It seems to me that the Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed not so much by our famous problem of identity — “Who are we?” — as by some such riddle as “Where is here?”
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
… the Canadian problem of identity seemed to me primarily connected with locale, less a matter of “Who am I?” than of “Where is here?” Another friend, commenting on this, told me a story about a doctor from the south (that is, from one of the Canadian cities) travelling in the Arctic tundra with an Eskimo guide. A blizzard blew up, and they had to bivouac for the night. What with the cold, the storm, and the loneliness, the doctor panicked and began shouting, “We are lost!” The Eskimo looked at him thoughtfully and said, “We are not lost. We are here.”
“Haunted by Lack of Ghosts” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2000), CW, 12.
In a year bound to be full of discussions of our identity, I should like to suggest that our identity, like the real identity of all nations, is the one that we have failed to achieve.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Canadian Literature
Canada is now producing a literature which has an imaginative integrity equal to that of other countries.
“From Nationalism to Regionalism: The Maturing of Canadian Culture” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
To study Canadian literature one has to stand on its own level: to stand above it and sneer at it, or to stand below it and exaggerate it, are equally unscholarly procedures.
“Roy Daniells” (1979), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The literary, in Canada, is often only an incidental quality of writings which, like those of many of the early explorers, are as innocent of literary intention as a mating loon.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The constructs of the imagination tell us things about human life that we don’t get in any other way. That’s why it’s important for Canadians to pay particular attention to Canadian literature, even when the imported brands are better seasoned.
“Verticals of Adam,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Articles proclaiming the imminent advent of literary greatness had been appearing for a long time, giving to Canadian literature, or its history, the quality that Milton Wilson has described, in a practically definitive phrase, as “one half-baked phoenix after another.”
“Across the River and Out of the Trees” (1980), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12. The English professor Milton Wilson was quoted in the anthology Recent Canadian Verse (1959).
The study of Canadian literature is not a painful patriotic duty like voting, but a simple necessity of getting one’s bearings.
“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
However important Canadian literature may be or become in a university, it is not any university’s primary duty to foster a national literature. Its primary duty is to build up a public receptive to it, a public that will not be panicked by plain speaking, not put off by crankiness, not bewildered by unexpected ways of thinking and feeling.
“Language as the Home of Human Life” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I first heard about the Group of Seven in a lecture by John Robins on the ballad, and about contemporary Canadian poets and novelists in Pelham Edgar’s course on Shakespeare. Fortunately, Pelham rather disliked Shakespeare, so I learned a good deal about Canadian literature while reading Shakespeare on my own.
“The View from Here” (1980), describing his student years in the early 1930s, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Most Canadian literature is and always will be tripe for the simple reason that most literature of all countries in all ages is and always will be tripe. Any national group of authors will form a pyramid with a few serious writers on top and a broad base of pulp-scribblers at the bottom.
“Canadian Authors Meet” (1946), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
By 1904 he was discussing the perennial Canadian question, “Have we a National Literature?” The answer, as it always is, is in effect no, but wait a while.
“Pelham Edgar” (1952), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
I imagine that in another ten years there will be very little difference in tone between Canadian and American literature; but what there is now in Canada is a literature of extraordinary vigor and historical significance.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Similarly, I think Canadian literature will become more and more a literature of regions. It seems to be a cultural law that the more specific the setting of literature is, the more universal its communicating power.
“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
There’s no such thing as “Canadianism,” but there are a number of poets working within a specific environment with a specific kind of historical background and that, I think, will influence and give a distinctive quality to their work if they don’t pay too much attention to it.
“Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Stephen Leacock’s famous hero who rode off rapidly in all directions was unmistakably a Canadian.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Well, I have said in another speech that if a sculptor were to make a statue of a patriotic Canadian, he would depict somebody holding his breath and crossing his fingers. In other words, there has never been a time when Canada has not thought in terms of disintegration.
“Cultural Identity in Canada” (1990), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In surveying Canadian poetry and fiction, we feel constantly that all the energy has been absorbed in meeting a standard, a self-defeating enterprise because real standards can only be established, not met.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
… everything that is central in Canadian writing seems to be marked by the imminence of the natural world.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Cancer
Even the individual body is a community of billions of cells and bacteria, with specialized functions and yet, presumably, with no “knowledge,” whatever knowledge may be in such a context, that they are forming a larger body. But they too can make mistakes about their relation to that body, as we see in the intolerant anarchist revolution we call cancer. I myself have allergic ailments that, I am told, are caused by a panic-stricken xenophobia among the blood cells, their inability to distinguish a harmless from a dangerous intruder. Good health, in both bodies, depends on a sense of unity that also rejects a hysterical insistence on uniformity.
“Natural and Revealed Communities” (1987), comparing social bodies and human bodies, including his own, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Capital Punishment
It is not that one feels sorry for the criminal, but that one feels sorry for the society which is stuck with