The Cultural Record

212 THE UNJVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY is primarily a teach1ng book. The cause of humanism is beset these days by many_ appalling pedantries, and equally appalling vulgarities, perpetrated in the name of popularization. One may be thankful, on reading The Story of the Iliad, for the fact that in Toronto the flame is still tended, and burns steadily. THE CULTURAL RECORD* WATSON KlRKCONNELL To gather all of the literatures of mankind into a single massive work of reference is a task of formidable proportions, yet in the Encyclopedia of Literature it has been. carried out with competence and distinction. This is primarily a venture of American scholarship, for the general editor and sixty-three of his ninety-eight contributors are from the United States of America. The ne:xt largest group consists of twenty-six Hindu scholars, mobilized by Dr. R. N. Dandekar of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona to deal with the broad -fidds of Indian literature1 ancient and modern. The remaining nine are from the British Dominions: five from Canada and one each from Australia1 New Zealand, South Africa, and Eire. Most of the contributors have written one general article each, but a veteran like Clarence A. Manning of Columbia University has written no fewer than sixteen: on Albanian, Bulgaria.n1 Czech, Estonian, Georgian, Modern Greek1 Latvian1 Lithuanian, Lusatian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Tyurk1c, Ukrainian, and Yugoslav. The :five Canadian contributors are Hermann Boesch:enstein of University College, Toronto (Swiss literature), W. M. Conacher of Queen's University (Canadian literature in French), Samuel A. B. Mercer of Trinity College, Toronto (Ethiopic literature), Carl A. Roebuck of Dalhousie University (Greek literature), and C. J. Vincent of Queen's University (Canadian literature in. English). The most striking feature of the ~ncyclopedia is its completeness, ranging from H. L. Ginsberg's article on extant Canaanite literature (unearthed by archaeologists at Ras esh-Shamra no earlier than 1929-33) to the very extensive survey of all phases of the literatures of the Indian sub-continent. Care has even been taken to include synthetic sketches of the native Amerindian literatures of North and South America, the native literatures of Africa, and the native literatures of Polynesia. These more primitive literatures have been dealt with especially in terms of folk-lore. One interesting section, which cuts across the boundary lines of language and of nationality, is a survey of Christian hymnody. Incidentally this article credits Latin hymnody anq German hymnody with about one hundred thousand hymns each. .._Encyclopttiin of Liln-tJture. Edited by JosEP!-1 T. SHIPLEY. Two \·nls. New York: Philosophical Ll brnry (Toronto: McLeod]. l946. Pp. xii, ll88. ($1 5.00) RaJSen and Vollar i11 f/nrgeu!Jichu und Gnc!Jichtt de.s /lbendlnndeJ. J3y WILHELM ScHMIDT. Bd: I, "Die Rasscn des Ahcndlandes"; Bd. U, ''Die Volker des :\bendlandes." Lucerne: Verl:lg Josef Stocker. 1946. Pp. X~', 3-:!.6; Kii, 329. REVIEWS 213 In some cases, the swift historicat' changes of the past two or three years have rendered the authors' judgments obsolete. Thus Professor tvianning·s article on Russian literature, apparently written about 1944, concludes; "Just as Russian· literature of the 19th century took over many of the qualities of the p_re-Petrine literature, so the Soviets a,fter a strenuous denial of the 19th century are coming back to <~:bsorb the past and to continu~ the unitary course of Russian literature from its inception." \Vith- the year 1945, however, came a ruthless Soviet purge of these "reactionary" tendencies. Soviet writers were brought back inexorably to strict Communist orthodoxy in thought an,d technique; in April: 1945, for example, Ilya .Ehrenburg was slapped into line; and by 1947 even the ideological chief of the Agitprop, Georgi. Fedorovich. Aleksandrov himself, was subjected to disciplinary action- by Stalin's orders. The key-note of this cultural reconve ,·sion was given by N. Tikhonov, General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, in a speech against the ideological lapses of war-time that was reported in full in the Literaturnaya Gazeta for May 17, 1945. Denouncing a whole list of literary heresies, he quotes Lenin as his authority that "any flirting with good old God is an unspeakable apomination'' (1/syakoye kokyenich.aniye .s bozhen'koi est' nevyrazimeishaya_myerzost'). He insjsts on a return to Communist atheist orthodoxy, and continues: "Such varied incipient playing along with God hits the eye! This phenomenon is, of course, distinct and doe$ not change the face of Soviet literature, but even in its Smail SCOpe it forces one tO point it OUt as a SOI"t of jncompatibility with. the tasks of Soviet literature." Professor C. J. Vincent's sketch of English-Canadian literature gives precedence in honour to Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Archibald Lampman , Stephen Leacock, and E. J. Pratt. On Mazo de la Roche, his comment is· interesting: "\Vhether her novels are literature is difficult to say. They are not, however, Canadian in the sense that MacLennan's stories are Canadian. Nor are they American. In none of these stories. does the native reader find a recognizable setting or character. Perhaps her books may be most accurately described as mid-Atlantic, so that their ultimate fate will be either the greatness of universa_lity or the oblivion of the void." His general conclusions are tentative an<;l pessimistic: "On the whole. the literature of Canada, conforming to alien conventions) is imitative of the literature of England, or of the United States, or of both. Much of the material used is new:, but it is communicated· in patterns that are not native, so that the result occasionally seems artificial. . . . Regional literatures have appeared and they may lead to the distinctly Canadian expression that some have hoped for. But anything like the creation of a national literature for Canada seems, at present, extremely unlikely.'' By flagrantly omitting Frederick Philip Grove, with his powerful intellectuality_ and his evidence of Scandinavian and Russian influences, Mr. Vincent tends to indict his own critical judgment. ' 214 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Th~ most uneven part of the Encyclopedia is its section of "Biographical Notiees" (pp. 1055-1188), giving sketches of some 780 authors from all periods of the world's literature. Here there seems to be no perceptible basis of choice. Romanian literature is conceded· one biography (Mihail Eminescu ), Canadian and Polish literatures get four each, and Russian literature gets nine; while the literature of Australia (comparable to that of Canada) eclipses Russian with thirteen biographies, Icelandic literature has twentysix , and modern Jewish literature (in Hebrew and Yiddish) soars to fortyone . One suspects that the aggressive enthusiasm of some contributors has been a determining factor in this strange result. Even within national 1 groups one rnay sometimes be dubious as to the selection. Thus in Magyar literature, the epic giant Michael Vorosmarty has been omitted from a list that includes the left-wing novelist Sigismund M6ricz. The gravest structural fault of the Encyclopedia is its lack of an index. Integration through a general introduction, moreover, while contrary to the encyclopedia technique, might nevertheless have satisfi~d a sort of vaguely felt want in an otherwise admirable volume~ Here, cheek by jowl, are' all the literary manifestations of the human race, embodied in national or linguistic traditions. Is it capricious to desiderate some attempt at com-. parative analysis and speculative synthesis? In the case of occidental civilization, a notable work of orientation has been undert.aken by the venerable Austrian anthropologist, Wilhelm Schmidt, formerly Professor of Primitive Language and Culture in the University of Vienna, but now, in his eightieth year, at the InstitU:t Anthropos at ·Posieux-Froideville, Switzerland. Father Schmidt's earlier work on Die Sprachjamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde (1926) is still perhaps the most comprehensive single treatment of all the languages of the world, and his approach to anthropology gives considerable emphasis to the data of language. The nucleus of his present work on Rassen und Volker in V orgeschichte und Gesclzichte des A bend/andes was an earlier and much.slighter volume on Rasse und Volk (Munich, 1927; second edition, Salzburg, 1935; abridged Italian edition, Brescia, 1936), which was placedo~ the Nazi index of banned publications in 1936 and was banned in Italy, under Nazi pressure , a few months later. His refutation of Hitlerian race-dogma is much amplified in the present work; but its purpose is not so much a polemic demolition of these crude heresies as a constructive approach to an understanding of the principles underlying human civilization.· The ·treatment is scientific rather than rhetoricaL There is an exhaustive analysis of hundreds of authorities in anthropology, linguistics, and soCiology, interspersed with statis.tical tables of birth-rates and cephalic indices. The fact that emerges from his' massive documentation 1s the complex reality of race and culture, as over against the simplified myths·of political nationalism, and the importance of the free human personality as over against the state. A third and concluding volume on "Gegenwart und Zukunft des Abendlandes.. will be awaited with deep interest. ...