Raymond Knister - Critical Writing

Critical Writing

Like his contemporaries in the McGill movement Knister was a rebel, and his criticism showed his dissatisfaction with the state of Canadian poetry and the Canadian literary milieu.

The most important point raised in Knister's critical writings, one which is applicable to his own verse, was his rejection of the sublime in the language and thought of poetry. In general Canadian taste favoured a style of writing which was "a refreshing haven of genuine romanticism to which the reader may retreat when he seeks an antidote to the intellectual tension imposed by the future progeny of 'The Wasteland' and 'Spoon River' " Knister, however, valued plough horses above winged ones, and in the foreword to the Collected Poems he set out his objectives as a poet. His primary aim was to make his poems 'real' and to escape the false tone which made most Canadian poetry of his day an inaccurate portrayal of life. In order to do this he intended to drop all attempts at idealistic sublimity and instead simply present the images of things as accurately as possible. "We would feel differently about many other common things if we saw them clearly enough" (vii–viii).

One more complaint which Knister had against Canadians was that they were 'colonials'. He ably described their cultural colonialism when he wrote of the "ideal Canadian litterateur" as

a man who has been educated as an English gentleman, though certain New England Universities will pass; in addition he should know about Canada as accurately and sympathetically as possible from the point of view of an omniscient tourist who, after all, knows better things. We want not so much to be different as to have had different experiences about which we can talk at tea as suavely as anybody. It amounts in fact to our wanting to be American or English with an added background which will lend chic.

Verse written by someone with such an outlook could not help but be unrealistic in its treatment of Canadian subjects. One need only look in issues of The Canadian Magazine from the period to find such poetry in abundance.

Knister also attacked the conservatism of Canadian taste, especially as it was reflected in the magazines. Arthur Stringer, in his opinion, was forced to become a writer of murder mysteries because the Canadian reading public refused to accept the innovative poetry in Open Water. Another example he cited was Pratt, whose poem "The Witches Brew" could not find a Canadian publisher until after it had appeared in The London Mercury. Knister himself was unable to find a Canadian magazine which would print his work:

My poems and stories were so Canadian and came so directly from the soil that Canadian editors would have nothing to do with them. The injustice was perhaps, trifling; the quite modest merits of my efforts were adequately rewarded by the audience, fit though few, of the "little" magazines . But they weren't morally subversive, nor eccentric mannered, these attempts. It seems gruesomely significant that not a Canadian editor would have anything to do with them. ("Canadian Literati," 162)

Implicit in his comments was the conviction that this conservatism was a direct result of colonialism and the dulled appetite for sublimity. His bitter feeling that he was one of a generation of writers who were being ignored is obvious.

Although many of Knister's contemporaries were equally unhappy with the state of Canadian poetry, only he dared to attack established writers by name. In "Canadian Letter" Knister dismissed Carman, Maclnnis, Leacock, Roberts, and D.C. Scott with the comment that "their contributions were made at a time when any impulse in a backwater would have been valued" (p. 381). Elsewhere he compared Lampman's style to "one of those rambling, barrack-like houses once common to New England and our own eastern landscapes," formerly stylish but now outdated. Just as the smaller bungalow had replaced the large family home, so too would the more compact verse replace nineteenth- century styles.

The tone of these attacks is disturbing. Leacock, Lampman, Roberts, and the others he mentioned do not deserve to be relegated to some literary trash heap. We must remember that at this time Roberts and the others had the status of literary giants and that one dramatic way for a newcomer to get attention has always been to play the part of the iconoclast. This, probably, was what Knister was doing in his excessively fierce criticism.

Knister was not, however, a mere fault-finder. He was prepared to offer a solution to the problems he perceived. In his opinion, Canada needed a little magazine "devoted to creative work ... perhaps only a few pages every month, yet chosen for vital quality ... which should give a voice to what is actually being lived among us" ("Canadian Letter," p. 379). Through this medium, he hoped, a distinctively Canadian voice would be heard.