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    Interview With Northrop Frye Final

    Diunggah oleh

    Rafael Censon
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    Interview with Northrop Frye Francesco Goad 1s pects the Me of longevity ha most fen comes to min ia thinkag of Nortrop Frye: Tn ot refering, obvi, tote age tthe man, who, lngh fe sree, ties write ho Se boo vith vince intel energy. ut othe age of Tis tery of lire Afr so many meteors that ppeared and anied lathe sty of cic inthe lat wo or hee decade, Frye's tren bigher than ever. Prom he ine of his emia tort on Bike (Fear Sync, 1947) he hs followed we “enc etc path, one whic tay, after cous cys as tone swe td welLicveled highway, tae by sores of Stone so well by sane prefers. highway sch 38 theca med mip nd ee tmp tmpertoun to mrace hs foot Bi every eatoggher of ery Slice has bs own syle and bis ov slo arvana scaly wit he sapesinporion of several diflrent maps It Ips get en's tearing might be of ome vale to open teers by skoing sbi oie ofthe Fryean Tiokeay it wil enind fhe ede of te general rection off Cte and wp cone! for he conversation tha follows Tey Eagleton, one of te leas sympa ees of Fe once ened hm as poo td poststrecsuat Enlton 1986, 23 133), The posi “pos etre to remind ef ascent approach toler ecm med expel in Anatomy of rca, wheres the pon” refers to cor of dered romantic” which Eagleton tect ate toma Sse for ety which ean only rele fen the realm of Pun, Think ht thee highly provocative remake tear some elements of trith something potiv abot Fy hat even tis ences ee ae freed acto. Eaghton imply fecopies, infact what sos impotant in e's they aly I concep of lenry sacar. ‘rece it ofl he den one develop ae reading work co erate and aks oneal wha hs toa meaning maybe. 1, QUADERNT 4 walianstice Volume IX, No. 2, 1988, Intervie wih Northrop Frye ais therefore, a perception of the work as « whole, Even this rather clementary concep of structure could be disputed by some “pre” of “post strotualst crits since they appear to be interested more “meaningful” segments ofthe text rather than inthe total vison that it projects. In Tay, this totalizing concept of structure till meets Some resistance, especially for those who cing tothe “poesia non poesia” dichotomy of Crocean memory, which assigns pre-eminence {to particular passages ofthe text over the others, However, the fact is ‘that this concept of structure has entered inthe practice ofeiticism everywhere; if nothing els, it has become an easily recognizable tical term. Frye, however, goes beyond this. His idea of structure surpasses ‘he boundaries ofthe literary work and extends over iterate isl, {aken in its totality. The amplified concept of strcture presupposes an “order of words,” an internal framework integrating every work of literature, whichis recognizable in the conventions, genres and clusters of archetypes within which lierary creation finds expres: sion. Such a framework is described in detail in Anatomy of Crit ‘cia. Here Frye is undoubtedly a “structural,” inthe sense tat the enlarged concep of sructure leads him to identity the series of categories that sustain the entire framework. But his type of site. {uralism is ofa peculiar brand, certainly diferent from that ofthe French schoo!—to which the term is more commonly asocited-— here there is a programmatic search forthe “deep structures of aa. tation” presenting the rigour and the coherence of scientific result (Over the years, Frye has distanced himself even more than before {rom the “pre” and “post” stracturalists who tend to focus thelr at tention on smaller units of literary discourse: new criticism points {0 the ambiguity ofthe vebal texture, deconstruction insists the ‘unsobstantiality of language, always “delayed” in offering its mean. ings. Frye has proceeded towards a definition of structure even ampler than the ones already formulated. I is one that takes into accou the whole context in which literature expresses itself, one, that i, which encompasses al ofthe humarites. The unifying force inthis bold and general vision of literature is mythology. Mythology is a {factum of mankind tat i the highest testimony of human capac itis with it and within it that man creates and gives shape to his 316 Francesco Guardian ‘own destiny. The purely creative activity of the arts carted on in this context is flanked by the other speculative activity of mankind, ‘which is the purwit of science. Al the apex of Prye's vision we have therefore a double perspective concerning the main activity ‘of the human intellectual; on one side energy is channelled toward the creative, on the otber toward the descriptive. The universe of mythology is an all-encompassing ality, but it excludes the world of ‘Eience because it merely tells what is there and not the human reality that we make: “I would even risk the suggestion thatthe physical sciences have never coatribuied anything 10 the mythopocie world picture except through misunderstanding and misapplication. If that is tr, then the moral is clearly that science is its own world-view, ‘nd should be distinguished from the mythical one” (The Stubborn ‘Structure, 18-19). This statement indicates clearly the abyss which ‘epantes Frye from the French school of Siructraism, oriented toward a scientific understanding ofall human experinces. "The world ofthe etic, then, hast focus onthe world of creation, the world of myth, where the ftal vision of the human condition is represented. The function ofthe critic isto show the relevance of this world to society. In fact, the critic isthe mediator between art and society, and this is why “the great bulk of citicism i teaching at all levels, from kindergarten to gradute school"(The Educpied Imagination, 55). The work ofthe aris isthe fulfillment ofthe ere- ative energy of man in its purest form; nature, the “outside” world ‘exists only because man is in it and gives it shape through attic ‘creation. The responsibilty of the critic, then, is precisely 10 show tthe reality ofthe “inside” world which isthe true world: “Real- ity is what we create and not what we contemplate” (The Subborn Structure, 51) In conclusion, Fye's vision of literature implies a vision of lite in which man, because of his creative energy, is recognized a8 the aly divinity able to give shape to the world. And if mythology ives ws an assurance of being immersed in such a word, its human shape reminds us ofits finite form and calls on out responsibility 10 recreate it. Interview with Northrop Frye a7 FRANCESCO GUARDIANE The mai thesis of dnatmy of Coit ‘om was the exblishment of new since Tay athe exression, of literary erica as anemia, yseats and progresive discipline drawing dec frm ieee noe, S30 instruments of analy. ‘The new ciple hold be fice from he diet experience that oe might hve in resi ce ature and fe fom the dependence on ther dscipons ety philosophy sychoaralyi history ect, tn earth ek point, what 60 you have to ay 10 Harold Bloom potsing that “There are oer Thre re ony eure (Srna) Do you think that criticism canbe eetve? In gar tothe so ‘ond pia woul ike you to expand on what you have occa Ie, en ys at rc ha ly ced fom ie inary, being "sl bound upto econ, and conceiey mich more concerned to develop te lngge of spent ae thes than eal fo enbuk on the empl ssy of Hesse (Sausinhy, 3) Are you ls opt ow. ih resp to he {stbinhment of «new eis, thn you wer thy Jet age? NORTHROP FRYE: don't se that Bloom's rematl & orig mote thn a foutde: i 4 aatemet of pure sole oe ile slips i alays sto wees ao eyo nore: Ive ate lst inet ning abe the et nas of ecm, ot because my views have changed, but baeoee Conceptions of cienx (moe paiclary sacl sae, whch the contest involved) ar sl fo inex, Ba whencier ces Sige with eachother te only eflecive dapeenent sat the meaning of eat ane texts avays hee to ppeaio ‘As there ate now about fen schools 0 every one a thre wer inte nineteen Ae, tis abot ie ies en itever wa tha im is oand up with espe, Gad ue tay be done within ay cries schoo, ut te gaep ey form sseltenclosed intminble mpoment. What fe se, however, thatthe pluralistic tendency must work iif bao xhution before any teal advance in am cn ne FG: Literary criticism has been constantly sustained by the support ‘of philosophy. Storms of scholars in the past tied Kant, Hees! a8 Francesco Guardian and, at least in Italy, Croce in order to speak competently 28 literary critics. Today they study Nietzsche and Heidegger. 1 Do you think itis = healthy altitude? 2 Do you think it i ‘necessary fo contain the influence of philosophy to remain inthe boundaries of literary criticism? 3.” Where does philology ft in this concentration on theory? 4. How about the help that cite can get from psychology ? (I know that Iam speaking to ‘someone who has meditated on hundreds of books of psychology, ‘who has a particular penchant for Jung. who has recently writen (on Lacan.) INF: In my student days, te literary establishment was mainly philo- logical and historical (the study of modern literatures inthe 19h century grew up parly as 2 by-product of imperialistic ideology, which doesa't say that the study itself was wrong). A number of ‘my seniors were reacting against this and stressing the relevance ‘of philosophy, forming what was called & “history of ideas” ap- ‘proach. T belonged 10 a generation in which the relevance of psychology and anthropology was also becoming obvious. No sensible critic can question the relevance of these disciplines to the literature that borders them: what [have consistently ob {ected to is turning literary criticism into a specialized branch of| philosophy oF whatever s FG: Ina previous conversation, never recorded, you mentioned your reading of Vico was an important and revealing experience. ‘You felt that you “hid been there before” having previously sud {ed Blake and having been “inoculate,” that was your word, by his works. What were the cycles of history that you found in Blake? INE: Blake saw the revolutionary movements of his time in America and France 28a repetition ofthe revolutionary movements in the Bible represented by the Exodus in the Old Testament and the Resurrection in the New Both of these “betrayed” revolutions: ‘The Exodus turned into Jewish legalism and the Resurrection ito ‘Christan authoritarianism, He saw the industrial movement of his time, including the slave trading in America, the Napoleonic ‘wars, and the intellectual rationalizing of these things, as evidence that the revolution in his day also contained elements of his own reversal. Out of that he developed a cyclical view of history, Imervew with Northrop Frye 39 symbolized as a periodic bint of "Orc," the revolutionary im- pals, Orc being eventually martyred of aging into the opposite Of himself. "The Mental Traveller” is one of several poems that eseribe this, FG: Vico like Blake, was interested in understanding the products ‘of mankind, rather than its environment, But Vico, like Blake, ‘nad no problems in recognizing the presence of «divine power ‘extemal to man. Who made the world of nature for Blake? INF: Vico lived in © much mote hysterical climate of opinion than Blake did, and he deliberately avoids al problems connected with sacred or Biblical history. But his axioms of verum factum, that ‘man understands only what he has made, and that he has made history, obviously cartes him far beyond this puting of history ino sacred and profane compartments. As for Blake, he regards ‘ature as citer chaos or a human creation: “where man isnot ‘ature is barren,” he 68, and in the imaginative of creative stale all objees in nature are "men seen a FG: Blake, you say, “isthe ist person in the modern world who Understands that the older mythological construct had collapsed and tha a new one had to be created" (Creation Recreation, 58). ‘What is the Sense of “creation” for him and how far is be fron Nietzsche? [NF: All creation for Blake is also recreation. What i terested isthe ‘original cretion before the fal, the fll being a power-stugale among “Eternals.” himan-ttanic beings. Hence ll eration today has a preexistemt model, and The Four Zoas ends: “How is i that all things are chang'd, even as in ancient time?” For him all energy is ether creative or perverted and destructive: thete is ‘0 “will to power” in him as in Nietsche, where power isnot identified with creativity, FG: You made extensive use ofthe concep of typology ("a vison of history") in The Great Code, the Bible being the typological txt ‘par excellence. Yet the temporal distance that necessarily seem to associate the antitype to the type is disregarded by Blake as 1 fallacy. How do you reconcile his “thermal Now” with typology? [NE: Bake thinks ofthe climax of imaginative power a he collapsing of time into an “Eshernal Now,” certainly. But he also realizes 20 Francesco Guardian ‘that man lives in history, and describes, among other things, & Aemporal sequence of seven ages symbolized by different names under which God has been worshipped, the lst two being Jehovah sod Jesus. Both Testaments of the Bible represents pat looking forward to future: what Blake means by the “mental fight” of building « New Gerusalem isthe turning of the fore into the reset, not waiting for some inevitable process to unoll itself. FG: It is your view that there is something in Blake that makes him stand out of his wn historical time. Harold Rlooen sa that reading Fearful Symmetry one never knows when Blake ends and Frye begins. believe, with many others, that in fact your work as 1 ct, lke Blake's writings, has a certain atemporal quality even though it is clearly rooted in our times. Have you ever thought about ie? [NP: [think every creative effort springs out of its own time, and to ‘the extent that it “spring fealy with any writer without taking both bis relation to his own time and his relation tous into account. There must be elements in Dante that rises out ofthe thirteenth century of he would not stl be a great poet to us; but if we ignored his thiteenth-century tural presoppoitons. I felt that I could write about Blake daly by entering hit mind as completely at possible; but I think I kept his cightenth-century contet in mind too. FG: Bloom has no problem in seeing literature, and literary criticism with it, as a narcissistic experience. Your idea is totally opposed to that, but narcissism seems to be very common among creative ‘writers. Do you see some value ini? You clarify the difference, in Creation and Recreation, as well a in The Great Code, between two different kinds of faith: the one we think we believe in and the one that isthe principle of our actions, which is ooted in our cultural identity. Do you se the possiblity for literature to touch tus on the deeper level off INF: Narcissism i the normal atitude that most writer and probably all reader, begin with. I's essentially an immature atitude, and must be outgrown before any genvine distinction in creative or tical work can emerge. Ala certain point you realize that that Imervew with Northrop Frye a lovely face is inthe water and that yours inthe ira that point you stop seeing the reflection of yourself and start looking for fish, Similarly, there are two levels of reacting to literature. One can think of one's reading as an aequirement, asa body of cultivation ‘one possesses: that's a stage of connoisscurship, where the moral ature isnot touched. I think there are much profounder and more ‘eeply commited ways of approaching literature, and that those ‘would affect the personality, but most people who gett that tage 4o 50 unconsciously FG: In your theory, in general, and in your dealing with Cenadian literature in paula, you have resisted the notion of the “global village.” proposed by your good frend the Inte Marshall MeLuan ‘You said that the trend to unify and to conglomerate, which is 0 cleat in politics and economics, is reversed in literature and culture. Yet more and more people in our day and age move {rom place to place, from country to county, from eultue 1 cl ture; a good number of "lalians” I know bere do not speak the language of ther parents, some of them were born in Belgium, in Germany, in Switzerland, where their parents had settled be. fore deciding to move to Canada. What is thei cultural identity? ‘Where is their “genetic identity” so important in your concept of| faith. Moreover, the movement from culture to culture ean be an intellectual journey of no less importance: your “Canadian” ideas ate shared by readers in South America and in Japan, Detida was, born in Africa, educated in France and is now matly appreciated inthe US. Do you regard these cultural exchanges as ineectal in defining cultural identity? INF: McLuhan's global vilage was a conception developed quite ex plicty in connection with the electronic media, and is tre that they impose a cultural conformity wherever they go. But there are also cultural cottage industries, like writing and painting and ‘composing, that tend to decentralize society and form a kind of counterenvironment. When I speak of being “rooted” in a ul ture I'm vsing a vegetable metaphor, and man, being an animal and mobile, can choose (or at leas it 0 ike a seed) the place where he wil oot. There ate expatriate writes, but they not ‘necessarily rootless, They've simply gone somewhere els, and 1 should certainly agre that movements rom one culture to another om Francesco Guarani ‘ean be & deeply cariching experience. The essential thing is that ‘one should write out of an imaginatively coherent environment, however one constructs it. By that last I mean that the coherent environment may not always be there: DH. Lawrence reamed all over the world looking for his imaginative home, but it was that home be wrote from whether he wat in Australis or Mex: __ 40 of Sardinia. Coherent environment are always communicable nd imeligible to other communities over the world, so tht ‘witer may write in Nigeria or Colombia and get a Nobel Prize in ‘Sweden. FO: From the previous question I am tempted to expand into 4 much ‘ebated topic of today, the woman’s cultural identity. Women's ‘Saudies is becoming increasingly relevant, in North America least a5 ew’ subject in the humanities. Do you see significant innovations coming from it in the area of literary criticism? INF: I find feminist eiticism most interesting when it's an aspect ‘of socal history. The main principles ofits specifically Iierary ‘rtciam are disappointing: they're quickly exhausted and don’t sustain any novel or challenging interest. 1" much prefer to be- lieve that i represented at new and important a dimension of sensibility as you sugges, but I haven't found itso, even if that ia a statement only about me. . FO: Ina recent interview Barbara Johnson expressed the very iter- ‘ting notion that “women ae all trained, to some extent, t0 be econsirucirs... (Salusinscky, 169). It seems clear that there ia “different” point of view out there, of enormous importance, that in the development of literary criticism has been completely neglected. How do you fel about it? NF: The remark quoted is certainly interesting, but the word “tained” sounds 1 bit ominous: it suggests that deconsiruction may be a ‘weatieth-ceatury form of needlework. Freud though not highly regarded a8 + feminist writer, remarked that women were much ‘quicker than men a picking up the subconscious elements in com- ‘munication, nd I suppote that that ability is related to deconstruc- tion. FO: On «theoretical level deconstruction critcam appears to be well, ‘grounded. You also gave credit to Derrida for having expanded Interview with Northrop Frye ms the notion of ‘delay’ (Creation and Recreation, 19-20), But do You see any problem coming from practical eiicism? It appears {ome that when the elusiveness becomes the rule one seems con.

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