on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The natural direction of science, then, is onward: it moves toward still greater achievements in the future. The arts have this in common with religion, that their direction is not onward into the future but upward from where we stand.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
But subjective art is as impossible a conception as subjective science. The arts are techniques of communication.…
“Speculation and Concern” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
For the arts, including the liberal arts, do not, like the sciences, improve: they revolve around certain classics, or models, which will remain models as long as the art endures.
“Comment” (1961), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
The sciences are primarily concerned with the world as it is, and the arts are primarily concerned with the world man wants to live in. What is not readily recognized is the fact that both require the same mental processes.
“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The polarizing of creative power between vision and sense is the basis of the distinction between the arts and the sciences. The sciences begin with sense, and work towards a mental construct founded on it. The arts begin with vision, and work towards a mental construct founded on it.
“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
The sciences demand intellect, the arts demand good taste, or disciplined imagination and emotions.
“By Liberal Things” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
… fifty years of teaching have only confirmed my conviction that only the arts and sciences are stable social realities: everything else simply dissolves and re-forms. The world of 1989 is no more like the world I was born into in 1912 than it is like the Stone Age, but nothing has improved since then except scientific and scholarly knowledge, and nothing has remained steady except human creative power.
“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Assassination
It seems almost as though the Hitlers and Stalins of the world do not get shot because the people who hate them are the kind of people to whom murder, for however good a cause, is repugnant. But the Lincolns and Gandhis of the world are hated by the kind of people to whom murder comes naturally and agreeably.
“Gandhi” (1948), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Astrology
I have been studying astrology recently and found that I was born under the sign of Cancer, the Crab. This interested me at once, of course, as I saw there must be something in the science after all, so I read on and learned quite a bit about it.
“NF to HK,” 25 Aug. 1932, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
There are many who “believe in” astrology, i.e., would like to feel that there is “something in it,” but I should imagine that relatively few of them are astronomers.
“The Times of the Signs” (1973), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Even at that I’m suspicious of astrology: it’s too close to the view that creation was made for man, a notion not only wrong but ultimately sick.
Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 38, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Astronomy
In my childhood I dreamed of becoming a great astronomer & discovering a new planet beyond Neptune that I was going to call Pluto.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 172, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
But then I like astronomy to be spectacular & obvious. I’ll take the galaxies millions of light years away on faith, or rather trust, and as for seeing, if I can see mountains on the moon I’m perfectly happy.
Entry, 18 Aug. 1950, 555, after attending a lecture by astronomer Harlow Shapley and viewing through a telescope a galaxy and then the moons of Jupiter, Harvard University, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Atheism
If we say, “There is a God,” we have suggested the possibility of saying, “There is no God,” and so in a sense have already said it. The most effective ideologies today, as said earlier, are those that have developed enough flexibility and tolerance to take account of this fact.
“Concern and Myth,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
Atlantis
What’s under the Atlantic is what’s inside us: if we uncover it we either find a spring of living water or we get drowned in a new flood just for us.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 27, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Why does Atlantis have to be in the past? If it’s a myth, of course, it’s present, an example or warning.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 197, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
I’m no nearer understanding Atlantis or reincarnation symbolism, but I do understand more clearly that it polarizes the Bible in some way.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 224, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
The myth of Atlantis, as I’ve known from the beginning, is another version of the myth of the fall, except that those who deal with it usually try to place it in history, whereas it doesn’t really belong in history necessarily.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 41, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Plato dreams up an ideal state, with future overtones, then says it corresponds exactly to an anti-diluvian state that fell from grace.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 313, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Atom Bombs
Man is a very frivolous animal, with a short memory and a limited imagination, and he can tie himself up in words to the point of persuading himself that dropping atom bombs on people he’s never seen is a kind of shrewd move in an exciting chess game.
“Laurence Hyde, ‘Southern Cross,’ and ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes’”
