Robert Norwood (1923)/Appreciation

anada is a land with little or no classical background. Our people do not know much of the classics, nor do they much care to know more. They are too busy making the classics of the future, the railroads, farms and cities that shall be the bases of new dramas, new songs and new civilizations. “Old things are passing away, behold all things are becoming new,” says our up-to-date western creator, and busies himself with original purposes, embodying his effort in a more comprehensive social state and a more universal statesmanship.

In the presence of these facts, it is not difficult to understand why, when the task of making an estimate of our Canadian poetry is essayed by one whose standards of taste have been acquired in older literary fields, he sometimes proves quite unfit for the work he has undertaken. The task is not his. He is ​somewhat like the old-country butler who, though he wears his uniform with self-conscious dignity, turns up his nose as soon as he begins to function. His superiorities are not current here at face value.

We know to-day that we do not understand one another and we are willing to admit it. This is a tremendous advance on the past. Perhaps this is enough advance for the present. It should lead us, without prejudice to our own point of view, to realize that there are others. Still more should it lead us, without prejudice to others, to new and just appraisement of our own point of view. Meantime, we deliberately ignore all criticism which seems to be based upon the assumption implied in the question “Can genuine poetry come out of Canada?” Not that we wish to commend where others condemn, but because we wish to find in Canadian poetry those standards of thought and feeling, life and law, best suited to the genius of this new western land.

That we are warranted in making such a quest—such a demand, if you will—seems clear. It is not enough that the poet shall discover the beauty in nature and describe or celebrate it in verse. That is the high function ​of pagan poetry, which we all so much love, but which has now become an habitual phase of art. It is not enough that he celebrates moral sentiment in platitudinous numbers. That too has been done for ages, but the chief habitat of such poetry—Europe—was recently a shambles.

The true poet—the poet we need in this land, whatever other lands may think they need—is he who lays the foundations of universal brotherhood so firmly that they shall abide; so permanently that the tragedies of the Victorian and the Georgian eras shall never again be enacted on the most benighted shores of the world-encircling seas. The poet who does not inspire creative and revolutionary thought, in the sense in which the sayings of Jesus were revolutionary, is negligible in this new era, when the spirit of goodwill should be made electric in all lands.

There have been centuries, and there may be others, when poetry shall demand only that our singers shall chant more beautifully than ever the songs and sagas of the wild. Indeed, there will always be many who will do this, and we give them due appreciation, but ours are times when the insistent voices of truth, ​eternally sounding in the hearts of poets divinely illumined, must be heard like tocsins flinging the strong words over sea and land; when the beacons of the old truth never yet fully accepted and tested by the people of earth, must be lighted; when that universal religion interpreted and promised many centuries ago, must be embodied in mass-experience, though it be for the first time.

The poet who sees not these things may be lyrical; he may be idyllic, but for all virile and divine purposes, his equation is zero. If our standards are careless of form, the loss is great. The supreme inspiration cannot have expression too lofty, nor the song of life too noble a score. The message of art for this age cannot be too explicit and vital. In the best sense of the word, it must be revolutionary. The poet must lay foundations of reality, which, when all things are shaken, shall remain. Whatever edifice may thereafter rise out of the poet’s dream must be built on these bases, in beauty eternal, truth unchanging, life undying.

Once more, out of the prolific Maritime Provinces, comes a maker of songs and plays, not too late in the Canadian dawn to have an ​important share in creating the nation’s ideals and in shaping its character and life. The quality of Robert Norwood’s gift is revealed in seven volumes of lyrics and drama, in all of which his wide range of vision and sympathy is expressed in highly artistic form and phrase, while his new and illuminating interpretation gives to all his dramatic work the joy of constant surprise.

Not only is Robert Norwood a poet, but he has been called to be a prophet, and has felt the live coal touch his lips with its altar flame. As a result he passes across the continent, kindling the hearts of the people with a passion for the real beauty. As a priest he has removed the veil which hides from our eyes the glory of the commonplace. As an artist he has pictured the whole truth—the truth in its universal conception, not hiding its warnings nor saying smooth things for the sake of brief popularity. As a poet, he associates the vision of truth with the beauty of his art, and his never-resting energy expresses both with a clarity vividly dramatic.

When “His Lady of the Sonnets” appeared, Norwood was at once recognized as a new and refreshing influence in Canadian poetry. The ​book was a slight volume, and was usually read from cover to cover at one sitting. Such a reading by the present writer led to a correspondence with the author. This resulted in a valued friendship which will always endure.

The first number of the sonnet sequence gives a thrill of pleasant expectancy whose fine promise is amply fulfilled in the beautiful imagery and sustained art which here unveils the loveliness of this poetic conception:

One seems to hear in these lines the elemental music of the sea of life. They are spontaneous. They glide along almost with the music of wings. The reader knows that here is a chord out of the heart of Nature herself, telling to the heart of man all the poignant meanings of the deep voices of the world. This is no falsetto note that cannot be maintained throughout the score with swelling volume and with deepening power. The initial beauty is but a suggestion of that which follows:

​Norwood is not much interested in things. He declares that he does not know flowers individually. “You will notice,” he says, “in my sonnets, that I confine myself to lilies and roses. These I love and understand. The rest are in the great pageant, and please me in the mass.” And yet our poet thrills to every mood of Nature:

If this is not the voice of Nature’s own child we know no such voice. He sees, too, the inevitableness of tragedy:

But as the sequence further unfolds, its chastening purpose and its healing power are also revealed, till in the later sonnets a comradely feeling prevails. There is assurance that the pruning of the vineyard has brought forth fruit.

The last sonnet of the series describes experience as a golden treasury into which, having braved the tragedy, we all may dip. Then,

Canadian poets have created some notable sonnets, and while we desire, as much as possible, to avoid the use of superlatives, it will readily be granted, I believe, that this sequence ranks in beauty and distinction with the most inspired Canadian achievement in this field.

Apart from the sonnets themselves, the most distinguished poem in this volume is “Dives in Torment.” Its somewhat riotous and disjunctive narrative is a carefully designed effort to show truthfully the ravings of a soul in its hell-delirium. The effect is powerfully shown, yet all the while it is an unfoldment of the profound meaning and purpose of tragedy (that is, hell) in human experience.

The reader who is familiar with Wilfred Campbell’s “Lazarus” will be interested to learn that when Norwood wrote “Dives,” he ​had not read the Campbell poem, but knew deeply Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven,” and felt the influence of its thunder. It will be seen, however, that Norwood’s poem is of quite a different order, and has a unique excellence.

The subject is treated at greater length by him, and with a dramatic vigour of which he is something of a master. This poem consists of seventy-four quatrains, in which he depicts the rich rouè in hell, hate-filled, defiant; ridiculing, pitying and scorning Jehovah. Lazarus, the beggar, despite Abraham’s refusal of help to Dives, descends lovingly to the place of torment, his compassion prompting him, as in the case of Campbell’s Lazarus, to bring solace to the heart of the rich man. Thus far the attitude of Dives in the two poems is entirely different. Campbell makes him penitent. The only similarity is in the pity of Lazarus. But here Campbell’s poem ends, and, one might almost say, Norwood’s begins.

The rich man, supposing that the beggar from heaven has come only to taunt him, at first spurns his visitor, but afterwards confesses his folly in bartering

​for the baubles of wealth and popularity with all the glitter of a worldly station. He perceives that love is shining out of the eyes and soul of Lazarus. He is convinced that this man whom he first knew as a creature of the dust, begging at his palace gate, is in reality a great, heroic, love-illumined soul who has come out of the very heart of eternal Goodness to prove himself a brother to one who had despised him. Then the rich man cries:

He realizes now that the love of one other being, and that being recently a beggar, has turned hell into heaven; has turned the beggar into a Messiah.

The remainder of the book under consideration is composed of “Sonnets and Songs,” all of which are good, and some exceedingly fine. Had Robert Norwood written nothing further, his place in Canadian letters would have been, if not spacious, at least lofty and secure. This book, however, was only the ​small beginning, though a notable one, of a series of volumes which already place our author among our most significant poets. Having once read it, the reader will always turn back to “His Lady of the Sonnets” with new surprise and delight.

In lyric verse, the poet is his own spokesman; but when he turns to drama, he must create proxies to voice his words and speak in divers characters. When the dramatist chooses spokesmen already known to his readers because of their familiar places in the world literatures, he finds it necessary, in a measure at least, to recreate those characters, otherwise he would be adding no personal contribution to art, for the personalities already stand out conspicuously in the world’s classics. The dramatist must give his people some new charm, some novel human appeal, if he would hold his reader and warrant his effort.

In Norwood’s first drama, “The Witch of Endor,” there is no break with the classical story of Saul and Samuel, David and Jonathan, or, indeed, with that of the Witch herself. Yet the play is charmingly original. It is the same Saul and the same witch, and yet it is also another Saul and another witch that ​move, one with sombre majesty, the other with self-consuming nobility, through all the tragic scenes of this drama with its strange allurement. Our poet has created a Saul moody and aloof in the presence of his own people, stormfully disdainful of their God who has shattered, by the word of His high priest, all the hope of his early and imperishable passion for a lovely and accomplished young woman of an alien race. His own people, in the bigoted patois of their narrow creed, describe her as “a sorceress.” And the witch? Norwood has conceived, with real genius, not a weazened and uncanny old hag, as the witch is so generally pictured, but a wonderful soul, noble in courage, resourceful in strategy, and faithful utterly in the highest obligations of her soul.

Our poet makes the whole interest revolve around this woman. It is the thwarting of her highest earthly hopes that constitutes the really tragical element in the drama. Yet it is made very clear that her highest hope, her spiritual dream, is never thwarted. She is regardful, as far as may be, of the respectable conventions of the world, but is never for one moment untrue to those realities before which, in the high ​court of her great soul, all respectabilities must in their final judgment bow low and be as uncouth shadows.

The duration of this play covers the entire reign of Saul. The time is shortened, to meet the artistic requirements of the story, to twenty years. The length of the period is unusual, but not unfitting, for time adds to the tragedy of the drama. In the first act Saul refuses to be king unless Loruhamah, the young woman he loves, is made queen. But she is not an Israelite, though willing to become one, and the High Priest rules against all who are not born of Israel, for the royal station. Loruhamah, careful of the highest interests of the man she loves, refuses to allow him to lose the throne for her sake, though he pleads with her to go with him to Babylon that they may be happy there together. She takes the whole matter out of his hands, disappears, and is no more seen by Saul throughout the twenty years.

Saul is now induced to marry Ahinoam, a beautiful maiden whose heart is tender towards Loruhamah. This part of the drama shows Saul as an independent spirit of stormy energy, fitted to be what he probably was, a great ​and good ruler. Though unseen, Loruhamah now constitutes herself Saul’s guardian angel, a function she maintains to the end.

In the second act, Doeg the Edomite, who has ingratiated himself with Saul, schemes to destroy the king. In this plot, he craves the assistance of Loruhamah, as priestess of Ashtoreth, hoping she may be induced to share his nefarious treachery. It is his intention that she shall lure Saul away from Jehovah and the religion of Israel, to his own undoing, so that Edom may conquer the nation and annex it to the Edomite power. The young woman, firm in her loyalty to Saul, spurns the project, and the second act closes with her lofty defiance in one of the most powerful scenes in the drama.

The aged prophet Samuel enters the play in the third act. Stern, resolute, vindictive for Jehovah, he curses Saul in the presence of Ahinoam, the Queen, for having spared the cattle of Agag for sacrifice instead of destroying them, as Samuel had commanded in the name of Jehovah. The Queen, prostrated by the severity of Samuel against Saul, which seems to her cruel and unjust, dies suddenly in her husband’s arms.

​All the while, concealed in the wood at the left, Loruhamah has been watching these events. She sees the king ascending the steps and entering the palace with Ahinoam dead in his arms. As soon as he disappears within the portal she exclaims:

The silent night and the stars are revealed, while the silver reflection of the moonlight is seen on Loruhamah’s face.

David is the centre of the next act. He is accused by Doeg of conniving for the throne. Since Samuel has already anointed him to be king, David cannot successfully defend himself. He flees from Saul’s hurtling javelin, and escaping with Jonathan, passes out of the drama, estranged not only from Saul, but from Michal who, torn with dread of all that may befall her father, her brother, her husband, for the time sees David no more, but remains with her father the King.

Bereft of the guiding word of the prophets—both Samuel and the High Priest being now dead—deprived of the soothing influence of ​David’s harp, and stricken by Jehovah, the lonely King goes in his extremity to the cave of Endor, where, as he has learned, there is one who, notwithstanding his edict, has the power, and may be induced, to raise Samuel for his counselling. Here in the cave of Endor the fifth act is staged, and here the Witch enters the drama.

Had it been possible to cover the fact that she is none other than Loruhamah, no doubt our poet would have availed himself of this piece of mystery, but the secret would have been guessed and verified from the beginning, so there is no effort made to help the plot in this way. Is it the thought of the imposing figure of Saul in the cave, his giant height overtopping all others, that leads our author to use as his foregleam to the tragedy, Browning’s picture of Saul in the tent?

A small fire in a brazier within the cave is the only light. It is not yet daybreak. In the ​dimness Saul does not recognize the Witch. Samuel’s wraith appears and announces Saul’s immediate death. Exhausted and stricken, the King falls fainting to the ground. Doeg steals into the cave and demands that Loruhamah shall slay Saul. She feigns willingness, receives the dagger from Doeg’s hand, strikes suddenly at Doeg’s throat, misses aim, is foiled. Doeg himself is about to slay Saul when Abner arrives, engages with Doeg and slays him. Saul revives. Abner explains the situation as to the dead body, then returns to the army without. Saul recognizes Loruhamah, who now begs of him to go with her to Babylon, as he, twenty years before, had besought her to go with him.

The closing scene is made strong and beautiful by the noble reserve of Saul and by the deep intensity of Loruhamah’s emotion. The final strophes are satisfying to the artistic taste. But apart altogether from the love-story of the King and this priestess of Ashtoreth, many obscure details in the life of Saul are cleared up by Norwood’s arrangement, as contrasted with the disjointed story as it appears in the book of Samuel. It seems likely also that a very just service is rendered to the ​memory of one who, because he was more universal—perhaps we should say elemental—than tribal, was a victim of narrow racial pride and religious prejudice. It may be, indeed, that Saul was a really great ruler who belonged in his development to a later age and a larger arena.

“The Witch of Endor” has never been staged. It would require at least four artists of supreme dramatic power in the cast. Whatever may be said, however, of its suitability for presentation upon the stage in this modern day, it inspires the finest aspirations of the soul and is an achievement in Canadian letters. It is probably the most distinguished work that Norwood has yet published.

“The Witch of Endor” gives the world a new Saul. To a wholesome mind, it is always a joy to see any well-known personage lifted to a higher ethical level in the world’s esteem. Norwood does this with most of his dramatic people. The Witch, Saul, Judas, Bartimæus, and others rise in our estimation with Norwood’s treatment. When he pictures a villain, he first creates him. Doeg has no place in the world’s esteem from which he could be ​dragged to suffer the ignominy of playing a base part in a mean plot.

We should not leave this play without some allusion to another Canadian drama. “Saul,” by Heavysege, is worthy of wider recognition, but it belongs to an age that is past. It was suited to fireside study when first published sixty-five years ago. Norwood’s drama is distinctly modern. The “Saul” published by Heavysege in 1857 is as different from the Saul of “The Witch of Endor,” published in 1916, as are the following lines put into their mouths by their respective creators:

It must be admitted that poetry suited to stage production is lonely in Canada. Drama is a task for genius. Few writers are fitted for the work. Some great poets have tried it with little success. Few Canadians who have ventured into this field have met with appreciation. The significant Canadian ​dramatists are a small group indeed, Heavysege, Mair, Campbell, Stringer, Norwood, and Denison. Of the dramas written in Canada there is probably none with more lines of strength, beauty, and surprise, than are found in either “The Witch of Endor” or “The Man of Kerioth.” This is high praise, for the others—“Saul,” “Tecumseh,” “Mordred,” “Sappho”—are strong and memorable tragedies.

There is little doubt that “The Witch” will sooner or later appear on the screen. It is admirably adapted for such presentation. Indeed, Norwood has recently produced a scenario entitled “The Power Within,” which has appeared with approval in American cities. It is a modernized story of Job, intended to show that a man should be the captain of his own soul.

“The Piper and the Reed” appeared in 1917. In the title poem of this book, Norwood shows how precious is a poet in the sight of God. He tells how the Heavenly Piper found a reed and added its note to the music, in order to perfect the harmony that He loves. As we read the poem we think again of that memorable day when God sought the young ​minstrel in the clearance of the forest, and brought him to realize “the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty.” We are reminded also of the call of young Isaiah. (Isaiah vi.)

The finest work in the volume, next to the title poem, is probably “After the Order of Melchizedek.” Three stanzas of this poem are already well known, for they have been frequently and widely quoted. They are the three beginning:

The “Melchizedek” is presented entire in this volume. It has a freshness and a freedom attractive to those who have burst the cocoons of cult and prejudice. No one knows better than Norwood that every thinker has some sort of creed; but here is a counterblast against fixity and aggressiveness of belief.

Much of Norwood’s thought and feeling is embodied in “The Optimist,” “A Song of New Gods,” “The King of Glory,” and “The Ploughman.” The last of these particularly, though a brief poem, has a dignity and nobility most attractive. Norwood has said elsewhere:

​“Everybody is divine. All divine being is germinal in the ego, and life eternal is the unfoldment of God in that ego. The Selfhood of God is in an eternal unfoldment . . . All is present. All is God. Time is but the shadow of divine consciousness obscured occasionally by the realization of the germinal processes of the soul. To take no thought for the morrow is to have arrived at the margin where, in the light of full divine consciousness, time shadows disappear.” The poems in this volume are true to the ethics of the intellect, and also to the loyalties of the heart, both of which qualities are timely.

In his next book, “The Modernists,” published in 1918, Norwood traces the development of the higher consciousness from the times of greater Egypt down to our own. It is dedicated to Charles G. D. Roberts, with whom Norwood has kept in touch ever since his days at King’s. This volume reveals an appreciation of the ideals of his heroes, implying an intimate acquaintance with the characters and times of these men and women. The fact that he is not a mere chronicler, but a poet, warrants the wide, imaginative sweep of his monologues. It may be that in some ​cases the poet has revealed more of the meaning of these strategic souls than they themselves had realized. This, of course, is not true of the greatest of them, such as Moses and Socrates. These men knew more than they could tell to their contemporaries. Their audiences lacked capacity and vision. One full monologue—“Giordano Bruno,” appears in the anthology of this volume. Lines from a few others are presented here. The reader will perceive the beauty and wisdom embodied in each quotation.

This last selection is taken from “His Lady of the Sonnets,” for though this poem is reprinted in “The Modernists,” the form is there slightly changed. Norwood makes it clear that evil never was, and never will be, destroyed by force. Conflict by its very nature breeds more conflict. Therefore he makes Paul say we must cast away all separating prejudices and bigot-superiorities. Only spiritual energy can overcome evils, whether on the physical or the spiritual planes.

​One more book, making five in all, emerged from Norwood’s study in annual series. Our author had meantime moved to Philadelphia. This book, “The Man of Kerioth,” appeared in 1919. It had been in contemplation for some years and presents a new, or at least a fresh, conception of the beginnings of the Christian ideal, before the doctors of theology had given it the dogmatic twists that pertain to our ecclesiastical “Christianity.” It gives us a picture of Christian backgrounds while the hope was still alive in the Judean Christian’s heart that the new Leader might prove to be a rock on which the Roman Empire would soon be broken.

This drama sets forth a Messiah whose miracles are spiritual achievements more miraculous—that is, more wonderful—than any physical exploits, however notable. It presents a Christ whose sublime personality was in itself the highest miracle. To each of the other characters some deft touch is given by the sculptor’s fingers. Philip becomes a Greek minstrel; Caiaphas, a social lion whose loyalties to Israel do not turn him aside from the gaieties of an elite social confraternity.

Mary Magdalene is a woman also loyal to ​Israel, but a lover of Judas who would inspire him to Messianic aspirations and deeds; Bartimæus, a blind minstrel, mystic, and poet whose heavenly vision gives the tragedy, for some readers, its greatest charm; the man of Kerioth, Judas, a thunderer of Hebrew fanaticism, a warrior-hearted enemy of Rome who is constantly pestering Jesus for “a sign;” and—the Carpenter—ah! the Carpenter!

The conception of every character is distinctly a poet’s. Possibly the drama would be less disturbing to preconceptions of the present times if the Carpenter had been kept in the background, but our author is not one who asks himself timidly whether the whole truth should be spoken. Here is Judas’ story of how he first met Jesus: (Act I—page 46.)

In the second act the Carpenter appears at the Jordan, where John, with herald voice, is booming across the plain: “Behold the Lamb of God.”

The third act tells in detail the story of the wedding at Cana. If any reader feels that the drama suffers because its author holds it far above the maze of miracle, the answer is that Jesus himself refused a sign to his own evil generation. The people were ever more disposed to believe in magic than in the miracle of truth. As another of our Canadian poets (Wilson MacDonald) writes: