Tapestry for Designs: Judaic Allusions in the Second Scroll and the Collected Poems of A.M. Klein

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

A.M. Klein is without question a major Canadian poet, yet a full appreciation of his poetry and prose is beset with difficulties — especially (though by no means exclusively) for Gentile readers. The majority of Klein’s writings are packed full of Jewish words and allusions; moreover, since he was immensely learned in his own culture, his references go far beyond the scope even of well-educated Jews. All this can lend a mysterious richness and fascination to his work, but his erudition sometimes proves frustrating.

Solomon J. Spiro, a rabbi from Quebec, has now addressed himself to this problem. Tapestry for Designs works page by page through the Collected Poems (edited by Miriam Waddington, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974) and The Second Scroll (paginated for both the first edition and the New Canadian Library reprint), and gives brief but useful annotations on all the Judaic allusions (and a number of others besides). Helpful cross-references are also provided.

I have tested this book in the obvious way. While I had from time to time consulted a knowledgeable Jewish friend on references that puzzled me, there were still a considerable number of question-marks in my personal copies of both books. In virtually every case (the few exceptions are doubtless not Judaic allusions), my queries have now been succinctly and satisfyingly answered. I can therefore approach Klein’s poetry and prose, as both teacher and interested reader, in the confidence that I have access to the basic and essential intellectual background.

A few reservations must, however, be recorded. This book (which began as a doctoral thesis) seems to have taken a long time to get into print, and as a result some recent publications have not, unfortunately, been taken into consideration. These include Usher Caplan’s useful biography, Like One That Dreamed (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1982), Zailig Pollock’s invaluable article listing errors in the Collected Poems (in Canadian Poetry, No. 10, Spring/Summer 1982), and above all the first two volumes of the University of Toronto Press’s collected edition of Klein that will ultimately include authoritative texts to replace those that have been used here. And the annotations are, very occasionally, inaccurate. Spiro claims, for instance, that “the most poetic sections of [“Out of the Pulver and the Polished Lens”] are in prose” (p.62), when in fact the first is a rhymed sonnet (albeit written out in continuous prose) and the second recreates the balanced phrasing and grammatical parallelism of the Psalms. I suspect that Spiro’s sacred learning is greater than his literary experience. But it is a learning in which most of us are sadly deficient, and his book will therefore prove invaluable. No one seriously interested in Canadian literature can afford to do without it.