Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

Literary Criticism

LITERARY CRITICISM IN CANADA—SCHOOLS, AIMS, METHODS, AND DEFECTS—NEW SYNOPTIC METHOD APPLIED TO POETRY OF OVERSEAS DOMINIONS.

I. Schools of Literary Criticism.

In an old country, like England, which long has had established standards of taste and refined artistry, literary criticism is a fine art. The essays in criticism by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater, Arthur Symons, Gilbert Chesterton, Mackail, Ker, and others are polite, disinterested, humane, and delightful in themselves. They have an intrinsic charm of thought and style. They are literature. In a young country, like Canada, when, in pioneer days, the people were necessarily preoccupied wholly with practical living and material civilization, and few were cultured and none had leisure for cultivating taste, literary criticism, if it existed, was exotic and traditional. Later, when the people are still primarily occupied with material civilization but decent culture is distributed and there is leisure for cultivating taste, literary criticism becomes imitative but academic, and, sometimes, is in the manner of the dilettante. Finally, when the people of a young country become conscious that they have a native literature and indigenous standards of taste but are in doubt about the status of their literature and the aesthetic dignity of their literary taste, literary criticism becomes pragmatic or pedagogical or philosophical.

In its first stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to appraise, by exotic, traditional standards, foreign literature. Such criticism has no communal value. It is not disinterested but personal. It only exhibits, as it was intended to do, the fine taste and style of the critics. In its pragmatic stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to praise native literature, so as to win for this literature the appreciation of the people in the land in which it was produced and, secondarily, the decent regard of foreign men of letters. The matter of such pragmatic criticism always counts most, or for more than the manner or style. It aims to be constructive. But because it is self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to be too high and its condemnation too severe. In the final stage literary criticism becomes less self-conscious, less ardent, and more detached and philosophical towards native literature. It takes a synoptic view of the whole civilization and culture which the native literature of a young country embodies and interprets. It looks first to this literature as an entity by itself and next regards it from the point of view of absolute or long established standards. It judges the native poetry and prose of a young country by their relative importance to the people of that country itself, and by its dignity as a contribution to world-literature.

These are the stages in evolution of Literary Criticism in Canada. Progressively there arose four Schools of Criticism—the Traditional, the Academic or Dilettante, the Pragmatic or Pedagogical, and the Synoptic or Philosophical. But the fourth is not so much a new School as it is the Pragmatic School with a broader and more philosophical application of its aims and methods. All these distinctions, however, are themselves pedagogical. The members of the various Schools commingle aesthetic, academic, and pragmatic methods in the same essay, for the reason that in Canada criticism has been compelled, as it still is compelled, to be primarily a cultural agency, and could never aim to be literature, wholly delectable in itself.

The Traditional School has passed but it was represented by such deceased critics as George Stewart, John Reade, George Murray, and Martin Griffin. The Academic or Dilettante School is represented by Professors James Cappon, W. J. Alexander, Pelham Edgar, and Archibald MacMechan, and by Sir Andrew Macphail, and Arnold Haultain; and the Pragmatic School, by T. G. Marquis, Miss Jean Graham, Miss Marjory MacMurchy, Katherine Hale (Mrs. John Garvin), Donald G. French, Melvin O. Hammond, R. H. Hathaway, J. D. Logan, and Bernard Muddiman. The Synoptic School, which, too, is pragmatic but also philosophical, is represented by Ray Palmer Baker, author of A History of English-Canadian Literature to Confederation and by the author of the present work.

As to the aims and methods of the members of the Traditional and the Academic Schools:—In general, Reade and Griffin wrote critically, to illuminate universal literature (poetry, fiction, drama, social life, and history). The members of the Academic or Dilettante School have, on the whole, the same aim, but sometimes they write critical essays as a fine art in the department of belles-lettres. Reade and Griffin wrote on literature and life in brief but scholarly journalistic essays. Professors Cappon, Alexander, Edgar, and MacMechan wrote or write monographs (as, for instance, Cappon’s fine study of the poetry of C. G. D. Roberts) or critical introductions and prefatory essays to selected English men of letters (as, for instance, Alexander’s admirable Introduction to Browning or MacMechan’s scholarly Introductions to his Selections from Tennyson and Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus). Dr. Macphail and Mr. Haultain delight in the critical essay for its own sake, and are more solicitous about beauty or dignity of style than about substance or thought. Their essays belong to the department of belles-lettres—not always and not essentially, but in tendency, form, and aesthetic dignity or style.

In particular, whenever the members of the first two schools have written about any phase of the literary history and the literature of Canada, or about any author who has figured notably in that history and literature, they have been rigorously aesthetic and critical. But the writers of the Traditional School differ from those of the Academic or Dilettante School in critical attitude to Canadian literature and literary history. Reade and Griffin wrote sympathetically, and with sincere admiration, about phases of Canadian Literature; but they showed little or no understanding of the historic process in the evolution of Canadian culture, of the continuity of Canadian literary history. How, then, could they have been more than merely aesthetic—how could they have been genuinely critical—if they had not the philosophic eye, did not look before and after, and thus did not treat the phases of Canadian Literature from the point of view of its implied relations to the whole of Canadian life and of English literature, of which Canadian verse and prose form a part? Sympathetically, politely, and charmingly as Reade wrote about the phases of Canadian Literature, his criticism, to employ a phrase of M. Jules Lemaitre, was ‘not criticism, but entertaining conversation.’ Virtually it denied that Canada possessed a literature, a body of poetry and prose which should be regarded as a real integer, having unity of inspiration and a continuous growth from crude thought and form to respectable aesthetic and artistic dignity. It implied only that in the literature of Canada there are no ‘highways,’ but only pleasant ‘by-ways’ which invite the essayist to write of them with aesthetic appreciation. This is not philosophical, not genuine, criticism; it is polite, entertaining conversation. For the problem of Canadian literary criticism is not the question whether Canada has produced, intermittently and here and there, some original authors who have composed poetry and prose as aesthetically winning and as artistically beautiful or dignified as that of British and American writers, but whether the Dominion has produced a continuous body of poetry and prose, which, at its best, may justly be considered genuine literature, worthy to be regarded, as American literature is regarded, as a living branch of English Literature.

While the members of the Academic School take the strictly aesthetic attitude to Canadian Literature, and show little or no appreciation of the historic process in the evolution of Canadian culture, they differ even in aesthetic attitude from their predecessors. They are rather dogmatic and patronizing towards Canadian prose and poetry.

As to the aims and methods of the Pragmatic School:—The members of this school have for their central principle or chief article of faith the proposition that Canada has a worthy body of authentic literature, which is being perennially enhanced in quantity and in quality. For their second principle they hold to the proposition that Canadian literary critics must more or less intimately know the history—the social and spiritual origins, ideals, and evolution—of Canadian Literature. For their third principle they have the proposition that the independent, sincere, honest, and really serviceable literary critic to-day must be constructive and pedagogic in method. They do not write literary criticism which is meant to be literature itself, intrinsically aesthetic, or pleasantly engaging reading on its own account. They call their essays, whether a journalistic review or editorial, or a magazine article, constructive criticism. Their critical writings are, in the Greek sense, pragmatic. For the chief aims of the Canadian constructive critics are these two: first, to make plain and indubitable to their compatriots and the world that Canada has a really respectable body of literature; secondly, to appraise new works of verse and prose by Canadians and to determine the status of their worth in the permanent literature of Canada. Canadian constructive critics have also a third aim. It is pedagogical: to teach the people a decent knowledge of the literary history of Canada and an aesthetic appreciation of Canadian poetry and prose. The members of the Pragmatic School all write with knowledge of their subject, with literary dignity, thoughtfully, and, on the whole, convincingly and effectively. Their systematic and ardent championing of the cause of Canadian Literature has had a three-fold result. It has led to establishment of regular courses in the study of Canadian Literature in the universities and colleges of the Dominion and in some universities of the United States, to a wider study and appreciation of Canadian Literature on the part of the people, and to finer critical and creative writing by Canadian men and women of letters.

II. The Synoptic Method.

Literary criticism in Canada has had two faults. It was vicarious—an echo of foreign criticism which was patronizing and insincere, and, therefore, untrue and harmful. It was too inclusive in conspectus and standards, for Canadian poetry and prose were critically compared with classical English Literature. This was to write criticism without perspective and without respect to a hierarchy of values. It was supererogatory and therefore futile. Even the Pragmatic School of Canadian literary critics did not wholly escape this second fault. It will result better for the advancement of Canadian Criticism if the literatures of the British Overseas Dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa—are compared amongst themselves; and if thus the status of each relatively in the literature of the Empire is critically determined.

By this method of comparing child with child, and not the child with the parent, the literary historian shows how worthily Canadian poetry and prose compare with other Overseas poetry and prose, and what right Canadian and other Overseas literature have to be considered respectable branches of the literature of the Empire. A comparative appreciation of the Poetry of Canada and the other Overseas Dominions will suffice.

If Canadians have not written ‘great’ poetry, they have written poetry in which, as Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the London Morning Post, says, ‘the most exacting critic can find something to admire.’ The problem of literary criticism in Canada to-day is not whether Canada has produced or is producing ‘great poetry,’ but whether it has produced or is producing good poetry, consistently with its grade of culture, civilization and national inspirations and aspirations—poetry that can genuinely be admired and that deserves to be preserved. To observe that Canada has produced good poetry, near-great poetry, is not, as many Canadians seem to feel it is, to damn it with faint praise, but sensibly to evaluate it. Those native critics who ignore Canadian poetry because, as they think, it is not ‘great’ poetry and is, therefore, not ‘real’ poetry or not poetry worthy of the name of literature, are maladroit logicians. Those other native critics who discover Coleridge reincarnated in Bliss Carman, Tennyson in Roberts, Keats in Lampman, Matthew Arnold in Duncan Campbell Scott, Kipling in Service are damning Canadian poetry with superobese praise. The truth is that Canada has produced systematic poets who have written much poetry that is good, some that is super-excellent, and some rare examples that are near the perfection which entitles them, in their kind, to be ranked as really great.

Canadian poetry, in variety of theme or species, and in technical finish, naturally might be presumed to be superior to that of Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. In a literary way, Canada is not much, if at all, older than Australia. Both countries depend on England for their literary standards and poetic forms. But in changes of seasons and their effects on the beauty and call of objective Nature, Canada has greater variety, and Nature makes a deeper impress on the soul, than is possible by climatic changes and Nature’s varying face and garb in Australia. Moreover, Canada has a unique background of romantic history which affords Canadian poets special opportunities to incorporate romantic and heroic material in their poetry, or to suffuse it with the glamor of romance. Australia has not this romantic history, and Australian poets, therefore, have less opportunity to make their descriptive and narrative poetry interesting or entrancing by way of romantic glamor. Again: Canada has had several internal or national crises which have had a distinct effect on the conscience of the Canadian people—creating in them a sense of solidarity, evoking a national consciousness, and filling them with national aspirations and an intense desire to work out their own destiny. Australia has not had any such internal crises; and, it is, therefore, not to be expected that Australian poetry will be noted for peculiar, intense, or profound expressions of the sense of nationality and of destiny.

But while in Canada the literature most in popular demand is imaginative prose, and while the majority of readers are virtually perusers of prose fiction, in Australia the readers and writers of poetry are legion or, as one critic has put it, ‘poetry out there is a national habit.’ Mr. Arthur Adams, an Australian editor, has stated that while he was always certain of getting good verse from contributors, he was never certain of getting a good story. It has been quite the other way in Canada—an editor is practically certain of getting a good piece of prose or a good story, and never sure of getting a technically worthy poem, or even verse which might by courtesy be called poetry. In Canada, with the exception of the enormous sales of Service’s volumes and W. H. Drummond’s habitant verse, Canadian poets have had to be content with very small editions, and even some of these had many left-over copies, absolutely unsaleable. In Australia the sale of poetry—of large successive editions of the poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson, Will H. Ogilvie, A. B. Patterson, C. J. Dennis, the latter’s running beyond 100,000 copies in 1917—is a literary phenomenon by itself; and goes to prove that in Australia the reading and the writing of poetry are virtually national habits.

On the sides, then, of romantic historical backgrounds, practical or social crises, and variety, beauty, and sublimity of Nature, Canada was naturally fitted to produce a larger and more impressive body of poetry than was Australia. But as a matter of fact, in at least two respects, Australian poetry rather surpasses Canadian. Canadian poets never had a waiting and avid body of readers. Australian poets had precisely such a clientèle. This means that in Canada poetry would not be written with the consciousness of a critical public in mind—a public that would as readily reject or condemn poetry which was not satisfactory as it would accept and praise poetry which satisfied, whereas in Australia poetry would be written consciously aiming at pleasing and satisfying a critical public of readers. In other words, while Canadian poets had only foreign or English standards, and practically no domestic standards or clientèle, Australian poets had both foreign and domestic standards and a very large and responsive domestic public of readers.

The result was that while in Canada the general run of poetry was technically indifferent, at least until the rise of the Systematic School, in Australia the run of poetry, irrespective of the themes, was technically better finished than the Canadian. The Canadians did not seem to write with a consciousness of English standards and criticism. Their poetry was only for home consumption—and the substance counted more than the form or style. The Australians, as poets, on the whole were more cultured than the Canadians and wrote their verse as if distinctly conscious that it would be seen and read in England, and judged according to rigorous English standards, because regarded as written by absentee Englishmen. Australian verse was written more for English readers than for home readers. But the home readers also read with English standards in view—even though the themes were Australian, horse-racing and other picaresque life or the more dignified themes of Nature’s loveliness, Nature’s immensities, or tragic death in the wilderness. Hence, on the whole, Australian poetry actually shows a better technical finish than does Canadian poetry.

Canadian and Australian poets naturally produced verse which is marked by fervid nature-painting and by realistic pictures of pioneer and wild romantic social life. But in fine nature-painting the Canadians surpass the Australians. Both in color from Nature (Canadian poets have the larger, more varied palette) and in technical artistry Australia has not produced a poet of the quality of Lampman, Wilfred Campbell, or Duncan Campbell Scott. Nor when it comes to envisaging the moods of Nature and the open-road, has Australia produced a poet of the lyrical quality of Bliss Carman. Canada’s Nature-painters are superb artists.

But the Australian poets have their forte. In realistic pictures of rough or pioneer social life, they surpass the Canadian poets. The Canadian poet Drummond, of course, stands in a class by himself, inasmuch as his poetry of the habitant and voyageur was a field pre-empted by him and inasmuch as his poetry in this field is devoted to picturesque revealment of the humanity—the pathos and humor—of the thought, speech and simple life—of a peculiar but morally worthy people. There is nothing melodramatic in Drummond’s poetry. It is genuinely humanized verse about a genuinely human people. Service’s Western and Northern Canadian verse, on the contrary, is the poetry of picaresque melodrama. The best ballads of the Australian poets of rough or pioneer life, A. L. Gordon, A. B. Patterson, Henry Lawson, C. J. Dennis, are authentic poetry. In remarking the distinction between the Australian and the Canadian poets of rude or picaresque life, Mr. E. B. Osborn truthfully says: ‘Some of the poems in his [Service’s] last volume are a near approach to the Australian realism, which avoids the melodramatic and the splashing of anapests as far as possible and makes use of the quiet-curtain. So far the manly adventurous poets of Canada [Service, Stead, McInnes, Fraser, et al.] have not progressed far beyond the Adam Lindsay Gordon convention. As yet none of the Western Canadian poets see that style is the only antiseptic and, as artists, they are far behind the Australians and compare unfavorably with the minor masters of Quebec.’

What has been said regarding the technical finish of Australian verse applies also to the verse of New Zealand and of South Africa, and to the latter with even more truth. For all the South African poets happened to be men and women of culture. Thomas Pringle was a man of rare and refined culture. So are Arthur Cripps, R. C. Russell, John Runcie, Mrs. Beatrice Bromley, W. C. Scully, and a score of others.

What, then, is the status of Canadian poetry in the poetry of the Empire? Canadian nature-poetry, in variety of theme, substance, color, imagery and artistry, at its best, surpasses that of the other Dominions. Much of Overseas poetry is concerned with social life. In the past Canadians displayed an insistent sense of a call to work out their own destiny, and a profound pride in the resources and institutions of their country. In the verse of Canadian poets the ‘note’ in this regard is somewhat too insistent, almost strident. But the stridency of the national ‘note’ is nothing compared with another defect. The moral earnestness of Canadian poets is so obtrusive that it either causes a neglect of form in order to get the important thing said, or it effervesces in insincere and melodramatic utterances. Australian, New Zealand, and South African poets do not exhibit the same intense consciousness nationality and destiny. They still hold to the idea of the Motherland, still feel their connection with the Old Country. For this reason they write of social life in their respective countries with more objectivity than do the Canadians, revealing the joys and humor and pathos of life with a realism that is veracious and sincere.

So far no Overseas poetry, Canadian or other, has contributed anything novel or original to the forms and aesthetic values of English poetry. In this respect no Overseas poetry is ‘great’ poetry, although much of it is genuinely ‘real’ and excellent poetry. But in aesthetic content, as in its Nature-painting or Nature-psychology, and in moral substance, all Overseas poetry—all the best of it—is admirable. Canadian poetry, however, ranks highest, particularly in self-reliance, in faith in the land and the people, in serenity and a profound trust in the providential government of nations that love righteousness and pursue it.

Summarily: Canadian poetry, excepting the realism of Service, is the sincerest poetry written in the Overseas Dominions of the British Empire. It is not always the most joyous, the most winning, the most moving, or the most transporting. But it is the most sincere and serene, and, therefore, the most satisfying, verse in the poetry of the British Overseas Dominions.