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Reviewed by:
  • The Letters by A.M. Klein
  • Jonathan D. Sarna (bio)
A.M. Klein. The Letters. Ed. Elizabeth Popham. University of Toronto Press 2011. xxxiv, 518. $85.00

This volume of letters by the Canadian-Jewish poet A.M. Klein represents the final volume of the Collected Works of A.M. Klein and is “the first compilation of a significant body of Klein’s correspondence.” Most of the letters date from Klein’s period of greatest creativity (1931–52); they shed little light on his mental illness and subsequent withdrawal from public life. His correspondents during these good years included poets like A.J.M. Smith, Leo Kennedy, Jacob Glatstein (Gladstone), and Karl Shapiro; scholars like Leon Edel and Ellsworth Mason; and publishers like the Jewish Publication Society, Ryerson Press, and Alfred Knopf. The letters shed light on his poems, writings, research, his Jewish engagements, and his public relations work on behalf of Samuel Bronfman. Family letters, sealed until 2022, and Klein’s legal correspondence are for the most part excluded from this compilation.

Elizabeth Popham, who teaches in the Department of English at Trent University, has carefully edited this volume, supplying a valuable introduction, textual notes, and explanatory notes. Those notes, unfortunately, are separated from the letters themselves and printed in two distinct sections, so the conscientious reader must flip across many pages to benefit from them. Had all the notes been printed below the letters, on the same page, this volume would have been far easier to read.

Students of Klein will nevertheless benefit greatly from the publication of these letters. They offer fresh clues concerning his unfinished commentary on James Joyce’s Ulysses, the manuscript of which he apparently destroyed, and on the meaning of his remarkable Joycean novel, The Second Scroll (1951). They also shed light on the textual history of some of his poems, exposing words and lines that he altered, sometimes for poetic reasons and sometimes because of the puritanical standards of the Jewish Publication Society.

Most important, the letters present a panoramic view of Klein’s mind and character during his period of intense creativity. They portray his deep Jewish knowledge and commitments (“A Jew I am; the whole world knows it. … I am the possessor, because of the education which my bearded father gave me, of a rich legacy. … My grandfather may have been a peddler; but my great-great grandfather was a prophet”); his deep emotional response to Hitler and the Holocaust; his Canadian patriotism and fascination with French Canadians (“we have many things in common: a minority position; ancient memories; and a desire for group survival. Moreover the French Canadian enjoys much – a continuing and distinctive culture, solidarity, land – which I would wish for my own people”); his fine critical eye; and his love and feel for language. [End Page 443]

Popham’s lengthy explanatory notes provide important commentary on these letters, identifying key individuals, explicating obscure references, and setting forth invaluable context. She misses some references, such as the meaning of “I received the microfilm (have not hidden it in a pumpkin),” which was actually an allusion to Whittaker Chambers’s explosive 1948 revelations concerning Alger Hiss. She also makes a series of unfortunate errors in the interpretation of Klein’s Jewish references. For example, a knacker is colloquial Yiddish for a “bigshot” and has nothing to do with either “an old worn-out horse” or “testicles.” An informer in Hebrew is a moser, not musar, which is an entirely different word meaning “ethical literature.” The blessing “who gives the rooster understanding” is not in the Amidah at all but rather is the first of the traditional Jewish daily morning blessings. The term a “Joyce chassid” refers to ardent discipleship (such as that of a Hasid to his Rebbe) and is not a suggestion that Klein is engaged in work similar to that of rabbinical scholars. The reference to “Mendelssohn” refers to the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, not to his Christian grandson, the German composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

These lapses, however, should not detract from the overall significance of this book to all students of Klein’s work. Thanks to this volume, and its cousins in the Collected...

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