Word: spenglerism
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Frye's writing is, as always, lucid, though the last few essays are difficult for those unfamiliar with the material. In addition, his straightforward presentation is occasionally spiced by a characteristic dry wit. In "Spengler Revisited," for example, Frye writes...
...science, but "rather an attempt to articulate what is of greatest human concern to the society that produces it." In his exaltation of the imagination, he goes so far as to view poetic myth as embodying a higher order of reality than scientific truth. In an essay called "Spengler Revisited," Frye defends Spengler against his detractors, in part, by saying...
Some of his comparative passages, such as his juxtaposing of colors in Western painting with tonal effects in Western music, read almost like free association. Any number of critics could call these comparisons absurd or mystical balderdash. But Spengler has the power to challenge the reader's imagination, as critics of that type usually have not, and he will probably survive them all even if all of them are right...
LONGEST THESIS--The opening lines from Henry A. Kissinger's 1950 summa cum laude senior thesis--entitled "The Meaning of History (Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant)"--read as follows: "An Introduction to an undergraduate honor thesis may seem presumptuous, but I believe that its inordinate length and unorthodox method require an explanation...the length is due to the fact that I did not realize the implications of the subject when I started to work on the thesis. As it grew, I made several efforts to cut it down...
JOHN CONNALLY, 59, was the most apparent loser. Usually a spellbinder, he hurried through a strangely flat address to an underwhelmed convention. His peroration was so gloomy that he sounded like a Texas Spengler: "How long this civilization, this free society of America will exist, I do not know...