This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on April 26, 1941.
Men and women born in the Greek tradition, and heirs to the treasure of that ancient people, are not likely to tremble before the oppressor. They have something that burns like a flame on the altar of their souls. Something in their blood — something that makes them prefer death to ignoble living.
Out of the confusion of Europe comes the shining story of Greek heroism. No wonder the leader of Yugoslavia paid them his tribute of praise, in confessing that they had inspired him and his people to fight for freedom.
What has given the Greeks this conquering courage? On what strong meat have their souls been nurtured?
Our school books, even the laconic and unimaginative school readers of 40 years ago, told us that the ancient Athenians valued poetry so highly that they gave liberty to a captive if he had but one line of verse on his tongue, and that the great Alexander carried the Illiad with him on his expeditions, in a precious casket.
These two great poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, have come down the ages, the work of the blind poet Homer, who, according to tradition, begged his bread from door to door, offering to recite his poems for a meal, just as the wanderers of today suggest that they will mow the lawn. Sometimes, too, he sold copies of his songs, which wealthy men and princes bought at a handsome fee, and sometimes he entered competitions held on holidays and festivals, and, we presume, received the prize.
There are modern critics who raise a doubt about the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and say that the ancient Athenians did not know anything about beds and had no fires in their houses, whereas Homer certainly knew about two-storey houses, open fires, linen sheets, silk coverlets, perfumes, pomades and wash basins.
But let us remember that we have critics who deny that Shakespeare wrote his plays because of anachronisms that they have discovered in his pages. Homer’s Iliad is addressed primarily to men, and the Odyssey to women, and the best way to enjoy them is to read them (which will take more than one evening), disregarding the great volumes of criticism that has been written about them.
Historically, these two epic works give the earliest picture of Aryan civilization. There might never have been a Siege of Troy, but the stories carry conviction, and the language is unsurpassed in directness, simplicity and beauty.
The Iliad and Odyssey stand at the head of the epic poetry of the world, and stand by common consent among the great achievements of the human spirit. The stories they tell are human, fresh and real. Some of them might have been written in our own time.
England has her Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens; Scotland her Scott and Burns; Ireland her Yeats and Don Byrne; the Finns have the Kalevala ; the United States has Whitman and Emerson. But what about us in Canada?
Recently I wrote about the Token of Freedom, the little book of 60 pages that each British child brings to its new home on this side of the Atlantic, to fortify their young hearts against loneliness and discouragement. I wonder what we would give of our own literature to our men who leave our shores. I wonder what we are giving them, or what we have given them.
I know the people who gather up books for the War Service huts and Hostess Houses say: “Give up books of adventure — that is what the soldiers like — something to take them into another world, escape stories, humorous stories, exotic stories of faraway places.”
We are so apt to think of a man in uniform as a composite man. Putting on a uniform does not change a man, and so I believe we should give to our men as varied a program of reading as possible. I know soldiers who prefer the Atlantic Monthly to Western Stories.
And I want to say a word for books about Canada, such as Robert Service’s poems, and the poems of Wilson MacDonald, Roberts and Carman, to mention some of the best-known of Canada’s poets. Think of what a thrill there is in the Law of the Yukon.
“I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline winds and wood.
I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of a Viking, and the simple faith of a child.”
It is not too much to ask of us who stay at home that we give our best to the men and women who bear the burden of the great fight for freedom. We must remember that it is not enough to provide physical comforts — we must see that the souls of these brave people are fed, or at least may be fed.
The Finnish army in peacetime is carried on like a university, with classes in sociology, Finnish history, literature, drama and music. We could do much to foster a love of country if we featured Canadian books in all the reading rooms for the forces.
I am thinking of the resonant beauty of Bliss Carman’s description of the seasons, how he traces the beauty of our country for us when he talks of the scarlet maples in the east. So, too the late Albert D. Watson’s cry for space (of which we have so much in Canada). It is easy to imagine an Alberta soldier longing for the rolling sunlit plains of his native province.
What is the essential spirit of Canadian literature? With so many races and peoples, we must have a sense of fraternity, and Wilson MacDonald has given us this in his poem called (I don’t know why) From the Mongrel.
In it he tells of his wanderings across the county, and his association with cowboys, loggers, miners. Everywhere he finds a kindly fellowship. This is the concluding verse:
“The East hath her genius and culture,
The West hath her vigour and brawn,
And one hath the glory of noonday,
And one hath the splendour of dawn.
So, God, give Thy smile to the Westland
Wherever a true heart abides
And God, give Thy smile to the Eastland,
And, blot out the line that divides.”
I have been speaking only of our poets, and their great national service. They put into words of beauty what we are thinking. They lead us by the hand, and show us the beauty of life, which we in our haste might not see. We have other writers, too, who look at Canada objectively, and let us see how we look to other people.
And, of course, there is the great treasure-house of literature which we inherit from all lands. The books of the world are ours. We must read the words of all nations. Books are the great equalizer of life, like music and flowers. They belong to every man. They lighten our darkness, dispel our gloom — bridge distance, bring faraway pleasures into the prisoner’s cell, or to the bed of pain. They have no boundaries in this land of liberty.
I have just been reading an account of one of the book-burning debauches of the Nazis, as described in Journalist’s Wife, by Lillian Mowrer, whose husband, Edgar Mowrer, wrote Germany Puts the Clock Back.
“Thirty thousand university students marched down Unter den Linden brandishing fire and singing patriotic songs. At regular intervals were trucks loaded with books. Not many people were assembled. Shame kept them indoors. [Josef] Goebbels addressed the spectators. He talked of the blight of internationally minded authors. I held my breath when they hurled the first volume into the flames. It was like burning something alive.”
Books are living things, dynamic and compelling. Great books make a people great. Great books, great heroes. We have both in the tradition of Britain.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.