Читать книгу The Northrop Frye Quote Book - Northrop Frye - Страница 7
C
ОглавлениеC.C.F.
I think with the C.C.F. that a co-operative state is necessary to preserve us from chaos. I think with Liberals that it is impossible to administer that state at present.
“NF to HK,” 4 Sep. 1933, referring to the Canadian Co-operative Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party or NDP), The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Callaghan, Morley
Morley Callaghan’s books, I think I am right in saying, were sometimes banned by the public library in Toronto — I forget what the rationalization was, but the real reason could only have been that if a Canadian were to do anything so ethically dubious as write, he should at least write like a proper colonial and not like someone who had lived in the Paris of Joyce and Gertrude Stein.
“Across the River and Out of the Trees” (1980), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada
Our country is abstract to ourselves.
“CRTC Guru” (1968–69), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
If one comes from a relatively small country culturally, that smallness provides a perspective difficult to explain. I should have been a totally different kind of critic as an American, just as, say, Kierkegaard would have been totally different as a German.
“The Critical Path” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The liveliest thing about Canada is its culture. It is the one thing that is really respected all over the world. Culture is a product of articulateness. And it is also indirectly a product of education.
“Love of Learning” (1987), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I keep finding that there are parallels between Biblical history and Canadian history, which would be of no importance if Canadian poets themselves were not aware of it.
“Introduction to Canadian Literature: Moscow Talk” (1988), 34, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
I cannot think of any society in history that has disintegrated simply through a lack of will to survive. Consequently I do not believe what I so often hear from the news media today, that Canada is about to blunder and bungle its way out of history into oblivion, leaving only a faint echo of ridicule behind it.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Canada, with four million square miles and only four centuries of documented history, has naturally been a country more preoccupied with space than with time, with environment rather than tradition.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Here we are: not an obstacle on the route to Cathay, not on the edge of the earth, not on the sidelines, but ringed by the world’s great powers: Japan and China here; the USSR here; the European Common Market here, and the United States here. And here is Canada, in the middle.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
But now Canada has become a kind of global Switzerland, surrounded by the United States on the south, the European common market on the east, the Soviet Union on the north, China and Japan on the west.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
One of the derivations proposed for the word Canada is a Portuguese phrase meaning “nobody here.” The etymology of the word Utopia is very similar, and perhaps the real Canada is an ideal with nobody in it. The Canada to which we really do owe loyalty is the Canada that we have failed to create.… It is expressed in our culture, but not attained in our life, just as Blake’s new Jerusalem to be built in England’s green and pleasant land is no less a genuine ideal for not having been built there … the uncreated identity of Canada may be after all not so bad a heritage to take with us.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Canada seems to impress non-Canadians as a moderate and reasonable country, potentially as happy a country to live in as the world affords.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It is only now emerging from its beginning as a shambling, awkward, absurd country, groping and thrusting its way through incredible distances into the West and North, plundered by profiteers, interrupted by European wars, divided by language, and bedevilled by climate, yet slowly and inexorably bringing a culture to life.
“Preface and Introduction to Pratt’s Poetry” (1958), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada, with its empty spaces, its largely unknown lakes and rivers and islands, its division of language, its dependence on immense railways to hold it physically together, has had this peculiar problem of an obliterated environment throughout most of its history. The effects of this are clear in the curiously abortive cultural developments of Canada.… They are shown even more clearly in its present lack of will to resist its own disintegration, in the fact that it is practically the only country left in the world which is a pure colony, colonial in psychology as well as in mercantile economics.
Preface, The Bush Garden (1971), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
A century ago Canada was a nation in the world, but not wholly of it: the major cultural and political developments of Western Europe, still the main centre of the historical stage, were little known or understood in Canada.… Today, Canada is too much a part of the world to be thought of as a nation in it.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
“Canada” is a political entity; the cultural counterpart that we call “Canada” is really a federation not of provinces but of regions and communities.
“From Nationalism to Regionalism: The Maturing of Canadian Culture” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Canada is not “new” or “young”: it is exactly the same age as any other country under a system of industrial capitalism; and even if it were, a reluctance to write poetry is not a sign of youth but of decadence.
“Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The essential element in the national sense of unity is the east-west feeling, developed historically along the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes axis, and expressed in the national motto, a mare usque ad mare. The tension between this political sense of unity and the imaginative sense of locality is the essence of whatever the word “Canadian” means.
Preface, The Bush Garden (1971), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Some years ago I first saw Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man in a bookshop, and what came into my mind was a quite irrelevant reflection: “I wonder what he’d say if he had to live in a one-dimensional country?” For Canada, through most of its history, has been a strip of territory as narrow as Chile, besides being longer and more broken up.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada & the United States
But Canada has, for all practical purposes, no Atlantic seaboard.… To enter the United States is a matter of crossing an ocean; to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Similarly, our undefended border is very effectively defended on one side, the United States being a highly protectionist country in culture as in other aspects of life, and the Canadian instinct for compromise has to make the best of it.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
There is an aged and now somewhat infirm joke to the effect that the United States has passed from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization. A parallel and possibly more accurate statement might be made of Canada: that it has passed from a pre-national to a post–national phase without ever having become a nation.
“Culture as Interpenetration” (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
An independent Canada would be much more useful to the United States itself than a dependent or annexed one would be, and it is of great importance to the United States to have a critical view of it centred in Canada, a view which is not hostile but is simply another view.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada may be an American colony, as is often said, by me among others, but Canadians have never thought of the United States as a parental figure, like Britain, and analogies of youthful revolt and the like would be absurd.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
I was recently reading the letters of Wallace Stevens, and came across his remark that the imagination transforms reality, giving as his example the fact that people living in the United States become Americans. It struck me that no Canadian poet could have said this. People living in Canada may become Canadians up to a point, but up to a far more limited point.
“Canadian Identity and Cultural Regionalism” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
A Canadian going to the United States to teach in a university there is often asked by his American students if he notices any difference. They expect the answer to be no, and nine-tenths of the time it is no, but the tenth time there is some point of discussion that suddenly makes him feel like a Finn in Russia or a Dane in Germany. His students have been conditioned from infancy to be citizens of a vast imperial power; he has been conditioned to watch, to take sides in decisions made elsewhere.
“America: True or False?” (1969), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
What is resented in Canada about annexation to the United States is not annexation itself, but the feeling that Canada would disappear into a larger entity without having anything of any real distinctiveness to contribute to that entity: that, in short, if the United States did annex Canada it would notice nothing except an increase in natural resources.
Preface, The Bush Garden (1971), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
In looking at two countries as closely related as Canada and the United States, no difference is unique or exclusive: we can point to nothing in Canada that does not have a counterpart, or many counterparts, south of the border. What is different is a matter of emphasis and of degree.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
What else is “distinctively Canadian”? Well, historically, a Canadian is an American who rejects the Revolution.
“Letters in Canada: Poetry” (1953), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It is an insult to Canada to have American authorities in charge of Canadian immigration who do not know the elementary facts of Canadian political life, and who cannot distinguish a Communist from a social-democrat.
“Nothing to Fear but Fear” (1949), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
American students have been conditioned from infancy to think of themselves as citizens of one of the world’s great powers. Canadians are conditioned from infancy to think of themselves as citizens of a country of uncertain identity, a confusing past, and a hazardous future.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canadians are so closely identified with Americans in their political fortunes that to make the identification complete actually improves the perspective.
“The Present Condition of the World” (1943), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Every aspect of Canadian culture has been affected by the enormously beneficent influence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“English Canadian Literature, 1929–1954” (1955), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canadian Content
What I would like to see is ninety-five per cent Canadian attitude.
“CRTC Guru” (1968–69), referring to CRTC’s rules regulating the balance between Canadian and foreign (i.e., American) content, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The CRTC has constantly been reminded, first by broadcasters and later by cable operators, that the majority of Canadians prefer American programs, including the brutal ones.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canadian Forum, The
In short, the man with a liberal education will not have an integrated personality or be educated for living: he will be a chronically irritated man, probably one of that miserable band who read the Canadian Forum, which is always finding fault and viewing with alarm.
“A Liberal Education” (1945), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Canadian Identity
I tend to think more and more as I get older that the only social identity that’s really worth preserving is a cultural identity. And Canada seems to me to have achieved that, so I don’t join with other people in lamenting the loss of a political identity.
“Richard Cartwright and the Roots of Canadian Conservatism” (1984), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
All identity has a boundary, whether we call it Canada or the individual, and our social mythology keeps this walled and bound unit as its central structure.
“Foreword to The Prospect of Change” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada is the Switzerland of the twentieth century, surrounded by the great powers of the world and preserving its identity by having many identities.
“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
One disadvantage of living in Canada is that one is continually called upon to make statements about the Canadian identity, and Canadian identity is an eminently exhaustible subject.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
There have been many fables about people who made long journeys to find some precious object. The moral is often that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is in their own backyard. But this is not the Canadian moral. The Canadian identity is bound up with the feeling that the end of the rainbow never falls on Canada.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It seems to me that the Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed not so much by our famous problem of identity — “Who are we?” — as by some such riddle as “Where is here?”
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
… the Canadian problem of identity seemed to me primarily connected with locale, less a matter of “Who am I?” than of “Where is here?” Another friend, commenting on this, told me a story about a doctor from the south (that is, from one of the Canadian cities) travelling in the Arctic tundra with an Eskimo guide. A blizzard blew up, and they had to bivouac for the night. What with the cold, the storm, and the loneliness, the doctor panicked and began shouting, “We are lost!” The Eskimo looked at him thoughtfully and said, “We are not lost. We are here.”
“Haunted by Lack of Ghosts” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2000), CW, 12.
In a year bound to be full of discussions of our identity, I should like to suggest that our identity, like the real identity of all nations, is the one that we have failed to achieve.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Canadian Literature
Canada is now producing a literature which has an imaginative integrity equal to that of other countries.
“From Nationalism to Regionalism: The Maturing of Canadian Culture” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
To study Canadian literature one has to stand on its own level: to stand above it and sneer at it, or to stand below it and exaggerate it, are equally unscholarly procedures.
“Roy Daniells” (1979), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The literary, in Canada, is often only an incidental quality of writings which, like those of many of the early explorers, are as innocent of literary intention as a mating loon.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The constructs of the imagination tell us things about human life that we don’t get in any other way. That’s why it’s important for Canadians to pay particular attention to Canadian literature, even when the imported brands are better seasoned.
“Verticals of Adam,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Articles proclaiming the imminent advent of literary greatness had been appearing for a long time, giving to Canadian literature, or its history, the quality that Milton Wilson has described, in a practically definitive phrase, as “one half-baked phoenix after another.”
“Across the River and Out of the Trees” (1980), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12. The English professor Milton Wilson was quoted in the anthology Recent Canadian Verse (1959).
The study of Canadian literature is not a painful patriotic duty like voting, but a simple necessity of getting one’s bearings.
“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
However important Canadian literature may be or become in a university, it is not any university’s primary duty to foster a national literature. Its primary duty is to build up a public receptive to it, a public that will not be panicked by plain speaking, not put off by crankiness, not bewildered by unexpected ways of thinking and feeling.
“Language as the Home of Human Life” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I first heard about the Group of Seven in a lecture by John Robins on the ballad, and about contemporary Canadian poets and novelists in Pelham Edgar’s course on Shakespeare. Fortunately, Pelham rather disliked Shakespeare, so I learned a good deal about Canadian literature while reading Shakespeare on my own.
“The View from Here” (1980), describing his student years in the early 1930s, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Most Canadian literature is and always will be tripe for the simple reason that most literature of all countries in all ages is and always will be tripe. Any national group of authors will form a pyramid with a few serious writers on top and a broad base of pulp-scribblers at the bottom.
“Canadian Authors Meet” (1946), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
By 1904 he was discussing the perennial Canadian question, “Have we a National Literature?” The answer, as it always is, is in effect no, but wait a while.
“Pelham Edgar” (1952), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
I imagine that in another ten years there will be very little difference in tone between Canadian and American literature; but what there is now in Canada is a literature of extraordinary vigor and historical significance.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Similarly, I think Canadian literature will become more and more a literature of regions. It seems to be a cultural law that the more specific the setting of literature is, the more universal its communicating power.
“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
There’s no such thing as “Canadianism,” but there are a number of poets working within a specific environment with a specific kind of historical background and that, I think, will influence and give a distinctive quality to their work if they don’t pay too much attention to it.
“Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Stephen Leacock’s famous hero who rode off rapidly in all directions was unmistakably a Canadian.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Well, I have said in another speech that if a sculptor were to make a statue of a patriotic Canadian, he would depict somebody holding his breath and crossing his fingers. In other words, there has never been a time when Canada has not thought in terms of disintegration.
“Cultural Identity in Canada” (1990), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In surveying Canadian poetry and fiction, we feel constantly that all the energy has been absorbed in meeting a standard, a self-defeating enterprise because real standards can only be established, not met.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
… everything that is central in Canadian writing seems to be marked by the imminence of the natural world.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Cancer
Even the individual body is a community of billions of cells and bacteria, with specialized functions and yet, presumably, with no “knowledge,” whatever knowledge may be in such a context, that they are forming a larger body. But they too can make mistakes about their relation to that body, as we see in the intolerant anarchist revolution we call cancer. I myself have allergic ailments that, I am told, are caused by a panic-stricken xenophobia among the blood cells, their inability to distinguish a harmless from a dangerous intruder. Good health, in both bodies, depends on a sense of unity that also rejects a hysterical insistence on uniformity.
“Natural and Revealed Communities” (1987), comparing social bodies and human bodies, including his own, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Capital Punishment
It is not that one feels sorry for the criminal, but that one feels sorry for the society which is stuck with the utterly beastly business of putting people to death.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on November 5th” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Capitalism
By the mid-1930s the climate of opinion had totally reversed, at least in the student circles I was attached to. Then it was a generally accepted dogma that capitalism had had its day and was certain to evolve very soon, with or without a revolution, into socialism, socialism being assumed to be both a more efficient and a morally superior system.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
I think, with the C.C.F., that capitalism is crashing around our ears, and that any attempt to build it up again will bring it down with a bigger crash.
“NF to HK,” 4 Sep. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Only capitalism exists, and that can go in one of two directions: towards increasingly decentralized democracy or towards increasingly centralized state capitalism administered by a bureaucratic dictatorship.
Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 39, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Communism in my youth (the depression period) was widely assumed to be both efficient and morally superior to capitalism. But capitalism didn’t evolve into communism; the two systems settled down into an adversary relation in which they could improve themselves only by borrowing features from each other.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 10, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
I think Americans are hardly aware of living under capitalism: what they want is democracy, whatever the economic basis for it is.
Entry, Note 53 (1989–90), 52, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Castaneda, Carlos
I glanced at a row of books by Carlos Castaneda recently, and saw that the earlier books were labelled “nonfiction” by the publisher and the later ones “fiction.” I dare say an interesting story lies behind that, but as the earlier and the later books appeared to be generically identical, the distinction was of little critical use.
“Framework and Assumption” (1985), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Catharsis
The attitude of detached concern is what is meant in literature by catharsis.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
There must be at least fifty theories on the market about the meaning of catharsis. I can perhaps save time by giving you the correct one, which by coincidence happens to be mine. I think that by “pity and fear” is meant the moral feelings that draw you either toward or away from certain characters.
“Literature as Therapy” (1989), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Catholicism
There is no such thing as a Holy Catholic Church, but a church that knows it isn’t catholic and is sincerely trying to become so is certainly worthy of respect.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 93, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Once you accept some high-flown fable about the dissociation of sensibility & grab the Catholic Church, you get stuck with the Legion of Decency & all the meddlesome rule of priests.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 312, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
By the way, I must get rid of my fear of Catholicism long enough to distinguish the kinds of it that are purely Fascist & therefore factional (the paronomasia of national & natural religion as the Satanic analogy should be noted) from a cosmopolitan & liberal residue.
Entry, Notebook 34 (1946–50), 7, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
Whatever value Catholicism has today is due to the fact that it’s confined, against its will, to spiritual authority. I’m beginning to wonder if the doctrine of the inseparability of theory and practice, which Christianity shares with Communism, isn’t a pretty pernicious doctrine.
Entry, 5 Jan. 1952, 14, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Why is the religious satire exclusively Protestant: don’t Canadian Catholics ever laugh at themselves? Is it editorial predilection or Canadian poetry that admits so little right-wing satire?
“Letters in Canada: Poetry” (1958), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The educated Catholic laity doesn’t believe in the autonomous infallible, non-contradictory church any more, and even the upper hierarchy only asserts that it does out of habit. Well, out of desire to maintain power.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 2, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Catholics perhaps have less trouble — or used to, anyway — because for them faith is essentially what runs the sacramental machinery, and that provides a continuity of action that takes the heat off the speculative mind. But the history of the Catholic Church certainly reveals the hysteria there.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 444, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
I’m afraid that Catholics show their broad-mindedness only in assuming that Protestants will have some interest in Catholicism, but it doesn’t seem to reverse.
Entry, 20 Apr. 1952, 259, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Celts
… we find the most soaring imaginations, as a rule, in defeated or oppressed nations, like the Hebrews and the Celts.
“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
The principle is that defeated nations have the greatest imaginations. Many people, certainly many poets, have been far more possessed imaginatively by the sense of Arthur’s historical existence than of, say, Alfred the Great’s, whose historicity is not open to question.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 244, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Censorship
And while I have no idea what censors think they are doing, what they really are doing is defending the tinsel world of the soap opera and the low-grade movie against the adult competition that continually threatens to shatter it.
“Dr. Kinsey and the Dream Censor” (1948), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I draw the line against what is usually called hate literature, that is, something which deliberately churns up an hysterical hatred of a minority group. I think that there is a case for censorship there. Otherwise, censorship is such a self-defeating thing and it is based on a contempt for other peoples’ vision.
“Stevens and the Value of Literature” (1990), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The difficulty with topical allusions is that they have to be subtle enough to get past the censor and broad enough to get across to the audience — an almost impossible requirement.
“The Tragedies of Nature and Fortune” (1961), referring specifically to allusions in the play Coriolanus, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Censorship is practically always wrong, because it invariably fastens on the most serious writers as its chief object of attack, whereas the serious writer is the ally of social concern, not its enemy.
“An Address” (1984), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that I have no use for the lame-brained hysterics who go around snatching books by Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro out of school libraries. I also resent the mindless cliché that the best way to sell a book is to ban it, which means that all its extra readers will be attracted to it for silly reasons.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
… however rationalized it may be censorship is always an attack on human intelligence and imagination and is always a sign of weakness, not strength, in those who enforce it.
“Introduction to Canadian Literature” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Censorship is itself a violent, or counterviolent, solution: it assumes that you’ve caught the real villain and are justified in doing what you like to him, which is precisely the fallacy of violence itself.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
The authority of open science is recognized in theory in both democratic and totalitarian societies, but both still try to control openness in historical writing by hiding or destroying the relevant documents.
“Introduction,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Censorship and democracy don’t mix, and there is no argument in favour of censorship that does not assume an antidemocratic social tendency.
“Dr. Kinsey and the Dream Censor” (1948), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Practically all movements of censorship are simply expressions of mob hysteria, and almost invariably focus on the very people whom genuine social concern should be regarding as allies instead of enemies.
“Introduction to Art and Reality” (1986), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Centennials
The value of centenaries and similar observances is that they call attention, not simply to great men, but to what we do with our great men.
“Blake after Two Centuries” (1957), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
For the majority of people in North America, the most important thing that happened in 1867 was the purchase of Alaska from Russia by the United States.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Centre & Circumference
The proverb says that God’s centre is everywhere and his circumference nowhere, but in a human perspective the divine circumference would be everywhere too, as a centre has no identity without a circumference.
“First Variation: The Mountain,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Champlain, Samuel de
In Orillia there’s a statue of Champlain, dressed like one of the three musketeers, with spurs (so useful for getting more speed out of a birch-bark canoe).
“Reconciliation with Nature” (1976), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Change
Besides, if a radical reaction includes a good deal of hysteria, a conservative one is bound to include a good deal of inertia.
“Teaching the Humanities Today” (1977), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
In a world where dynasties rise and fall at much the same rate as women’s hemlines, the dynasty and the hemline look much alike in importance, and get much the same amount of featuring in the news.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
What is connected with the universities is what is really happening: the political and economic charades also going on are what are called pseudo-events, created for and blown up by the news media to give us the illusion of living in history. The human lives behind these charades, of people losing their jobs or finding that they can no longer live on their pensions, certainly do not consist of pseudo-events. But they are not hot news items either.
“The Authority of Learning” (1984), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Chaos
Chaos comes into the first verse of the Book of Genesis and keeps on going long past Melville.
“The Scholar in Society” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
God screwed chaos for six days and separated on the seventh, panting. Chaos thereby split into cosmos, the child, and Schekinah, the surviving companion. The light and the dark, plentitude and vacancy.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 721, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Chaplin, Charlie
If films can survive indefinitely our grandchildren will probably ask some very awkward questions if we didn’t see the great Chaplin masterpieces when they were new, or did see them and missed the point.
“The Great Charlie” (1941), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Charity
Charity is not only the greatest of virtues, but the only virtue there is.
“Canadian and American Values” (1988), explaining that “charity” in the New Testament means “love,” Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In a world like ours differences in faith are much less important than agreement in charity. Faith, or the rejection of faith, often revolves around the question, “Why would a good God permit so much evil and suffering?” Charity starts with the question, “Why do we permit so much evil and suffering?” and that is a question on which all men and women of good will can act instead of arguing in circles.
“To Come to Light” (1986), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Charms & Riddles
If we stayed with the oracular world of charm, everything would seem solemn, awful, portentous, and the least breath of humour or irreverence would destroy the mood. If we stayed with the world of riddle, we should be subjected to an endless stream of irresponsible wisecracks.
“Cycle and Apocalypse in Finnegans Wake” (1987), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
Chaucer, Geoffrey
By looking at Chaucer’s pieces we see an exceedingly clever versifier: by looking at his completed structures we see the greatness of his mind in something like its true perspective.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Chess
A chess move is a decisive choice that may not abolish chance, but sets up a train of consequences that forces it to retreat into the shadows.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 313, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Chicago
It is such a cheerful, hospitable, adolescent city. They tell me that the clothing advertisers urge Chicagoans to get a metropolitan cut to their clothes to impress the hick visitors. This is typical Chicago.
“NF to HK,” 17 Jun. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Chicago World’s Fair
It’s a World’s Fair all right, and very like the world — huge, pretentious, artificial, mostly vulgar, partly beautiful, and, in spite of everything, magnificent.
“NF to HK,” 18 Jun. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Children
I was brought up in a middle-class, non-conformist environment. I have been more or less writing footnotes to the assumptions I acquired at the age of three or so ever since.
“Music in My Life” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The adult tends to think of the child’s vision as ignorant and undeveloped, but actually it is a clearer and more civilized vision than his own.
“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Whatever literature we learn early, from pre-school nursery rhymes to high-school Shakespeare and beyond, provides us with the keys to nearly all the imaginative experience that it is possible for us to have in life. The central part of this training consists of the Bible, the Classics, and the great heritage of our mother tongue.
“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Again, if the child is an undeveloped human being, the parent, the complement of the child, is an imperfect one.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 66, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The child is born civilized: he assumes that the world he is born into has a human shape and meaning, and was probably made for his own benefit.
“Introduction to Selected Poetry and Prose of William Blake” (1953), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
You drop out of poetry as soon as you drop out of the child’s timeless world.
“Frye’s Literary Theory in the Classroom” (1980), discussing the loss with age of the appreciation of poetry, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Living with children is recognized to be purgatorial, differing from hell only in having some sort of end.
Entry, Notebook 18 (1956–62), 148, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
The sound of children playing is a cliché of innocent happiness. I have listened to it, and what I hear is mainly aggressiveness and hysteria.
Entry, Notebook 18 (1956–62), 148, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
I once read a book on the language of children which remarked that children seem endlessly fascinated by the fact that a word can have more than one meaning. The authors should have added that they ought to keep this fascination all their lives: if they lose it when they grow up they’re not maturing, just degenerating.
“Introduction,” Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
As the older aristocracies declined, it became clearer that the real natural aristocracy, the group of those who really have a right to be fed and sheltered and cosseted by the rest of society, are the children.
“Convocation Address, Franklin and Marshall” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
China
The creatures in China cannot “reform” anything, because to reform is to introduce the unpredictable, and they’ve proved they can’t deal with that. They can only repress: that’s all they know, and they will devote their entire energies to repression until their devils call for them.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 757, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
China will probably have the next century pretty well to itself as far as culture, & perhaps even civilization, are concerned.
Entry, 19 Aug. 1942, 63, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Chinese painting, for example, will influence Western painting purely through its merits as painting, not through any Western attempt to understand Chinese cultural traditions for political reasons.
“F.S.C. Northrop’s The Meeting of East and West” (1947), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I know this sounds like an obsession, but for anyone living in 1967, the thought of millions of Chinese yelling their guts loose & waving the little red books of Chairman Mao’s thoughts in the air ought to be pretty central. Anything can happen, but one thing that certainly can happen is that China will unify itself around the “thought” of Mao, & become strong enough to wipe us out with the back of its hand in a very few years.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 408, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Chosen People
Every people is the chosen people: that’s what a translated Bible means.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 821, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Christ
Christ is both the one God and the one Man, the Lamb of God, the tree of life, or vine of which we are the branches, the stone which the builders rejected, and the rebuilt temple which is identical with his risen body.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Christ’s life can only be told mythically, but as myth is so obviously a human invention the myth cannot be the real form of the revelation.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 177, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
In this age Christ is no longer a peculiar society nor a historical individual, but the body of man.
Entry, 6 Feb. 1950, 92, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The real or eternal Christ is the form of man, and the real body of art is that which art reveals.
Entry, 9 Aug. 1950, 534, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Christendom
Christian faith produced the civilization of Christendom, which reigned supreme in the Western world from the Atlantic to the Caucasus for many centuries, and is still one of the greatest forces of the contemporary world. But while Christendom is a colossal achievement, once we think of all its intolerance, its persecutions, its “religious” wars, its bigotry, it is clear that it too is still not the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Christianity
There is nothing that we get from Christianity except a body of words, and they become transmuted into experience. I wouldn’t talk about the objectivity of God. I’d talk about the transcendence of God.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Christianity, similarly, had to outgrow the notion that the end of the world was going to come in the next week or so, and after it had outgrown it, it settled down to being a way of life, rather than a way of postponing life.
“Style and Image in the Twentieth Century” (1967), comparing Christianity with Russian and Chinese Communism, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I think it is the conception of God as the power that recreates man rather than God as the creator of the order of nature that is the really valid element in Christianity.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
A genuinely tragic Christian attitude would see suffering as a participation in the passion of a hero who was both divine and human, and so would establish a place within Christianity for the tragic hero.
“Fools of Time: III, Little World of Man: The Tragedy of Isolation” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Hence being a Xn [Christian] is one way of being a Buddhist.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 34, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
In the official Christian myth, the Creator is pure and innocent and the creature is foul and vicious; in the fabulous counterpart, the creator, being man, is foul and vicious but his creature, the work of art, is pure and innocent.
Entry, Notebook 54-4 (late 1970s), 193, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
For Christianity, like the humanities, is teachable only to a very limited extent: the rest consists in realizing anew for oneself what every Christian has always known, but can explain only to a receptive mind.
“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
It’s given us a very strong sense of a meaning emerging out of human history rather than history as a meaningless series of cycles from which you have to be liberated.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
It still seems to be true that Christianity has some affinity for stupidity. If I were to see a small church labelled “the foursquare gospel” I’d give it a wide berth, because I know I’d find nothing inside except what I’d call hysteria.
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 152, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The revolutionary core of Christianity is its identifying of God with a suffering, persecuted, and enduring man. It was in the sign of the cross, a ridiculous and shameful emblem, that an outcast religion conquered the world’s greatest empire.
“Silence in the Sea” (1968), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
However, early Christianity discovered that Christianity would be much more saleable if you perverted its good news into bad news, and in particular if you put at the centre of your teaching the doctrine that after death, unless you did what you were told at this moment, you would suffer tortures for eternity, meaning endlessly in time.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It may be possible to Christianity to have its God and eat Him too, but it is not yet possible for a Christian philosopher to choose either the committed religious or the disinterested intellectual path and still get all the benefits of both.
“Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture” (1950s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
The central form of Christianity is its vision of the humanity of God and the divinity of risen Man, and this, in varying ways, is what all great Christian artists have attempted to recreate.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Christmas
It is the latter vision that turns the darkness of Advent into the festival of blazing lights, the lights which are the glory of a God who is also Man, who is continually born and continually dying, and yet remains unborn and beyond the reach of death.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), referring specifically to Christmas, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The present secular Christmas is, in any case, really a New Year festival, with Santa Claus representing the spirit of the Old Year and the New one hazily identified with the Christ child. The identification is not pressed, because that would lead to the unwelcome inference that the birth of Christ and the death of Santa Claus are the same event.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The story of Christmas, from its primitive beginnings to the present, is in part a story of how men, by cowering together in a common fear of menace, discovered a new fellowship, in fellowship a new hope, and in hope a new vision of society.
“Merry Christmas (III)” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Christmas is far, far older than Christianity, as even the pre-Christian Yule and Saturnalia were late developments of it, and it was never completely assimilated to the Christian faith.
“Merry Christmas (I)” (1946), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Perhaps the answer is that people go through the bother of Christmas because Christmas helps them to understand why they go through the bother of living out their lives the rest of the year. For one brief instant, we see human society as it should and could be.…
“Merry Christmas (II)” (1948), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
There is no New Testament evidence whatever about what time of year Jesus was born, and as far as we can see, the Church seems to have been content to take the winter solstice festival from other religions.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Christmas season then is a deliberately induced period of chaos & hysteria designed to assume stability after the New Year.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 182, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The world clings to Christmas with a kind of desperation: it is the only traditional festival, apart from a flurry of new hats at Easter, that retains any real hold on ordinary life.
“Merry Christmas (II)” (1948), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Church
If the Sabbath was made for man, the Church was too.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 212, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Law is the expression of temporal authority; justice is law informed by the vision of freedom and equality; the vision of freedom and equality is a steady vision only within the Christian church. Outside the church it is only a vague hope or a fitful glimpse afforded by the lucky chance of a good ruler.
“The Analogy of Democracy” (1952), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
We can save ourselves only through an established co-operative church, and if the church ever wakes up to that fact, that will constitute enough of a miracle to get us the rest of the way.
“NF to HK,” 4 Sep. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
The dilemma the Church put modern man into is this: the Catholic position is that the Church contains the Word: the Protestant is that the Word contains the Church.
Entry, Notebook 32 (late 1946–51), 102, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
The society produced by the gospel is the church, and the church is a community whose members have all been made free and equal by their faith.
“The Return of Eden: Five Essays on Milton’s Epics” (1965), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
If Milton or Blake had joined or founded a church, therefore, they would have lost the real Church, the total vision which is the city of God, and gained a sect.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
The church has the power to save the world when it is itself saved, and the saving power will work largely outside it until it is.
“The Analogy of Democracy” (1952), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
As I don’t believe in substantial real presence, I don’t believe anything happens at a church service. I don’t understand the “this do in remembrance of me” aspect of Christianity: it seems silly, & I must think about it.
Entry, 8 Jan. 1950, 25, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The religious bodies have enough problems of their own, but if they fail to meet the spiritual needs of society, the university will become the only source of free authority, and hence would be almost compelled to slip into the role of a lay church for intellectuals.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Churchill, Winston
I had the usual childish fantasies, when very young, of wanting to be a “great man” — fantasies that in our day only Churchill has realized. But Churchill’s greatness was archaic: his funeral really buried that whole conception of greatness as a social ambition.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 66, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Cincinnati
There are more people in Cincinnati than in Shakespeare’s London; but Cincinnati cannot produce genius. It isn’t the capital of anything: no organization of state or nation or anything else with a body comes to a head in it.
Entry, 24 Jan. 1949, 120, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Cities
The map still shows us self-contained cities like Hamilton and Toronto, but experience presents us with an urban sprawl, which ignores national boundaries and buries a vast area of beautiful and fertile land in a tomb of concrete.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Engineers, along with architects and town planners, are deeply involved with the physical appearance of society. And the briefest glance at our society shows a stupefying hideousness and squalor, with the great octopus sprawl of streets and highways and buildings swallowing all the fertility of the nature around us. When this process is applied to the natural environment, we call it pollution: when it is applied to the human environment, we call it development. But whatever we call it, something is badly wrong with the creative power of the society that has produced it.
“Universities and the Deluge of Cant” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The amount of mental distress caused by living in an environment which expresses indifference or contempt for the perspectives of the human body is very little studied: one might call it proportion pollution.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The city is the community become conscious: it is to the country what man is to animals. Animals live; man knows that he lives; people live in the country & often live very well, but in the city some additional consciousness comes to life.
Entry, 24 Jan. 1949, 120, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Washington became a capital because it was in the logical place for one, between the north and the south: Ottawa became a capital because it was not Montreal or Kingston.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Citizens
A citizen’s primary duty, I should think, is to try to know what should be changed in his society and what conserved. The operative word here is “know.”
“Universities and the Deluge of Cant” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
It is essential for the teacher of literature, at every level, to remember that in a modern democracy a citizen participates in society mainly through his imagination.
“Elementary Teaching and Elemental Scholarship” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Civilization
But for better or worse, our civilization, if it survives at all, will be one in which criticism and literature, that is, the theory and practice of literature itself, will be two parts of one thing.
“Literary Criticism” (1963), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Civilization is not merely an imitation of nature, but the process of making a total human form out of nature, and it is impelled by the force that we have just called desire.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
In the civilized state of humanity we love those who are close to us: for those farther away we feel the tolerance and good will which express love at a distance. In the pure state of nature we feel only possessive about those close to us, and hostile and mistrustful of those further away. The latter do all sorts of vaguely irritating things, like speaking different languages, eating different foods, and holding different beliefs.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The totality of imaginative power, of which the matrix is art, is what we ordinarily call culture or civilization.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
The oldest civilization in the modern world is the American one, which was established in its present form in 1776.
“The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Clarity
No darkness can comprehend any light; no ignorance or indifference can ever see any claritas in literature itself or in the criticism that attempts to convey it, just as no saint in ordinary life wears a visible gold plate around his head.
“Criticism, Visible and Invisible” (1964), using claritas as a synonym for clarity or intensity, “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Classes
The social energy which maintains the class structure produces perverted culture in its three chief forms: mere upper-class culture, or ostentation, mere middle-class culture, or vulgarity, and mere lower-class culture, or squalor.
“Tentative Conclusion” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
But it would be wrong to forget that the average American does not think of the rich and poor as separate classes, but as lucky and unlucky branches of an undifferentiated society he does not even think of as middle-class.
“The Present Condition of the World” (1943), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
We have already got to the point where the phrase “leisure class” makes no sense. Perhaps our grandchildren will be living in a world in which the phrase “working class” makes even less sense.
“The Teacher’s Source of Authority” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Classic, Literary
The word “classic” as applied to a work of literature means primarily a work that refuses to go away, that remains confronting us until we do something about it, which means also doing something about ourselves.
“The Double Mirror” (1981), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Masterpiece and classic don’t mean inherent formal qualities but a locus of social acceptance. Perhaps they emerge when acceptance becomes recognition, a vision of form irradiating it.
Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 13, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
The classic, what’s worth studying, is what has already established itself in experience, and won’t go away.
“Critical Views” (1980s), 17, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
If I were to be asked what my definition of a classic was, I would say it was a work that won’t go away. It just stands in front of you until you deal with it. It’s the angel that every Jacob has to wrestle with.
“Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
What we call classics are works of literature that show an ability to communicate with other ages over the widest barriers of time, space, and language.
“The Expanding World of Metaphor” (1984), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
The original writer is the person who returns to origins. The man who produces the imperishable classic is not a man with a new story but a man who tells one of the world’s great stories again and tells it better.
“Music in My Life” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
What we call a “classic” in literature is often a literary work so complex that understanding the “structure” becomes an indefinite and tentative sequence of responses.
“The Mythical Approach to Creation” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Literature revolves around certain classics or models because it is really revolving around certain structural principles which those classics embody.
“The Developing Imagination” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
This coincides with a feeling we have all had: that the study of mediocre works of art remains a random and peripheral form of critical experience, whereas the profound masterpiece draws us to a point at which we seem to see an enormous number of converging patterns of significance.
“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Classics, Greek & Roman
… Classical mythology became purely poetic after its oracles had ceased.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The first thing to be laid on top of a Biblical training, in my opinion, is Classical mythology, which gives us the same kind of imaginative framework, of a more fragmentary kind. Here again there are all sorts of incidental or secondary reasons for the study: the literatures of all modern Western languages are so full of Classical myths that one hardly knows what’s going on without some training in them. But again, the primary reason is the shape of the mythology. The Classical myths give us, much more clearly than the Bible, the main episodes of the central myth of the hero whose mysterious birth, triumph and marriage, death and betrayal and eventual rebirth follow the rhythm of the sun and the seasons.
The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Clichés
Belief in clichés and catchwords and slogans is an automatic response which saves the time and trouble of thinking, and this kind of misplaced mechanism is sinister and dangerous. So is dealing with the news of the day in the categories of a bad movie, which is an automatic form of retreat from the world, like taking a tranquillizer pill.
“Push-Button Gadgets May Help — But the Teacher Seems Here to Stay” (1960), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Clothes
Glanced over a book on nudism. I don’t see the point myself: I don’t wear clothes out of modesty. I wear them because they have pockets.
Entry, 20 Jul. 1942, 26, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Coincidence
In ordinary life a coincidence is a piece of design for which we can find no practical use.
The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1975), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Cold War
The influence of Canada on the United States is almost impossible to describe in words: it’s subjective to the verge of being mystical. But simply to have so powerful an insulating force separating it from the Soviet Union had a good deal to do with the fact that the Cold War stayed cold.
“Notes for ‘Levels of Cultural Identity’” (1989), 55, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
The language of American democracy and the language of Russian Marxism, for example, get so self-enclosed and so solipsistic that neither can really get outside itself to reach at the other. That seems to me to be perhaps the greatest central danger society faces today.
“The Only Genuine Revolution” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
I think that if I believed in anything like reincarnation I would feel that maybe I was commissioned to write Coleridge’s book on the Logos which he kept hugging to his bosom in the form of fifty-seven notebooks that a colleague of mine has tried to edit.
“Archetype and History” (1986), responding to the suggestion that his approach was “probably best called Coleridgean” and referring to the scholar Kathleen Coburn, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In continuous prose, even at his best, he is, as Chesterton says of Shaw, long-winded because he is quick-witted: he thinks of all the qualifications of his idea at once, hence his contemporary reputation for murkiness.
“Long Sequacious Notes” (1953), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Collaboration
It has been proved all through the history of drama that the word “collaborator” does not have to be used in its wartime sense of traitor, and that collaboration often, in fact usually, creates a distinct and unified personality.
“A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance: II, Making Nature Afraid” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Collage
There is, perhaps, an element of stunt or even a put-on about a good many experimental developments in our time, and yet we are in an age of collage: an age where we’re more or less committed to the unexpected juxtaposition.
“Poets of Canada: 1920 to the Present” (1971), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Colonial Williamsburg
The kind of preservation that we have in Williamsburg and similar large-scale open museums is in a sense almost antihistorical: it shows us, not life in time as a continuous process, but life arrested at a certain point, in a sort of semi-permanent drama. There is nothing wrong with this, but it gives us a cross-section of history, a world confronting us rather than preceding us.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Colonialism
In culture, as in religion and politics, the homeland is the source of authority, and the first duty of a colonial culture is to respond to it.
“Culture as Interpenetration” (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada may very well be the only genuine colony left in the world. The degree of economic and to some extent political penetration by the United States is of course very great, and the reasons for it are quite obvious.
“Canadian and American Values” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The imperial and the regional are both inherently anti-poetic environments, yet they go hand-in-hand; and together they make up what I call the colonial in Canadian life.
“Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The colonial position of Canada is therefore a frostbite at the roots of the Canadian imagination, and it produces a disease for which I think the best name is prudery.
“Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Colour
There is an annual birth and death of colour, out of the black and white, in Canada.
“CRTC Guru” (1968–69), noting, as well, “You’ll never get a Monet in Canada,” Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Comedy
The statement “all’s well that ends well” is a statement about the structure of comedy, and is not intended to apply to actual life.
“A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance; II, Making Nature Afraid” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
The only modern master of ideal comedy to rank with Aristophanes & Shakespeare is Mozart.…
Entry, 24 Feb. 1952, 136, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Comedy is a structure in which Eros smashes an irrational law.
Entry, Notebook 54-5 (1976), 1, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The indication of tragedy is one of the most powerful effects that comedy, particularly satiric comedy, can produce. But only the indication is possible: to go further would upset the balance of tone.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
A tragic or comic plot is not a straight line: it is a parabola following the shapes of the mouths on the conventional masks. Comedy has a U-shaped plot, with the action sinking into deep and often potentially tragic complications, and then suddenly turning upward into a happy ending. Tragedy has an inverted U, with the action rising in crisis to a peripety and then plunging downward to catastrophe through a series of recognitions, usually of the inevitable consequences of previous acts.
“Myth, Fiction, and Displacement” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Man is a creator as an individual; as a member of a society or species, he is a creature. The end of a comedy leaves him creaturely, invited to join a party to celebrate the creation of a new society, from the further fortunes of which he is of course excluded by the ending of the play. The end of a tragedy leaves him alone in a waste and void chaos of experience with a world to remake out of it.
“Fools of Time: III, Little World of Man: The Tragedy of Isolation” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Forgiveness and reconciliation come at the end of a comedy because they belong at the end of a comedy, not because Shakespeare “believed” in them. And so the play ends: it doesn’t discuss any issues, solve any problems, expound any theories, or illustrate any doctrines. What it does is show us why comedies exist and why Shakespeare wrote so many of them.
“Northrop Frye on Shakespeare: VII, Measure for Measure” (1986), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
The supreme masters of comedy have rather a hard time of it with critics: because they amuse, one is tempted to patronize them. Besides, the appeal of comedy might perhaps without overstatement be described as more intellectualized than that of tragedy, and comedy usually includes a considered refusal to explore the emotional possibilities which tragedy affords.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
There is a continuous dream in life, which is the slave’s life that we live when we are driven by the necessities of money or security or the tactics of conflict. The awareness of the reality of life comes in detached moments of release from this, or in later memories of them.
“Hart House Rededicated” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Comic Art
A good deal of the worry over the ten-year-old’s comic books would be far better expended on making sure that the central educational structure is a sound one.
“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
All humour demands agreement that certain things, such as a picture of a wife beating her husband in a comic strip, are conventionally funny. To introduce a comic strip in which a husband beats his wife would distress the reader, because it would mean learning a new convention.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
At its most naive it is an endless form in which a central character who never develops or ages goes through one adventure after another until the author himself collapses. We see this form in comic strips, where the central characters persist for years in a state of refrigerated deathlessness.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Soap operas & comic strips are as close to endless art as we can get: their unreality has something to do with the intolerable realism of their form.
Entry, 24 Feb. 1949, 220, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Commandment
Commandment says: this do; aphorism says, this understand; parable says, this see; oracle says, this hear. If that’s right, there is a movement from oracle to parable and from commandment to aphorism.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 47, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Commitment
If the end of commitment is the community, the end of detachment is the individual. This is not an antithesis: the mature individual is mature only because he has reached a kind of social adjustment.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Commonwealth
The idea of a Commonwealth is a very attractive idea to me, now that it no longer has an imperialistic basis. I think the symbol of royalty as something that nobody can possibly earn but that you can only get by accident is still something that I would buy. Otherwise, the whole of society becomes open to competition.
“Making the Revolutionary Act Now” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Communication
Communication is the force holding together a community; at the centre of community is communion — the icon or concept symbolizing unity.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 109, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The same feeling for strained distance is in many Canadian poets and novelists — certainly in Grove — and can hardly be an accident that the two most important Canadian thinkers to date, Edward Sapir and Harold Innis, have both been largely concerned with problems of communication.
“Letters in Canada: Poetry” (1953), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The triumph of communication is the death of communication: where communication forms a total environment, there is nothing to be communicated.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Control of communications is one of the primary aims of an ascendant class: whatever tends toward democracy must have, as one of its primary aims, the openness and sharing of communications.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Communism
But, if the first half of the century saw the passing of Fascism, the second half may see the passing of Communism. I don’t look for catastrophic war, but for restricted bleeding wars, threats, interdicts, and an attempt on the part of each side to wait for the enemy to blow up through internal contradictions.
Entry, 1 Jan. 1951, 1, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
But if the entire Communist world were annihilated tomorrow all our enemies would still be with us, in many respects stronger than ever.
“By Liberal Things” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Communism has no God, but that does not prevent it from being a religion with prophets, revealed scriptures, a body of infallible doctrine, heresies, saints, martyrs, and shrines.
“The Changing Pace in Canadian Education” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Communities
But if we place the works of the human imagination in the centre of the community and make sure they stay there, we shall be able eventually to see that community itself as the total form of what human beings can bring forth, their own larger life that continues to live and move and possess its inward being.
“Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason” (1982), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
But while communities enrich themselves by what they include, they define themselves by what they exclude. The more intensely a community feels its identity as a community, the more intensely it feels its difference from what is across its boundary. In a strong sense of community there is thus always an element that may become hostile and aggressive.
“Hart House Rededicated” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Total communication threatens a community’s identity by attacking it from without: it’s what a community can absorb, not what it can reach that’s important. There’s no reason why exclusion should be hostile: whether or not good fences make good neighbours, the fence certainly creates the neighbour.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 119, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
In an interpenetrating world every community would be the centre of the world.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The study of literature therefore is a means of making one a member of a community beyond death, a community of the human imagination which has survived thousands of years of empires that have come and gone and is still adding to and building up its central imaginative structures.
“Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
All religions are one, not alike; “that they may be one,” not that they should all think alike: community means people thinking along similar lines & motivated by similar drives; communion means that all men are the same man.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 560, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
I think that the human community is really something that is prior to the individual. The individual grows out of the community, not the other way around.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The form of human community envisaged by democracy is not new: it is the real form of human community which has been with us since the beginning of history, obscured by human weakness, ignorance, passion, and greed.
“The Analogy of Democracy” (1952), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Compromise
If Canada had not been able to compromise, it would never have been Canada.
“Canadian Voices” (1975), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Compromise is not a betrayal when a refusal to compromise would be a greater betrayal.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Compulsions
We live in a world of threefold external compulsion: of compulsion on action, or law; of compulsion on thinking, or fact; of compulsion on feeling, which is the characteristic of all pleasure whether it is produced by the Paradiso or by an ice cream soda. But in the world of imagination a fourth power, which contains morality, beauty, and truth but is never subordinated to them, rises free of all their compulsions.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Computers
The mechanical age stopped with the Selectric typewriter, as far as I’m concerned.
“‘Condominium Mentality’ in CanLit” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Computers can think; they have intelligence and consciousness. What they don’t have (so far) is will: they have to be plugged in or turned on like other machines. Perhaps electricity is will on the mechanical level.…
Entry, Notebook 47 (1989–90), 18, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Eventually, no doubt, we shall have machines that stand in the same relation to ordinary human brains that jet planes do to ordinary human feet.
“Introduction to the Second Volume of Harold Innis’s “A History of Communciations” (1980s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
I suppose computers are the physical realization of magic, just as the television screen is the physical realization of ghosts.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 262, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
There’s no reason why man should not develop machines that can reproduce every activity of the human brain on a vastly higher level of speed and efficiency. But nobody has yet come up with a computer that wanted to do these things on its own: as well, so far, every machine is an expression of the will of its makers.
Entry, Notes 54.2 (1982–91), 2, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Concern
Briefly, the language of concern is the language of myth. Myth is the structural principle of literature that enters into and gives form to the verbal disciplines where concern is relevant.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
And I speak of concern rather than belief, because a general public assent to certain formulas is more important to a society than actual belief in them. Belief may be in theory the essential thing, but private beliefs elude social vigilance, as the public expression of them does not.
“The Myth of Deliverance: I, The Reversal of Action” (1981), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
To liberate the language of concern is to ensure that the whole imaginative range of concern is being expressed in society, instead of being confined to a selected type of imagination which is hitched to the tactics of one social group, as propaganda for it, or what we have called a rhetorical analogue to it.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism (1971), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
It is out of the tension between concern and freedom that glimpses of a third order of experience emerge, of a world that may not exist but completes existence, the world of the definitive experience that poetry urges us to have but which we never quite get.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism (1971), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Concern is the response of the adult citizen to genuine social problems. Anxiety is based on the desire to exclude or subordinate, to preserve the values or benefits of society for the group of right people who know the right answers.
“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Once a myth of concern is recognized to be such, it becomes clear that you can’t express its truth without lying. Because you’re contradicting accepted truth with something which is going to be made true but isn’t true now.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 237, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
There has always been a practical distinction between what is important, like cathedrals, and what is necessary, like privies: in our day the important seems, possibly for the first time in history, to be becoming necessary as well.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Concerns, Primary and Secondary
Human beings are concerned beings, and it seems to me that there are two kinds of concern: primary and secondary. Primary concerns are such things as food, sex, property, and freedom of movement: concerns that we share with animals on a physical level. Secondary concerns include our political, religious, and other ideological loyalties.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
I think mythology expresses the primary human concerns, and ideology the secondary and derivative ones.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 6, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The most primary concern of all, breathing, is transformed into spirit, & the spiritual meaning of food & drink, of love, of security & shelter & the sense of home, all follow. The transition from material to spiritual, of course, is through the verbal: we don’t go into a Platonic intelligible world.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 293, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Literature seems to me to revolve around what I call the primary concerns of humanity, those that have to do with freedom, love, and staying alive, along with the ironies of their frustration, as distinct from the secondary or ideological concerns of politics and religion, for which the direct verbal expression is expository rather than literary.
“Auguries of Experience” (1987), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
The physical primary concerns of humanity, food, sex, possessions and freedom of movement, are elements in human life that we share with animals. It is the secondary concerns that are distinctly human, so if the twentieth century is an age in which primary concerns must again become primary, what this indicates is not an abolishing of secondary concerns but a renewed integration of humanity with nature.
“Fourth Variation: The Furnace,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Primary concerns rest on platitudes so bald and obvious that one hesitates to list them: it is better to be fed than starving, better to be happy than miserable, better to be free than a slave, better to be healthy than sick. Secondary concerns arise through the consciousness of a social contract: loyalty to one’s religion or country or community, commitment to faith, sacrifice of cherished elements in life for the sake of what is regarded as a higher cause.
“Crime and Sin in the Bible” (1986), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
All through history primary concerns have had to give way to secondary ones. It is better to live than die; nevertheless we go to war. Freedom is better than bondage, but we accept an immense amount of exploitation, both of ourselves and of others. Perhaps, with our nuclear weapons and our pollution of air and water, we have reached the first stage in history in which primary concerns will have to become primary.
“Crime and Sin in the Bible” (1986), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Secondary concern has to do with the structure and source of authority in society, with religious belief and political loyalties, with the desire of the privileged to keep their privileges and of the nonprivileged to get along as well as they can in that situation. I think the present age, with its threats of nuclear warfare and environmental pollution, is an age in which secondary concerns are rapidly dissolving.
“The Survival of Eros in Poetry” (1983), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Condensation
Condensation means the opposite movement [of displacement], where the similarities and associations of ordinary experience become metaphorical identities.
“First Variation: The Mountain,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
Conditioning
People robotize themselves to adjust to society & save trouble for themselves. Automatic conditioned reflex makes up I suppose 98 % of any normal life: if someone said 100 %, how could you refute him?
Entry, Notebook 48 (1993), 17, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Most of the members of this audience, even when they were embryos in the womb, were still middle-class twentieth-century Canadians. Religion calls that original sin. Political theory calls it, or used to call it, the social contract. But whatever it is called it has an element in it which is to some extent ironic, even tragic.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), addressing a symposium at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Confederation
The main thing wrong with Confederation was its impoverished cultural basis. It was thought of, however unconsciously, as a British colony and a Tory counterpart of the United States, with French and indigenous groups forming picturesque variations in the background.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
I feel that directly in front of us lies a primary need for what I shall call Reconfederation, and which I think of essentially as providing a cultural skeleton for the country that fits its present conditions. Without a cultural Reconfederation there can be only continued political tinkering of the most futile kind.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It is clearly time to start creating a second positive event in our history: Reconfederation.
“Italy in Canada” (1990), referring to Confederation of 1867 as “the most positive event in Canadian history,” Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It is possible that what we think of as the centenary of Confederation may turn out to be our genuine Confederation, a period of spiritual rebirth in response to the central social fact of our time: that man must unite, not divide, because he simply will not survive in a state of radical disunity.
“Foreword to The Prospect of Change” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Conformism
The epithet “conformist” is a double-edged one, for no social groups show more rigid patterns of conformity than nonconformist groups.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Confusion
… it’s simply a matter of numbers — that millions of people are more confused than thousands of people.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Conscience
Consciousness is released by scientia: conscience is released by imagination.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 109, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
By conscience I mean the informing power of moral experience.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 138, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Consciousness
The revolution of consciousness against routine is the starting point of all mental activity, and the centre of mental activity is imagination, the power of transforming “reality” into awareness of reality. Man can have no freedom except what begins in his own awareness of his condition.
“The Realistic Oriole: A Study of Wallace Stevens” (1957), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
In our day the intensifying of consciousness, in the form of techniques of meditation and the like, has become a heavy industry. I have been somewhat puzzled by the extent to which this activity overlooks or evades the fact that all intensified language sooner or later turns metaphorical, and that literature is not only the obvious but the inescapable guide to higher journeys of consciousness.
“Sequence and Mode,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
The idea that the human consciousness lives inside a universe of words, which is in turn inside the universe of nature, has always been very central to me. Of course the difficulty with the word “universe” is that it suggests something spatial, whereas the true verbal universe is a conflict of powers and, consequently, exists in time as well as space.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
It is the articulated worlds of consciousness, the intelligible and imaginative worlds, that are at once the reward of freedom and the guarantee of it.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism (1971), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Consciousness in a world which without consciousness is only a mechanism: damn uncomfortable situation.
Entry, Notes 58-5 (c. 1985), discussing Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Renaissance Literature (2006), CW, 20.
Hence while the production of culture may be, like ritual, a half-involuntary imitation of organic rhythms or processes, the response to culture is, like myth, a revolutionary act of consciousness.
“Tentative Conclusion” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Consciousness is to the unconscious as the earth’s crust is to the earth, & it has taken exactly the same length of time to develop.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 94, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It is fascinating to become conscious of all one’s unconscious processes in order to become unconscious of them again: it’s a new birth, for though a very young baby can be trained to correct automatisms, they break up when the age of self-will begins, and a change of form or style is needed in life as in athletics.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 36, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The consciousness doesn’t know what the hell goes on in the body: its function is to escape from the body, hence the cooperating essence notion. Or it can control its own version of the body, as in yoga.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 237, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Consciousness is the unreality which transforms reality; life is the unreality which transforms the inanimate; time is the unreality which transforms space.…
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 362, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The world of waking consciousness represents, for the creative imagination, a low level of reality.
Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 27, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
Our waking existence is a continuum: sleep and dreams have beginnings and ends, but when we wake up again we rejoin the continuum.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
There is one consciousness that subjects itself to the text and understands, and another that, so to speak, overstands. It is only the possession of the latter that makes the operation of reading worthwhile: without it a reader is a pedant who understands but does not comprehend.
“Identity and Metaphor,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
