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LIKE ONE THAT DREAMED: A Portrait of A.M. Klein. Usher Caplan, with a Foreword by Leon Edel. Photographs edited by David Kaufman. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1982. Pp. 224. $24.95. This is a thoroughly fascinating and revealing portrait of one of Canada's most truly remarkable poets. Of course, as Caplan's book so ably demonstrates, Klein was more than a poet. His activities and accomplishments included a not always thriving legal practice, a dedicated career as a political and social activist and Zionist, two unsuccessful attempts to obtain election to Parliament as a candidate for the C.C.F., a brief career as a lecturer at McGill University, and a long and somewhat perplexing association with Samuel Bronfman for whom he acted as consultant and ghost writer. It is with a view to weaving together the various and often conflicting pursuits of this "man for all seasons" that Caplan undertakes his biographical study of Klein's life. In addition to a thoughtful and well documented narrative, Caplan's book is interspersed with photographs and selections from Klein's writings, all of which helps to bring Klein to life as a person and reveals the power of his mind and art. But while Klein was a remarkable artist, his life was was often tortured by ambiguity, disappointment and frustration - as can be expected of someone who attempted to combine a career as a lawyer, political activist, publicist and artist. Among the more distressing ambiguities affecting his life was his attempt to reconcile his passionate commitment to the cause of the Jewish people with his rejection of the purely religious side of Judaism. The pride with which he would always rally to the cause of the Jewish people in the name of social justice stood in marked contrast to the guilt he felt about his lack of "faith," as expressed, for example, in his poem "The Cripples" (1946) which was inspired by the sight of pilgrims on their knees ascending the steps of St. Joseph's Oratory: And I who in my own faith once had faith like this, but have not now, am crippled more than they. Journal ofCanadian Studies Klein suffered similar feelings of ambiguity about his status as a poet, whom he regarded as not only a pure artist, but as a voice of protest and reform. How to reconcile these sometimes conflicting interests was of perennial concern to him. Caplan's observation about Klein's anxieties in this matter is most revealing: What offended him was not merely the reduction of art to ideology but the frightening prospect of the poet becoming the servant of the politician . Stalin is wiser than Plato, he noted sarcastically, for "Plato banished poets from his republic; but Stalin uses them." Klein never could decide who was the more pitiable: the poet neglected or the poet used. (64) Klein's anxiety and sense of inferiority over his ambiguous status as a Jew and a poet remained with him all his life. One of the most revealing episodes in his life is reported by Caplan in his account of Klein's courtship of his future wife Bessie. In a sonnet written for her Klein writes: Once upon a time there lived a dwarf, a Jew. The image of the "dwarf' - a punning reference in Yiddish to his own name, Klein - is part of his playful self-denigration before Bessie. In another sonnet, he is No handsome Greek nor even wealthy Jew, But only a poor scribbling Abraham. Among the more significant accomplishments of this book is Caplan's account of Klein's lifelong struggle with himself in his effort to be both the artist and the Jew. How is it possible for the poor scribbling Abraham to serve two masters, and to be loved by both? In 1940 his friend and fellow poet, Leo Kennedy, warned him that he was endangering his talent by confining himself so narrowly to an audience of middle-class Jews. Caplan's observation concerning Klein's reaction to this advice brings us to the centre of the problem: Such advice, which he had tended to shrug off at first, gradually had the effect on Klein's...

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