WINDSOR, Dec. 14.—Having been asked
for a brief forecast as to the future of literature in Nova Scotia, let
me in the first place declare my faith that that future must be the
future of literature in Canada. We must forget to ask of a work whether
it is Nova Scotian or British Columbian, of Ontario or New Brunswick,
until we have inquired if it be broadly and truly Canadian. It is the
future of Canadian nationality with which every son of Canada is most
concerned; and our literature will be false to its trust, will fail of
that very service for which young nations have ever relied upon their
literature, if it does not show itself the nurse of all patriotic
enthusiasms, and the base of provincial jealousies. This being promised,
my subject becomes a consideration of the part likely to be played by
Nova Scotian talent in the making of our national literature. But the
subject is one on which it would be hard to speak with much definiteness
or confidence. The utmost to be looked for here is perhaps a little
suggestiveness. It is fair to expect that our contribution will be to
the higher and more imaginative claims of literature, seeing that, to a
greater degree than any other province save Quebec,
WE HAVE WEALTH OF TRADITION,
variety of surrounding, and a soil
well tempered by human influences,—a soil that has been cradle and
grave to a now fair number of generations. This last means much, for a
raw soil seems rarely to flower into fine imaginative work. As we have
inspiring material in our past, and in our hopes for the future, so we
have also picturesque and striking material in some aspects of the
present, in the lives of our fishing populations, for instance, and in
our lumber camps and drives. In our landscape, earth and sea and sky
conspire to make an imaginative people. These stern coasts, now
thundered against by Atlantic storms, now wrapped in noiseless fogs,
these overwhelming tides, these vast channels emptied of their streams,
these weird reaches of flat and marsh and dyke, should create a habit of
openness to nature, and by contrast put a reproach upon the commonplace
and the gross. Our climate with its swift extremes is eager and waking,
and we should expect a sort of dry sparkle in our page, with a
transparent and tonic quality in our thought. If environment is
anything, our work can hardly prove tame. Referring to our material in
HISTORY AND TRADITION,
perhaps the source from which most is
commonly expected is our store of Indian legend. There is continual
demand for the working of this field, and continual surprise that it
should be so long unharvested. Both the demand and surprise are as old
as literature in North America, and are likely to grow much older before
being satisfied. The legends are, some of them, wildly poetic, and
vigorous in conception; and they are easily attainable, both from the
lips of their hereditary possessors and from such books as Leland’s
admirable ‘Legends of the Algonquin Indians.’ But the stuff seems
almost unavailable for purposes of pure literature. The Indian has left
a curse in his bequest, and the prize turns worthless in our grasp. The
host of America poems and romances with the Indian as inspiration, or
form, ‘Hiawatha,’ being excepted, a museum of lamentable failures.
They are
THE CROWNING INSULT TO A DECAYING AGE.
Even ‘Hiawatha,’ in spite of easy
story-telling and bright description, can hardly be called quite worthy
of its author’s genius. It is bizarre and fanciful rather than
imaginative; and it lacks the grave beauty and the air of reality
essential to great verse. Only indirectly, by association and
suggestion, is Indian legend likely, I think to exert marked influence
upon our creative literature. But there is room to do invaluable work in
the collection and comparative study of Indian folklore and kindred
matter, for the results of which there is now a ready appreciation.
Leland has left behind him some very good gleaning, owing to the
wideness of the field which he has occupied. With the story of the
French in Nova Scotia, which reads less like history than romance, the
case is far otherwise. The eager searchings, the bold exploits, the
strange adventures, the hardships and the triumphs interwoven in the old
Acadian annals, together with the deep pathos of the end, these are
matters so near us that we can feel their warmth, and at the same time
remote enough to admit of full poetic treatment. They are in that
distance which catches—
"The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet’s
dream"
This material, too, has already proved itself adapted
to exquisite treatment. The fact of Longfellow having come to it for one
of his chief inspirations, though this might seem to make it
presumptuous for another to dip into the same source, in reality only
makes that source so much the more available. Most of
THE GREATER POWER OF OUR LITERATURE
and of all literatures, have been wrought upon
subjects familarized by previous handling. Nearly all great themes show
a certain inexhaustibility, and admit of being, more then once or twice
splendidly treated. It is he has the hardest task who breaks a new
field; but his successors as a rule reap the richest harvests.
Longfellow’s handling of Acadian story has simply glorified the theme
for later singers. Every dyke and ancient rampart, and surviving Acadian
name, and little rock rimmed haven, from the wind rippled shifting
sepulchre of Sable Island to the sunny levels of Chignecto, should be
breeding ground for poem, and history, and romance. It is hard to
imagine a region more fascinating to the thought, mor suffused with the
glamor of a splendid imperishable past half veiled in mystery, than is
the Island of Cape Breton. The ear is greedy for the faintest echo of
the trumpets and the stir that once were Louisburg; and an anscient
spell is in the silence, broken only by tinkle of sheep-bells, that has
come down upon the place of the vanished city. But not only in the past
of another people should our pens find motion; for our own ancestors
have left us noble themes. In the coming of the loyalists there is
A TREASURY OF SUBJECTS
hardly inferior to that which
New England has found so rich in the deeds of
her Puritan fathers. Perhaps these are matters
scarcely yet remote enough to take the highest
treatment; but surely now is the time for doing,
in this connection, the work which will make purely
creative work a possibility in the future. Those
minute and loving records of the past of particular
localities, those accurate studies of this or
that county, town, or village, such as count no
detail too petty, and grudge no labor of research,
are needed now to preserve traditions, which year
by year are dying out, and of which the ultimate
value is as yet hardly to be realized. For work
of this sort well done, not prostituted to the
requirements of the subscription book advertisement
scheme, there is always a standfast welcome, and
a position honorable if not among the highest.
Great literary skill is not essential to the production
of such works, but it is a secure investment in
the future to have written a book, upon which
after workers in the field shall find themselves
of necessity dependant. If it is nothing very
definite which I have dared to prophesy, I trust
that this brief note may at least serve to indicate
a probable and suitable direction for our literary
effort. It may serve also to ground a reasonable
confidence that the Nova Scotian element in that
Canadian literature which our hearts are set upon
building will not fail of being important and
of rare quality.
