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Introduction Introduction Charles G.D. Roberts was one of Canada's most productive writers. In a literary career that extended over six and a half decades, he published some three hundred and fifty poems, over two hundred short stories, nine full-length novels, six other books (including travel-guides, histories, and a translation) and a con- siderable number of articles, essays, and prefaces. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that the standard of his writing is extremely uneven, or that his best work - and this is at least as true of his poetry as of his prose - is always in danger of being buried under the dross. As it happens, Roberts had himself encountered, and commented on, a similar situation in the case of Wordsworth (see pp. 271-5 below). He observed that 'severe selection was called for in order that full justice might be done to the genius of Wordsworth,' and went on to argue that the interest of the student 'makes it imperative that he should be brought first in contact with Wordsworth's genius through the medium of a volume of selections.' These remarks are equally applicable to Roberts' own work, and express the rationale for the present book. In 1936 Roberts published his own Selected Poems, which included approximately one-half of his total poetic output. At first sight, this would seem an ideal introduction to his poetry, but unfortunately, like many other poets, Roberts is not neces- sarily the best judge of his own writings. A surprisingly large number of inferior pieces remain, and their presence too often detracts from the impressiveness of the rest. Moreover, the order- ing of the poems is confusing. In the prefatory note Roberts commented: 'From early youth to the present day I have always been alive to the moment, keenly aware of contemporary cur- rents of thought, action and emotion .... I am far from claiming that this change is of necessity growth. But it is divergence, and as such might, I think, be taken into account in any serious evalua- tion of my verse which the critic may find it worth while to make.' Oddly enough, however, he made it as difficult as possible for any temporal progression or developing pattern to be studied, since early and late poems are scattered indiscriminately through the pages, chronology giving way to classification by theme, subject-matter, or poetic form. In the present selection (which, as it turns out, differs notably from Roberts' own) I have reprinted 118 poems - roughly one- third of the whole. This means that a sufficient body of work is presented for the cumulative strength of his poetry to be dis- cerned, but I have not hesitated to omit a good number of the more trivial or unsuccessful poems that might otherwise dilute the overall effect. This danger of dilution is considerable. Roberts is the kind of poet who frequently employs rhythms and effects so close to the commonplace that the ear can easily be dulled by a slack piece and fail to respond to one that uses language more subtly. As an example I would cite 'In the Afternoon.' In my Charles G.D. Roberts (1969) I allowed myself to remark that this poem 'rarely raises itself above the level of doggerel.' This I now believe to be excessively severe; I was deceived by its similarity and proximity to indifferent poems with little to commend them. In preparing this selection, it has been gratifying to discover that the number of Roberts' accomplished and satisfying poems, though a modest percentage of the whole, was noticeably greater than my acquaintance with them within the individual volumes and collected editions had led me to expect. W.J. Keith xvi An account of my selection-procedures may perhaps be helpful at this point. The first criterion, of course, was poetic excellence. I began by rereading the individual volumes and selecting those poems that seemed to me most successful as poems. I was not, at that stage, looking for important themes, noble sentiments, significant experiments, or any of the hundred and one other reasons why certain poems might be considered worthy of inclusion. This rereading provided me with an all-important nucleus, and I then turned my attention from Roberts to his readers. This selection is intended for the serious student of Canadian literature who wishes to find, between two covers, the main materials upon which a considered appreciation of Roberts' poetry can properly be based. For this purpose, certain items, of modest interest on purely qualitative grounds, may prove significant. To take but one example for the moment, no one is likely to claim 'An Epistle to W. Bliss Carman' as a masterpiece, and Roberts' omission of it from his Selected Poems is understandable. None the less, for its presentation of his literary hopes and ambitions as a young man, for its evocation of the early intellectual background of Carman and himself, not to mention its sheer youthful exuberance and vitality, it surely deserves reprinting. In order to give the reader an opportunity to test Roberts' claim for 'divergence,' I have preferred a chronological arrange- ment. This admittedly has certain disadvantages. In particular, it separates poems which Roberts later found effective to print side by side ('Epitaph for a Sailor Buried Ashore' and 'An Epitaph for a Husbandman,' for instance, and some of the sonnets from In Divers Tones that were to take their place in the sonnet-sequence in Songs of the Common Day). But on balance, it seemed desirable, in the interests of clarity and scholarly convenience, to follow the ordering of the first editions. Introduction xvii No one could be more conscious than myself, of course, that such a selection is both personal and tentative. As I noted in my earlier study, the poems that most impressed Roberts' contem- poraries (and himself) were of the kind that he categorizes in Selected Poems as 'Poems Philosophical and Mystical.' I do not share this evaluation, believing that in too many of these poems the profundity of the subject-matter is not matched by a corresponding subtlety of language and treatment. They seem to encourage in the reader a stock response rather than stimulation to a new awareness. I have therefore chosen a comparatively small selection of these poems (based on poetic merit rather than 'importance,' and including 'Child of the Infinite,' 'Ascription,' 'Beyond the Tops of Time' and 'The Native') where others might have devoted considerably more space to this aspect of his poetry. I have preferred to concentrate on the less ambitious descriptive and meditative poems of the younger Roberts. Any reader who wishes to make a thorough study of Roberts' work will naturally need to consult the whole poetic corpus. This selection should be considered as a preliminary introduction. It cannot be over-emphasized that, by the very nature of the exercise, editorial selection is in itself an act of literary-critical evaluation. The work of most poets is intimately connected with events in their lives, and Roberts' verse is no exception. While we do not need biographical information in order to understand his poems, a knowledge of the relation between his writings and his life can assist and augment our appreciation. What follows, therefore, is not so much a life of Roberts as a brief biography of his poetry. W.J. Keith xviii The pattern of Roberts' life divides neatly into three sections. The first, a period of growth in which he established himself as a significant Canadian poet and man of letters, lasted until his departure for New York in 1897. The second, extending from 1897 until 1925, was a period of wandering which involved many years in England and on the continent, and also included service in the First World War. At this time prose took precedence over poetry, and Roberts emerged, solidly yet not altogether com- fortably, as a 'cosmopolitan' figure. The third, from 1925 until his death in 1943, dates from his return to Canada. Superficially it could be seen as a retirement, but it was in fact a period in which Roberts worked actively for the recognition of Canadian literary achievement, was honoured for his services to the country, and even enjoyed a late flowering of his poetic talents. If we focus our attention on his poetic career, a similar pattern emerges. Desmond Pacey has aptly and concisely described it as 'a rapid development, a sudden decline, a long silence, and a late revival. ' 1 We have only to telescope Pacey 's two central stages, and the biographical and poetic divisions prove virtually identical. I 1860-97 If the first of these periods seems the most important for our purposes, this is not only because it saw the writing of many of his best poems, including 'The Tantramar Revisited,' Ave, and the sonnets in Songs of the Common Day; more generally, his New Brunswick upbringing, at Westcock within easy reach of the Tantramar marshes and at Fredericton, which combined the cultural advantages of a provincial capital with a close proximity to Introduction xix wilderness and ancient wood, provided Roberts with a subject- matter and an inspiration that was to colour the rest of his life and work. He was remarkably fortunate, in fact, in the circum- stances of his early life. At Westcock, where his father was rector from 1860 to 1874, the parsonage and its adjoining glebe-farm happily combined the contemplative life of the spirit with an active existence close to the soil. The Roberts household was one in which a wide range of cultural and artistic pursuits flourished, and the immediate environment, with its wealth of history and tradition, could hardly fail to prove fruitful to the aspiring writer.
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