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ОглавлениеBabel
The society of power always tends to resemble the pyramid or tower of Babel: the society of love tends to resemble the communion table.
“The Church: Its Relation to Society” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Babel is action with confused words.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 599, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Babies
The parents of a new baby are proud of its novelty; they may even speak of it as unique; but the source of their pride is the fact that it is a recognizable human being, and conforms to a prescribed convention.
“Nature and Homer” (1958), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Bach, J.S.
I’m probably just nutty, but the 1st movement of the 6th Brandenburg Suite has something sinister about it to me, as though a race of superhuman Robots, cultivated but ruthless, were marching along at a terrific speed to wipe us out.
Entry, Notebook 5 (1935–42), 17, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
I think Bach is the great Protestant poet of the Pathos: not only two Passions, but even the B minor centres on the Kyrie and the Crucifixion.
Entry, Notebook 5 (1935–42), 22, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
If we are listening to music, let us say, on the level of Bach or Mozart, the response keeps shifting from the personal to the impersonal. On the one hand we feel that this is Bach, that it couldn’t possibly be anyone else. On the other hand, there are moments when Bach disappears, and what we feel is: this is the voice of music itself; this is what music was created to say. At that level, we are not hearing the music so much as recognizing it.
“The Teacher’s Source of Authority” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Back to Basics
I distrust all slogans of the “back to basics” type because I distrust anything that stars with “back to.” That is, I know that what is called a pastoral myth is operating — that at one time people were much better taught than they are now. I simply don’t believe that.
“The Scholar in Society” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Ballet
The ballet cannot remain permanently in fairyland — the satiric attitude is too important and essential to contemporary art for that.
“Ballet Russe” (1935), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Baptism
Just as the Eucharist in Christianity is founded on the metaphorical basis of food and drink, so baptism becomes the physical image of spiritual cleanliness, the separating of the true individual from the excreta of original sin.
“Third Variation: The Cave,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Baseball
There is certainly no evidence that baseball has descended from a ritual of human sacrifice, but the umpire is quite as much of a pharmakos as if it had: he is an abandoned scoundrel, a greater robber than Barabbas; he has the evil eye; the supporters of the losing team scream for his death.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Beat Movement
The beat philosophy may be wrong — that is, it may be crazy itself instead of merely making use of craziness — but its symbolism is a contemporary cultural force to be reckoned with.
“World Enough Without Time” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Beauty
The beautiful has the same relation to the diminutive that the sublime has to bigness, and is closely related to the sense of the intricate and exquisite.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The progress of criticism has a good deal to do with recognizing beauty in a greater and greater variety of phenomena and situations and works of art. The ugly, in proportion, tends to become whatever violates primary concern.
“Second Variation: The Garden,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
The cult of beauty, then, is reactionary: it is continually setting up barriers to the conquest of experience by art, and limits the variety of expression in art wherever it can.
“Yeats and the Language of Symbolism” (1947), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Identity is love; difference beauty.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 77, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
When we speak of the human body as beautiful we mean a body of someone in good physical condition between about eighteen and thirty, and when Dégas expresses interest in thick-bottomed matrons squatting in hip-baths, we confuse the shock to our sense of propriety with a shock to our sense of beauty.
“Yeats and the Language of Symbolism” (1947), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
The notion that thinking the world is beautiful has actual survival value may have nothing in it, but it’s worth thinking about. Otherwise, why do we call both art and nature beautiful? It seems absurd on the face of it to apply the same term to a Mozart divertimento and some cutie in a bathing suit.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 50, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Beauty Contests
A beauty contest is a narcissistic middle-class ritual: the contestants have the immobility, the fixed smiles, the mechanical responses, the sense of remoteness, of wax mannequins in a shop window, which have much the same social function.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on Television … November 1971–March 1972” (1972), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Because
… as I have tried to show elsewhere, nothing can follow “because” except some kind of pseudo-critical moral anxiety.
“Criticism, Visible and Invisible” (1964), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Beckett, Samuel
The dramatic convention parodied in Waiting for Godot is clearly the act that killed vaudeville, the weary dialogue of two faceless figures who will say anything to put off leaving the stage.
“The Nightmare Life in Death” (1960), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
Beethoven, Ludwig van
I would like to hear the 9th as the only thing on the programme, with the Ode sung in some language I don’t understand.
“NF to HK,” 18 Apr. 1934, describing a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
The master of comedy gets little reward for not being sententious. Because what was a profound truth to Beethoven was only a platitude to Mozart, Beethoven is listened to with awestruck reverence and Mozart indulgently smiled at as charmingly superficial.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Behaviour
Behaviorism is senility. When an organism has reached its adjustment, it stops evolving, & a man who has stopped evolving in this world is still only an ape.
Entry, 2 Mar. 1953, 8, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Most of our behaviour is mechanical; that of some people wholly so. I think there is a point at which one breaks through this & forms a kernel of autonomy or free will. Total liberation completes what this starts.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 213, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Being
Now, how is Being related to God? Theologians say Being is an analogy of God, philosophers say that God is an analogy of Being.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 436, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Belief
To say “this really happened, and history doesn’t really happen” is walking a tightrope over Niagara gorge, but something like that must be what’s being asked of us.
“Notes for ‘The Dialectic of Belief and Vision’” (1983), 30, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Belief without vision is always hysterical. Because vision is itself the confirmation of belief: the hypostasis of the hoped for and the elenchos of the unseen is not and never can be the acceptance of something without evidence.
“Notes for ‘The Dialectic of Belief and Vision’” (1983), 7, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Belief is rather the creative energy that turns the illusory into the real. Such belief is neither rational nor ideological, but belongs on the other side of the imaginative.
“Spirit and Symbol,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
Just as we have a principle of economy of means in the arts, and of economy of hypotheses in the sciences, so we need a principle of economy of belief.
“The Times of the Signs” (1973), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
I think a genuine belief is an axiom of behaviour. If you want to know what a man believes you watch him, you see what he does. What he really believes will be what his actions show that he believes.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I don’t believe in anything that is to be believed: that is, I don’t trust anything that remains in the dark as an object of belief.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 162, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Only what may not have happened at all is a fit subject for belief.
Entry, Notebook 46 (1980s–90), 34, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
A belief can only be replaced by another belief, even when a godless religion is substituted for a godly one.
“The Well-Tempered Critic (II)” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth is the motto of my present job.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 203, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
As long as both imagination and belief are working properly, we can avoid the neurotic extremes of the dilettante who is so bemused by imaginative possibilities that he has no convictions, and the bigot who is so bemused by his convictions that he cannot see them as also possibilities.
“The Well-Tempered Critic (II)” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
A metaphor will be “believed,” that is, assumed as part of the framework of one’s thinking, as long as it seems emotionally convincing, and is irrefutable until it ceases to be so.
“Blake’s Bible” (2 Jun. 1987), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
The willing suspension of belief, not disbelief, is what matters.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 421, recalling Coleridge’s words about the “willing suspension of disbelief,” The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
The world of the imagination is a world of unborn or embryonic beliefs: if you believe what you read in literature, you can, quite literally, believe anything.
“Giants in Time,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
A belief is a course of action inspired by a shaping vision. This shaping vision is the opposite of idolatry. In both cases you become what you behold.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 195, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
When something is certain it ceases to be believed, even though we continue to use the word.
Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 24, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
A better way of putting the question is “If I had been there is this what I should have experienced?” It is only in these terms that belief or doubt arises, & what does rise is nearly all doubt. The doubt is of oneself rather than of the event, which, as just said, eludes the categories of doubt & belief.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 5, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
In belief as ordinarily understood, experience is divided between the involuntarily credible, or what we can’t help believing (e.g., the data of sense experience, or some of them), and the voluntarily credible, which is accepted without confirming or supporting evidence.
“Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Problems of belief are still with me: for all practical purposes “I don’t believe in God” and “I believe in no God” are interchangeable. They seem to me to be very different statements, and the agnostic-atheist distinction doesn’t exhaust the difference.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 38, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
I’m a Xn [Christian] partly faute de mieux: I see no better faith, & certainly couldn’t invent one of my own except out of Xn assumptions. But some of my other principles are: a) the less we believe the better b) nothing should be believed that has to be believed in.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 499, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Belief has to be redefined as the process of existential choice, which involves selecting a community.
Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 42, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
If there is a creative force in the world which is greater than the purely human one, we shall not find it on the level of professed belief, but only on the level of common action and social vision.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
When we consider beliefs that others hold and that we do not, our feelings are increasingly those of a sense of freedom delivered from obsession. In short, the less we “believe” in the ordinary sense the better, and one comes to distrust believing in anything that has to be believed in.
“Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Thus the artist may keep his life continuous by a belief in creativity, the businessman by a belief in productivity, the religious man by a belief in God, the politician by a belief in policy. But the more intense the immediate experience, the more obviously its context in past and future time drops away from it.
“The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
A man may go to church on Sunday morning and find himself repeating an extremely impressive statement of what he believes in, but by Monday evening he may have demonstrated that his real conception of human society is a very different one.
“Preserving Human Values” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Belonging
To participate in anything in human society means entering into a common bond of guilt, of guilt and of inevitable compromise. I am not saying that we accept the evils of what we join: I am saying that whatever we join contains evils, and that what we accept is the guilt of belonging to it.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Bereavement
In moments of despair or bereavement or horror, we find ourselves staring blankly into an unresponding emptiness, utterly frustrated by its indifference. We come from the unknown at birth, and we rejoin it at death with all our questions about it unanswered.
“To Come to Light” (1988), Northrop Frye on Religion (1999), CW, 4.
Bestsellers
A modern bestseller has only a temporary incarnation as a book between its initial appearance as a magazine serial and its ultimate appearance as a movie.
“The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Bible
The Bible is the world’s greatest work of art and therefore has primary claim to the title of God’s word.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
… the Bible (which would still be a popular book if it were not a sacred one).…
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The Bible never calls itself the Bible nor does the phrase Word of God ever mean the Bible.
Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 79, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The Bible is a structure of fiction and a structure of syntax, I think, rather than of meanings.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
If the Bible did not exist, at least as a form, it would be necessary for literary critics to invent the same kind of total and definitive verbal structure out of the fragmentary myths and legends and folk tales we have outside it.
“The Road of Excess” (1970), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
I can only point out the inner coherence of the book and the way in which if you look for guidance in life you get a great deal more than you actually bargain for.
“The Hypnotic Gaze of the Bible” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The Bible begins by showing on its first page that the reality of God manifests itself in creation, and on its last page that the same reality is manifested in a new creation in which man is a participant. He becomes a participant by being redeemed, or separated from the predatory and destructive elements acquired from his origin in nature. In between these visions of creation comes the Incarnation, which presents God and man as indissolubly locked together in a common enterprise.
“Spirit and Symbol,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
If a book is believed to originate from a source beyond the limitations of the human mind, and a benevolent source at that, one would expect it to speak the language of breakthrough, a language that would smash these structures beyond repair, and let some genuine air and light in. But that, of course, is not how anxiety operates.
“History and Myth in the Bible” (1975), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The Bible is to me the body of words through which I can see the world as a cosmos, as an order, and where I can see human nature as something redeemable, as something with a right to survive.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In the Bible there are references to a prophecy which has to be sealed up and hidden away until its time has come. That time comes when in the age of the people the gods become names for human powers that belong to us, and that we can in part recover.
“The Responsibilities of the Critic” (1976), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Yet the suggestion in it of infinite mysteries connected with logos or articulate speech is as fascinating to the literary critic in me as a flame to a moth, even if in the end it proves equally destructive.
“Teaching the Humanities Today” (1977), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Even the Bible must be shaken upside-down before it will yield all its secrets.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Bible as Literature Plus
The real reason why the Bible fascinates me as a literary critic is that its language comes out of direct experience. It’s not secondhand language.
“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Fact is objective, and fiction is a human construct. The Bible is neither. It’s something beyond both.
“The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In the Bible I think you have uniquely a book which has no outside.… In the Bible what is inside the book and what it points to outside the book have become identified. The Bible is not confined by what we usually call the imaginative, which I sometimes call the hypothetical.
”Maintaining Freedom in Paradise” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW 24.
The Bible to me is not a structure of doctrine, not a structure of propositions, but a collection of stories making up one single story, and that’s the interrelationship of God and man. You can understand the importance of that interpenetration without necessarily believing in God.
“Canadian and American Values” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… it is, in short, a work of literature plus. The present book attempts to explain once more what that “plus” is, why the beginning of the response to the Bible must be a literary response, and why, within the Bible itself, all the values connected with the term “truth” can be reached only by passing through myth and metaphor.
“Introduction” (1990), Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
I’m trying to distinguish the sacred book, the Bible, from secular literature. That literature is written in the imaginative language of myth and metaphor, but it doesn’t provide a model to adopt as a way of life, whereas the object of the writers of the Gospels writing about Jesus was the imitation of Christ, in the sense that they were telling a story just as the writers of literature tell a story. But the particular story they told was the one that they wanted to make a model of the life of the person reading it.
“Cultural Identity in Canada” (1990), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Works of literature aren’t on a par with the Bible: they form models for the central understanding of the Bible. One has to see the Bible as though it were literary before one can pass beyond the literary.
“Notes for ‘The Dialectic of Belief and Vision’” (1983), 22, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
It’s just nonsense to apply evaluation to the Bible, and that’s because it keeps continually breaking out of the category of literature.
“Getting the Order Right” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Nothing happens in the Bible except verbal events, but it’s the interplay among those verbal events in which the truth emerges. Afterwards it is inexhaustible.
“Archetype and History” (1986), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The Bible is the only place in our tradition I know where one can get a view of literature that goes beyond literature, and so establishes its relative finiteness, and yet includes all the elements of literature. In this age of posts and metas, I can find nothing in our cultural tradition except the Bible that really illustrates the metaliterary.
“Auguries of Experience” (1987), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
One thinks more particularly of the Bible, which is one long folk tale from beginning to end, and the most primitive and popular book in the world.
“Blake after Two Centuries” (1957), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
Perhaps our conclusion will be that the Bible is the only work of literature that ever succeeded in getting beyond literature. I am not at this point discussing the Bible’s truth or reality, only the language in which that truth or reality is being presented to us. That that language is mythical seems to me unanswerable.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 61, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
If the Word is the beginning, it is the end too, and the Omega as well as the Alpha, and what this principle indicates is that to receive the revelation of the Bible we must examine the total verbal structure of the Bible.
“The Mythical Approach to Creation” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The Bible suggests that there is a structure beyond the hypothetical.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 68, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
With such a book as the Bible, which has had so tremendous a role to play in our cultural tradition, all value judgments are palpably absurd and futile.
“Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
The Bible is a colossal literary tour de force, whatever “more” it is, and the canonical instinct is so sure, in the large view, as to suggest a direct intervention by God. I don’t see this in the Koran, & I don’t see how anybody could see it in the Koran. But what does this lead to? Apparently to the reflection that God is exactly like me: in a world howling with tyranny and misery all he cares about is getting his damn book finished.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 661, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The function of the Bible is to give us knowledge of myth (and metaphor). Not experience: that’s the reader’s response. The Bible guides and girds the experience: unorganized mythical experience is hysteria or insanity.
Entry, Notebook 11b (late 1980), 22, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
If we insist that the Bible is “more” than a work of literature, we ought at least to stick to the word “more,” and try to see what it means.
“Language II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
To say that the Bible is “more” than a work of literature is merely to say that other methods of approaching it are possible.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Bible as Mythology
To me the Bible is a single and definitive myth.
“Breakthrough” (1967), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The Bible teaches the knowledge of myth: the poets teach the experience of it.
Entry, Notebook 11b (late 1980), 26, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
To me the Bible, though not a work of literature, is none the less written in the literary language of myth and metaphor throughout, and therefore its “literal” meaning is its poetic and imaginative meaning, whatever other kinds of meaning may be found in it.
“Preface to Essays Translated into Russian” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
If we take the Bible as a key to mythology, instead of taking mythology in general as a key to the Bible, we should at least have a definite starting point, wherever we end.
“Typology I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
When we do look into it, we find that the sense of unified continuity is what the Bible has as a work of fiction, as a definitive myth extending over time and space, over invisible and visible orders of reality, and with a parabolic dramatic structure of which the five acts are creation, fall, exile, redemption, and restoration.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
… and for me the two statements, The Bible tells a story, and, The Bible is a myth, are essentially the same statement.
“Myth I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
The Bible is for the literary critic the best place to study the mythological framework that Western culture has inherited.
“Literature and Society” (1968), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
At this point the word mythos begins to turn into the word “myth,” and we have to face the possibility that the entire Bible has to be read in the same way that most of us now read the story of Noah’s ark.
“History and Myth in the Bible” (1975), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
As there is no boundary line, it follows that nothing in the Bible which may be historically accurate is there because it is historically accurate.
“Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
A genuine higher criticism of the Bible, therefore, would be a synthesizing process which would start with the assumption that the Bible is a definitive myth, a single archetypal structure extending from creation to apocalypse.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
… The Great Code tried to show, by realizing that the Bible’s roots are not in doctrine, which is a structure of secondary concern, nor in history, which is the record of it, but in the creative imagination, which from palaeolithic times has been the central force driving humanity from mere survival into life more abundantly.
“Words with Power: Draft Introduction” (before 1990), 6, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Bible as Source of Symbolism
The Bible to Blake was really the Magna Carta of the human imagination.
“William Blake: Prophet of the New Age” (1987), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In our culture, the Bible is the work which provides the fundamental mythical context for the metaphorical functions of language, for the stories which we tell ourselves. The Bible helps us to rediscover ourselves, to quest for and discover our individual and collective identities.
“Identity and Myth” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The Bible is therefore the archetype of Western culture, and the Bible, with its derivatives, provides the basis for most of our major art: for Dante, Milton, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bach, the great cathedrals, and so on.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
In other words, it’s the myth of the Bible that should be the basis of literary training, its imaginative survey of the human situation which is so broad and comprehensive that everything else finds its place inside it.
“Verticals of Adam,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
To grow up in ignorance of what is in the Bible or Homer is as crippling to the imagination as being deprived of the multiplication table.
“The Developing Imagination” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
A student of English literature who doesn’t know the Bible doesn’t know what is going on in English literature.
“Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
My chairman said the only thing to do was to draft a course in the English Bible and teach it. He said, “How do you expect to teach Milton to students who don’t know a Philistine from a Pharisee?”
I said, “Perhaps in the kind of society they are going into, that particular distinction won’t be important to them.” But I didn’t often talk like that to my chairman, except in moments of stress, so I drafted the course and I’m still teaching it.
“The Meaning of Recreation: Humanism in Society” (1979), on teaching Milton to undergraduates under department chairman John Robins in the late 1930s, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
… the Bible forms the lowest stratum in the teaching of literature. It should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind, where everything that comes along later can settle on it.
“Verticals of Adam,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Bible as Unity
In our culture the central sacred book is the Christian Bible, which is also probably the most systematically constructed sacred book in the world.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Everything that could possibly go wrong with a book has gone wrong with the Bible at some stage or other in its history. So the Bible, therefore, is a unity which has passed beyond unity.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
This poetic unity is there: how it got there will doubtless always be something of a mystery. It is not a product of history, or authorship, or editing, or of any such conception as “inspiration,” a word which may assert something but explains nothing. We can only call it a mystery of canonicity, and let it go for the time being, holding in the meantime to our central principle: the Bible is not a work of literature, but its literal meaning is its mythical and metaphorical meaning.
“Spirit and Symbol,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
The curious paradox in the construction of the Bible. It’s all bits & pieces, a mosaic of discontinuous concerned prose; yet it’s a unity too. Inspiration seems to apply to the greatest unity & the greatest editorial diversity. There’s one spirit, obviously, but a vast number of minds. So while the shape & unity of the whole canon is important, we shouldn’t reduce the variety to unity, but see them both as interpenetrating.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 259, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The New Testament has the same paradoxical relation to the Old that a preface has to a book: it’s written later, but belongs logically earlier (“before Abraham was, I am”).
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 41, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
There isn’t a page of the Bible where the editing process is not utterly obvious.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The Bible is, first of all — to use a word no less accurate for being a fashionable term — a mosaic: a pattern of commandments, aphorisms, epigrams, proverbs, parables, riddles, pericopes, parallel couplets, formulaic phrases, folk tales, oracles, epiphanies, Gattungen, Loggia, bits of occasional verse, marginal glosses, legends, snippets from historical documents, laws, letters, sermons, hymns, ecstatic visions, rituals, fables, genealogical lists, and so on almost indefinitely.
“Language II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
… if the Bible is to be regarded as “inspired” in any sense, sacred or secular, the editing and conflating and redacting and splicing and glossing and expurgating processes all have to be taken as inspired too.
“Language II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
It is historically impossible that the Bible could have achieved such a unity of structure and imagery, over such a variety of periods and authors. But as the unity is there, so much the worse for history.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 512, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Yes, it’s utterly impossible to understand a word of the New Testament without having the Old.
“The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Bilingualism
I suppose no reasonable Canadian denies the extraordinary advantages of a bilingual culture, despite all the complaints one may hear in English Canada about “shoving all that French down our throats,” though those who use such phrases are unlikely to have much French in their throats.
“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Biography
The first and most striking unit of poetry larger than the individual poem is the total work of the man who wrote the poem.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
There are poets — and they include Shakespeare — who seem to have pursued a policy of keeping their lives away from their readers. Human nature being what it is, it is precisely such poets who are most eagerly read for biographical allusions.
“Emily Dickinson” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Birney, Earle
This is a book for those interested in Canadian poetry to buy and for those interested in complaining that we haven’t got any to ignore.
“Canadian Poets: Earle Birney” (1942), reviewing Birney’s volume David, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
He has a very simple & honest mind, & tends to be attracted by the simplified clarity of extreme positions. Helps him as a poet, maybe.
Entry, 20 Jul. 1942, 26, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Birth
We all belong to something long before we are anything. We were predestined to be mid-twentieth-century middle-class North Americans before we escaped from the womb.
“Criticism as Education” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Death is not the opposite of life; death is the opposite of birth.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 144, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
For death, the Gospel tells us, is the last of our new beginnings: it is not the opposite of life, but only the opposite of birth, until we reach it, when it becomes birth, and in our last and greatest act of renunciation we find that all things have been made anew.
“Sermon in Merton College Chapel” (1970), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
… every new birth provokes the return of an avenging death.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Bishop, Elizabeth
She spent half her time in Nova Scotia, so much so that one or two Americans suggested Canadians really ought to make her Canada’s national poet. I think it was a bit of a problem for her too to decide whether she was Canadian or American, and she finally solved the problem by going to live in Brazil.
“Autobiographical Reflections: Speech at Moncton’s Centennial Celebration” (1990), referring to the American poet who was raised in the Maritimes, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Black Culture
If the viewer is black and sees a white society gorging itself on luxuries and privileges, the results can be explosive.
“Communications” (1970), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Black Mass
But the black mass seems to me an extremely literary notion and a rather second-rate literary notion. Aleister Crowley is a good example of the level it operates on.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Blake, William
I think I’ve learned everything I know from Blake. Blake was practically the only man of his time who realized that we all live inside a big mythical and metaphorical framework of images, and that unless we become aware of that we can never change anything of the social condition — we just keep on responding to the same conditioning. That was where I derived the notion that literature, as a whole, made sense.
“The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
What Blake demonstrates is the sanity of genius and the madness of the commonplace mind, and it is here that he has something very apposite to say to the twentieth century, with its interest in the arts of neurosis and the politics of paranoia.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Blake does not exactly say that the Bible is a work of art: he says “The Old & New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.” The Bible tells the artist what the function of art is and what his creative powers are trying to accomplish.
“Blake’s Treatment of the Archetype” (1950), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
If the Prophecies are normal poems, or at least a normal expression of poetic genius, and if Blake nevertheless meant to teach some system by them, that system could only be something connected with the principles of poetic thought. Blake’s “message,” then, is not simply his message, nor is it an extraliterary message. What he is trying to say is what he thinks poetry is trying to say: the imaginative content implied by the existence of an imaginative form of language. I finished my book in the full conviction that learning to read Blake was a step, and for me a necessary step, in learning to read poetry, and to write criticism.
“The Keys to the Gates” (1966), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
… the titles of the sets of aphorisms which introduce Blake’s canon, “There is No Natural Religion” and “All Religions are One,” contain the whole of his thought if they are understood simultaneously.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Only the Blake — I know Blake as no man has ever known him — of that I’m quite sure. But I lack so woefully in the way of subtlety.
“NF to HK,” 3 May 1935, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Blake was the first poet in English literature, and so far as I know the first person in the modern world, to realize that the traditional authoritarian cosmos had had it, that it no longer appealed to the intelligence or the imagination, and would have to be replaced by another model.
“Blake’s Biblical Illustrations” (1983), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
I was originally attracted to him because he was, so far as I knew and still know, the first person in the modern world to see the events of his day in their mythical and imaginative context.
“Third Variation: The Cave,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
The conclusion for Blake, and the key to much of his symbolism, is that the fall of man and the creation of the physical world were the same event.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Blake’s Prophetic Books represent one of the few successful efforts to tackle conversational rhythm in verse — so successful that many critics are still wondering if they are “real poetry.”
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The question in Blake’s Tyger means: can we actually think of the world of the tiger as a created order?
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 87, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Whatever other qualities Blake may have had or lacked, he certainly had courage and simplicity. Whatever other qualities our own age may have or lack, it is certainly an age of fearfulness and complexity. And every age learns most from those who most directly confront it.
“Blake after Two Centuries” (1957), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
The only way to crack his code was to take him away from all the mystical and occult traditions that people had associated him with and put him squarely in English literature, which is where he belonged. That was really what took me so long to do — to see what he was driving at and to begin to realize that what he meant was fundamentally what he kept saying he meant.
“Getting the Order Right” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Read Blake or go to hell: that’s my message to the modern world.
“NF to HK,” 23 Apr. 1935, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Blavatsky, H.P.
Yet The Secret Doctrine, whatever else it is, is a very remarkable essay on the morphology of symbols, and the charlatanism of its author is less a reflection on her than on the age that compelled her to express herself in such devious ways.
“Yeats and the Language of Symbolism” (1947), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Works based on an interconnection of oracular poetry and prose commentary are usually found in or near the area of religion (even Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine takes this form).
“The Well-Tempered Critic (II)” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
… no reputable scientist has had the influence on the poetry of the last century that Swedenborg or Blavatsky has had.
“New Directions from Old” (1960), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
If Blake had told us that he had gone to visit the wise men of the East and had learned from them the doctrines which he has set down in his poems, we should know what he meant, or ought to by now. When Madame Blavatsky tells us the same thing we are not sure what she means.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Body
It also leaves the human mind as a function of the body, for man has received his body from nature, and his mind is his unique instrument for achieving a harmonious and comfortable adjustment to nature.
“Trends in Modern Culture” (1952), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I think as long as the human body has a top and a bottom it’s likely to be read into the symbolism of the mythological universe that man lives in.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Boehme, Jakob
It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Books
The book qua book is not linear: we follow a line while we are reading it, but the book itself is a stationary visual focus of a community.
“The Search for Acceptable Words” (1973), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
It seems to me that the printed book, with its established text and its mechanically accurate reproduction, is the inevitable form of the verbal classic or model, in whatever age it is produced.
“Comment” (1961), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
It is a common academic failing to dream of writing the perfect book, and then, because no achievement can reach perfection, not writing it.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
… the book individualizes its audience.…
“Communications” (1970), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
The book happens to be the most efficient technological instrument that the human mind has ever devised, and consequently it will always be here, at the centre of our technology, no matter what else we do.
“Back to the Garden” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It’s the world’s most patient medium, for one thing. It doesn’t go away. It comes back with exactly the same message no matter how often you consult it.
“The Scholar in Society” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… nobody believes that a book is an object: it’s a focus of verbal energy.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 176, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
The psychological effect of studying such a work as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind in paperback seems to me to be quite different from studying the same book in a hard cover. And by dramatizing the book as intellectual tool, the paperback also dramatized the extraordinary effectiveness of the book, the fact that, familiar and unobtrusive as it is, the book is one of the most efficient technological instruments ever developed in human history.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Now that society, after some years of reeling from the impact of television, is beginning to bring it under control, we can see more clearly that the book is the chief technological device that makes democracy and the open society continuously possible.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2001), CW, 11.
But the book is actually a companion in dialogue: it helps to structure and make sense of the flood of automatic gabble that keeps rolling through the mind. This interior monologue, as it is called, never relates to other people, however often it is poured over them. Further, a book stays where it is, and does not vanish into ether or the garbage bin like the mass media.
“Preface to On Education” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
So the book becomes the focus of a community, as more and more people read it and are affected by it. It moves in the opposite direction from the introversion of what has been well called “the lonely crowd,” where no one can communicate with his neighbour because he is too close to him mentally to have anything to say.
“Preface to On Education” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Good books may instruct, but bad ones are more likely to inspire.
“Auguries of Experience” (1987), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
What we’d never see except in a book is often what we go to books to find.
“The Keys to Dreamland,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
The document is also the focus of a community, the community of readers, and while this community may be restricted to one group for centuries, its natural tendency is to expand over the community as a whole. Thus it is only writing that makes democracy technically possible.
“Communications” (1970), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
It is necessary for one deeply interested in books to acquire the detachment from one’s reading that ordinary people have who are not much interested in them: to have something of their massive indifference which is not blown about by every wind of doctrine.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), Northrop Frye Newsletter, Fall 2000.
The success of a book that takes no risks is not worth achieving.
Entry, Notebook 47 (1989–90), 17, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
The second-hand bookshop however represents something irreplaceable in one’s literary experience, and it is bound to revive sooner or later, if only as an aspect of the junk-antique business.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2001), CW, 11.
There are signs that in America and Britain, as in France, the paperbound book will become the salvation of the impoverished intellectual.
“The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I have finished eleven books so far, but I have never finished any of them with the sense that I had succeeded or that I had achieved anything. I always finish them with a sense that they were simply being abandoned.…
“The Question of ‘Success’” (1967), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
A good book must delight and it must instruct. Anyone who desires to quarrel with or qualify that statement should take up some other occupation.
“On Book Reviewing” (1949), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Borduas, Paul-Émile
For Borduas, the human mind contained an it as well as an I or ego, and this It was what he felt needed expression.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Boredom
I know it’s a difficult thing, but the great test of maturity is knowing when one is bored. I think that people are really bored out of their minds by what they get from the news media.
“The Great Test of Maturity” (1986), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
A man is bored because he bores himself.
“Leisure and Boredom” (1963), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Borges, Jorge Luis
One of the wisest and shrewdest men of our time, the Argentine writer Borges, has remarked that literature not only begins in a mythology but also ends in one.
“Tradition and Change in the Theory of Criticism” (1969), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Boston
When I was growing up in the Maritime Provinces during the [1920s], there was a strong political loyalty to Confederation, but an even stronger sense that Boston was our real capital, and that the Maritimes formed the periphery of New England, or what was often called “the Boston states.”
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Bourgeois
The word “bourgeois” is practically synonymous with creative man: the middle class has produced culture and civilization alike.
Entry, Notebook 31 (late 1946–50), 8, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
The implication, which I’ve always accepted, is that God’s aim is to be a bourgeois, the middle class of the middle world, which means after upper & lower unrealities have vanished.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 578, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
What I am expounding may be called a bourgeois liberal view, which throughout my lifetime has never been regarded as an “advanced” view. But it may begin to look more central with the repudiation of Marxism in Marxist countries, the growing uneasiness with the anti-intellectualism in American life, and the steadily decreasing dividends of terrorism in Third World Countries.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
General attitude toward life: That of a liberal bourgeois intellectual, which I consider the flower of humanity.
“Chatelaine’s Celebrity I.D.” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye, CW, 24.
Breath
Breathing is the most primary of all concerns, the act marking the transition from the embryo to the baby, and our most continuous activity thereafter. We can go for days without food, or for a lifetime without sex, but ten minutes without breathing and we “expire.”
“Spirit and Symbol,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
British Empire
There is a great deal to be said for the British Commonwealth, but everything connected with the British Empire, from the Indian question to the defence of Singapore & Hong Kong, is entirely vicious.
Entry, Notebook 42a (1942–44), 5, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
Broadcasting
I think the combination of what are called private broadcasters and of nationally subsidized broadcasting is a rather healthy thing for a country.
“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Browning, Robert
At the end, when English becomes a long-dead language, it is not difficult to imagine a professor in the remote future, who does not altogether understand the true genius of our tongue, saying: “This man was the greatest of all, for the qualities of the other great ones are combined and blended in him.”
“Robert Browning: An Abstract Study” (1932–33), Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938 (1997), CW, 3.
Buddhism
Xy [Christianity] stands for the triumph over death; Buddhism for the triumph over birth. The latter is a Thanatos vision because death is the only visible symbol of Nirvana, just as life after death, or rebirth, is the only visible symbol of heaven.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 420, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
The Buddhists keep saying, with tremendous and unending prolixity, that the subject-object duality is horseshit. Okay, it’s horseshit: what’s so infernally difficult about it. The fact that it’s so difficult to overcome derives from the fact that the metaphorical kernel of subject & object is the contrast of life & death. The person from whom that’s disappeared really is a sage.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 109, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Buddha promises an unborn world; Jesus a paradise or unfallen world.
Entry, Notebook 6 (1967–68), 2, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Bultmann, Rudolf
I don’t understand the twentieth-century attraction for these antiseptic sounding words beginning with “de.” I don’t know why Bultmann speaks of demythologizing the Bible when he means remythologizing it. And I don’t understand in literary criticism why Derrida speaks of deconstruction when what he means is reconstruction. But that’s just original sin.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Bureaucracy
I think the only government of which the human race is capable is more or less efficient or corrupt bureaucracy. The degrees of efficiency and corruption are what make the difference.
“Towards an Oral History of the University of Toronto” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The work of most middle-class people today consists mainly in the polluting of paper, or what is known as filling out forms.
“The Responsibilities of the Critic” (1976), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Burton, Robert
That is, having written one of the most delightful books in the language, he knows that reading that book would be a much better cure for melancholy than most of the remedies he prescribes.
“Rencontre: The General Editor’s Introduction” (1960s), discussing the “ethical tradition of rhetorical prose” of Anatomy of Melancholy, Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Byron, Lord
The main appeal of Byron’s poetry is in the fact that it is Byron’s.
“Lord Byron” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Byzantium
You have to sail to Byzantium as well as be there.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 520, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
