The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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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“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.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