Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath.
On this date in 1789 members of the revolutionary National Constituent Assembly took an oath to ban feudalism and abandon their privileges.
Frye in “The Question of ‘Success'”:
One of the prominent figures in the French Revolution was asked what he did, what he achieved in the French Revolution, and he said: “J’ai servécu” — I survived. (CW 7, 300)
Today is P. D. James‘s 90th birthday.
Thanks to Bob Denham’s wonderful compendium, Northrop Frye Unbuttoned, we have at our fingertips what Frye had to say in his notebooks about the detective novel. Here’s a selection:
Why am I obsessed with detective stories?. . . I’ve completely forgotten the Freudian explanation I came across recently. In my own terms (which wouldn’t of course exclude Freud) a really top-flight detective story has two levels of meaning throughout. Every sentence, every fact given, may be potentially a “clue”: it has its surface meaning in the narrative, and its teleological meaning as part of what you “see” in the final cognitio. Also, of course, the descent of the police as a Last Judgment symbol, reaching for the guilt that’s in everyone, and the scapegoat as the primal anxiety symbol. (Unbottoned, 66)
The detective story is written backwards, & belong to creative & dream time, not to the ordinary beginning-to-end, cause-and-effect time. It’s written in the way one composes a dream after having the alarm go off. This event-to-cause order is the mythical as distinct from the historical order. . . . I think my dream life demands these stories. (ibid.)
There are some Freudian reasons (except that I’ve forgotten what they are) for the appeal of detective stories: Freudianism itself owes much of its popularity to the same kind of appeal, Freudian therapy of neurosis being essentially a search for who done it in childhood. Or what done it. (ibid.)
I have often wondered why I’m so hooked on detective stories. . . . One thing that occurs to me is double meaning: a casual remark or incidental episode suddenly becomes relevant in that second world where the murderer is identified. Miniature apocalypse with Satan cast out and all the other details moving together in identity. (ibid.)
You can watch a complete television adaptation of James’s Shroud for a Nightingale by linking here.
Plaque commemorating the first telephone exchange in the British Empire in the old Exchange Building at 8 Main Street East in Hamilton, Ontario
On this date in 1922 Alexander Graham Bell died.
Frye in his “Convocation Address, University of Bologna” (April 24, 1989):
In Canada, with its sparse population, immense area, and physical obstacles separating each part of the country, communication has always been a major preoccupation. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison both lived a good deal in Canada; the building of railways and bridges and canals have formed much of Canadian history, and a fair number of Canadian intellectuals have been philosophers of communication theory. (CW 10, 343)
Today provides a number of important anniversaries in the history of African slavery across more than two centuries.
On this date:
In 1619 the first African slaves arrived at Jamestown, Virginia.
In 1834 slavery was abolished in the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act.
In 1838 non-laborer slaves in the British Empire were emancipated.
In 1840 laborer slaves in the British Empire were emancipated.
Frye in conversation with David Cayley:
What man wants always is slavery or mastery. That is, he wants mastery first, and if can’t have that he’ll settle for slavery. (CW 24, 98)
Frye in “The Dialectic of Belief and Vision”:
Primary concerns are those common to the whole human race: concerns about food, shelter, and survival: a freedom without anarchy, a social order without slavery, a happiness without misery. (CW 3, 253)
Our earlier post on the Canadian Act Against Slavery (1793) here.
On this date in 1703 Daniel Defoe was placed in the pillory for seditious libel, but was pelted with flowers instead of garbage.
Frye in The Secular Scripture:
When the novel was established in the eighteenth century, it came to a public familiar with the conventions of prose romance. It is clear that the novel was a realistic displacement of romance, and had few structural features peculiar to itself. Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Pamela, use much the same general structure as romance, but adapt that structure to a greater demand for greater conformity to ordinary experience. This displacement gave the novel’s relation to romance, as I suggested a moment ago, a strong element of parody. It would hardly be too much to say that, realistic fiction from Defoe to Henry James, is, when we look at it as a form of narrative technique, essentially parody-romance. (CW , 79)
Today is de Tocqueville‘s birthday (1805-1859).
Frye in the “Conclusion to the Second Edition of Literary History of Canada“:
The coherence of the “American way of life” is often underestimated by Americans themselves, because the more thoughtful citizens of any country are likely to be more preoccupied with its anomalies. Hence outsiders, including Canadians, may find the consistency easier to see. De Tocqueville, who didn’t like much of what he saw in the United States, wrote his book [Democracy in America] very largely about that consistency, almost in spite of himself. (CW 12, 452-3)
In his “Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington”:
De Tocqueville, in his magesterial survey of democracy in America, says only one thing about Canada, but what he says bears on our present point. “In Canada,” he says, “the most enlightened, patriotic and human inhabitants make extraordinary effort to render the people dissatisfied . . . more exertions are made to excite the passions of the citizens there than to calm them elsewhere.” He is speaking mainly of French Canada, but the remark applies to the whole country. One reads between the lines the desperate frustrations of the earlier communicators, and the massive indifference of those they attempted to address. The silence of the eternal spaces remained at the bottom of the Canadian psyche for a long time, and in many respects is still there. (ibid., 647-8)
In a 1969 interview, “CRTC Guru”:
Chiasson: I’m considering some thoughts that Tocqueville, the French historian, had about the U.S. and indeed about Canada, which I think have something to do with the fundamentally classless situation of North America.
Frye: The thing is that when you don’t have a class structure you have to diversify society in some other way, otherwise you just get a mob; of course, the mob is what Tocqueville is worried about. This is why, I think, this breaking down of the Canadian population into separate groups is so important.
Chiasson: And something to be encouraged?
Frye: Well, it takes place anyway. (CW 24, 101)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnyXgcoQl-A
From the Matthaeus Passion
On this date J.S. Bach died (1685-1750).
Frye on the Matthaeus Passion:
In the twenty years I’ve been listening to the Passion, I’ve changed my mind about it. I used to feel that the narration was something to sit through, & one waited for the arias and the choruses. Now I feel that the work is primarily narration, as the arias & choruses, with greater familiarity, fall into the background as commentaries. This, of course, brings out its real tragic structure, as it’s like Greek tragedy, not only in its use of chorus, but in its reporting of events. Even Christ, even though he does his own singing, is contained within the narration. (Cited in Robert Denham, Frye Unbuttoned, 18-19)
Picasso’s famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-6. When someone noted that the portrait did not look like her, Picasso reportedly replied, “Yes, but it will.”
On this date Gertude Stein died (1874-1946).
Frye in one of the “Third Book” notebooks:
Ultimately there is a moral conflict between the art that shocks & outrages us & the mass media that tries to accustomize us & desensitize us. I’ve often spoken of Gertrude Stein as a practitioner of an associative style, but there’s every difference between that & the Dick & Jane readers with their phony pumped-up excitement (“Run, Jim, Run”) which educate for the reading of advertising, with its exclamatory exhortations. The slogan is the demonic opposite of the koan or text, or formulaic pattern. (CW 9, 120)
On this date Samuel Coleridge died (1772-1834).
Frye in “Rencontre: the General Editor’s Introduction”
Coleridge took over from Spinoza the distinction between natura naturata, nature as structure or system, and natura naturans, nature as creative process, and all his philosophy turns on the superiority and priority of the latter. The importance of this for literature is mainly in the new status given to the poet, or the artist or creative person generally, as a result. As long as it is assumed, in Sir Thomas Browne’s phrase, “Nature is the art of God,” the poet cannot be more than an imitator of nature at one remove, and of God at two removes. Man’s creative power is at best a faint shadow of the power that made the realities of the world. But for Coleridge, and increasingly for Romantic writers, man’s creative power does not imitate a structure of things out there, but participates in the organic structure of nature. The poet creates, first, because he is alive and participates in the being of God (primary imagination), and second, because creation is the highest effort of conscious life. (CW , 121) L&S
On this date in 1534 Jacques Cartier planted a cross on the Gaspe Peninsula and declared it for Francis 1 of France.
Frye in “Levels of Cultural Identity”:
Even careless populizers are more hesitant to write such sentences as “Jacques Cartier was the first man to set foot on Canadian soil,” which were fairly recent usage not long ago. Even when the word “white” was inserted, the implication “first genuine human being” was often there. (The Eternal Act of Creation, 179)