Bliss Carman: A Reappraisal

R. L. MCDOUGALL

In Summary R. L. MCDOUGALL D.M.R. BENTLEY DOUGLAS LOCHHEAD R. L. McDougall "W.hateverhappenedtoBlissCarman?" Raymond Souster puts this question at the top of his Foreword to the selection of Carman's poetry which he and Douglas Lochhead published in 1985, and he later attributes it to John Betjeman, as part of a conversation Betjeman had withJohn Robert Colombo in the 1970s. Maybe the editors, in a kind of sub-text, are saying that this new edition of the poet's work is what is happening to Bliss Carman in 1985, and it's not a bad answer. But in the Foreword they answer the question in another way, specifically though briefly, in terms of the ups and downs (mostly downs) of a literary reputation. Several papers in the present volume (conspicuously Mary McGillivray's) have reflected or enlarged upon this response. Perhaps, however, we do not need to do much more than look at the question itself, which is full of meanings quite as interesting as the answers. Who (whether John Betjeman or someone else) asks such a question, and why? Clearly, the phrase "whatever happened," with a query after it, is charged with implications. Time has passed. The impulse is one of caring. The questioner is perplexed, brows furrowed, puzzled that someone who once commanded his interest, perhaps his respect, even his loyalty, has disappeared from view. His feelings may be seasoned with disappointment at expectations unfulfilled. His caring is nostalgic. "Whatever happened to Bliss Carman?" he asks; and really wants to know. We may answer, taking an easy line, "Tastes change, and Carman came a cropper." But we may at the same time say to ourselves : true literary monuments do not disappear from view. Is it better, then, not to be the subject of such a question at all? 182 I don't think so. Much will depend on how bent we are on establishing a pecking order for poets in the Canadian barnyard. The fact that Carman belongs chronologically with the "poets of the Confederation " has invited ranking within this group. E. K. Brown tackled the problem head on in 1943, in On Canadian Poetry, because he thought that the pecking order amongst these poets had got badly out of whack: "Carman and Roberts," he wrote to D. C. Scott, "will no longer do as landmarks. I think that A. L. and you and Ned Pratt will do, and that you three must be the main landmarks." Fair game; it was a useful intervention. And history will judge Brown, as it judges Carman. It has never been the purpose of the Reappraisals series, however , as I understand it, to get very heavily into this business of ranking, and I am in agreement with that. I see its function, rather, as one of re-examining the past, or near past, in terms of present-day scholarship , by this means throwing whatever new light is available on the man or woman in question, the work and the times, which is really quite Tainesian (remember Hippolyte?) and old-fashioned, but I can't help it. It is at any rate enough for me that Carman was much loved and honoured, both as a man and a poet, in his day, and that he died in a blaze of recognition as a laurel-crowned poet of Canada in the 1920s. He was very much a presence then, in that complex decade of shifting values. If, therefore, I must give a quick answer to the question "Whatever happened to Bliss Carman?", I will answer that he is present in this volume, very much alive, having been worked over thoroughly, back and forth and round about, sixty years after his death. Not a bad happening . "Poor Archie," D. C. Scott used to say of his friend Lampman. "Poor Blissie," we might feel like adding, mindful of his posthumous fall from high repute, but we would do so with even less reason than Scott had in Lampman's case, since neither of these poets was or is poor in any way that counts. Pecking order? Well, we all have personal pecking orders, valid within limits, and would not define ourselves as individuals ifwe didn't. I must tell you that, in preparation for this assignment, I read well over one hundred poems by Bliss Carman in two or three sessions not far apart. One should not do this to any poet, least of all Carman, as it turned out, and I do...