St. Augustine

See, Lord my God, how many words about few words I have written...
--from St. Augustine's Confessions

While laboring over St. Augustine's Confessions, I realized that his obsessive attention to self-reflection resulted in writing that reminded me of the Gaines discussion on metaphor/metonym. Particularly, the idea that meaning generated by metonym, according to Gaines, is contingent upon the social or cultural positioning of the interpreter (Gaines 11). I wonder what Gaines would think of what St. Augustine says when he speculates as to how God's Word created heaven and Earth :

How was that Word spoken?... That voice sounded and ceased, it had a beginning and end... These words sounding in time passed through the ear to the judicious mind, whose interior ear is alert to your timeless word. The mind compared the words sounding in time against the timeless word heard in silence, and concluded that they were entirely different things. The sounding words are a lesser thing than man, in fact are nothing at all, since they flew by and are gone. The Word of God, however, is a greater thing than man, since it changes never (St. Augustine 261-262).

What does this mean? How does it relate (maybe I should ask "does it relate?"). It makes me think of the interpreter experience metaphor and metonym, comparing the word heard in silence to the word that is sounded, written.

When my student wrote, "poem is like a pizza" I know the silent words of "poem" did not sit well to the idea of "pizza." Substituting "pizza" for "poem" is open for critique. I'd ask, "When you eat pizza, do you think of poetry?"