Daily Archives: August 12, 2010

Frye Newsletter: Vote for the Frye Sculpture!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PGGjiLd54

The latest Frye Festival newsletter can be found here.

But here is what you urgently need to know:

The Frye Festival is currently 5th in the national competition presented by Pepsi Canada, a contest which could give the Festival $25,000 in order to create a bronze, life-sized sculpture of Moncton’s most famous son. The Festival must finish first or second to win the money.

The winner will be chosen only by the number of votes received. Until Tuesday, August 31, everyone is invited to vote daily at www.refresheverything.ca/fryefestival for “Feed your imagination” in Arts and Culture, under the $25,000 category. You have to be signed in before clicking “Vote for this idea” for your vote to count.

“We still have three weeks to be in first or second position and ensure that we can create a beautiful piece of public art that will inspire all citizens, young and old,” says Dawn Arnold, Chair of the Frye Festival. Arnold indicates that the project is already creating waves since the Festival is in fifth place among 50 proposals in the $25,000 category. “We know we can win this with everyone’s help! Vote every day-every vote counts!” encourages Dawn.

The contest is being presented by Pepsi Canada, who will distribute $1,000,000 over one year. If the Festival wins, the statue of Northrop Frye, who grew up in Moncton, will be placed in front of the Moncton Public Library.

Quote of the Day: Mark Twain

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leYj–P4CgQ

Mark Twain filmed at his home by Thomas Edison

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”  Mark Twain

Frye on Twain in the notebooks:

I read somewhere that Twain planned a story in which Tom sells Huck into slavery, which shows, if true, that he realized what an utter creep Tom Sawyer was. (Northrop Frye Unbuttoned, 131)

Cleopatra

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqUHh9poo6M

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, act II, scene 2Enobarbus’ famous speech (“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water”) begins at 7.30

On this date in 30 B.C. Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, committed suicide.

Frye on Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in The Return of Eden:

Cleopatra in Shakespeare is all the things that the critics of Milton say Eve is.  She is vain and frivolous and light-minded and capricious and extravagant and irresponsible and a very bad influence on Antony, who ought to be out chasing Parthians instead of wasting his time with her.  She is morally a most despicable character, yet there is something about her which is good: we cannot feel that Cleopatra is evil in the way that Goneril and Regan are evil.  For one thing, Cleopatra can always be unpredictable, and as long as she can be that she is human.  Goneril and Regan are much closer to what is meant in religion by lost souls, and what that means dramatically is that they can no longer be predictable . . . At the same time Cleopatra is part of something far more sinister than herself: this comes out in the imagery attached to Egypt, if not in the characterization attached to her.  Putting the two together, what we see is the human contained by the demonic, a fascinating creature of infinite variety who is still, from another point of view, sprung from the equivocal generation of the Nile.  (CW 16, 52)