The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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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