Lafferty and the Sliding Scale of Allegory

Holy Allegory by Giovanni Bellini, Uffizi Galleries

Lafferty’s use of allegory is complicated. One of the most effective critical tools for approaching it is Northrop Frye’s idea that allegory is a sliding scale, a view that profoundly influenced Angus Fletcher’s seminal Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (1964) and Fredric Jameson's ideas about allegory in science fiction.

In the "Second Essay" of Anatomy of Criticism (1957), Frye writes, "Within the boundaries of literature we find a kind of sliding scale, ranging from the most explicitly allegorical, consistent with being literature at all, at one extreme, to the most elusive, anti-explicit

and anti-allegorical at the other."

The following table breaks down Frye's attempt to depict allegory as a sliding scale:

Type of Allegory/Symbolism	Definition & Characteristics	Examples & Notes
Actual Allegory	Poet explicitly indicates the relationship of images to examples and precepts, guiding commentary.	The Faerie Queene systematically refers to historical examples and moral precepts.
Continuous Allegory	Allegory is sustained throughout the work, resembling contrapuntal music (like canonical imitation).	Used extensively by Dante, Spenser, Tasso, Bunyan. Their works are compared to masses and oratorios.
Freistimmige Allegory (Free-Style Allegory)	Allegory appears and disappears at the author’s pleasure rather than being continuous.	Seen in the works of Ariosto, Goethe, Ibsen, and Hawthorne.
Naive Allegory	A disguised form of discursive writing, primarily used in elementary educational literature. Based on habitual ideas and spectacle.	Found in schoolroom moralities, devotional exempla, local pageants, political cartoons. Tends to "date" when it loses its original context.
Extreme Naive Allegory	Lacks a strong literary center; prioritizes making an allegorical point over artistic coherence.	II Esdras: Allegorical vision of an eagle lacks poetic depth, relying instead on didacticism.
Sliding Scale of Allegory in Literature	Literature moves from highly explicit allegory to more elusive, anti-allegorical forms.	Categories in descending order: 1) Continuous Allegories (The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Faerie Queene), 2) Free-style allegories, 3) Doctrinally insistent poetic structures (Milton’s epics), 4) Implicit allegory (Shakespeare), 5) Increasing irony and paradox.
Ironic & Anti-Allegorical Imagery	Imagery shifts away from example and precept, becoming paradoxical, symbolic, or ironic.	Modern critics favor this approach as it aligns with a literal view of art.
Metaphysical Conceit	A paradoxical, strained union of disparate things, reflecting a breakdown in the relation between art and nature.	Common in Baroque metaphysical poetry.
Symbolisme Substitute-Image	Avoids explicitly naming things, instead suggesting or evoking them.	Technique of the Symbolist poets.
Objective Correlative	An image that evokes an inward emotional focus while substituting for an idea.	T.S. Eliot’s concept of poetry.
Heraldic Symbol	Central emblematic image that disrupts both narrative and meaning, creating an ironic tension.	Examples: Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Melville’s White Whale, James’s Golden Bowl, Woolf’s Lighthouse.
Contrast Between Allegorical and Heraldic Symbols	Allegorical symbols have a continuous relationship between art and nature; heraldic symbols create an ironic, paradoxical relation to both narrative and meaning.	Spenser’s allegorical symbols contrast with the ironic heraldic emblem seen in modern literature.

Setting aside Lafferty use of heraldic symbols, two examples from Past Master can illustrate how his sliding scale of allegory works. The first is particularly tricky. Lafferty disarms the reader’s critical attention by writing that while in Hopp-Equation Space “it wasn’t all heavy vital stuff encountered in Passage Dreams.” He then immediately drops something that appears outlandish and frivolous but is, in fact, still vital stuff:

But it wasn't all heavy vital stuff encountered in the Passage Dreams.

Some of it was light and vital stuff. Also still drifting in deep space is

every tall tale ever told.

Hey, here's one. It was of an Earthman of a few hundred years before

Paul's time, John Sourwine, or Sour John. But now Paul became Sour John

and he told and lived at the same time the outre tale.

Owing to the diet he had followed from his youth-alcohol, wormwood,

green snails-one of Sour John's kidneys had become vitrified, and in a

peculiar manner. Not only had it turned into glass, but it had turned into

glass of a fine jewel-like green. This he had seen himself on the

fluoroscope.

It happened that he and some friends were at Ghazikhan in what was

then India of Old Earth, and they looked at the great idol there. They were

told that the center eye of the idol, an emerald nearly a foot in diameter, was

worth eleven million dollars. Sour John went back to his ship and thought

about it.

"Ghazikhan is not a sea-port," Paul interrupted his dream, for he had

acquired Old Earth information by psychteacher machine long ago. "Either

get on or get off," said Sour John, Paul's other self for the moment. "I say it

is a sea-port." Paul (Sour John) went back to his ship and thought about it.

He had always meant to acquire expensive habits, and he could use

eleven million dollars. He sharpened up an old harpoon, called the ship's

boy to help him, and in no time at all they had that kidney out. They

trimmed it down a little, put it to a lathe and then a buffer and one thing and

another, and soon they had it shined up to perfection. It was the most

beautiful kidney in the world.

Then Paul went back to the town, climbed up the idol at midnight (it

was five hundred feet high and sheer and slick as ice); he pried out the

emerald eye and substituted the green kidney. It fit perfectly. "I knew it

would," said Paul. Then he climbed down, a descent that not another man in

the world would dare to make, and went back to his ship with the emerald.

He sold it in Karachi for eleven million dollars, and he lived high for a

while. But owing to his only having one kidney, Paul was now unable to

drink water at all.

Three years later Paul (Sour John) was back in Ghazikhan. He was told

that the center eye of the idol had been reappraised. By a miracle it had

changed, the people said. It had become richer in color, finer in texture, of a

deeper brilliance; and a grand new aroma came from it. And now it was

worth thirteen million dollars. "I figure I lost two million dollars on the

deal,"

Paul said as he woke up.

Ninety seconds; how could that be? The climb up the idol had taken

two hours at least. Somebody asks what sort of man was this Paul with the

permanent crooked grin? He was the sort of man who was visited by a

passage dream of a vitrified kidney.

This functions as a continuous allegory and is helpful for the the reader who wants to understand the novel's plot. The following table presents my interpretation:

Topic	Details
Passage Dream	The strangest of Hopp-Equation Space dreams involves Sour John’s kidney. It can now be explained.
Devils in the Novel	Grouped into three categories: (1) Retrogression (Boggle, Skybol, Swampers) – Past, (2) Rechabitism (Northprophet, Knobnoster, Beebonnet) – Present, (3) Extrapolation (Pottscamp, Holygee, Gandy) – Future.
Rechabitism (Present Devils)	Difficult to analyze because people lack a framework beyond Lafferty’s attitude toward alcohol.
Library of America Note (161.7)	Defines Rechabitism as abstaining from alcohol. User argues this is insufficient and that it extends further.
Key Question	We need to explain the role of Rechabitism.
Sour John’s Kidney Dream	Paul becomes Sour John in Old Earth India. Sour John’s diet transforms one kidney into green glass (confirmed via fluoroscope).
The Heist	In Ghazikhan, India, an idol has an emerald eye worth $11M. Paul-Sour John removes his vitrified kidney, shapes it into a gem, and swaps it with the emerald. He sells the emerald in Karachi for $11M.
Unforeseen Consequence	After losing a kidney, Sour John can no longer drink water.
Economic Consequence	Three years later, his kidney stone in the idol is wroth $13M. He has lost money. A metaphor for privatio boni.
Temporal Distortion	The dream lasts 90 seconds, but climbing the idol takes two hours. Paul interrupts the dream upon realizing Ghazikhan is not a seaport, yet his dream-self insists otherwise.
Dream’s Voice	Possibly Sour John, an angel, or God. The “seaport” mistake suggests the real meaning is Cathead (a nautical term).
Cathead Description (Novel)	A major city astride civilization, full of extreme poverty, noisome industry, and central to Astrobe’s commerce.
Ontological Meaning	(1) Cathead holds the real, valuable kidney-gem while Sour John’s financial loss represents ontological privation. (2) The original lifeless gem in the idol represents the devils’ use of Ouden as a false god for control of mechanicals.
Rebuttal to Rechabitism	Sour John’s kidney disproves the Rechabite devils’ claim to serve perfect emptiness—emptiness is limited (idol’s eye socket).
Role of Rechabite Devils	They enforce sterile uniformity by rejecting human frailty.
Philosophical Implication	Even damaged human existence (ens) has redemptive potential (Cathead). The idolatry of Ouden disregards the Catholic principle ens et bonum convertuntur (being and goodness are convertible).
Clarifying the Novel	This reading eliminates contradictions in Ouden and explains allegories such as the Feral Lands, the boy and the toy, and Sour John’s kidney.
The Challenge for Alternative Readings	Provide an alternative reading of the novel’s allegories with internal logic rather than dismissing them as set pieces.

There are at least four or five other continuous allegories in the novel that correspond to its deep structure. Lafferty’s use of this type of allegory is generative, shaping and driving the logic of the plot itself.

In contrast, Lafferty employs freistimmige allegory to create literary effects that gesture toward hidden depths—elements that resist precise explication (what his SF Encyclopedia entry foolishly describes as his "slapdash sublime, only skittishly evocative"). An example of this in Past Master is the boy Adam and his relationship to his sibling, Evita. While much can be said about Adam and Evita, his appearances and repeated deaths function on a different location on the allegorical scale than Sour John’s kidney. (For example, his walking through the wall in Chapter 12: "The boy Adam came in, through the wall, but this also was no test. In many ways, Adam was not real," which, recalls John 20:19 and John 20:26.

Here are some important Adam passages:

And high above them on an outcropping there stood a boy or a young

man. He seemed a spire-mirage, for there are such. But how had he got

there and they not seen him before?

"It is my brother Adam," Evita said. "I love him, but he is a bad omen.

---

They came up to the boy Adam, and he joined their party silently. So

handsome a boy, though his sister Evita had once said that he was

completely empty-headed. Never mind, he maintained his silence, so who

should know? He moved well, he climbed well, it was said that he died

well.

He could have been the statue Greek Youth except that he seemed

Jewish.

The spinodeltoid and posterior trapezus (the bowbending muscles)

were well developed, and the bow had never been used on Astrobe. Ah, he

was old statuary all right, quite well done. He was nude and nobody noticed

Had he been nude in all his other manifestations?

---

A blow that literally burned the eyes and choked the lungs with an

intake of light. A thunder-smash that knocked them all flat, men and

machines. And they were to it again after the narrow moment. The boy

Adam died in glorious gore, howling defiance. He was good at dying, Evita

had said. He had done it before.

With Sour John, we have continuous allegory—but it is exceptionally shrewd and subtle, calculated to avoid naïve allegory and meant to misdirect casual readers (But it wasn't all heavy vital stuff). With Adam and Evita, there is freistimmige.

The sliding scale reveals at least two distinct allegorical methods at play, each serving a different purpose: (1) to convey propositional knowledge about Astrobe through continuous allegory (Sour John/Paul), and (2) to expose the limits of propositional knowledge through ruptures in allegory, nudging the reader toward the anagogical structures that shape the deepest aims of Lafferty's fiction (Adam/Evita). This clarifies why elements that might initially seem skittishly evocative or slapdash instead arise from a purposeful application of allegorical logic.

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lafferty_r_a