“The written word is far more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up hallucination.”

—  Northrop Frye

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981) according to Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death p 13.
"Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The written word is far more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not …" by Northrop Frye?
Northrop Frye photo
Northrop Frye137
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991

Related quotes

Sadhguru photo

“Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Pebbles of Wisdom

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Joe Meno photo

“The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.”

Joe Meno (1974) American writer

Source: Demons in the Spring

Northrop Frye photo

“There is a curious law of art…that even the attempt to reproduce the act of seeing, when carried out with sufficient energy, tends to lose its realism and take on the unnatural glittering intensity of hallucination.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

“Design as a Principle in the Arts”, The Critical Path and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975, p. 232
"Quotes"

William Saroyan photo

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Franz Kafka photo

“If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

(18 October 1921)
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923 (1948)
Context: Eternal childhood. Life calls again.
It is entirely conceivable that life’s splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.

Wallace Thurman photo

“I am reminded again that the greatest phrase ever written is words, words, words.”

Wallace Thurman (1902–1934) American novelist active during the Harlem Renaissance

“Attempting to define the sensationalism of the press, Malcolm Muggeridge came up with the slogan 'Give us this day our daily story.' A doomed effort, because all it did was remind the reader that the King James Version of the Lord's Prayer was better written than an article by Muggeridge.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Georg Christoph Lichtenberg', p. 383
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

Related topics