Correspondence

Phyllis Mailing as Ariadne, the party girl for whom the piece is a requiem. I would go again, too, for the brilliance of the settings: a multi-purpose mouth of hell at the end of a long, dancers' stage for Orpheus, and, for Patria II, a clinical pit with translucent sliding panels for walls, above the four edges of which the audience on bleachers, in John Kraglund's phrase, "perched like vultures" above the action. It was the dialogue in each work that embarrassed it. Looking back, I have an impression of a gabble of words in Patria II, of inept and rather pretentious poetry in Charpentier's re-telling of the Correspondence The Editor: I have just had brought to my attention the November 1971 issue of your journal. I hope and trust that in the interest of fairness my right to speak will be acknowledged. I refer to "standard-bearer" Robin Mathews' article, and to its references to a short piece of mine which had appeared in the first issue of The Canadian Review of American Studies, "The Yankee Insolence of Ethan Allen." Now this is at least the third time in which Mathews has chosen out of context and out of true relationship to what is actually said a very few lines out of what I meant to be a constructive and provocative article. That he has taken to borrowing from himself in this way to make such repeated use of my materials is, I suppose, capable of being taken as flattering; however, his consistent misunderstanding, however deliberate , is merely depressing, as is finding its latest appearance in a journal such as yours. Now I do not intend to strike at the tarbaby of invincible ignorance. The Mathews technique, amply proved elsewhere, is to make a variety of charges on questionable grounds in the hope that some of them will stick, or that at least the "opponent" will Journal of Canadian Studies Orpheus legend. Perhaps these weaknesses would not have been so annoying if the music had not been so exciting and good. As it was, one squirmed through the straight bits, waiting for the music to come again. The fault was in the books; Andre Brassard's direction of Orpheus was designed to liberate the spirit of the piece, and Michael Bawtree 's direction of Patria II was a spectacular, yet perfectly sympathetic, enterprise in multimedia effects that utilized designer Eoin Sprott's ingenious stage-engineering to immure Ariadne in a madhouse of light and sound. be frightened into silence. (It is interesting to note that Mathews declares his Canadianism through violent attacks on Americans and "american isation," a declaration of independence he says I say Canadians suffer without.) Indeed, Mathews' piece is at least interesting, and I compliment him on his progress in constructive thinking. I wish only to offer the suggestion that little is accomplished by petty attacks on invented enemies ("U.S. writer, Professor" yours truly) (smally "yankees") (policies of misspelled U.S. Presidents: "Munroe Doctrine"). What is so awful about individuals like myself, genuinely interested in Canadian development and clearly committed to her intellectual fulfillment, that Mathews and others must so malign us in print, especially on prior occasions, imputing to us and to, quite often, Americans in general, the malicious intent so evidently implied by the sloppily used word "imperialism"? What is there which makes it a good deal easier for some Canadians to organize their energies against fictive foes without than to cope with the real problems within? If America has often been callous, ignorant , or brutal in her treatment of Canada, has her presence not been far more often of consistent and obvious benefit to Canada? 61 No, you shout? Well, the point represents a bad rhetorical posture, easily jeered away from consideration. And jeering comes so easily to negativists of either nation. But will Mathews just once indicate that he has assimilated my whole article? Or admit that it is more convenient to excerpt from it? Or see that even the passage he quotes treats "character" with the irony of punctuation? Perhaps I had something to say. Perhaps too, I would not offer Nigeria as an absurd example...