reflecting the image scheme of source-path-goal. In the Life of Gregory we find multiple metaphorical conceptions of death, showing both parallels and differences with the conception of life as a journey. These various conceptions reflect ideas of the afterlife. In the passage discussed above, the endpoint of the life of the saint coincides with heaven, which Gregory reached due to his virtuous lifestyle. However, in the narrative the death of other people is not represented using metaphorical language in which the endpoint/destination of life coincides with reaching heaven. This difference might reflect the idea that only saints reach heaven directly.623 For other dying people, we do find other metaphorical language in the narrative, including metaphors in which dying itself is conceptualised as an (unknown) path. An example of this is found in a passage in which Gregory predicts the death of another monk, telling him: ‘you will shortly travel a foreign path’.624 The end of life is not 622 These schemes are adapted from a similar scheme in Kovecses (2002), p. 9. 623 See also the discussion at p. 188. For Byzantine ideas on the afterlife, see Marinis (2016); Muehlberger (2019). 624 μέλλεις γὰρ οὐ μετ’ οὐ πολὺ τρίβον διανύειν ξένην; Life of Gregory of Decapolis 43.
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