Spring 2010 - Interpretation

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3 0 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n a human artefact could teach man nothing except that he was not it. We are taught by our own cultural conditioning, and by that alone. (Frye 2000, 37) Frye’s assessment remained unaltered even in his later writings. In “The Double Vision: Language and Meaning in Religion,” originally composed in 1990, Frye insists that “the axiom of the eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico was verum factum: we understand nothing except what we have made” (Frye 2000, 185)—as if any attempt to understand Vico as a Mind that we did not “make” were nothing better than an exercise in futility. Frye’s diagnosis and prognosis stand at the farthest remove from Vico’s own arguments, entitling us to suspect that Frye’s understanding of Vico is based on merely indirect acquaintance with the philosopher’s work. Frye’s account of Vico’s thought appears to rely heavily on English renderings of Vico’s texts and possibly on twentieth-century appraisals of Vico, rather than on Vico’s original Italian and Latin texts. Frye does not appear to be disturbed by the possibility that his representation of Vico betray lack of intimacy with the philosopher’s own thought. At least in the press, Frye pays no attention to the possibility that he may have misunderstood Vico, or that what enabled him to step beyond Vico was lack of an adequate understanding of what stood before him. Had he doubted his vision, perhaps Frye would have intended that what stood before him was no molehill, but “the Olympus of the Mind” that would inevitably make any audacious conqueror stumble (Oration II, par. 8-9). That which enabled Frye to appropriate the “letter” of Vico’s text appears to have been something akin to what one of Vico’s friendly interlocutors once spoke of as “the tyrannical audaciousness of wrong forgone conclusions”—a stance that would have prevented Frye from inquiring into the inherent reason or mind of Vico’s phrasings (see Addendum 1). Ultimately, Frye’s treatment of Vico is unwittingly reminiscent of the treatment Vico’s dogmatic barbarian “of reflection” reserves to ancient and thus longdead philosophical Writers (Scrittori), where he crowns himself as Divine Author of their world, as if their world were devoid of any original order and meaning—as if Right were not rooted in nature prior to its being imposed supernaturally (see Addendum 2).
Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico 3 0 3 References Cristofolini, Paolo. 2001. Vico Pagano e Barbaro. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Frye, Northrop. 1965 [1947]. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1990 [1957]. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1992 [1990]. Words with Power. Orlando, FL: First Harvest/HBJ. ———. 2000. Northrop Frye on Religion. In Collected Works of Northrop Frye. Edited by Alvin A. Lee and Jean O’Grady. Toronto, Buffalo, London: Victoria University Press. Vico, Giambattista. 1708. De Ratione = De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione [Of the Reason of the Studies of our own Time]. ———. 1710. De Antiquissima = De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia ex Linguae Latinae Originibus Eruenda [On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians that is Raised out of the Origins of the Latin Tongue]. (On wisdom being “raised,” see Addendum 3.) ———. 1711-12. Risposta = Risposta di Giambattista Vico all’Articolo X del Tomo VIII del ‘Giornale de’ Letterati d’Italia’ [Answer by Giambattista Vico to the Article X of the Tome VIII of the ‘Journal of the Men-of- Letters of Italy’]. ———. 1720. De Uno = De Uno Universi Iuris Principio et Fine Uno [Of the One Principle and One End of Universal Right; all citations pertain to Bk. I]. ———. 1730. SN30 = De Principi d’Una Scienza Nuova d’Intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni [Of the Principles of One ‘New Science’ About the Common Nature of Nations]. ———. 1744. SN44 = Principi di Scienza Nuova di Giambattista Vico d’intorno alla comune natura delle Nazioni [Principles of New Science of Giambattista Vico about the common nature of Nations]. ———. Riprensione = Riprensione delle Metafisiche di Renato delle Carte, di Benedetto Spinoza, e di Giovanni Locke [Reprehension of the Metaphysics of René Descartes, of Benedict Spinoza, and of John Locke]. (In Correzioni, Miglioramenti, e Aggiunte Terze [Third Corrections,
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