E.J. Pratt: The Master Years, 1927-1964

Robert Seiler was Assistant Professor of General Studies at the University of Calgary.

Fifteen years ago Desmond Pacey lamented that, while Canadian literature had come of age, Canadian literary scholarship, including biographical and bibliographical research and the editing of texts, manuscripts, and letters, remained in a state of juvenility. He predicted that our literary scholarship would not reach maturity until definitive and comprehensive scholarly editions of the letters and works of Canadian authors started to roll from the presses. David G. Pitt’s two-volume life of Edwin John Pratt (1882-1964) is a good index of the development that has since taken place in our literary scholarship.

The idea for this monumental biography of Canada’s leading narrative poet took shape in the late l950s, when Pitt discussed the project with members of the Pratt family. Pitt secured his subject’s approval early in 1960, on the understanding that the work appear posthumously. Pratt believed that “a modest volume might be in order, to set the record straight.”

This task proved to be formidable indeed. On the one hand, no diary or journal in which Pratt recorded his thoughts about those matters that touched him most deeply has survived. On the other, the public legend which features Pratt as an unusual but not unattractive “personality” has obscured his real nature. Over a great many years Pitt collected an extraordinarily wide variety of materials, including unpublished manuscripts and letters, transcripts of CBC programmes, published and unpublished prose compositions, taped interviews, newspaper records and reviews, and published and unpublished recollections recorded by members of the poet’s family and his friends. By way of preparing for the task of revealing the man behind the legend, Pitt edited (1962) a selection of Pratt’s poetry and published (1969) a collection of critical evaluations of Pratt’s work.

In the first volume of this biography, E.J. Pratt: The Truant Years, 1882-1927 (1984), Pitt traces Pratt’s life from birth to middle age. (One of the great ironies of Pratt’s life was that he spent the prime of his manhood looking for his true vocation.) In the second volume, E.J. Pratt: The Master Years, 1927-1964 (1987), Pitt traces Pratt’s life through the years of his greatest achievements as well as personal vicissitudes. During this period Pratt taught English at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953, published 14 volumes of poetry, including such popular books as The Fable of the Goats (1937), Brebeuf and his Brethren (1940), and Towards the Last Spike (1952); edited The Canadian Poetry Magazine from 1936 to 1943; and travelled back and forth across the country lecturing on a variety of topics and reading poetry. It is surprising to learn about the effort Pratt put into fostering the growth of young poets, among them Earle Birney. For his contributions to Canadian culture Pratt received many honours. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1930; awarded the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1937, 1940, and 1952; awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal for distinguished service to Canadian literature in 1940; and made a Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1946. He was also awarded many honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from the University of Toronto in 1961. Pratt experienced his fair share of hardships during this period, including penury and illness (at the age of four his daughter was crippled by polio), but he suppressed his feelings about these matters.

Sooner or later the recollections of Pratt’s intimate friends converge upon the extempore stag parties and the gala dinners he held to mark some accomplishment, sometimes to illustrate his convivial nature and sometimes to reveal a trait more easily described than defined. Even those who knew him best failed to realize that the hail-fellow-well-met character Pratt presented to the public concealed another character, one not unlike the sensitive, insecure, vulnerable and delicate boy from the outport manse. One very close friend speaks of Pratt’s “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” personalities. Viola explains that “He was really a very sensitive and emotional person, with feelings that ran deep…. Like his mother, he could cry very easily. Tears were often near the surface even when they didn’t show.” A profitable way to understand this complex individual, then, is to realize that in poetry Pratt found a mechanism for disciplining his feelings, especially those he was ashamed of. Imprisoned within the cage of his own sensibility (to paraphrase Birney), Pratt learned how to construct his own “patterns of sound” for attracting notice. Pratt argued that poetry should not be the turning loose of emotions but an escape from emotion; not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. Understandably, for generations readers have stereotyped Pratt as the poet who, in works like The Titanic (1953), Dunkirk (1941), and Behind the Log (1947), celebrated “heroic” action.

This thoroughly researched and well documented biography will soon be hailed as the first major biography of a major Canadian poet. The portrait of Pratt presented here is the first convincing portrait of this enigmatic man. General readers as well as specialists will find this biography entertaining and instructive reading.