Highways of Canadian LiteratureLogan, J. D. (John Daniel)
History
Highways of Canadian Literature
Logan, J. D. (John Daniel)
Canadian literature -- History and criticism
Lampman also stands alone in this—_in his love of local beauty and his
power to individualize and vitalize it_. This, too, is a ‘national’ note
and a psychological phenomenon by itself. His is not a love of Nature’s
beauty abstracted from a particular time and place, but of those very
scenes and haunts where first he beheld Nature in all her physical
loveliness and many moods and became her intimate companion and lover.
Lampman so individualizes and vitalizes his fields and woods, as
Campbell his lakes, Roberts his woods and marshes, and Carman his tide
and mists and April morns, that the reader can localize the region, and
‘time’ the season, of their inspiration with the nicest perception. So
singularly is this quality present, most notably in poetry of Lampman,
though also in the poetry of Roberts, Carman, Campbell, Duncan Campbell
Scott and Pauline Johnson, that a reader can, with absolute surety, say
not only, ‘This is Canadian nature-beauty,’ but also, ‘This is Canadian
nature-beauty in Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick, in Ontario.’ Surely,
then, this peculiar imaginative interpretation of Canadian Nature
whereby Lampman and his _confrères_, first, localize Nature, and, next,
humanize her noblest mood and temper into an identity with their own is
a supreme expression of the national spirit and raises
Post-Confederation poetry to the dignity of authentic literature.
Canadians are, in the eyes of the older nations, a notably sane and
happy people. They are so because they keep their souls, in the phrase
of Lampman, always ‘clear and valiant,’ having, as Lampman, and even as
Roberts and the other poets of the First Renaissance in Canadian
Literature, a sure vision of the greatness of their country’s destiny
and of the means to it. The peculiar moral qualities of the Canadian
people are an inviolable faith in themselves, an indomitable courage,
and an imperturbable serenity. The ground and inspiration of these
qualities are in Canadian woods and hills and waters, and Archibald
Lampman, in his nature-poetry, interprets these qualities of the
Canadian people and country with sweet reasonableness and genuine
nobility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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