ABSTRACT
Beginning from the fact that old Arabic poetry was dominated by the simile (the world at a distance) while the Qur’anic text is dominated by the metaphor (the world within), the author finds that the dominance of simile in the qaṣīda is an expression of the horizontal worldview, which is also a view from a distance. It is to such a world that the Qur’an brought a unique change that might be described as a “metaphoric turnabout”. A world of the obvious and the transparent is replaced with a world that is incomparable and indescribable. About the transcendence and a non-presence of the other world – only the metaphor can speak, which the Qur’anic text abounds in. This change (the dominance of metaphor instead of the dominance of simile) represented an unprecedented revolutionising of the World and Thought. Instead of the flatness and definitiveness of the world, the Qur’anic text made a turnabout by highlighting its incompleteness – the world was deprived of totality, so that man was left only with the possibility of searching for the realisation of totality only in unity with the Other World.
