United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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vox A Milestone in Canadian Criticism It Needs to Be Said ... by FREDERICK PHILIP GROVE (Macmillans in Canada, 1929.) In the year 1864. Matthew Ar¬ nold, then Professor of Poetry at Oxford, published an epoch-mak¬ ing essay entitled “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.” To the parochial England of his day, Arnold proclaimed the need for absolute standards in literature, for the impregnation of the creative mind of ideas, and for the propaga¬ tion by the critic of “the hest that is known and thought in the world.” There followed a neces¬ sary familiarity on the critic’s part with the literatures not merely of Greece, Rome, and Judea, but also of contemporary Europe. Only thus could there be produced such a current of true and living ideas as would inspire the creative mind to work of enduring worth. In the year 1929, Mr. Frederick Philip Grove, perhaps the most dynamic creative writer in Canada today, has published a volume of essays, It Needs to be Said, with a similar emphasis on the abiding value of the absolute in art. It is a timely book. Matthew Arnold’s essay seems unknown in Canada, except perhaps to college Sopho¬ mores—in that vague way in which all prescribed texts are re¬ luctantly peered into. Here and there across the country, some aca¬ demic Jeremiah tries, with a wry face, to preach a gospel of high se¬ riousness in literature, to insist that standards of truth and beauty still have cogency. But so far as things published are concerned, most of our book-reviewers are blind lead¬ ers of blind book-writers and book- readers. It would be hard to name more than one or two professed critics in the whole Dominion who have a competent knowledge of any modern literature other than Eng¬ lish, still less of the great literatures of antiquity. Much of the imma¬ turity and ephemerality of Cana¬ dian writing is traceable to this lack of stern, enlightened leadership. Mr. Grove, nourished on six modern and two ancient literatures, and himself a writer with thirty years’ apprenticeship, now presents our generation with critical theory in the great tradition. Of the eight essays in the book, one, on “Na¬ tionhood,” is partly sociological in substance; the rest are al l critical; (1) “A Neglected Function of a Certain Literary Association,” (2) “Literary Criticism,” (3) “Real¬ ism in Literature,” (4) “The Happy Ending,” (5) “The Aim of Art,” (6) The Value of Art,” and (7) “The Novel.” The clearest statement of his lit¬ erary creed is to be found in “Lit¬ erary Criticism” and so pertinent are his remarks that large-scale quo¬ tation seems to be called for. His basic declaration is that the real critics have always faced in three directions: “They faced, firstly, that vast accu¬ mulated mass of literature which has stood the test of the centuries and which, in what follows, I shall call classic, no matter whether it was written in ancient Greece or in modern Italy, England, France, or Germany. They faced, secondly, the contemporary authors. And they faced, thirdly, the contempo¬ rary public. Let us, then, see what may be the functions of the critic facing in these various directions.

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6 VOX in afferent and efferent waves, he unceasingly affirmed the fact of a personality, living and essential, behind and in all the marvellous mechanism. Conduct was more than behavior, and life more than physical processes. When others were attempting to explain the strange power of hu¬ man aspiration, longing and ambi¬ tion as the residue of a lower order from which men had evolved, Prof. Hetherington grew impatient with a crassly materialistic evolu¬ tionary hypothesis, and kept clear¬ ly before the minds of his students and hearers the thought that man is akin to God, and from God come these nobler aspirations of his soul. These are not an inheritance from a lower origin, but the breath of the divine in the soul of man call¬ ing him upward to communion and fellowship with God. So, during the time of transition and change in Religious Education, Psychology and Evolution, he ren¬ dered a very distinct service, sym¬ pathizing with all new light and fresh truth, but adhering firmly to the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith and life. A good man, faithful and effec¬ tive, has done his work here, and has passed on to work in a higher life in closer communion with the God he loved and sought loyally to serve. Appreciation by a Student Dr. Hetherington will live in the memories of his students. It will be so not merely in the intellectual advance which they made under his guidance, but also in the value of personality which he revealed to them. One of his former students tells this in a few paragraphs of appreciation which follow. “We live calmly among men who might be put into brave books and be the bravest figures in those books,’’ has frequently been my thought as I have listened to Professor Hetherington illustrating in his lectures from his early ex¬ periences in the Trail of Ninety- Eight.” He was our teacher in Psy¬ chology, Religious Education, Old Testament and Hebrew, in which subjects we considered him not so much a foremost student, but rath¬ er as one who knew folks and neighbored with their experiences in the learning processes. His personality had for us the largest appeal—that ready laugh of his, that wave of the arm in re¬ cognition across the halls, that knowing glance of the eye, that pushing of the stray lock of hair across the forehead, that keen sense of the ludicrous, the rollicking glee he had in his friends, that helpfulness without censoriousness, that service without thought of self-sufficiency, that freedom from ranting, that happiness in an over¬ abundance of work, those firm un¬ wavering convictions without dog¬ matism or self-assertion, that in¬ stinct and grace of a man of peace, that spiritual nature which needed not to talk about religion all the time to let men know he had re¬ ligion—such a man he was, and as such he moved in and out among the students as an inspiration and a blessing, whose heart was young and whose sympathy was a per¬ petual spring.

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8 VOX Classic Literature “Firstly, as facing classic litera¬ ture, the critic has a passive and an active duty. Perhaps it would be better to say, as regards the litera¬ ture of the past, he is both recep¬ tive and creative. “In all great literatures we find common ground. The Antigone of Sophocles, written more than 2,000 years ago, is as living today as it was when first produced. Let us hesitate and ponder that fact. It is one of the most remarkable and astounding facts with which we can meet. Even granting—as I am only too willing to grant—that human nature is essentially the same today as it was then—since, in literary art, the appeal to that human nature is made through con¬ crete things, through happenings conditioned by laws and usages that are no longer laws and usages to us—how is it that the acciden¬ tals of these concrete happenings— antiquated accidentals that have not even a counterpart in the life as we live it—do not drown out the possible thin, quiet voice of the spirit which speaks through them. The critic answers, Because Anti¬ gone is a work of art. For Art is essentially that activity of the hu¬ man mind which converts the con¬ crete fact into a spiritual experience which has eternal life. “I cannot expatiate. I will, there¬ fore, briefly say that, in his recep¬ tive mood, the critic is the man whose own spiritual life has arisen through, has reacted to , and is nourished by, the spiritual experi¬ ences of the past as embodied in the great works of literary art accumu¬ lated through the centuries. This is, of course, merely another way of saying that the critic stands in what I call the great tradition. If he does not, he may possibly be an advo¬ cate; he cannot be a critic. Classic Tradition Upheld “I said that, in facing classic lit¬ erature, the critic has, besides this passive duty—-the duty of nourish¬ ing himself by the great tradition —an active one or one which might be called creative. That duty con¬ sists in keeping alive what is liv¬ ing; for in literature, that which is not lived, dies as too much of an¬ cient literature has died to us for the want of critics in what we have come to call the dark ages, which were dark for the very reason of that want. By the mere fact that he himself stands in that great tra¬ dition which is traceable through¬ out the centuries he must keep it alive; it must be present in every sentence he speaks or writes; if not explicitly, at least implicitly; as a spiritual presence; as a background out of which his voice sounds forth as from a cavern. Critic Faces Author “Secondly, we said, the true critic faces the contemporary au¬ thor. “What is the attitude in which he faces him? It is the attitude of reason as distinguished from that of passion. There is, in the fight of the day, passion not only in poli¬ tics, in the warfare between classes, in the schisms of creeds, but also in the disagreements between schools of art. The critic knows that there is nothing new under the sun. At all times little details of procedure, inessentials, have been made the subject of contention; even the art¬ ist is only human and inclined to quarrel with his neighbor about free verse or so-called realism. But over against him stands reason in the person of the critic. In the past,