Notebook 9, which dates from 1962, contains material that was not included in the Collected Works. This notebook is in the Northrop Frye Fonds of the Victoria University Library, 1991 accession, box 22. The bulk of the transcription of these notes was done by my friend and co-editor Michael Dolzani. The holograph text was a particularly challenging one to decipher, and Dolzani’s labours represent a considerable effort of concentrated attention. I have edited his transcription and filled in a number of words he found to be indecipherable. Still, more than two-dozen words and phrases remain untranscribed, Frye’s scrawl defeating my best efforts to decode it. These words and phrases are noted by a question mark in square brackets. When I have guessed at what Frye wrote, those guesses are also in square brackets followed by a question mark. Everything else in square brackets is an editorial insertion. Frye’s own square brackets have been replaced by braces: {}. The numbers 1 through 6 that appear at the end of many of the entries of the notes for the Massey Lectures, which became The Educated Imagination, represent the number of the lecture in which Frye, at this stage, proposed to use the material in the entry. I have excised one entry on Shakespeare that occurs in the Massey Lectures notes, a list of abbreviations for Shakespeare’s plays. Reprinted by permission of Victoria University.
[1] Original idea:
1—(“Centre & Expanse”). Environment & home; atomistic world of poet.
2—(“Singing School”). Autonomy of lit.; derivation from itself.
3—(“One Story Only”). Lit. [literature] as filling in of myth.
4—(“Motive for Metaphor”). Informing of thought by imgn. [imagination] through metaphor.
5—(“Verticals of Adam”) Vocation of Eloquence. Myth in social & political life.
6—(“Heart of Light”) Keys to Dreamland. Human universe, time & space; here & now; sense of infinity.
[2] For 1: The constructed world vs. the seen world.
In latter beauty & truth separate; in former they combine.
Participation & not separation of performer & audience.
Theory & practice of literature. The critic who is teacher.
1962
[3] 1. Introduction to Design for Learning.1
2. Inglis Lecture at Harvard.2
3. Speech at Nebraska.3
4. Speech at Rochester.4
5. Address at Psychiatrists’ Conference.5
6. English Institute Paper.6
7–12. Massey Lectures.7
[4] Plus:
Arts Conference at Vic
R.C.I.8
Mt. Allison.9
Queens.10
U.C. Alumni
[5] 1. Talk at the R. Col. [Ryerson Collegiate Institute] on The Two Worlds of Art & Science. (Not published).11 February. Done.
2. The Inglis Lecture. (Harvard, on secondary education. (Published). April.
3. Address to the Psychiatrists’ Convention.12 No plans for publication, but should read the paper. May.
4. Speech at Nebraska.13 To be published, but perhaps not just then. April.
5. Paper on Romanticism for the English Institute.14 Must be a read paper, whether published or not. September.
6–11. The Massey Lectures. Fall of 1962.
12. Introduction to the Board of Education Reports.15 Anytime. Done.
[6] Besides this, of course, the main structure—the nave, so to speak—of my present thinking and writing, is the sequel to the Anatomy.16 This is to be a work of practical criticism, and will of course expand the third essay of the Anatomy. The transepts will be the Massey Lectures, which will provide whatever theoretical basis is necessary for new theories. (The second Anatomy essay area). The chancel, the fourth essay area, is the relation of criticism to education generally, the theme of 2 & 12 above, & to some extent 3. Only 5 above really deals with the first essay material, & even it will be part of the sequel argument. I ought to have a name for this book.
[7] Of the above, 1, a good deal of 2, 12 and the first Massey will deal with the question of the educated imagination. In fact 1 is just a trial run for the first Massey, and 2 will use whatever I learn in 12. 4 I think of as a personal statement about where I am as a critic, and 3 I think of as a kind of retrospective paper, reflections on the mental processes recorded in English fiction.
[8] The Thomas More lecture17 provides me with a number of jumping off points for the Massey Lectures. The first lecture, I’ve thought all along, should be about the world we create vs. the world we contemplate. The archaic, atavistic nature of the poet’s world. From there I expand to consider the role of literature & of the imaginative arts generally in relation to thought, psychology, & politics. That should be about four.
[9] The last two will be centripetal, returning to the central place of literature itself, & ending with paradoxes about time & space.
[10] The environment & the home: the world we see around us & study & the world we see within us & build. 118
[11] The atavistic & archaic shape of the poet’s world. Peacock. 1
[12] Analogy & identity. 1 The basis of all life the conviction of a continuum of identity. 6 if I use it at all.19
[13] Discovery & recognition: the created vs. the recreated. 3
[in bottom margin: “Masseys”]
Massey Lectures
[14] The simplicity & crudity of vision (desire to fly)20 vs. the enormous technological complexities. 1
[15] How we can be a spectator of life: vision of life as real faith. Reconstructing faith by observing behavior. 3
[16] Creation is not out of nothing: wife & shop window. Role of tradition in shaping form.21 1
[17] The metaphors of orientation: lift up your hearts; “sub”-conscious, on the other hand.22 Metonymy of nations as individuals. In ordinary life we are all bad poets.23 3–4
[18] Half-truths of war: theory of games in the imagination.24 The relation of work to play.25 4–5
[19] {5 will turn mainly on the shift from the old to the new four levels. It will be of the general type of the sensibility paper,26 I suppose, but bigger in range. The question of why e.g. Scott is Romantic & Jane Austen not is one of the first things. Also the Byron point about the shift in world-views—well, I have that. Quotations would deal with the element of evocation & magic behind the surface.}
[20] What we see as distinct from the containing form in which we see it. The grammatical nature of reality. Subjects & predicates. 3
[21] Censorship & its folly: there is no such thing as a bad book, except in its own categories of badness.27 6
[22] Present Massey plan: (1) The two worlds & anthropocentric one of art, (2) The descent of literary forms from literature, (3) The mythical structure of literature, (4) The informing of thought by metaphor, (5) The informing of social life by myth, (6) The here & the now; art & time & place.
[23] {I don’t know if I know enough to tackle a paper called “Preface to My Collection of Ghost Stories.” But some of its ideas (if I have any ideas) might go in the psychiatry paper}.
[24] Art, love & religion are areas in which reality is achieved or created rather than recognized. Religious people are often suspicious of the arts, because they’re afraid the arts create a specialized form of idolatry, a group of what is to be recognized as super-realities. But when we realize that art is designed to transfer a power of vision, & belongs in education, the either-or deadlock disappears. 6?
[25] Dialectic of popular-primitive art with its cycle & official art. Latter begins in luxury goods for aristocracy & priesthood (Beowulf’s wondrously wrought; the demonic smith & the Greek Cyclops & Dactyls & Telchines; Blake’s Los) distinguished by elaborateness—look at all the work in that (survives in Fabergé). It then develops toward society’s (or at least its ruling class) creating an idealized picture of itself. Hence the deadlock faced by Morris and, more neurotically, by Tolstoy. Social “Realism” not scientific but a social myth.
(Rochester)28
Miami?
[26] The relation of imgn. [imagination] to “sense.” In the arts themselves this [relieves?] the distinction often expressed as Rc. [Romantic]-Classical. In childhood sense & memory take the lead over imgn., because the child’s imgn. is fanciful. In adolescence imgn. consolidates with the conservative or Coleridgean force; in the university it ought to consolidate with the radical one. The extraordinary conservatism of students today indicates a fairly secure adolescence.
[27] The secondary stage of studying myth in literature takes one into the question of the informing of social thought (pastoral myths, etc.).29 3–4
[28] The Massey Lectures ought to be, I now think, gentle, even humble, but intolerably lucid lectures on how to read literature, especially poetry. Start with, say, the problem represented by Hazard Adams’ story about the Sick Rose.30 Blake isn’t talking about plant disease; yet one feels that allegorizing the poem isn’t quite good enough. The metaphor can only expand into a myth, ending in Dante’s paradisal rose & Satan as worm. That TV program I was on with Milton Wilson may be the right lead after all. 3
[29] Popular & official art: Tolstoy: Carlyle on the symbol.
[30] Partisanship & the free play of ideas: dialectic half-truths. 5 (4)
[31] Modern art partly a critical activity: the arts course in a university supplies the scholarly background necessary for the arts proper, or practical. 4 or 5
[32] Science begins in “sense” but ends as a construct: the world as it looks to human beings (scientia). Many things not really seen till seen aesthetically; hence seeing “beauty in” things is a function of art, if it expands beyond the conventionalizing of beauty. If art is conventional new art remakes old, & so is also an act of criticism. You cannot distinguish art from science by the mental processes involved, but only by the containing form of the subject. 1
[33] Sketch as vision in process: trompe l’oeil realism leads to hallucination, handwriting of subconscious in Klee & Miro: writing & drawing & experiment (the cantori & Balla’s dog).31 Art & magic: work & play. Impressionism vs. wit of abstraction (these are random notes from my Institute lecture:32 don’t know if they’re any use). Rochester
insert in 2
[34] Cliche: difficulty or chaos of art is because it reflects difficulty or chaos of our time. Balls. It reflects 20th c. conventions. 2–3
[35] The moral-aesthetic judgements we make on words, & the strong & inseparable moral element in rhetoric. 4
[36] Three levels of quid credas (speculative or theatrical knowledge), quid agas (moral & participating knowledge), and quo tendas (archetypal framework). 1
[37] The thing is that the Massey Lectures ought to say very simply & plainly the central point in my argument that I’ve been jumping over, such as (a) the dialectical separation of the apocalyptic & the ironic. 2 (b) the difference between allegory & archetypal framework. 3
[38] Vision of aeroplane not the desire to fly but an imgve. [imaginative] revolt against the tyranny of space & time. 6. Sakuntala: 1.33
[39] One thing that isn’t in your draft is the relation of theory to the chronological problem of teaching & training the imgn [imagination].
[40] Peacock in 1;34 the atomistic universe; no improvement in arts.
[41] Something in 6 about Wordsworth’s huge & mighty forms as myths,35 which in Gk. [Greek] religion wander around, however in Xy [Christianity] enter history & [?] up & inform human life (as they do in Gk. lit., though not in Gk. religion).
[42] 5 should have culture as the levelling influence in democracy, as in my Harvard speech. I don’t need to stick too closely to the theory of csm. [criticism]. I can use the series to show how my ideas all hang together.
[43] 3 should have the point about the myth as the stylizing element (halo of saint in picture, etc.). Even lipstick is a desire to conventionalize the face.36
[44] 1 outlines the three levels of the mind, sense, work & vision, & the role of the arts in defining vision. Then the difference between art & science, the Peacock paradox, & the atomistic universe of poetry. Then the job for 2 is clearly headed in the direction of just how lit. does not isolate vision. I think it has to start with the double Aristotle diagram, outlining poetry as licensed lying & its relation to rational thought. Seems to me at the moment the next step is poetry as fulfilling a mythology: in that case the autonomy of poetry & the permanence of its conventions & genres would come in 3. In that case 4 deals with literature in its aspect of rhetoric & as one of the humanities.
[45] Criticism moves in v.-j’s [value judgments] dialectically too: not perhaps in the old 18th c. “beauties” & “faults” dialectic but towards a separating of central & peripheral. Something here involved with the creative dialectic—I don’t know just what at the moment.
[46] Rest of 1: the arts as articulating vision: design in non-obj. ptg. [non-objective painting]; applied arts & sciences (architecture) in middle. End of 1 is probably the relation of creative to critical activity: the arts course & the arts {no, I think 6}. Not an end in admiration: literature is for the benefit of the consumer, & its end is participation. Its use relates to the student. Heroism of the artist, e.g. Lawrence or Joyce spending years writing a book that’s ignored or ridiculed or called obscene. 6
[47] 2 begins, I think, with the difference between imitation & copying, & the form of art & content of nature. I’m beginning to think 2 & 3 may reverse, & 2 will be structure & 3 autonomy. 4 is the rhetoric one. Private possession of lit. expands into a shared communal one, which involves rhetorical appeal.
[48] Nothing is in action; everything is in the poetic statement. Topos of modesty & Lincoln at Gettysburg.37 Achilles survives not just because he had Homer to write about him, but because Homer treated him poetically—i.e., nearly everything he said about him is utterly preposterous. Probably 3.
[49] Residual rcsm. [romanticism]: things have a grandeur in retrospect (Gibbon on the Capitol Hill)38 things in passing were preoccupied, cheap, even squalid. Part of the religious emotion in withdrawing from time—Aristotle’s universal action. 3. Insert into [historic?] dialectic.
[50] 2 or 3: structure of metaphor founded on natural cycle: analogy & identity. Thick autumnal leaves—literary identification of roses & worms.39 What this suggests might be a 6 point.
[51] The relevant question about what poetry says (e.g. Housman) is not is it true but is it imgvely. [imaginatively] conceivable. If you don’t think it is, there may be some value for you in stretching your imgn. [imagination] into a previously unexplored area. I suppose end of 3. The moral-aesthetic nature of rhetorical judgements is certainly 4, & whatever points of this jargon stuff I use.
[52] Truth of observation or insight: that Deloney passage: if not too laborious to explain in its context, coordinating feeling, uniting billions of possible experiences. 2 or 3.
[53] Chesterton’s donkey: the role of allusion.40 3
[54] One of the functions of the critic is to civilize the poet indirectly by explaining to society the diff. bet. facts of life & lit. conventions, that there are many forms of expression. The poet may be naive or anti-intellectual, in the grip of the conventions he knows; & he’s usually reductive in tendency. The critic is that judge drawing his authority from knowledge. 4
[55] Expand on end of P.B.’s [possible beliefs?] in 5: Utopia as informing principle which turns out to be culture. 5 or 6.
[56] Lawrence: the critic’s function is to take the work away from the artist. Cf. Jastrow on the chimpanzee.41 4 [Frye has drawn an arrow from this note to a phrase written at the top of the ms. page: “the diff. bet. facts of life & lit. conventions,” even though that phrase also has an arrow inserting it into the note two entries above].
[57] Examples of pastoral myth: Western story, Sat. Eve. Post, Alger, etc. The conventional hell—Jews & Italians in Elizabethan fiction (Richardson); decaying Old South now. 2 or 3. Some pastoral myth likely 4.
[58] My association of creative & academic rubbed a lot of fixations [in the raw?] (Layton & others), & should be developed in 5, which in many respects is the stretto of the whole series. The body of imgve. pbs. [imaginative probabilities?], the area of free discussion or symposium, the source of spiritual authority as far as the “humanities” are concerned, the republic of letters, is the real academy, where things are probable impossibilities. I’m talking to consumers & not producers. Some account may be of the diff. bet. academy & lyceum: the academic vision of possibilities (or probable impossibilities) is what literature presents to the consumer, this academic vision of life being a—well, Golgonooza. Diff. of imgn. & belief in 3; two levels of the academic in 5.42
[59] A good deal of what got squeezed out of the (watch metaphors) end of the 3rd P.B. [possible belief?] I can use here, notably the anti-Babel business. Our life at present looks like Babel, a heaven-storming enterprise that gets no nearer heaven but only further from the earth, that looks cooperative but is really a deadlock of rivalries, which has every attribute of impressiveness except genuine human dignity. A world so obviously hysterical that none of us could keep sane if it were the only world that exists. 6. 5
[60] Also something about Utopia & Plato’s Republic, along with their parodies (1984) as specific applications of the vision of the matrix of all Utopias, which is culture. 4
[61] Rhetoric: what’s true is what’s right for that occasion: funeral eulogy, wedding speeches—we all have to wear clothes.43 Two kinds of truth: you feel a moral as well as an aesthetic obligation to say what’s right. Poetry’s the same, except that the occasion, say, of Macbeth or the Tempest, is much less important. Most of the rightness is in the context. 5 Talking to women: saying reflects meaning or emotional state.
[62] Sheep May Safely Graze:44 regarded as religious music, the sheep being Christians. It easily could be, though actually this is from a secular cantata in honour of some count, & the sheep are the count’s taxpayers. These are allegories. 3. You never get just the sheep that nibble the grass: they have to be poetic sheep, with some poetic reason for being there. Symbols, in short.45
[63] The next thing to do is to get 2 & 3 unscrambled.
[64] Way we can foul ourselves with diagrams. Left & right in politics. If I said conservatives are more fascist than liberals, & liberals closer to communism, you’d realize I was talking nonsense; but lots of people can’t think their way out of the framework. 5
[65] I’m now beginning to see the importance of this distinction: quo tendas—constructive imgn.: literature: displaced myth quid agas-fancy or rearrangement: verbal technology: insistence on [centre?]. Former as utopia informing latter.
[66] I now think that 4 is on education & not a flight into the time-&-space stratosphere. It’ll try to do what I promised to try to do. More [?].
[67] Titles: (1) The Motive for Metaphor (2) The Singing School (3) Giants in Time (4) Heart of Light (5) The Strange Angels (6) The Keys to Dreamland. Each poem should be mentioned and (when a poem) quoted from.46
[68] So 4 should be a retake of the highs, declaring solidarity with the students & teachers who’ll be most of my audience. That way more themes’ll get properly interwoven & strettoed. I think a lot of my patterns are beginning to fall together anyway—maybe I’m getting into my tertiary period without having really had a secondary one.
[69] As soon as work ceases to become automatic & rest is a [?] we’ve moved from the level of the mental or [social?] slave into a world of mental freedom. The first sense of that world, the moment of leisure, gives you a sharp desire for more education. 4, I suppose, although it’s really 6.
[70] The relation of the [active?] rite [?] got squeezed out of 1. 2 or 3, maybe.
[71] 4: Puritanism as explaining a fear of sleeping with one’s wife: jargon. The Messiah myth (or 5).
[72] There is such a thing as inspiration in poetry, but the only inspiration worth having is the one that crystallizes as a form. Hence a writer does well to be receptive to his reading. Belongs in the argument of 2, but I think I should use it somewhere else.
[73] The title “Heart of Light” is for 6, I think: if so, I don’t have one for 4. Strange Angels I think is out if I [?] reference to the poem.47 Verticals of Adam doesn’t fit & I don’t want to refer to that poem. Look elsewhere in Thomas.
[74] Stuff on competing worthy causes & existential obligations is in 5: I started off on it by mistake in 4. I think fear of Csm [Communism] is 4, but 4 & 5 are so closely intertwined I’m not sure.
[75] There are two levels of the fight of the imgn. [imagination]: against illusion (4) & against excessive demands on a limited amount of time & energy (5).
[76] “Then there are the competing rel. dems. [religious demands], the diff. [?] to belong to, the worthy causes & welfare agencies to support. All of these can appeal to your sense of duty, but you can’t support them all; you have to choose your obligations, and, as the ex. people say, they’re obligations only because you choose them. (Not rational or emotional). The imgn. [imagination] has a fight on two levels (one vs. mob). It has to fight to protect your limited time & energy from the variety of demands made on it.” Excreted from 4: I suppose maybe 5.
[77] I’m beginning to wonder if the 2nd half isn’t this:
[78] 4. Mythology leading to lit.: hence the theory (Bible, Classical myth, myth starting with romance & comedy, & the contribution of poetry & prose to speech[)]. Still later, the informing of social studies by metaphor: I’ve not yet seen where the hell to put that. Mostly the present 6, with either the Joyce or the Dylan Thomas title: either would do.48
[79] 5. The present 4, with the Perse title.
[80] 6. The present 5, with a good deal of consolidation & the Heart of Light title, the original one for the conclusion.
[81] Prose is no more the language of ordinary speech than your best Sunday suit is a bathing suit. 4.
[82] Reason why poets are often silly people is that they can’t always distinguish the conventions of lit. they use from the facts of their lives.
Six: The Keys to Dreamland
[83] Reprise & summing up: ordinary perspective makes poet peripheral.
Fundamental is the useful, lit. a luxury product, ought to amuse.
General dim-wittedness of lit. conventions: Swan of Avon.49 We’ve been trying to reverse the perspective.
Actual society changes rapidly.
Continuity is in one’s habitual responses.
These turn out to be metaphors, & bad poetry.
The poet rearranges the constructive principles of thought.
Hence can be allied with religion.
Shift from other-directed to self-directed imgn. [imagination] in Rc. [Romantic] period.
The total dream of man.
The world of imgn. as bigger than the world of action.
The arts course as the study of real society.
[10 pages of cancelled draft of The Educated Imagination occur at this point].
[84] Dialectic & cyclical rhythms: soul & self. In The Shadowy Waters it’s the soul quest that wins out.
[85] 28 from Blake: Spectre Around Me & 28 loves; 28 churches; 4 Zoas & 24 Elders; 4 phases of Mental Traveller; medieval 7 planets & 4 humors—29th [loiterer?] in Chaucer, made in the DC [Divine Comedy]* into a kind of Olympian Zodiac of human types. P. 52 of Vision.
*cf. p. 107 Vision.
[87] Cf. Eliade on the anarchy preceding the beginning of a new cycle.
[88] One should show that Yeats’ construct is that of post-Romantic poetry, if possible, & illustrate its affinities to Graves’ white goddess, Eliot’s double gyre in Little Gidding & the Heraclitus topoi, etc. Its antithetical side is female, & the primary male, a submerged Beulah. What puzzles me is the omission of the female principle getting younger as the male gets older & vice versa, that he could have found in the MT [Mental Traveller].
[89] What I’d like to prove is the shape of my third Massey: the dialectic-primary quest, pre-Romantic in statement, containing the cyclical-antithetical one. The drunken boat is the Luvah boat; the solar one isn’t ever that close to water. So the Romantic, & therefore post-Rc., construct is the white-goddess & black bride cycle. Naturally this idea is as full of bugs as a slum tenement, but if I crack it the Bampton lectures51 will be a piece of cake. I’m not sure what holds these metaphors together. “Dialogue” with oneself is a risky business.
[90] Opening sentence: For most readers the only justification for studying A Vision is the fact that Yeats, in his own words, was fool enough to write a number of poems that are unintelligible without it.52
[91] The phases would be a lot clearer as an encyclopedia of ethical criticism: if they’d all been literary character archetypes like The Idiot or at most real people conforming to literary archetypes like Whitman it would clear up. Actual people lack this kind of uniform consistency, & have to be dealt with as being often atypical or “out of phase.”53 Well, I needn’t insist on this, but there’s a true existential projection about it. The real horror of Dante’s Inferno similarly comes from the e.p. [existential projection] of a number of literary archetypes.
[92] Besides, we have only the cycle of will: we ought to have at least the creative mind cycle, & perhaps the other two, to understand the bloody thing at all.
[93] Possible procedure: extract the structure of imagery directly from Yeats’ poetry, exactly as though that silly boy were right, then compare it with a) Blake’s lunar cycle b) the Vision itself.
[94] Dialectic: 5 to 3; the decisive imagery of The Shadowy Waters; a passage at the end of the first Rosa Alchemica Story; the 13th cone in the Vision. The lunar cycle is in Blake as well as Graves; the historical cycle is in all the Third Reich nonsense, & tying it up to Helen of Troy ties it more totally to Spenser’s 3rd Troy. (The 2nd Troy is also R.C.).
[95] Scant [?] in Tables of Law explains how Axël epigram fits Yeats.54 I think I need a distinction between the Freudian & the mythopoeic subconscious anima mundi. This latter produces “moods”; the moods produce the inner esoteric society of creators; they in their turn produce antithetical & primary [feeling-classes?] (cf. King’s Threshold). Agent of rebirth is a proletariat (Mythologies, 3 (2)).
[96] Something I haven’t quite got about the relation between elements of thought, or the imgve. [imaginative] identity, & elements of existence, individual human beings. In Blake the birth, development, death & reincarnation of imgve. units is described in such a way as to suggest that Blake is talking about actual human life, both during & after its earthly existence. Perhaps he intends this overtone, as the role of Milton in Milton suggests. But Yeats, it seems to me, completely confuses the two, & projects the immortality of imagery (Byzantium) into actual existence. If I could solve this problem, of course, I could do anything. Certainly I could write my third book easily enough.
[97] The lower cycle of the faculties:
The table [?] of the progressive [?] (M & W shape).
The original [?] of the [?]
The hero-cult in fascism.
Resemblance to Graves’ white goddess.
The dance of Salome.
Note that it has two gates, south & north.
Third Reich notion of a neo-paganism.
[98] A. The primary & antithetical contrast. (Originally lunar-solar).
B. The (largely Xn) real world & the land of heart’s desire the dumbbell cosmos & the antithetical fairy world looking glass of reversed time.
C. This eventually becomes the world of rebirth vs. the soul’s quest. return to rag & bone shop.
[99] Character means the entering of the subject into a giant form, a state or a god: expressed in literature by convention.
[100] These states or moods are what exist, & the subject-object split doesn’t exist for them. Hence the artist doesn’t “live.”
[101] The greater cycle of the principles:
Antithetical Christ & God as Plotinian archetype of Daimon
Staring virgin & Byzantium (find source of this)
Haroun al-Raschid & Charlemagne as portents
The land of heart’s desire
Determination to associate purgatory & reincarnation
The Alice in looking glass of outer consciousness: dreaming back.
The sphere vs. the cone. The great year.
Vision of Los, I think
The hour-glass in the early play: note Babylon & the fool.
Blavatsky: dumb-bell cosmos.55
Phase 1 of the Principles assimilates the social mob to the spiritualistic fragment—doodle & babble; Phase 15 assimilates the Christ or Oedipus (as in the Colonus play) figure with the Daimon.
Phases 2–7 are primitive; phases 23–25 decadent. At phase 1 is the water of birth-death, & on the other side are the worlds of fairie, & the dead (spiritualism), the land-under-wave.
Note that the lunar-ant. [antithetical] & solar-primary stuff is balls: we should go back to something deeper in Yeats ([Ex?] 24) & get lunar-historical cycle & solar-principle perspective.
The principles are the perspective of the terrible rectilinear lines cutting through serpentine nature, the [?] ornament of Phidias & Michelangelo, the arrow shooting upward.
Virgil & Er (“Man of Ur”)
[102] The mountain under the moon & the dialogues of self & soul.
Origin of the Ben Bulben complex in Yeats’ childhood.
Tragic-heroic cycle of the dying god—heart’s purple.
Acceptance of cycle: cf. Zarathustra in Nietzsche.
Platonic perspective of the principles here.
What happens to the happy island or land of heart’s desire?
[103] KL [King Lear] > Cy [Cymbeline]: king of Britain; blindness of self-abdication; evil & good Queen.
O [Othello] > WT [Winter’s Tale]: jealousy theme.
[104] The dialectic completion.
Attacks Rcs. [Romantics] for having no sense of evil; but has Yeats got any?
The final answer is that the cycle is hell.
Hence the ambiguity of Herakles at the end of A Vision.56
The opposite & the Other: the 13th cone.
Opposite of the 13th cone is beginning over: Circus Animals’ Desertion.
Two trees & the glass of outer consciousness.
The true or mythical ascent: total mind as the human imgn. [imagination] in The Tower & S to B [Sailing to Byzantium].
The creative artist as designated “not to live” but to create.
The structure of society vs. the creation of a myth (King’s Threshold).
The secret society or symposium (Courtier, Plato, & [?] [?]).
The Shadowy Waters.
Yeats knew enough to complete his pattern, but his instructors did not.