Between the Temple and the Cave: The Religious Dimensions of the Poetry ofE.J. Pratt E.J. Pratt's religious beliefs have baffled literary scholars for years: critics have assigned him positions ranging from orthodoxy through agnosticism to atheism. Between the Temple and the Caw provides a defin- itive exploration of Pratt's complex relationship with Christianity, pro- viding insight into both the man and his works. Drawing on a wide variety of newly available source material, Angela McAuliffe examines the roots of Pratt's religious attitudes, including his strict Methodist upbringing in Newfoundland and his plans to enter the ministry. She explores Pratt's early prose and unpublished poetry, including his theses on demonology and Pauline eschatology and the unpublished poem "Clay," to trace the origins of religious ideas and motifs that occur in his later work. McAuliffe focuses on key motifs in Pratt's poetry, such as his image of a distant and formidable God, his apocalyptic vision of the world, and his belief in determinism and fate. She concludes that the diver- sity of religious positions attributed to Pratt and the image of God that emerges from his poetry are facets of the ironic vision of a man of twentieth-century sensibility who wrestled with God and sought a medium of expression equal to his themes. ANGELA T. MCAULIFFE is an independent scholar and retreat director at Loretto College in the University of Toronto. This page intentionally left blank Between the Temple and the Cave The Religious Dimensions of the Poetry ofEJ. Pratt ANGELA T. McAULIFFE IBVM McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca © McGill-Queen's University Press 2000 ISBN 0-7735-2057-0 Legal deposit second quarter 2000 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. Excerpts from EJ. Pratt's poetry are taken from E.J. Pratt: Complete Poems, 2 vols, edited by Sandra Djwa and R.G. Moyles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). Reprinted by permission of University of Toronto Press. Excerpts from "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets, copy- right 1943 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data McAuliffe, Angela T. C. Between the temple and the cave : the religious dimensions of the poetry of E.J. Pratt Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2057-0 i. Pratt EJ. (Edwin John), 1882-1964 — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Pratt E.J. (Edwin John), 1882—1964 — Religion. 3. Christianity in literature. I. Title. psSsSi-RSS2?2 2000 c8ii'-52 099-901606-7 FRgi9g.3.P7z72 2000 Typeset in 10/12 Baskerville by True to Type Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii 1 "Up from Newfoundland": The Preacher in Search of the Poet 3 2 "The Good Lord" with "a Glittering Monocle": The Problem of God 39 3 "Ghosts of the Apocalypse" 65 4 "A Tendency to ... Fatalism Tempered with Humanity" 123 5 The Wheel Comes Full Circle: The Atoning Christ 157 Conclusion 199 Notes 205 Bibliography 227 Index 245 This page intentionally left blank Preface Any careful study of the writings of E.J. Pratt, one of Canada's most distinguished and consistently productive poets of the twentieth century, cannot but help lay bare a question of major importance that emerges from the heart of his work - his attitude towards religion in general, and towards Christianity in particular. The few books and many articles which constitute Pratt criticism serve to confirm the sig- nificance of this question, embracing within their range a wide spec- trum of interpretation. For example, Northrop Frye and A.J.M. Smith indicate Pratt's debt to Christian ideas and attitudes, but leave the reader wishing that with their degree of perception they had pursued the matter further. John Sutherland is so determined to find Christian themes and images that he wrests them out of the most unlikely con- texts. Sandra Djwa struggles with what she perceives to be the "dualisms" in Pratt's religious thought as she finds them reflected in the poetry. Frank Davey assumes Pratt's denial of all but the natural order, while other critics such as Vincent Sharman and Glenn Clever seem bent on proving Pratt's rejection of traditional Christianity. Complicating the issue are certain attitudes on the part of Pratt himself - his ironic vision of humanity and of the world around him; his relentless effort, particularly as a narrative poet, to achieve "dra- matic objectivity"; and his self-deprecatory comments about his work. Significantly, no one, to this date, with the exception of David Pitt in his authoritative biography, appears to have looked very far beyond the general or vague information provided by Pratt in private conver- sations or in public interviews to what must surely be the foundation viii Preface of his attitude towards religion or of his reaction against it - his upbringing in a family and a community of strict Methodist affiliation, his schooling under religious auspices, and the years he spent in preparation for the Methodist ministry to which he was ordained. It should prove rewarding, then, to explore Pratt's poetry in the light of the religious and cultural atmosphere of Newfoundland in which he was raised, the early education and the pastoral initiation which he received there, and the studies in formal theology and psy- chology which he undertook in Toronto in the early years of the twen- tieth century. His two theses, written in partial requirement for gradu- ate degrees in philosophy at Victoria University, and copies of his lectures as a professor in the Department of English, introductions to readings of his poetry, and occasional talks and papers which he deliv- ered throughout Canada and the United States, together with the texts of posthumously published and little-known poems and collec- tions of correspondence, provide insights into Pratt the man and into those of his works that have appeared, even in part, to be problematic. Within the context of this study, several questions of significance must be posed or reformulated. For example, what was the nature and the extent of the religious crisis that Pratt is said to have undergone? When did it occur? Was it the reason for his decision to forego the ministry for an academic career? Did it lead him to a total renuncia- tion of religious belief and to the severance of all connections with organized religion? How much was he influenced by the scientific, philosophic and theological works of the nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries? To what degree are his biblical and theological studies reflected, consciously or not, in his poetry? What is the image of God that emerges most consistently from his work? Can it be clearly for- mulated? Similar questions must be asked about Pratt's image of Jesus Christ: is Jesus anything more than the epitome of human nature? What is his relationship to God, to humankind, to time, and to history? Any doubts that I might have entertained about the value of this task in view of the many and extreme interpretations that have been read into Pratt's poetry in the past have been relieved by three sources. The first is information that I gathered between 1972 and 1999 in interviews and conversations with those who knew Pratt closely or intimately. The second is the abundance of barely tapped source material mentioned above. The third is a letter Pratt wrote in 1957 in reply to Dorothy Doyle, who had asked his opinion of her proposal to write a study of the relationship between nature and grace as it is reflected in his poetry. Pratt's response was surprisingly enthusiastic. After pointing out both the positive insights and the lim- itations contained in John Sutherland's book, he remarked, "leafing ix Preface through Collected Poems recently, I was astonished at the numerous ref- erences to Christ, the Cross, and to the symbol of grace." In addition to the narrative poems that raise questions of a religious nature, Pratt then suggested nine lyrics which he felt should be considered in such a study as "they contain undercurrents of my convictions." This per- sonal letter, appended to one copy of a doctoral thesis, came to light only after much of this study was completed, and served to confirm the validity of such an approach and to indicate Pratt's general atti- tude during his later years towards a religious or Christian interpre- tation of his work.