The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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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“ethical tradition of rhetorical prose” of Anatomy of Melancholy, Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.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.
C
C.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