Is it possible to say what a metaphor says literally? Is this committing the ‘heresy of paraphrase’?
The question was confused. Metaphors aren’t reducible to similes which have a straightforward content. (“juliet is the sun” is not “juliet is like the sun”)
The simile is not true, there’s no relevant property shared by juliet and the sun that romeo means.
Inverse: “My love is like a red, red rose” why not “My life is a red, red rose”?
These questions are addressed by Joseph Stern, from analysis of the context.
In using a metaphor you will do something you couldn’t do otherwise, harder to say if you will say something you couldn’t do otherwise
Poetry is often the desire to compress a language and squeeze out all you can get
Can you translate poetry?
Of course.
Czech poet, Anschel, makes his name easier one day as Ansel, then much later writes under anagram “Selam”. Has a poem “Death Fugue” which begins “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deustchland”
Should be translated “Death is a Meister from Germany” because no subtitutee would work for Meister.
Romans made very few advances in mathematics, possibly because their notation was so bad.
Representation makes a big difference in our ability to imagine
This may be analogous to poetry which represents concepts in a way that prose may not be able to.