Publications in Other Languages

332 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Ricour's discourse on the problem of the humanities, Les Humanites greco-latines, idoles au vrais dieux? (Montreal, Edns Chantecler, 160 pp., $1.50) contains interesting chapters on the sources of the French language and the French spirit. In the two volumes of Nouvelle aventure en Afrique (Montreal, Fides, 251, 253 pp., $4) M. Jacques Hebert describes a journey undertaken by himself and his wife through northern and central Africa. M'en allant promener (Montreal, Beauchemin , 162 pp., $2.50) is an account of a tour through the Scandinavian countries by Mme Fran~oise Gaudet-Smet. The book contains numerous photographs of buildings, ports, artists, and works of art. VII. PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES WATSON KIRKCONNELL Two volumes dominate the poetry of the year, one in Ukrainian and the other in Icelandic. An important contribution to the religious poetry of this country is a lengthy Ukrainian verse-cycle, totalling nearly six thousand lines and entitled Christ the Messiah, Saviour of the World. Its author is Archbishop Michael of Toronto and many of its sections are identified as written in 1953 in Toronto or Montreal. The great bulk of the work is in rhymed quatrains but one or two parts (e.g., no. 44, vii, "Prayer for all the Church") are in looser measures. In design, this substantial volume is reminiscent of Iceland's chief devotional work, the fifty Passion-Hymns of Hallgrimur Petursson, which to this day form an integral part of the Icelandic Hymnbook. Whereas Hallgrimur , however, confines himself to the brief intensity of the Passion period and grows lyric in devotion over the suffering and death of the Saviour, the Ukrainian poet-archbishop is more ambitious in his scope and ranges from primordial counsel within the Trinity down to the Ascension of the risen Lord. There are five main sections in the book: Part I (poems 1- 9), "The Beginning of Salvation," including the antecedent joy in Heaven and bitterness in Hell and the instructions given to Mary, Elizabeth, and Joseph; Part II (10--28), the birth of the Saviour and his early career; Part III (29- 37 ), a prelude to the Atonement (Palm Sunday, in the Temple, the treachery of Judas, etc.); Part IV .(38- 63), the Betrayal, Judgment, Crucifixion , and Descent into Sheol; and Part V (64-85), the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. It may be that Archbishop Michael might have greatly enriched his prosody by adapting his metres and stanzas, deals; but it may also be argued that uniformity of metre has its own as did Hallgrimur Petursson, to the varying themes with which he effect, as in In Memoriam, in giving unity to a wide range of topics under a single master-plan. LEITERS IN CANADA, 1953 333 Contrasted in many ways is Wedges, Pall Bjamason's substantial volume (270 pp.) of Icelandic verse. Mr. Bjamason was born in Mountain, North Dakota, in 1883, spent many years in Wynyard, Sask., and is now living in retirement in Vancouver. The present work represents the most diverse collected lyrics from a long lifetime of poetic activity, much of it from his early twenties. Among the best work in the book is his "Maid of the Mountain," written for the millennial celebration of Iceland's parliament in 1930, "My District" dealing with his home territory in North Dakota, and "The Sea." As with other Icelandic-Canadian poets, Mr. Bjamason has many adroit examples of translation, in his case from Thomas Gray, Oscar Wilde, Fitzgerald's version of the Rubaiyat, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edwin Markham, Longfellow, Tennyson, Henley, and others. Considerable Icelandic poetry of importance is also to be found in the Annual of the Icelandic National League, especially "Klettafjollin " by Guttormur J. Guttormsson. Gaelic poetry begins to come back into the position it once occupied in Nova Scotian life with a little volume of original Gaelic poems and melodies by Major C. 1. N. MacLeod, once a distinguished Celtic scholar at the University of Edinburgh and now general adviser in Celtic studies to the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Here are pathos and tenderness, shadow and sunshine, deep emotion and elevated thought. Poetry blends with critical scholarship in volume III...