Thursday, October 30, 2014

In the Deepest Most Serious Sense a Play Ground

"The ordinary division of our lives into work and play makes work the endless pursuit of a donkey's carrot into the future, and play a relaxation from this that reminds us of the carefree days of our childhood. But the genuine human energy of the arts and sciences converges on a world where work and play have become the same thing. A gathering together of such people with such interests, including this one, would be in the deepest and most serious sense a play ground, a common meeting point where all forms of language are interchangeable, all statements of identity, whether metaphors or equations, balance out, and scientists and humanists shake the past and the future out of their bones and join together in a present life."

— Northrop Frye, "The Bridge of Language" [lecture, 1981] in On Education (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1988) p167.