Modernist Poetry from a Modern Perspective

How A.J. Smith’s “Testament”, the McGill Fortnightly Review, The McGill Group, and Sir Arthur Currie Helped Advance Canadian Literature Beyond the Victorian Era in the 1920’s

***Originally submitted 25 September 2019 to Dr Jason Wiens, in part for credit, for ENGL 372: Canadian Literature at the University of Calgary***

***Not only is this essay subject to copyright, but any unauthorized use without citation is considered academic misconduct (plagiarism). You are welcome to consult this paper if you provide the appropriate citation(s)***

I find that too often in the field of English, the implicated merits of works are surrounded by a fixed presence of haute air. As is the basic natural tendency of most academic disciplines, the literary canon is stringent, rigid, and inflexible; characteristics that supposedly lend these works added value. Although this diminutive attitude has often been situated towards Canada, the most flagrant exhibit of this mind-set is unveiled when discussing Canadian art. This outlook could also be found closer to home, as Robert Kroestche too asserted, "Canadian literature evolved directly from Victorian into Postmodern” (1). Upon introspective inspection of the McGill Fortnightly Review, I believe it becomes apparent that its founding fathers – A.J. Smith and F.R. Scott – along with their contemporaries in the Montreal Group have advanced and conquered the Canadian embodiment of poetic modernism. When further attention is applied to the contextual tapestry of Canadian history – and in particular, the emergence of the Canadian national identity at Vimy in 1917 and the resulting maturation of Canadian patriotism – I argue that the contemporarily front-running disposition of the McGill Fortnightly Review is overtly Canadian and irrefutably modernist. Within this paper, I will discuss various editorials found in the McGill Fortnightly Review, how these are reflective of historically significant Canadian events, and how when taken together, provide insight into the Canadian literary identity. I will further argue that this is demonstrated in the modernist approach of A.J. Smith’s “Testament”, and thorough explication of the poem’s departure from traditional Victorian conventions highlight the lasting implications of A.J. Smith’s – and the Montreal Group’s – ‘literary revolution.’ I will first begin by explicating the poem and discussing its modernist characteristics, and then I will establish the context and ideals of The McGill Fortnightly Review, before concluding with the greater context and lasting impact on Canadian history and identity.

I would first like to emphasize the structure of the poem, as “Testament” operates in free verse – a modernist form – with a non-standardized rhyme scheme. This serves to enable Smith in several ways, as the deviation from form also allows for a developed deviation from the conventional theme. “Testament” further breaks from the preceding literary tradition in a variety of ways, both through formal elements and in thematic value, with the playful pun in the title serving to ‘attest’ this idea and provide unity to the poem as a whole. I observe then, that throughout “Testament” there is significant use of wordplay – another defining characteristic of modernist poetry – and symbolism, wherein the figurative meaning derived from words offer duality to Smith’s argument.

From the first word, Smith describes “IT” (line 1) wherein “IT” acts as the figurative ‘testament’ or devotion to religion; the use of capitalization encapsulating “IT” as a tangible, almost physical idea of faith as it relates to beliefs of all kinds. For the sake of brevity, I will explore the religious interpretation further. In doing so, I would like to point to Smith’s religious allusions in the “god of the desert” (line 9) and the “cactus and the prickly pear” (line 11). This imagery is a departure from the Canadian landscape, and the diction Smith chooses evokes connotations of sweltering heat, the punishment of the desert, and the merciless landscape – wherein the only fauna found amongst the sand is prickly and appears dangerous. Taken together, this juxtaposition of God and the merciless, punishing landscape opens a conversation on the role and reverence of deities; foregrounded by this “testament” that is ironically heretic from a religious perspective. This is a perspective that is further reiterated in the “misremembered voice” (line 15), or perhaps synonymously misinformed idea that has corrupted or “called [us] out of a child’s heaven” (line 16). Here the child represents innocence, or the misled indoctrination and corruption of the literal child’s mind. Therein the religious themes and images which criticize and comment on the fickle and ‘sinful’ nature of “IT” – to which Smith arguably breaks the fourth wall and remarks, “there is madness in that thought” (line 17). Notably, the ellipses that precede this single lined stanza offer a contemplative and continual idea – the perpetuity of faith – before transiting the fourth wall and declaring the madness of our faith. Smith asserts this both in isolation – the personification of the isolating nature of these opinions – and in the emphasis of this ‘testament’.

There is then an apparent shift towards a more open and allegorical commentary, as the poem, now grounded in almost a “dream-like” state, pays homage to and evolves on the Petrarchan sonnet’s octet and sestet. The desert is no longer simply a manner of speech, but becomes the “[desolated]” (line 18) setting in which we now interact with God – the kissing of hands alluding to the catholic practice – and yet the speaker kisses not God but has “kissed [his] hands to distant trees And to the girls with pitchers waiting at the well” (lines 18 – 19). Here the speaker declares their love for themselves over God, and simultaneously jeers at the pitchers – a wordplay on a sales pitch, or synonymously in religion, the preachers – who wait at the well, the provision of sustenance, and “the most faint mirage” (line 22) that leads not to a well of water, but the false hope the preachers provide. Despite this the speaker remains committed to the cause, “set upon a pilgrimage Seeking a more difficult beauty Unheartened […]”  (lines 19 – 22). Here the enjambment is supporting these lines, creating a meter that propels forward, and seemingly marches on in its purpose. This juxtaposition and conflict highlight the confusion of being dehydrated in the desert, and evokes Smith’s quotation of W.B. Yeats “what change should one look [to inspire via] the manner of our poetry?” (quoted in “Contemporary Poetry” 31). This is a question Smith answers in his last stanza, declaring “this generation, communicant with trickling sand And grey and yellow desert stone – […] God” (lines 23 – 25) – or in allegorical terms, ‘this generation’ is communicant with the desolated, barren and trickling dangers of the desert sand, which is symbolic of God.

There remain two central questions I would like to address, which can be answered together, and of which I will frame as ‘What evidence is there to support this reading of “Testament”?’ and ‘To what end does “Testament” act as a reflective ‘snapshot’ of Canadian history surrounding the publication time of The McGill Fortnightly Review?’ Throughout all twenty issues of The McGill Fortnightly Review, there are a dozen poems, editorials, and other works that are religiously themed. I provide further commentary on these other works in my ‘appendix’ on D2L, but what is most relevant is how this repeated religious commentary is reflective of an unapologetic social commentary – a modernist ideal that the McGill Group frequently conveys.  What I argue the McGill Group embodies is the Baptist Schism of 1920’s Canada, wherein further division amongst Catholics, Christians, and Protestants into more niched derivative collectives helped form a uniquely Canadian identity. These ideas are further explored with reference to the existential question J.A. Taylor provides in Volume 1, No. 6 “[…] not only the incomplete knowledge that we do possess, but even the nature of the knowledge process itself, is incompetent to grasp or describe the reality in which we find ourselves” (“Science and Belief” 49). I believe it is relatively agreed amongst Canadian scholars that the emergence of ‘the Canadian’ is definitively tied to the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917 and the revolutionary success of Sir Arthur Currie – who became McGill University’s Principal after the war from 1920 until 1933 (“Principal: Currie’s Appointment”) – and the Canadian Core during the Hundred Days Offensive, leading to an effective ‘apartheid’ to the effectively British ‘Dominion of Canada’ – particularly so on the world stage. Currie’s involvement with McGill at the time of the McGill Fortnight Review’s publication – even at a superficial level with the university’s philosophy – combined with the Québécois predisposition to fervent patriotic identity, suggests to me that the emergence of strong, cutting edge, and controversial editorials and publications found in The McGill Fortnightly Review are a direct reflection of ‘the Canadian’ coming into ‘his’ own. With a departure from the stain of British identity, also comes the departure of British influence on art – and so emerges the beginnings of modernist works, religious schisms, and the culmination of religious critique within modernist forms of art.

To that end, I turn to the McGill Fortnightly Review and its various editorials on the natural purpose of art to highlight how there is this departure from the past, and how these mediums of art ought to be utilized for social analysis. Smith describes this process as “the estimate of the value of our civilization,” spurred on by “progress that has been suddenly accelerated,” with, “contemporary poetry [reflecting] it as clearly as any other art”  (“Contemporary Poetry” 31).  Smith’s essay examines the complex relationship between art, life, and science – to which Smith poses “science has altered […] the character of our everyday life [and] the philosophies by which we interpret that life” (“Contemporary Poetry” 31). Science, Smith argues, becomes the essential factor that has progressed the very nature of our writing and art, and poetry serves to critique, question and explore akin to the scientific method. Smith summarizes this succinctly by stating “we are at the beginning of a new era, […] a new world, [and we must] create a new art to express it” (“Contemporary Poetry” 31). The McGill group presumably shares such a philosophy as its members collaborated on, actively edited, produced and compiled The McGill Fortnightly Review. Textually, there is significant evidence for this as well, as the prose pieces frequently critique and explore controversial topics – with consistent reference to the McGill debate team, J.A. Taylor’s “Science and Belief” and “Man’s Place in Nature” in Vol.1, No 6., and Vol.1, No. 3’s editorial, which discusses the nature of lectures and learning. F.R. Scott also writes a “A Miniature Republic” and “Student Government at McGill” in Vol.1, No. 2 and Vol. 2, No. 6 respectively, demonstrating the inclusion of political commentary – or political science and philosophy – in literature and art, further answering the question of the purpose of literary study, and more specifically, Canadian literary study.

I believe that The McGill Fortnightly Review is a written record of the emergence of Canadian literary thought and a true evolution of ‘the Canadian’ coming into ‘his own’. This is exemplified in the controversial and opinionated writing on the intricacies of politics, philosophy, science, religion, and the ultimate existential question. Not only does this reflect the religious changes, and by extension, social changes that occurred within Canada and to Canadian identity in the 1920’s – in part due to the Canadian story of involvement in The Great War – but also the development in young Canadian poets and writers in this time period: to break convention, to challenge and question the world around them, and to evolve their writing into its Canadian Modernist form. Modernism, some argue, is an era we have never truly left; regardless, it is irrefutable that Modernism precedes the Post-Modern, the Post-Colonial, and the many other contemporary theories that remain today. For this reason, the McGill group has definitively changed the landscape of Canadian literature, and perhaps more importantly, the identity of ‘the Canadian’ ‘himself.’

Works Cited

Edel, A. “What is Art?” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 5, 23 Jan. 1926.

“Editorial.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 3, 19 Dec. 1925.

Eve, A.S. “Reality.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 9-10, 22 Mar. 1926.

F.K. “Prayer.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 3, 19 Dec. 1925.

Kroetsch, Robert. “[Introduction].” Boundary 2, vol. 3, no. 1, 1974, pp. 1–2. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/302363.

Page, Philip. “The Will to Live.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 27 Nov. 1926.

Page, Philip. “The Wise Fool.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 27 Nov. 1926.

“Principal: Currie’s Appointment.” McGill University, http://mcgillarchives.canadiana.ca/view/qmma.McGillAC_462/6?r=0&s=1

Ross, Margaret Amy. “Half Light.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 9-10, 22 Mar. 1926.

Ross, Margaret Amy. “Mystic.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 25 Dec. 1925.

Ross, Margaret Amy. “Puck Song.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 9-10, 22 Mar. 1926.

Scott, F.R. “A Miniature Republic.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 25 Dec. 1925.

Scott, F.R. “Student Government at McGill.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 7, 10 Mar. 1927.

Scott, F.R. “The Canadian Authors Meet.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol.  2, no. 9-10, 27 Apr. 1926.

Smith, A.J. “Symbolism in Poetry.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 25 Dec. 1925.

Smith, A.J. “Three Poems: Something Apart.” The McGill  Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1 Dec. 1926.

Smith, A.J. “Three Poems: For Ever and Ever, Amen.” The McGill  Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1 Dec. 1926.

Smith, A.J. “Three Poems: Epitaph.” The McGill  Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1 Dec. 1926.

Smith, A.J. “Contemporary Poetry.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 4, 15 Dec. 1926.

Smith, A.J. “Twilight.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 6, 18 Feb. 1927.

Starr, Vincent. “Sermon.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 7, 10 Mar. 1927.

Taylor, J.A. “Science and Belief.”  The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 6, 6 Feb. 1926.

Taylor, J.A. “Man’s Place in Nature.”  The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 1, no. 6, 6 Feb. 1926.

“Trivium.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 1, 3 Nov. 1926.

T.T. “New Names.” The McGill Fortnightly Review, vol. 2, no. 4, 15 Dec. 1926.