E. J. Pratt
Encyclopedia
Edwin John Dove Pratt, FRSC (February 4, 1882 – April 26, 1964), who published as E. J. Pratt, was "the leading Canadian
poet of his time." He was a Canadian poet originally from Newfoundland
who lived most of his life in Toronto
, Ontario
. A three-time winner of the country's Governor General's Award for poetry, he has been called "the foremost Canadian poet
of the first half of the century."
, became a Canadian Senator
.
E.J. Pratt graduated from St. John's, Newfoundland's Methodist College in 1901. Like his father he became a candidate for the Methodist ministry, in 1904, and served a three year probation before entering Victoria College
of the University of Toronto
. He studied psychology
and theology
, receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of Divinity in 1913.
Pratt married fellow Victoria College student Viola Whitney, herself a writer, in 1918, and they had one daughter, Claire Pratt
, who also became a writer and poet.
Pratt was ordained as a minister, in 1913, and served as an Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario
, until 1920. Also in 1913, he joined the University of Toronto as a Lecturer in psychology. As well, he continued to take classes, receiving his PhD in 1917.
Pratt was invited by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where he became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor in 1938. He taught English literature
at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to the Editorial Board of the College magazine, Acta Victoriana. "As a professor, Pratt published a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those to four Shakespeare plays), and edited Thomas Hardy
's Under the greenwood tree
(1937)."
It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released. It contains "A Fragment of a Story," the only piece of Clay that Pratt ever published, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic in diction, and reflects a pietistic
and sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic
derivation, characteristics that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is expressed in humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and in the creation of an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or Great War losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), is a central element as setting, subject, and creator of mood."
With illustrations by Group of Seven
member Frederick Varley
, Newfoundland Verse proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime. "Recognition came with the narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered."
"Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though specific references to it appear in relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life are central to many of his poems, both short (eg, "Erosion," "Sea-Gulls," "Silences") and long, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), describing duels between a whale and its foes, a giant squid and a whaling ship and crew; The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), recounting the heroic rescue of the crew of a sinking freighter in a winter hurricane; The Titanic (1935), an ironic retelling of a well-known marine tragedy; and Behind the Log (1947), the dramatic story of the North Atlantic convoys during WWII
."
Another constant motif
in Pratt's writing was evolution
. "Pratt's work is filled with images of primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed instinctive to him to write of molluscs
, of cetacean and cephalopod
, of Java
and Piltdown Man
. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the central metaphor of Pratt's work." He added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which he could achieve an epic style," and also "gave him the themes for his best lyrics" (such as his much-anthologized "From Stone to Steel," from 1932's Many Moods.)
Pratt founded Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1935, and served as its first editor until 1943. He published 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces
, edited by F.R. Scott
.
In 1937, with war on the horizon, Pratt wrote an anti-war poem, "The Fable of the Goats," which became the title poem of his next volume. The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems, which included his classic free-verse poem "Silences," won him his first Governor General's Award.
Pratt returned to Canadian history in 1940 to write Brébeuf and his Brethren, a blank-verse epic on the mission of Jean de Brébeuf
and his seven fellow Jesuits
, the North American Martyrs, to the Hurons in the 17th century; their founding of Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons
; and their eventual martyrdom by the Iroquois
. "Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear in the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation in this, his first attempt to write a national epic; but in his ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization beleaguered by savages." Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye
has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme of the Canadian imagination."
Expounding on that theme in 1943, in a review essay of A.J.M. Smith
's anthology The Book of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated that, in Canadian poetry:
By the time Brébeuf was published the war had begun; and "in his next four volumes, Pratt returned to themes of patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue of British forces while also emphasizing its democratic nature.... Language plays a pivotal role as Churchill's call inspires the miraculous deliverance. The title poem in Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the destruction, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events to be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism
of modern warfare by treating the submarine as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies death to show its new horrors in modern times."
Still Life and Other Verse included another poem, "The Truant," which Frye later called "the greatest poem in Canadian literature." In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to be punished for messing up the grand evolving scheme of things. Cheeky genus homo, instead of being duly cowed by the Great Panjandrum, points out that He is largely man's invention in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to be convincing, but is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought."
Pratt's next book, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end of the war, but also introduces one of the first treatments in literature of the concentration camps
. And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates the wartime role of the Royal Canadian Navy
and the merchant marine
."
By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being Earle Birney
). In that year Pratt published Towards the Last Spike
, his final epic, on the building of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railway
. "Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poem interweaves the political battles between Sir John A. Macdonald
and Edward Blake
with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, mud, and the Laurentian Shield. In a metaphorical method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a prehistoric lizard rudely aroused from its sleep by the railroad builders' dynamite."
Pratt's reputation as a major poet rests on his longer narrative poems, "many of which show him as a mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter philosophical works also command recognition. ‘From stone to steel’ asserts the necessity for redemptive suffering arising from the failure of humanity's spiritual evolution to keep pace without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive account of the way the once-articulate and ceremonial human response to death was rendered inarticulate by the primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truant’ dramatically presents a confrontation in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos between the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for his time; but his diction was experimental, reflecting in its specificity and its frequent technicality both his belief in the poetic power of the accurate and concrete that led him into assiduous research processes, and his view that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap between the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."
The Canadian Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A major poet, he is, nevertheless, an isolated figure, belonging to no school or movement and directly influencing few other poets of his time."
for The Fable of the Goats and other Poems; in 1940
for Brébeuf and his Brethren; and in 1952
, for Towards the Last Spike.
He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada
in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal
in 1940. In 1946, he was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by King George VI.
He was awarded a Canada Council Medal for distinction in literature in 1961.
He was designated a Person of National Historic Significance in 1975.
The University of Toronto's Victoria University library currently bears his name, as do the University's E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize for poetry. Winners of the award include Margaret Atwood
in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje
in 1966.
Except where noted, pre-1970 information is from Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
poet of his time." He was a Canadian poet originally from Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
who lived most of his life in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. A three-time winner of the country's Governor General's Award for poetry, he has been called "the foremost Canadian poet
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
of the first half of the century."
Life
EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Dove Pratt in Western Bay, Newfoundland, on February 4, 1882. He was brought up in a variety of Newfoundland communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony as a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Old Gang mines in Gunnerside - a village in North Yorkshire, England. In 1850’s he became a Methodist pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland and settled down with Fanny Knight, a daughter of Capt. William Chancey Knight. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations of all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who had firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a break when his father was gone on pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from her husband. “Fanny Pratt was easy-going and unpunctilious where John was careful and exacting, lenient and forbearing where he was strict and inflexible, soft hearted where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more comradely relationship with the children. Raised in a less rigoristic household than he, she was prepared to take her children for what they were, make allowances for their fallen natures, and generally overlook their innocent iniquities” E.J. Pratt's brother, Calvert PrattCalvert Pratt
Calvert Coates Pratt OBE was a Newfoundland businessman and a Canadian Senator. He was president of Purity Factories, a Newfoundland food manufacturer...
, became a Canadian Senator
Canadian Senate
The Senate of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the House of Commons, and the monarch . The Senate consists of 105 members appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister...
.
E.J. Pratt graduated from St. John's, Newfoundland's Methodist College in 1901. Like his father he became a candidate for the Methodist ministry, in 1904, and served a three year probation before entering Victoria College
Victoria University, Toronto
Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...
of the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
. He studied psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
, receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of Divinity in 1913.
Pratt married fellow Victoria College student Viola Whitney, herself a writer, in 1918, and they had one daughter, Claire Pratt
Claire Pratt
Mildred Claire Pratt, , was a Canadian artist, poet and editor who published as Claire Pratt. She was the daughter of Viola Whitney and E.J. Pratt, a noted poet and educator...
, who also became a writer and poet.
Pratt was ordained as a minister, in 1913, and served as an Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, until 1920. Also in 1913, he joined the University of Toronto as a Lecturer in psychology. As well, he continued to take classes, receiving his PhD in 1917.
Pratt was invited by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where he became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor in 1938. He taught English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to the Editorial Board of the College magazine, Acta Victoriana. "As a professor, Pratt published a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those to four Shakespeare plays), and edited Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
's Under the greenwood tree
Under the Greenwood Tree
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, the last to be printed without his name, and the first of his great series of Wessex novels...
(1937)."
Writing
Pratt's first published poem was "A Poem on the May examinations," printed in Acta Victoriana in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he privately published a long poem, Rachel: A Sea Story of Newfoundland. He then spent two years working on a verse drama, Clay, which he ended by burning (except for one copy which Mrs. Pratt managed to save).It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released. It contains "A Fragment of a Story," the only piece of Clay that Pratt ever published, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic in diction, and reflects a pietistic
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
and sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
derivation, characteristics that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is expressed in humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and in the creation of an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or Great War losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), is a central element as setting, subject, and creator of mood."
With illustrations by Group of Seven
Group of Seven
Group of Seven can refer to:*G7 - the "Group of seven" industrially advanced nations .*Group of Seven - a group of Canadian landscape artists....
member Frederick Varley
Frederick Varley
Frederick Horsman Varley, also known as Fred Varley , was a member of the Canadian Group of Seven artists.-Early life:Varley was born in Sheffield, England. He studied art in Sheffield and in Belgium...
, Newfoundland Verse proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime. "Recognition came with the narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered."
"Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though specific references to it appear in relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life are central to many of his poems, both short (eg, "Erosion," "Sea-Gulls," "Silences") and long, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), describing duels between a whale and its foes, a giant squid and a whaling ship and crew; The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), recounting the heroic rescue of the crew of a sinking freighter in a winter hurricane; The Titanic (1935), an ironic retelling of a well-known marine tragedy; and Behind the Log (1947), the dramatic story of the North Atlantic convoys during WWII
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
."
Another constant motif
Motif (narrative)
In narrative, a motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood....
in Pratt's writing was evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. "Pratt's work is filled with images of primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed instinctive to him to write of molluscs
Mollusca
The Mollusca , common name molluscs or mollusksSpelled mollusks in the USA, see reasons given in Rosenberg's ; for the spelling mollusc see the reasons given by , is a large phylum of invertebrate animals. There are around 85,000 recognized extant species of molluscs. Mollusca is the largest...
, of cetacean and cephalopod
Cephalopod
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda . These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot...
, of Java
Java Man
Java Man is the name given to fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil - Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus...
and Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England...
. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the central metaphor of Pratt's work." He added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which he could achieve an epic style," and also "gave him the themes for his best lyrics" (such as his much-anthologized "From Stone to Steel," from 1932's Many Moods.)
Pratt founded Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1935, and served as its first editor until 1943. He published 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces
New Provinces (poetry anthology)
New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors was an anthology of Canadian poetry published in the 1930s, anonymously edited by F.R. Scott assisted by Leo Kennedy and A.J.M. Smith. The first anthology of Canadian modernist poetry, it has been hailed as a "landmark anthology" and a "milestone selection...
, edited by F.R. Scott
F. R. Scott
Francis Reginald Scott, CC commonly known as Frank Scott or F.R. Scott, was a Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party...
.
Pratt returned to Canadian history in 1940 to write Brébeuf and his Brethren, a blank-verse epic on the mission of Jean de Brébeuf
Jean de Brébeuf
Jean de Brébeuf was a Jesuit missionary, martyred in Canada on March 16, 1649.-Early years:Brébeuf was born in Condé-sur-Vire, Normandy, France. He was the uncle of the fur trader Georges de Brébeuf. He studied near home at Caen. He became a Jesuit in 1617, joining the Order...
and his seven fellow Jesuits
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
, the North American Martyrs, to the Hurons in the 17th century; their founding of Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons
Sainte-Marie among the Hurons
Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was a French Jesuit settlement in Wendake, the land of the Wendat, near modern Midland, Ontario, from 1639 to 1649. It was the first European settlement in what is now the province of Ontario. Eight missionaries from Sainte-Marie were martyred, and were canonized by...
; and their eventual martyrdom by the Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
. "Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear in the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation in this, his first attempt to write a national epic; but in his ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization beleaguered by savages." Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme of the Canadian imagination."
Expounding on that theme in 1943, in a review essay of A.J.M. Smith
A. J. M. Smith
Arthur James Marshall Smith was a Canadian poet and anthologist. He "was a prominent member of a group of Montreal poets" -- the Montreal Group, which included Leon Edel, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, and F.R...
's anthology The Book of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated that, in Canadian poetry:
- The unconscious horror of nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: this amalgamation is the basis of symbolism on which nearly all Pratt's poetry is founded. The fumbling and clumsy monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills to mutual destruction, are the same monsters that beget NazismNazismNazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and inspire The Fable of the Goats; and in the fine "Silences," which Mr. Smith includes, civilized life is seen geologically as merely one clock-tick in eons of ferocity. The waste of life in the death of the Cachalot and the waste of courage and sanctity in the killing of the Jesuit missionaries are tragedies of a unique kind in modern poetry: like the tragedy of JobJob (Biblical figure)Job is the central character of the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. Job is listed as a prophet of God in the Qur'an.- Book of Job :The Book of Job begins with an introduction to Job's character — he is described as a blessed man who lives righteously...
, they seem to move upward to a vision of a monstrous LeviathanLeviathanLeviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...
, a power of chaotic nihilismNihilismNihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
which is "king over all the children of pride."
By the time Brébeuf was published the war had begun; and "in his next four volumes, Pratt returned to themes of patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue of British forces while also emphasizing its democratic nature.... Language plays a pivotal role as Churchill's call inspires the miraculous deliverance. The title poem in Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the destruction, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events to be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism
Atavism
Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before. Atavisms can occur in several ways...
of modern warfare by treating the submarine as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies death to show its new horrors in modern times."
Still Life and Other Verse included another poem, "The Truant," which Frye later called "the greatest poem in Canadian literature." In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to be punished for messing up the grand evolving scheme of things. Cheeky genus homo, instead of being duly cowed by the Great Panjandrum, points out that He is largely man's invention in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to be convincing, but is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought."
Pratt's next book, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end of the war, but also introduces one of the first treatments in literature of the concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates the wartime role of the Royal Canadian Navy
Royal Canadian Navy
The history of the Royal Canadian Navy goes back to 1910, when the naval force was created as the Naval Service of Canada and renamed a year later by King George V. The Royal Canadian Navy is one of the three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces...
and the merchant marine
Canadian Merchant Navy
Canada, like several other Commonwealth nations, created its own Merchant Navy in a large-scale effort during World War II. Within hours of Canada's declaration of war on September 10, 1939, the Canadian government passed laws to create the Canadian Merchant Navy setting out rules and controls to...
."
By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being Earle Birney
Earle Birney
Earle Alfred Birney, OC, FRSC was a distinguished Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honor, for his poetry.-Life:...
). In that year Pratt published Towards the Last Spike
Towards the Last Spike
Towards the Last Spike was written in 1952 by Canadian poet E. J. Pratt. It is a long narrative poem in blank verse about the construction of the first transcontinental railroad line in Canada, that of the Canadian Pacific Railway , from 1871 through 1885.The poem won Pratt the Governor General's...
, his final epic, on the building of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...
. "Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poem interweaves the political battles between Sir John A. Macdonald
John A. Macdonald
Sir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, PC , QC was the first Prime Minister of Canada. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, his political career spanned almost half a century...
and Edward Blake
Edward Blake
Dominick Edward Blake, PC, QC , known as Edward Blake, was the second Premier of Ontario, Canada, from 1871 to 1872 and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1880 to 1887...
with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, mud, and the Laurentian Shield. In a metaphorical method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a prehistoric lizard rudely aroused from its sleep by the railroad builders' dynamite."
Pratt's reputation as a major poet rests on his longer narrative poems, "many of which show him as a mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter philosophical works also command recognition. ‘From stone to steel’ asserts the necessity for redemptive suffering arising from the failure of humanity's spiritual evolution to keep pace without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive account of the way the once-articulate and ceremonial human response to death was rendered inarticulate by the primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truant’ dramatically presents a confrontation in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos between the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for his time; but his diction was experimental, reflecting in its specificity and its frequent technicality both his belief in the poetic power of the accurate and concrete that led him into assiduous research processes, and his view that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap between the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."
The Canadian Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A major poet, he is, nevertheless, an isolated figure, belonging to no school or movement and directly influencing few other poets of his time."
Recognition
Pratt won Canada's top poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 19371937 Governor General's Awards
The 1937 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the second such awards, and the first to include a category for poetry and drama. No monetary prize was yet given; the awards were simply recognition of the authors.-Winners:...
for The Fable of the Goats and other Poems; in 1940
1940 Governor General's Awards
The 1940 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the fifth such awards. The awards in this period had no monetary prize and were just an honour for the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: Ringuet, Thirty Acres....
for Brébeuf and his Brethren; and in 1952
1952 Governor General's Awards
In Canada, the 1952 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the sixteenth such awards. The awards in this period had no monetary prize and were just an honour for the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: David Walker, The Pillar....
, for Towards the Last Spike.
He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...
in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal
Lorne Pierce Medal
The Lorne Pierce Medal is awarded every two years by the Royal Society of Canada to recognize achievement of special significance and conspicuous merit in imaginative or critical literature written in either English or French...
in 1940. In 1946, he was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by King George VI.
He was awarded a Canada Council Medal for distinction in literature in 1961.
He was designated a Person of National Historic Significance in 1975.
The University of Toronto's Victoria University library currently bears his name, as do the University's E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize for poetry. Winners of the award include Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...
in 1966.
Poetry
- Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private, 19171917 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* July — Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" and is sent by the military authorities to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where on August 17 Wilfred Owen introduces himself...
- Newfoundland Verse, Toronto: Ryerson, 19231923 in poetry-- From Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", first published this year in his collection New HampshireNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:...
. illus. Frederick VarleyFrederick VarleyFrederick Horsman Varley, also known as Fred Varley , was a member of the Canadian Group of Seven artists.-Early life:Varley was born in Sheffield, England. He studied art in Sheffield and in Belgium...
. - The Witches' Brew, Toronto: Macmillan, 19251925 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* T. S. Eliot joins the publishing house of Faber & Gwyer, leaves Lloyds bank....
. illus. John Austin. - Titans ("The Cachalot, The Great Feud"), Toronto: Macmillan, 19261926 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The remains of English war poet Isaac Rosenberg, killed in World War I at the age of 28 and originally buried in a mass grave, are re-interred at Bailleul Road East Cemetery, Plot V, St...
. illus. John Austin. - The Iron Door: An Ode, Toronto: Macmillan, 19271927 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* T. S. Eliot enters the Church of England and assumes British citizenship-Canada:...
. illus. Thoreau MacdonaldThoreau MacDonaldThoreau MacDonald was a Canadian illustrator, designer and painter.MacDonald was the son of Group of Seven member J. E. H. MacDonald. He was mainly self-taught, but he did work with his father...
. - The Roosevelt and the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan, 19301930 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:*Alfred Bailey, Tao: A Ryerson Poetry Chap Book, ....
- Verses of the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan, 19301930 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:*Alfred Bailey, Tao: A Ryerson Poetry Chap Book, ....
. intr. by Charles G.D. RobertsCharles G.D. RobertsSir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......
. - Many Moods, Toronto: Macmillan, 19321932 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*W. B. Yeats rents a house in Dublin....
. - The Titanic, Toronto: Macmillan, 19351935 in poetryLinks to nations or nationalities point to articles with information on that nation's poetry or literature. For example, United Kingdom links to English poetry and Indian links to Indian poetry.-Events:* Canada -- Charles G.D...
. - New Provinces: Poems of Several AuthorsNew Provinces (poetry anthology)New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors was an anthology of Canadian poetry published in the 1930s, anonymously edited by F.R. Scott assisted by Leo Kennedy and A.J.M. Smith. The first anthology of Canadian modernist poetry, it has been hailed as a "landmark anthology" and a "milestone selection...
, Toronto: Macmillan, 19361936 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* James Laughlin founds New Directions Publishers in New York, which published many modern poets for the first time;...
(eight poems). - The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 19371937 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Iowa Writers' Workshop founded by Paul Engle at the University of Iowa...
- Brebeuf and his Brethren, Toronto: Macmillan, 19401940 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* English poet and writer Aldous Huxley is a screenwriter for the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice...
. Detroit: Basilian Press, 1942. - Dunkirk, Toronto: Macmillan, 19411941 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*September 3 — 19-year-old John Gillespie Magee, Jr., American poet and aviator, flew a high-altitude test flight in a Spitfire V and afterwards wrote "High Flight" about the experience, on...
- Still Life and Other Verse, Toronto: Macmillan, 19431943 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* September 12 – Abraham Sutzkever, a Polish Jew writing poetry in Yiddish, escapes the Vilna Ghetto with his wife and hides in the forests. Sutzkever and fellow Yiddish poet Shmerke...
- Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Toronto: Macmillan, 19441944 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The first and second lines of Paul Verlaine's 1866 poem Chanson d'automne were broadcast by the Allies over Radio Londres this year as a message in code to the...
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. - They Are Returning, Toronto: Macmillan, 19451945 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, based on George Crabbe's The Borough...
- Behind the Log, Toronto: Macmillan, 19471947 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Dorothy Parker divorces Alan Campbell for the first time....
- Ten Selected Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
- Towards the Last SpikeTowards the Last SpikeTowards the Last Spike was written in 1952 by Canadian poet E. J. Pratt. It is a long narrative poem in blank verse about the construction of the first transcontinental railroad line in Canada, that of the Canadian Pacific Railway , from 1871 through 1885.The poem won Pratt the Governor General's...
, Toronto: Macmillan, 19521952 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* November — The Group British poetry movement of the 1950s and 1960s began at Downing College, Cambridge University, Philip Hobsbaum along with two friends — Tony Davis and Neil Morris...
. - "Magic in Everything" [christmas card]. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.
- Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (2nd edition), Toronto: Macmillan, 19581958 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Brazilian manifesto for concrete poetry, which focuses on visual and other sensory qualities...
. intr. by Northrop FryeNorthrop FryeHerman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
. - The Royal Visit: 1959, Toronto: CBC Information Services, 1959.
- Here the Tides Flow, Toronto: Macmillan, 1962. intr. by D.G. Pitt.
- Selected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 19681968 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Belfast Group, a grouping of poets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was started in 1963 in poetry, lapsed in 1966 when founder Philip Hobsbaum left for Glasgow, is reconstituted this year by...
. - E. J. Pratt: Complete Poems (two volumes), Toronto: Macmillan, 1989
- Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt, Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19981998 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Samizdat poetry magazine founded in Chicago .* Skanky Possum poetry magazine founded in Austin, Texas....
).
Prose
- Studies in Pauline Eschatology. Toronto: William Briggs, 1917.
- "Canadian Poetry – Past and Present," University of Toronto Quarterly, VIII:1 (Oct. 1938), 1-10.
Edited
- Thomas HardyThomas HardyThomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
, Under the Greenwood TreeUnder the Greenwood TreeUnder the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, the last to be printed without his name, and the first of his great series of Wessex novels...
. Toronto, Macmillan, 1937. - Heroic Tales in Verse. Toronto, Macmillan, 1941, 1977.
Except where noted, pre-1970 information is from Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)
Books
- Sandra Djwa (1974). E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision. (1974)
- David G. Pitt (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Years, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
- David G. Pitt (1987). E.J. Pratt : the Master Years, 1927-1964. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
External links
- Canadian Poetry Online: E.J. Pratt - Biography and 6 poems (Erosion, From Stone to Steel, The Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, The Titanic)
- The Complete Poems and Letters of E.J. Pratt: A Hypertext Edition, Trent University
- CBC Digital Archives: Poet E.J. Pratt on turning 75