Robertson Davies: A Mingling of Contrarieties ed. by Camille R. La Bossière, Linda M. Morra (review)

528 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Martinis.= On an antihistamine used to relive the symptoms of hayfever and for nighttime sedation: >I had a bad headache, caused, as my headaches always are, by the backing up of mucus in my deviated septum. That in its turn was the result of spending a second night without Benadryl. ... Guess I=m a dope addict, for the present anyway.= 7 February 1950: >Yesterday I got my Benadryl supply & was all right again this morning. The nine o=clock on Ruskin was pretty fair.= 9 February 1949: >I took some Benedryl [sic] & slept all afternoon, then got up and went to a Forum meeting.= 15 February 1949: >Curious disturbed dream last night B evidently I can=t sleep properly without Benedryl [sic], even when I seem to be feeling all right.= Unravelling the dream, Frye moves from a French town, to a statue in the town square (la Vierge d=Alsace), to the author de la Motte Fouque [sic], whose name >has a highly improper reference to intercourse before going to sleep & Helen=s nervous exhausted state, with some anxiety about my own technique.= A month or so later, 18 March 1949: >I went to bed intending to go to sleep, but Helen climbed in beside me ...= (my ellipsis). According to Denham, >those who do not want their diaries read will surely do the only sensible thing they can do to have their wish fulfilled B destroy the manuscript.= Some people are not sensible. (LINDA MUNK) Camille R. La Bossière and Linda M. Morra, editors. Robertson Davies: A Mingling of Contrarieties University of Ottawa Press. vi, 178. $21.95 Declaring itself a >collective assessment of the achievement of Robertson Davies,= the twenty-fourth volume in the University of Ottawa=s series of Reappraisals: Canadian Writers promises to >present new insights on a broad range of topics in Davies= oeuvre= in addition to providing >one of the first major discussions devoted to Davies= work since his death in 1995.= With an emphasis on what the jacket blurb describes as >the basic problems in reading [Davies=s] artfulness, as a moralist committed to the practices of doubling; disguise; irony and paradox; and dwelling in Agaps@ or spaces Ain between,@= this well-designed volume exhibits both the strengths and weaknesses that might be expected from a set of papers >developed from the first-ever conference on Davies= and his work. Promisingly, a number of selections do gesture towards the breadth and crispness of >new insights.= Lois Sherlow=s >Metadrama and Melodrama: Postmodern Elements in the Plays of Robertson Davies= is the best example, arguing convincingly for >the extreme metatheatricality= of the plays individually while prompting a rereading of them in the aggregate as a reflection of Davies=s >dedication to staging (meta)theatrical games, in which the illusionistic confounding of two or more levels of reality brings about a humanities 529 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 transformation of self-perception= as well as of his persistent interrogation of >the unexamined habits of perception common in Canada.= In one of the few papers that peek over the walls of the Upper Canadian garrison, Sherlow looks to situate Davies=s strategies vis-à-vis the works of such Québécois dramatists as Bouchard and Lepage. Indeed, the theatrics of (self-)transformation and liberation take centre stage in a number of the stronger contributions. Focusing variously on the >perceived liberating influence= of >liquid AFifth Business@= (K.P. Stich on >The Leaven of Wine and Spirits=), on Davies=s paradoxical deployment of a >monologic domination= of enchantment (Todd Pettigrew on the Nabokovian term shamanstvo), or on the >shadows= of fatalism that can be glimpsed in the >stylistic disruptions= of narrative (David Creelman), these papers suggest diverse paths towards >real intellectual discovery in the world according to Davies.= As Faith Balisch suggests in >@A Hint of the Basic Brimstone@: The Humour of Robertson Davies,= such journeys often lead to a world defined by >a confrontation between Canada=s ostensibly Calvinist gloom, cultural stagnation, utilitarianism, and Victorian prudery, and Davies= own effervescent, determinedly Renaissance spirit.= It is a world...