Author Archives: Joseph Adamson

Quote of the Day: “Resistance to Civil Government”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjCB6W1TKcc

An excerpt from Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government: “A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”

I hope I am not overreaching here, but since Michael has invoked civil disobedience, it seems like an apt occasion to quote Thoreau. This passage from Resistance to Civil Government (1849), I think, applies here, mutatis mutandis:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. …

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

William Blake: “It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity”

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Further to Michael’s previous posts, “What Would Jesus Defund?”, here’s William Blake, the man Frye says taught him everything he knows, on the everyday indifference to the poor in The Four Zoas, “Night the Seventh,” ll. 111-29:

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs.

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies’ house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children,
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field
When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: ‘but it is not so with me.’

‘Compel the poor to live upon a crust of bread, by soft mild arts.
Smile when they frown, frown when they smile; and when a man looks pale
With labour and abstinence, say he looks healthy and happy;
And when his children sicken, let them die; there are enough
Born, even too many, and our earth will be overrun
Without these arts. If you would make the poor live with temper,
With pomp give every crust of bread you give; with gracious cunning
Magnify small gifts; reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp.
Say he smiles if you hear him sigh. If pale, say he is ruddy.
Preach temperance: say he is overgorg’d and drowns his wit
In strong drink, though you know that bread and water are all
He can afford. Flatter his wife, pity his children, till we can
Reduce all to our will, as spaniels are taught with art.’

 

Primary Concerns, Democracy, and Conservative Ideology

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvE9EN4YPGM

The Hour: Stephen Harper and U.S. style media control

Bob Denham`s article on Frye and Kierkegaard, recently published in our journal, shows the importance in Frye’s later work of the Danish philosopher’s emphasis, among other things, on concern. Frye first develops the idea in terms of the tension or dialectic between freedom and the myth of concern, as most fully worked out in The Critical Path. There it is argued that the imagery of literature is ultimately the language of concern. This insight becomes the basis of his later formulation of primary concerns in Words with Power, where he makes the distinction between primary human concerns and secondary or ideological ones. One of the books of Frye`s now famous Ogdoad (famous at least among amateurs of Frye) is entitled Liberal, and it strikes me that this indicates another source of Frye`s concept of concern, and in particular his formulation of the distinction between primary and secondary concerns.

It would be of great interest to examine this idea of primary concerns as a genuine contribution to socio-political thought, specifically liberal and social democratic thought. Certainly there have been essays touching on the liberal humanism of Frye`s critical position, or what I would prefer to call his critical “vision.” It is often a stance he has been attacked for. More sympathetically, Graham Good, for example, has a particularly discerning article on the subject. Years ago I presented at a conference a very preliminary stab at such an examination, but I have not had the opportunity yet to follow it up. Involved in such a study would have to be a comparison, ultimately, of Frye`s concept of primary concerns with such theories as John Rawl’s idea of basic goods, and even more with Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s idea of basic human capabilities. These ideas are a different way of talking about human rights and are very close to Frye`s primary concerns, focusing as they do on those universal human needs and wishes that can be regarded as essential to the dignity and fulfillment of every human individual. It is worth emphasizing that it is this kind of thinking in the liberal and social democratic tradition that has given us, among other things: universal health care (now severely threatened); legal access to abortion; gay marriage; serious efforts to ensure gender equality and protect minority rights; a less punitive system of law and order aimed at restoring the incarcerated to reentering and contributing to society; a more welcoming policy to refugees fleeing persecution or unimaginable hardship in their own countries. The list could go on.

These great benefits have derived from an often invisible or inarticulate social norm, not in the normative sense, but as an ideal the departure from which makes irony and the grotesque ironic and grotesque. This ideal is “the vision of a more sensible society,” of a world that actually makes human sense. Such a vision works outside literature among individuals in their daily lives and workplaces, giving meaning to their work and actions beyond any need for a pay-cheque. As Frye writes: “one can hardly imagine, say, doctors or social workers unmotivated by some vision of a healthier or freer society than the one they see around them.” The same could be said of any member of society who contributes in a meaningful way, who has, in other words, a social function, this being, as Frye views it, the real significance of the democratic ideal of equality. In a true democracy, everyone is potentially a member of an elite, and no-one`s social function is more worthy of respect than another’s.

This idea of a social vision, ultimately the vision of a world of fulfilled primary concerns, is particularly useful in defining the issues we face in the current Canadian election campaigns. Any genuine social vision of a healthier or freer society is precisely what the program of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are devoid of. It is telling that Harper almost always speaks of the economy, never of society. It is as if it doesn’t even occur to him. Contrary, however, to the famous tag-line, it’s not the economy, stupid: it’s society.

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Frye and Tomkins on Democracy and Contempt

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In a review of 1984 when it first appeared, Frye writes that the real value of the book is that the author

gives us a terrifyingly clear impression of what we don’t want for either ourselves or our children. Mr. Orwell doesn’t tell us what to fight for, but he gives us a terrifyingly clear impression of what we should fight against. And what we should fight against, according to him, is not Russia or China, not Eurasia or Eastasia, but the evil tendencies in our own minds, our own weak and gullible compromises in a contempt of law and a contempt for truth. (CW 10, 143)

What is it exactly if not these evil tendencies, driven by contempt, that have given the Harper Conservatives permission to compromise their consciences, to lie, deceive, break rules and the law, cheat, conceal, refuse to answer questions, de-route all democratic process, and generally engage in vindictive attacks on perceived enemies and malign and smear honest public servants who inconveniently speak the truth? The great psychologist and affect theorist Silvan Tomkins–like Frye, a genius with a grand theory–postulates that at the heart of contempt is a drive auxiliary that acts like an affect and which he calls “dissmell.” Dissmell is clearest in the sneer, the raised upper lip directed at another, as if other people smelled bad and were not fit for human consumption.

Tomkins points out that in a democracy contempt (which is unilateral dissmell combined with anger) is rarely used (Tomkins calls it the most unappealing affect), because it undermines the assumption of equality and solidarity with others. It is however a central affect in authoritarian and hierarchical societies, where dominance and superiority must be communicated by rejecting and distancing “malodorous” others. Contempt, as Tomkins neatly puts it, is the mark of the oppressor.

In contrast, shame is the affect central in democratic societies, because shame does not sunder the interpersonal bridge: it is not unilateral and only functions when there is already an affluence, a closeness and fellow feeling that is impeded in some way but with only an incomplete reduction of enjoyment or interest. Shame implies an identification with others, and a wish to return to the good scene of communion with the other. Contempt, on the other hand, insists on an unbridgeable distance from the other in the first place, so that there is no good scene to return to. There is no identification with the other. It is a very handy affect if you want to lynch someone, or cheat them out of their life’s savings, or if you are just part of an oligarchy that wants to avoid uncomfortable feelings of guilt (moral shame) for the misery that has been inflicted on the rest of the human population.

Compare for example, the facial display of Dick Cheney with that of Barack Obama. As far as I know, Cheney’s prominently raised upper lip is not due to any physical paralysis of any kind; it is an expression of dissmell. It is hard to imagine a sneer like Cheney’s coming over the features of someone like Obama. So when you have a leader of a government, Stephen Harper, who treats his own fellow citizens with dissmell it is best to be suspicious and wonder about the fate of our democracy.

But as of yet too many Canadian voters seem inert, immobilized, unconcerned with the erosion of democratic institutions and processes, and it is this very situation the Conservatives count on in a fear campaign directed at everybody’s pocket book.  Harper’s government is a perfect example of what Frye calls, in an essay on democracy which I will quote more fully below, a “managerial dictatorship.” Its primary model is a corporation, and thus it is naturally in conflict with democratic principles and processes. The only principles the Conservatives uphold are the rights of Canadians to own unregistered deadly weapons and to pollute the environment in the name of the economy. But, to lift a phrase from Thoreau,“whether we should live like baboons or like men seems a little uncertain.”

In contrast to the current inertia of voters is the famous reversal in the 1993 election when a negative Conservative ad ridiculing Jean Chrétien’s facial paralysis turned the election around on a dime, leaving the Conservatives, by the time the dust had settled, with only two seats in the country. It was an encouraging moment. It was uplifting to know that the voters could say so loudly and clearly that such a mean and ugly attack on a fellow human being and citizen is just not welcome here, thank you very much.

The following paragraph is from an essay Frye wrote in 1950, an essay he wrote for The Varsity, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto. He is not speaking in affective terms, but the antithesis he speaks of is the same:

All governments whatever must be either the expression of the will as a minority holding autonomous power, which is able to impose that will on society as a whole, or the expression of the will of the people as a whole to govern themselves. In the former case there is an antithesis between a ruling class and the ruled classes; in the latter case there is no governing class, but only a group of executives and public servants responsible to society as a whole for what they do. The latter conception is the democratic one.  (CW 11, 235)

“Democracy,” he goes on to say, “ is thus essentially the attempt to preserve law and order in society which has superseded the primitive and outmoded idea of ‘rule.’” We now have a government, of course, that seeks the very opposite: to rule as a minority and actively undermine the preservation of law and order in its own house: the House of Commons. Our House, as Michael so rightly puts it. The Conservatives have been found in contempt of parliament, guilty as charged of obstructing parliament and undermining democracy. Consider this paragraph from Frye in the same essay:

Anti-democratic social action, of the kind intolerable to a democracy must necessarily be in the direction of withdrawing information and action from the community as a whole. It is a contradiction in terms for democracy to tolerate a conspiratorial coup d’etat aimed at the restoration of the old idea of a professional ruling class. (236)

I can’t think of a better way of describing the threat that this country faces right now.

 

“The Canada We Have Failed to Create”

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Paul-Émile Borduas, “Leeward of the Island (1.47),” 1947, National Gallery of Canada

At the end of The Modern Century, Frye speaks of a

genuine America buried underneath the America of bustling capitalism which occupies the same place. This buried America is an ideal that emerges in Thoreau, Whitman, and the personality of Lincoln. All nations have such a buried and uncreated ideal, the lost world of the lamb, and the child, and no nation has been more preoccupied with it than Canada.

He then goes on to mention Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Riopelle, Borduas, and of  Pratt and Nelligan, as well as the novels of Grove and artists and writers he sees as constantly in search of that ideal, that “something to be found that has not been found, something to be heard that the world is too noisy to let us hear.”

If there is a genuine Canada, it seems all the more elusive today. It is hard to believe that the cynicism and dishonesty of the current government has had, if we are to trust the polls, so little impact on a disturbingly large part of the electorate. Elsewhere, with reference to the inability of the NDP ever to garner enough support to win federal power, Frye pithily observes: “Principles make voters nervous, and yet any departure from them towards expediency makes them suspicious” (CW 12: 644). We can only hope that the current government’s venality and contempt for democracy, not to mention the wishes of his fellow citizens in the name of “stability” and a spurious economic expediency, will create enough suspicion to defeat Harper once and for all.

The Modern Century was published in 1967, the year of Canada’s centenary. Whatever ensues in the upcoming ballot, the eloquent words of the closing peroration are worth keeping in mind over the next weeks:

One of the derivations proposed for the word Canada is a Portuguese phrase meaning “nobody here.” The etymology of the word Utopia is very similar, and perhaps the real Canada is an ideal with nobody in it. The Canada to which we really do owe loyalty is the Canada that we have failed to create. In a year bound to be full of the discussions of our identity, I would like to suggest that our identity, like the real identity of all nations, is the one that we have failed to achieve. It is expressed in our culture, but not attained in our life, just as Blake’s new Jerusalem to be built in England’s green and pleasant land is no less a genuine ideal for not having been built there. What there is left of the Canadian nation may well be destroyed by the kind of sectarian bickering which is so much more interesting to many people than genuine human life. But, as we enter a second century contemplating a world where power and success express themselves so much in stentorian lying, hypnotized leadership, and panic-stricken suppression of freedom and criticism, the uncreated identity of Canada may be after all not so bad a heritage to take with us.

Frye and the “Mature Society”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-0y0Tywlw

Stephen Harper yesterday announced he will only take four questions from the national news media per day — a national media he sequestered behind a fence forty feet away. He’s also backed off on his challenge to debate Michael Ignatieff one on one.

Frye’s comments on liberalism are very much in the social democratic vein of John Stuart Mill. I am reminded of another phrase Stephen Harper is throwing about: “real Canadians,” though I guess both words should be lit up with capitals as “Real Canadians,” he is so clearly hypostatizing the term in an insidious and McCarthyistic way. The next thing you know he’ll be using the phrase “anti-Canadian” (if he hasn’t already). As Frye makes clear in this excerpt, there are no real Canadians or Canadian identity in that sense: there are only individuals, and society, in its most genuine form, is an expression of the individuals in it, who in turn are what the society is for. In The Double Vision, Frye asks: “What is the difference between the spiritual aspect of primary concerns and the secondary or ideological concerns just mentioned?” He answers this way:

I think the difference is expressed in two types of society, one primitive and the other mature. A primitive or embryonic society is one in which the individual is thought of as primarily a function of the social group. In all such societies a hierarchical structure of authority has to be set up to ensure that the individual does not get too far out of line. A mature society, in contrast, understands that its primary aim is to develop a genuine individuality in its members. In a fully mature society the structure of authority becomes a function of the individuals within it, all of them, without distinctions of sex, class, or race, living, loving, thinking, and producing with a sense of space around them. Throughout history practically all societies have been primitive ones in our present sense: a greater maturity and a genuine concern for the individual peeps out occasionally, but is normally smothered as society collapses back again into its primitive form.

I think there is little doubt about what kind of society Stephen Harper has in store for us.

New Article: “Northrop Frye and Soren Kierkegaard”

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Here is a gem from our own Bob Denham, a remarkable piece on “Northrop Frye and Soren Kierkegaard.” It is the latest piece of peer reviewed scholarship we have posted in the journal. I am sure readers will find it of the greatest interest. Two main pivots of Frye’s complex thinking about the metaliterary – creative repetition and primary concern – are beautifully teased out and developed here. As only he can do, Bob shows in detail the development of these concepts from their very first appearance in Frye’s writings, including of course his notebooks and diaries, to their fullest fruition at the end of his career. The article bears more than one reading to appreciate the full effect. I am delighted to say that there is more to come from Bob on Frye and his relationship to other thinkers. It occurred to me today what a good job I have here: I get to read papers about Northrop Frye written by Bob Denham.

We expect Bob’s next paper to be “Northrop Frye and Aristotle,” and hope to have it posted soon.

We also wish to thank Clayton Chrusch for his time and effort to format the charts that appear in the paper.  It takes a fair amount of work to get them looking so good. He is always unfailingly our good friend and generous colleague.

“The Case for Obama”

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Further to Michael’s earlier post

I just read an interesting article by Tim Dickinson in the latest Rolling Stone: “The Case for Obama.” As the article argues, what Obama has accomplished in just his first two years has made his, in the words of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “a truly historic presidency.” From her perspective, he doesn’t really have any serious rivals since Lyndon Johnson. Obama has put through an astonishing amount of progressive legislation and yet the x factor Michael speaks of–the feebleness of the Democrats at celebrating these successes, out of fear, I guess, of being branded liberals or, worse, socialists–makes it seem as though he has been weak and bullied into ineffectiveness by Republican intransigence.

Here is Dickinson’s list of the eight key areas of historic progress associated with the Obama administration: averting a depression, sparking recovery, saving Detroit, reforming health care, cutting corporate welfare, restoring America’s reputation, protecting consumers, and launching a clean-energy moonshot. As Kearns Goodwin puts it, Obama has tried to use “the collective energy of the nation to make life better for more people.” Or as Norrie might have said, Obama has tried to change the world so it makes more human sense.

This is off topic but there is in the same issue of Rolling Stone, as an additional incentive, some appetizing excerpts from Keith Richard’s memoirs. Most interesting to me is Richard’s very wry take on Mick Jagger, reminiscent of Dean Martin’s unique friendship with Ol’ Blue Eyes, Dino being the only one in the Rat Pack who could say no to The Chairman of the Board and get away with it.

Frye Alert: “The Modern Construction of Myth”

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Andrew Von Hendy’s The Modern Construction of Myth (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003) includes an interesting section on Frye (you can read it here). Hendy has an impressive knowledge of modern theories of myth, and he certainly sees real strengths in Frye’s approach. His treatment, however, is restricted to the Anatomy and, perhaps because of this, he is dissatisfied with Frye’s understanding of the social context of literature. His position is that Frye’s view of the transformational power of literature is ultimately “romantic”–a purely personal projection that exalts the individual self over society. (This is neither a fair construction of Frye or, for that matter, of romantic writers like Shelley and Blake.) Thus Frye’s emphasis on the hypothetical and disinterested condition of literature is understood as a failure to address myth’s relationship to immediate social concerns and the concrete reality of history.

This is a typical criticism of Frye’s work. As he himself recognized, one of the unfortunate outcomes of the Anatomy’s enormous celebrity and influence is that it overshadowed Frye’s later elaborations and refinements of the myriad concepts it introduced, in particular his dynamic understanding of the role of both literature and literary criticism in society. Bad faith and vested interests being what they are, the crude assessment of Frye as an aloof and disengaged formalist is now a shibboleth for many, most of whom have never read the Anatomy.

Hendy is not one of them; he is in good faith and has certainly read the Anatomy carefully. His treatment is far from dismissive. His analysis is worth reading.

Chairmen of the Board: Frye on Sinatra

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Thanks for this post on Sinatra, Mike. Frye’s erudite knowledge of classical music is well known, but the one essay he wrote on Frank Sinatra is a little known fact. It just goes to show Frye’s incredible range, like ol’ blue eyes himself. The essay remained unpublished; Sinatra threatened to sue, or worse–and you know what that means.

Below are some excerpts from the essay, “The Fearful Symmetry of Frank Sinatra,” which opens with a statement by the singer about his legendary sense of wardrobe and style, “I am a symmetrical man, almost to a fault,” a thinly veiled allusion to both Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” and Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus

The excerpts start in fact with a brilliant gloss on Sinatra’s version of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got you Under my Skin” (great choice for the post, Mike!), worth quoting as it puts to to rest all the lame accusations that Frye was somehow weak on texture:

“In ‘I’ve Got you Under My Skin,’ [Nelson] Riddle starts with a comfortable, loping rhythm that he called ‘the heartbeat rhythm’–‘Sinatra’s tempo is the tempo of the heartbeat,’ he said–and then created a marvelous instrumental tension around Sinatra’s voice. Riddle always found little licks–certain spicy, nearly out-of-key notes–that would tease the key, and added the glue of ‘sustaining strings’ almost subliminally to the rhythm and woodwind sections. At the instrumental breaks in the songs, Riddle gave solo voices to oboes, muted trumpets, piccolos, bassoons; in ‘I’ve Got you Under My Skin,’ it was Milt Bernhart’s trombone, which is whipped up the excitement and Sinatra joined the song again and brought it back to the heartbeat rhythm where it had begun. Sinatra had wanted an extended crescendo; Riddle provided one that was longer than had ever been heard in an organized arrangement.”

And for you cultural studies types:

“What Sinatra evokes is not strictly urban. It is a very particular American loneliness–that of the soul adrift in its pursuit of the destiny of ‘me,’ and thrown back onto the solitude of its own restless heart.”

“The cocked hat, the open collar, the backward glance with the raincoat slung over the shoulder, the body leaning back with arms wide open in song–these images of perfect individualism dominated the albums of the fifties.”

And finally, in the context of ritual and dream, opsis and melos:

“In time, Sinatra seized more than power; he infiltrated the Western world’s dream life.”

Frye never stops amazing his readers. Who’d have thunk it? Not even Bob Denham. As one critic of Frye has justly remarked, “in whatever direction you happen to be going, you always meet Frye on the way back.”

And Sinatra. Just don’t get in his way.