Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

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.