HAL 9000
In the Clarke-Kubrick movie 2001, the computer HAL suddenly develops an autonomous will, a power of using its intelligence for its own ends. That makes HAL a nightmare, of course, but it also makes him a fellow-creature: he’s now a he and not an it, and the depiction of his gradual destruction had a genuine pathos.
Entry, Notes 54.2 (1982–1991), 2, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Haliburton, Thomas Chandler
… and it’s more sensible to appreciate the good writer we have than to regret the great writer we might possibly have had.
“Haliburton: Mask and Ego” (1962), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Hallucinations
It seems to me that at a certain point of intensity what literature conveys is a sense of a controlled hallucination. That is, in literature things are not really seen until they become not actual hallucinations, because that would merely substitute a subjective experience for an objective one, but a controlled hallucination, where things are seen with a kind of intensity with which they are not seen in ordinary experience.
“Literature as Therapy” (1989), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
The poem or painting is in some respects a “hallucination”: it is summoned up out of the artist’s mind and imposed on us, and is allied to delirium tremens or pretending that one is Napoleon.
“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Hamlet
Hamlet is not about Hamlet at all, but about a situation into which Hamlet fits, and all attempts to treat the play as though it were primarily a character study of Hamlet destroy the symmetry of the play.
Entry, 31 Dec. 1948, 12, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Happiness
The American Constitution talks about the pursuit of happiness, but that’s bad grammar. You can’t pursue happiness: you pursue the course of your life and if you’re lucky it may produce happiness from time to time.
“Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason” (1982), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
That’s why the pursuit of happiness is, in itself, regressive. In thought it leads to the state of mind many theosophists are in, of confusing profound thoughts with pleasure at the idea of having profound thoughts.
Entry, 4 Jan. 1949, 30, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The basis of happiness is a sense of freedom or unimpeded movement in society, a detachment that does not withdraw; and the basis of that sense of independence is consciousness.
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.
Harris, Lawren
Nothing he paints ever seems to look at us.
“The Pursuit of Form” (1948), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Harron, Don
Maybe he’s just too intelligent to be a good actor: that is, there’s too solid a core of his own personality.
Entry, 23 March 1952, 199, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Hatred
I don’t share anti-Semitism, & feel that way about anti-Semites. But I do feel that way about Roman Catholics, and discover from that that a hatred is as objective as a headache: it’s a disease one may not ever care to have but continues to be afflicted with.
Entry, Notebook 42b: Notes I (1942–44), 29, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Haydn, Franz Joseph
If I had such a thing as a favourite composer, it would be Haydn. I think it’s Haydn anyway.
Entry, Notebook 5 (1935–42), 15, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Healing
All healing is casting out the devils of nature. And the psyche we acquire from nature.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–1991), 746, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Health
It is easier to believe that a society which has been “sick” for thousands of years will get well immediately than to believe that we shall come to an immediate agreement on what constitutes health.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Heart
Besides, the world, unlike nature, always betrays the heart that loves her.
“The Critical Discipline” (1960), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
His moral and social values are where those of most sensible people are, and where the heart usually is in the body, a little left of centre.
“Preface and Introduction to Pratt’s Poetry” (1958), referring to E.J. Pratt, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Heaven
Heaven exists for me, but I always try to think of it as really the actualization of something present, rather than something to be prepared for in the future.
“On The Great Code (II)” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Heaven is this world as it appears to the awakened imagination.…
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
I suppose heaven could be defined as the gaining of the ability to explore the underground caverns of time at will.
Entry, 24 Jan. 1949, 117, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Perhaps the myth of heaven as a place where harp playing is a compulsory cultural accomplishment will come true, and the theology and metaphysics of the future will be understood musically rather than verbally.
“Speculation and Concern” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Heaven & Hell
Hell is the world created by man, and heaven, or at least the way to it, is the world created through man by God.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
When you have a myth like a paradise lost in the past or a hell threatening you in the future, you have myths which are distorted by the anxieties of time. The great strength of myth is that it really has no past or future, everything is in the present tense.
“Nature and Civilization” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The reality of hell is the fact that we put it there, and the unreality of paradise is that we failed to put it there. If you transpose these past and future things into the present tense you have the genuine myth.
“Nature and Civilization” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Hebraism
I think that if Hellenism can come to symbolize a love of beauty, and Hebraism a moral energy, the cultural heritage of the English-speaking nations can also come to symbolize a sense of individual freedom which is one of the permanent achievements of human history, and will remain so however dark and troubled our future may become.
“The Developing Imagination” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Hebrew Language
Hebrew and Greek are, to use a useful French distinction, only the langue of the Bible; the langage is something else again.
“The Meaning of Recreation: Humanism in Society” (1979), referring to the usage of French theorist Ferdinand de Saussure, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Hell
Hell doesn’t “exist,” but it’s the world we have been making and ought to stop making. It’s the pure past, the bottom of God’s revelation to Job.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 695, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Hell is ideological crap; nothingness is the true myth.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 495, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Hell is often supposed to be an after-death state created by God to which people are eternally tortured for finite offences. But this doctrine is merely one more example of the depravity of the human mind that thought it up. Man alone is responsible for hell, and much as he would like to pursue his cruelties beyond the grave, he is blocked from doing so.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The teaching of hell fire is undoubtedly bad, yet it has some psychological point: it brings one face to face with one of the limits of the human mind, & instils a fear which often acts as a spur to the imagination that without it might get nowhere.
Entry, 6 Feb. 1949, 162, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Here & Now
Nothing in Jesus’ teaching seems to have been more difficult for his followers to grasp than his principle of the hereness of here.
“The Journey as Metaphor” (1985), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Heritage
Our cultural heritage, then, is our real and repressed social past, not the past of historical record but the great dreams of the arts, which keep recurring to haunt us with a sense of how little we know of the real dimensions of our own experiences.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Heroes
The true hero is the man who, whether as thinker, fighter, artist, martyr, or ordinary worker, helps in achieving the apocalyptic vision of art; and an act is anything that has a real relation to that achievement.
“Blake’s Treatment of the Archetype” (1950), expressing Blake’s view, Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
The hero’s act has thrown a switch in a larger machine than his own life, or even his own society.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The tragic hero is very great as compared with us, but there is something else, something on the side of him opposite the audience, compared to which he is small.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Myths of gods emerge into legends of heroes; legends of heroes merge into plots of tragedies and comedies; plots of tragedies and comedies merge into plots of more or less realistic fiction.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
… there is the association between the heroic and the demonic in that the demonic is the root of the heroic.
“On Evil” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Heroism
The Christian teaching, as I understand it, is that the greatest form of heroism expresses itself in endurance and in resisting evil rather than in engaging oneself in a destructive activity.
“On Evil” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Man tends to admire that: Satan is usually man’s model when man tries to be heroic, and it’s this admiration for Satan that produces all our wars and all our destructive heroes.
“The Writer as Prophet: Milton, Blake, Swift, Shaw” (1950), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
The conventional hero has always been ready to die if necessary; the heroism of today must be in the form of a readiness to survive.
“To the Class of ’62 at Queen’s” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Hierarchy
Order without hierarchy, because hierarchy creates a limited order.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), identifying “a principle of mine,” Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Hippie Movement
In adolescence particularly there are strong pressures toward introversion on the one hand, and rigid conformity to group action on the other. Both of these, as we saw in the hippie movement of a few years ago, tend to make a fetish of inarticulateness.
“Teaching the Humanities Today” (1977), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
For many people the hippie movement is something to drop into and out of.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
A few years ago it was they who led the cult of doing one’s own thing, but now they are turning increasingly to communes and social settlements, rather like the Utopian projects of the nineteenth century.
“The Quality of Life in the ’70s” (1971), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Historians
The ideal historian, who has finally got rid of all passion, pride and prejudice, doesn’t exist, and if he did exist he’d be the Recording Angel.
“Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘The Irony of American History,’ and Herbert Butterfield, ‘History and Human Relations,’” (1952–53), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
We notice that when a historian’s scheme gets to a certain point of comprehensiveness it becomes mythical in shape, and so approaches the poetic in its structure.
“New Directions from Old” (1960), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
I think it is obvious that anybody teaching history at a university here today is going to be a middle-class, twentieth-century Canadian. This gives him a position, a stance, a perspective on things which would not be that of somebody teaching in Indonesia or somebody teaching in the nineteenth century.
“The Only Genuine Revolution” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Here again what is of primary importance is the quality of our historical imagination, the ability, if I may try to express something very difficult to express, to see things, not merely as objects confronting us, but as growing in time, as having come out of our own past and moving towards our own future.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
History is diachronic but history-writing is synchronic: it selects, rejects, censors, condenses & displaces just as the dream does.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 303, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
History
The record of human history is so unutterably foul and never shows you a successful bid for freedom or dignity that isn’t instantly smothered by a new kind of tyranny.
“Back to the Garden” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
When I was young, George VI was the Emperor of India, and Hitler ruled an empire from Norway to Baghdad. All that has vanished into nothingness. That says to me that history is a process of continuing dissolution, and that the things that survive are the creative and the imaginative products.
“Canadian and American Values” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I think that probably every cycle is just a failed spiral, and that history and nature collapse into cycles because they are too lazy to start again at another level.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The lesson of history, that there is nothing new under the sun and that we solve all problems simply by surviving them, might be rather discouraging to young people.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission … November 1971–March 1972” (1972), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
… and history, which is essentially the actualizing of memory.
“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… a linear chronicle is a wild fairy tale in which the fate of an empire hangs on the shape of a beauty’s nose, or the murder of a noble moron touches off a world war.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
A strong and prosperous nation does not take kindly to a philosophy of history. It needs no great white hope in the future, nor promise in the past; it lives in the pure present as a causal agent, not as an actor in a larger drama.
“The Augustinian Interpretation of History” (1935–36), Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938 (1997), CW, 3.
Besides, history usually has to be arranged a good deal before it will fit the parable form, and, in general, historical parables are to history much what bestiaries are to zoology.
“History and Myth in the Bible” (1975), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
History begins as chronicle: history in the proper sense begins when chronicle is realized to be the content or raw material of history.
“Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
History, Canadian
The central fact of Canadian history: the rejection of the American revolution.
“Address, Royal Society of Canada, 11 June 1956,” Studia Varia, No. 24, 1957.
It has been said that those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it: this means very little, because we are all in the position of voters in a Canadian election, condemned to repeat history anyway whether we learn it or not. But those who refuse to confront their own real past, in whatever form, are condemning themselves to die without having been born.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
When we don’t think of Canadian history as dull we think of it as theatrical. We think of it as a pageant of canoes and furs and tortures. And, when we think of it as a pageant, of course, we put it at a distance from us, and make it unreal.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
History, Natural
If you are studying natural history, no matter how fascinated you may be by anything that has eight legs, you can’t just lump together an octopus and a spider and a string quartet.
“Sir James Frazer” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
History & Myth
Myth is the narrative shape of history, as in “Decline and Fall.”
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 63, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
In a sense the historical is the opposite of the mythical, and to tell a historian that what gives shape to his book is a myth would sound to him vaguely insulting.
“New Directions from Old” (1960), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.
“Typology II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
A more traditional language would say that myth redeems history: assigns it to its real place in the human panorama.
“Myth I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
History itself is designed to record events, or, as we may say, to provide a primary verbal imitation of events. But it also, unconsciously perhaps, illustrates and provides examples for the poetic vision.
“The Road of Excess” (1970), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
The poet finds increasingly that he can deal with history only to the extent that history supplies him with, or affords a pretext for, the comic, tragic, romantic, or ironic myths that he actually uses.
“New Directions from Old” (1960), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
The climb up the ladder from the surface of this earth is a climb out of history. The climb up from the subterranean world to the surface of this one is a climb into history: its type is the Exodus, the beginning of the history of Israel, and its antitype the Resurrection.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 452, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The point is not that myth falsifies history, but that history falsifies primary concern. The “overthought” is the ideological content, or what is, more or less, being “said.” The “underthought” is the progression of metaphors that express the primary concerns.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 511, employing G.M. Hopkins’s terms for thought, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Anyway, history has no shape except what it derives from myth.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 167, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Similarly you never get history in literature: you get virtual history, history assimilated to myth.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 286, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
For anything with a history that history is part of the context which determines meaning. Hence the descent of a literary work from a mythical structure is part of its critical interpretation. For anything with a telos or direction of development that telos is similarly part of the context and the meaning.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 2, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
The basis of myth is the repeating cycle of knowledge, with nothing new under the sun; the basis of history is the unique experience, which means there isn’t any shape to history except what myth gives it. Nor is there any experience to myth except what it gets from history.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 172, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
History-experience-unique vs. Myth-insight-repetitive.
Entry, Notebook 46 (1980s–90), 28, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
As time goes on, and historical tradition becomes more tenuous, only the events with conventional poetic associations can carry the thrilling magic of a great name.
“Nature and Homer” (1958), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Hitler, Adolf
Hearing Hitler’s 1939 speeches was a terrifying & hideous experience: Churchill, too, gave a sense of archaic greatness. True, all the visual effects of movies and photography helped build up Hitler; but I wonder if he could have survived television. For in television you can turn the sound off, & that would reduce Hitler to Charlie Chaplin in no time.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 166, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
The only mark of real greatness in Hitler was the seriousness with which he accepted his Antichrist role, his pedantic insistence that even a child saying grace at meals should thank his Führer for his bread.
“The Eternal Tramp” (1947), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Hockey
Watching a hockey game is not directly a spectator sport, because anyone interested enough in hockey to watch a game knows how the game is played, & through that knowledge can see much more of what is going on, with or without a commentator, than the players.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 110, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Holidays
Curious how much holidaying consists of running away from holy days.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 675, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Holomyth
What I then started to look for was not a monomyth but a holomyth, a map of the verbal imagination that would provide a context for individual works. I think the Bible comes closer to indicating what such a holomyth would be like than any other work in our culture.
Entry, Notes 52 (1982–90), 620, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Homosexuality
I suppose Christianity belongs primarily to the onward and upward group. Its founder, apparently, was a homosexual with a beloved disciple and a mother fixation so intense that he even insisted his mother was a virgin. Or somebody did.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 339, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Honesty
The only person who is honest is the person who is consistently honest, and what is true of the moral life is true of the intellectual life as well.
“Education and the Rejection of Reality” (1971), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Hope
Hope springs eternal: unfortunately it usually springs prematurely.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
If faith is the substance or hypostatsis of hope, does that mean that literature as a whole is an expression of hope? Or that polytheism is?
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 89, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Here the virtue is hope rather than faith, and the opposite of hope is not doubt, but despair. Again, despair is not the enemy of hope but the dialectical complement of hope, the thing that hope must fight against if it’s to attain its reality.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It’s one thing to believe in God, but nobody can believe in Godot. He isn’t there. He will never come. I would say that the alternative to this kind of hope is a genuine hope, which I should locate in the present rather than in the future, and which takes a form of realization rather than expectation.
“Style and Image in the Twentieth Century” (1967), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Hope without love is ineffectual, just as faith without love is intolerant. But hope is what divides those who see the leap in the dark as the end of things from those who see it also as a new beginning.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Humanism
The humanist ideal offered a “liberal” education to those who were economically liberated: for it, the study of the greatest achievements of humanity provided the only genuine vision of freedom that society possessed.
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.
I referred above to the humanist tradition in education, a form of education based primarily on literature. The strength of humanism lay in its exploitation of a central fact about literature: that the arts do not, like the sciences, evolve and improve, but revolve around classics or models.
“The Developing Imagination” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
As long as man lives in the world, he will need the perspective and attitude of the scientist; but to the extent that he has created the world he lives in, feels responsible for it and has a concern for its destiny, which is also his own destiny, he will need the perspective and attitude of the humanist.
“Speculation and Concern” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Everything a humanist most values comes out of some loophole or anomaly in the social order.
“Preface to On Education” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The professional humanist hardly exists; if I am a humanist, I’m one in virtue of my interests & social attitudes, not my job.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 147, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Humanities
In short, the study of literature belongs to the “humanities,” and the humanities, as their name indicates, can take only the human view of the superhuman.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
But authority in the humanities comes from certain great artists who always have been and always will be models of the highest possible achievement in their fields, classics as we call them. Others may come who will equal them, but no one will ever improve on them.
“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The humanities have always to fight for themselves, whatever the economic conditions, but as they are inherently depressed, a boom period in the economy is disastrous for them. When the market expands, many drift into them with no real vocation for or commitment to them; and for teaching the humanities one needs the vocation and the commitment of the twelve disciples.
“Preface to ADE and ADFL Bulletins” (1976), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Humanity
… becoming finite means becoming genuinely human.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
If we realize that human beings quite as intelligent as ourselves have been around for half a million years, we get quite a different slant on things.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 366, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Humanity, alone of all organisms, has elected to transform its environment instead of simply adapting to it, and so only human beings have a lifelong commitment to experiment, trial and error, uncertainty, and all the other burdens of continuing knowledge.
“Some Reflections on Life and Habit” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Anyway, the difference between the merely human & the genuinely human is crucial: it lets the daylight of the infinite & eternal into the closed human situation.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 46, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
I personally don’t see why humanity still exists without some power that cares more about it than it does about itself, as history records nothing persistent or continuous except the impulse to self-destruction.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 546, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
But humanity’s primary duty is not to be natural but to be human.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Even if there are no paradises, lost or hidden, no angels, no divine presence and no hell, there is still the range of human mentality, which could be immensely more powerful and efficient than it normally is, or fall far below even its average performance now.
“First Variation: The Mountain,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Humility
Humility is partly a negative virtue, a way of avoiding self-exposure and disarming criticism. But it can be a positive virtue too: a sense of one’s own limitations is the basis of all security, even of sanity.
“Sermon in Merton College Chapel” (1970), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Humour
All genuine humour in one sense is gallows humour, because humour begins in the accepting of the limits of the human condition.
“Yorick: The Romantic Macabre” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
To say that a person has no sense of humour amounts to saying that that person is deficient in a sense of reality.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 504, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The humorous vision sees things in proportion because it sees them out of proportion. That means that the customary proportions of things are somehow all wrong. Probably that’s why we have dreams: to remind us every night that we’ve spent the previous day in a world of petrified nonsense.
“Tribute to Robert Zend” (1985), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Humour, innocence, and nakedness go together, as do solemnity, aggressiveness, and fig leaves.
“Rencontre: The General Editor’s Introduction” (1960s), referring to Adam’s fall in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Huxley, Aldous
I’ve said already that I’ve never written fiction because Huxley’s novels are there to remind me of how bad it would be.
“New Fictional Formulas: Notebook 20” (after 1965), 18, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Hymns
As for the Blake, “Jerusalem” is the greatest hymn in the English language. While I’m not sure that any musical setting is definitive, that’s as good a one as I know.
“Music in My Life” (1985), referring to Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Blake’s text, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I managed a bit of outrage myself occasionally: in my opinion two of the greatest hymns ever written are Blake’s “Jerusalem” and Luther’s “Ein Feste Burg,” and there were proposals to throw out both. (They stayed in.)
“Stanley Llewellyn Osborne” (1971), referring to advisory work of the United Church of Canada’s committee on hymnology, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Hypnotism
Mediums have the power to animate & make telekinetic their dreams; dictators are the link between mediumism & hypnosis. The hypnotized subject behaves like a figure in a dream.
Entry, Notebook 33 (1946–50), 58, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy has been called the tribute that vice pays to virtue, but to know that you’re saying one thing and thinking another requires a self-discipline that’s practically a virtue in itself. Certainly it’s often an essential virtue for a public figure.
“Northrop Frye on Shakespeare: III, The Bolingbroke Plays: Richard II and Henry IV” (1986), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Hysteria
This social dimension of madness is, to put it mildly, still with us in the century of Fascism, Communism, and the parasites in the democracies who devote themselves to spreading hysteria.
“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Traditionally, the difference between sanity and hysteria, between reality and hallucination, had always been that sanity and reality lasted longer, and were continuous in a way that their opposites could not be.
“The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
All I can suggest is that while nothing is more insistent, demanding, and obviously important than this year’s hysterias, nothing is more pathetically ludicrous than the hysterias of last year.
“Hart House Rededicated” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.