Author Archives: Michael Happy

Saturday Night at the Movies: “Duck Soup”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGjx93yB0gMb

Given the state of our politics these days, this may be the perfect film to watch on this particular Saturday night. (Video not embedded: click on the image and then hit the YouTube link.)

The 24 year old Frye in a letter from Oxford to Helen Kemp relates a story involving a classmate, a somewhat addled aristocrat, and the Marx Brothers’ 1933 classic, Duck Soup:

The other night in the lodge our only sprig of nobility, the Honourable David St. Clair Erskine (one of our tame homosexuals as well) came in from the Dramatic Society’s performance of Macbeth and met Baine, who had just come in from seeing the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.  The Honourable David St. Clair Erskine was tanked up just enough to be affable to anybody–when he woke up the next morning and realized that he had spoken to an American Freshman Rhodes Scholar to whom he hadn’t been introduced he probably went on the water wagon for life.  He said: “I enjoyed the show (meaning Macbeth) very much, didn’t you?”  Baine: “Very much (meaning Duck Soup).  “I remembered that I had seen it before, but I enjoyed it very well the second time anyway.” The Honourable D. St. C.E. (somewhat staggered): “I — I understand they didn’t get it all rehearsed in time, and are adding a few scenes at each performance.”  Baine: “Yes, I noticed it had been cut a good deal, but thought it had been censored.”  The Honourable Et Cetera: “I like the leading lady — she’s new to Oxford, but she did very well.”  By this time, there being no leading lady in the Marx Brothers picture, the first faint roseate blush of dawn began to appear in Baine’s mind, but he wisely decided the situation would be too much for the H. D. St. C. E.’s  bewildered brain to cope with at that point.  (CW 2, 702-3)

The rest of the film after the jump.  This is the Marx Brothers at their very best.  Many will no doubt be amazed just how many of the classic Marx Brothers scenes come from this one movie.  About the best way I can think of to spend 80 minutes.  As a bonus, this is also a pristine, high definition version of the film.  Enjoy.

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Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord”

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lostchord

On this date in 1888, one of the first phonograph recordings ever made, Sir Arthur Sullivan‘s “The Lost Chord,” was revealed to the press in London.

You can hear it here. It starts out a little rough but gets better: it’s a really remarkable experience to listen to a 122 year old recording.

Frye notes of the “lost chord” in “Music and the Visual Arts,” “Like Sullivan, [Mendelsohn] thought the diminished seventh was the lost chord.”

Diminished seventh on C here.

H. G. Wells

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

Orson Welles in conversation with H. G. Wells

On this day in 1946 H. G. Wells (born 1866) died.

Frye in “Varieties of Literary Utopias”:

The implication seems clear that the ideal state to More, as to Plato, is not a future  ideal but a hypothetical one, an informing power and not a goal of action.  For More, as for Plato, Utopia is the kind of model of justice and common sense, which, once established in the mind, clarifies its standards and values.  It does not lead to a desire to abolish sixteenth-century Europe and replace it with Utopia, but it enables one to see Europe, and to work within it, more clearly.  As H. G. Wells says of his Utopia, it is a good discipline to enter it occasionally.  (CW 27, 202)

Frye Newsletter: Vote for the Frye Sculpture!

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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

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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

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

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, act II, scene 2.  Enobarbus’ 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)