Highways of Canadian LiteratureLogan, J. D. (John Daniel)
History
Highways of Canadian Literature
Logan, J. D. (John Daniel)
Canadian literature -- History and criticism
Stringer’s _Sappho in Leucadia_ is an engaging and even impressive
dramatic colloquy, but it is not an authentic poetic or closet drama. It
has sensuous beauty but no spiritual power. But it does increase
Stringer’s reputation as a verbal colorist and melodist.
In 1915 appeared an original poet of distinct spiritual power in lyrical
and dramatic forms. He was Robert Norwood. His first book was a
sonnet-sequence. But in 1916 he published a poetic drama, _The Witch of
Endor: A Tragedy_; and in 1919, another poetic drama, _The Man of
Kerioth_. In 1921 he published _Bill Boram_, which is a ‘dramatic tale.’
Robert Norwood has two natural gifts. More than any other Canadian poet
he has an innate genius for the philosophical or mystical interpretation
of good and evil in the universe. Also, he is gifted with acute insight
into the inner heart of man and woman, ancient and modern. These two
gifts fit him for the office of the kind of poet who by imaginative
sympathy perceives the ultimate harmony of the universe, the spiritual
meaning of the tragedy and comedy of existence. As a poetic dramatist,
then, Norwood is a Seer; and his voice is the voice of a Prophet. Power
over the heart and imagination of the people, not Beauty and Art for
art’s sake, is his aim. If he is the Poet of Beauty, as he is in all his
verse, lyrical and dramatic, he is more, or supremely, the Poet of
Spiritual Vision and Power in his poetic dramas.
In _The Witch of Endor_ Norwood returns to the Biblical theme which had
engaged Heavysege—the love romance and tragedy of King Saul. The
characters are never shadowy but always alive. The dramatic movement is
never held up by long or digressive moralizing speeches, as in
Heayysege’s _Saul_, but each character makes his speeches according to
the dramatic necessity, enough and no more, thus permitting at ‘the
psychological moment’ the natural entrance of another character and his
speech. The structure is logically developed to the tragic or spiritual
climax. But in the development there is no uniform level of emotion,
rather the emotion varies from gentle or pathetic to intense or tragic.
It is indeed in its profounder imaginative vision, its more varying and
rising degrees of emotional intensity, and its more logical structural
development to a climax that _The Witch of Endor_ has more incisive and
compelling power as poetic drama than Campbell’s Arthurian drama
_Mordred_. In short, _The Witch of Endor_ is a beautiful and spiritual
poetic drama—purging the emotions of pity and fear and transporting the
spirit to the Mount of Vision where it sees intuitively how the ways of
God to man are justified and how Love is greater than Faith and Hope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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