Judith Skelton Grant. Robertson Davies: Man of Myth.
New York: Viking, 1994.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
As the hundredth anniversary of his birth approaches, it seems appropriate to revisit the life and accomplishments of Canadian novelist, journalist, educator, dramatist, and performing artist, Robertson Davies. Judith Skelton Grant’s detailed, analytical, and incisive biography pays tribute to her fellow Canadian. Appalled by his nation’s backwardness and apparent indifference to most art forms, Davies led a lifelong crusade to awaken his country to the value of literature, drama, art, music, and opera. His media were editorials, essays, speeches, plays, and no less than 11 novels.
Grant’s biography contains minute details of Davies’ entire life, building her accounts on countless interviews, including more than 70 with the author himself, who was a willing collaborator throughout. His “…immensely detailed and extensive memories of Renfrew, [Canada, 1919-25] …contains tremendous energy. He loathes the place at the same time as he treasures the storehouse of highly coloured images and stories that he amassed during his six years there.” The characters, events, and environment all contributed to his early fiction. Character types were built upon individuals he had known. Also, gossip, rumor, and local legends worked their way into his story-telling.
Grant traces each of the stages of Davies’ life similarly. These stages include his years in Kingston and at the Upper Canada College. “Kingston’s mellowness and its cast of costumed characters deeply satisfied Davies, but it was music and drama that were the greatest gift to him.” His experiences at UCC appear in modified form in several of his novels, i.e., The Fifth Business, The Manticore, and What’s Bred in the Bone. He continued his education in England as a special student at Oxford, where he became a specialist in nineteenth-century British drama. He also worked with several of England’s greatest actors in the Old Vic Company, where he performed and worked extensively backstage on the production end. These studies and experiences prepared him for years of work in the Canadian theater as a dramatist, actor, director, and producer.
Davies was a journalist/editor for one of his family’s newspapers, The Peterborough Examiner, where he earned a reputation for being a knowledgeable, perceptive critic of literature, art, politics, social questions, and even psychological issues. Based on his dramatic and journalistic endeavors, he was elected as the Master of Canada’s first residential graduate school, Massey College. He advocated each student’s “solitary growth, that continuing search for what is enduring in the self, from which all the great loves, all the high adventures, and all the noble rewards of life have their beginning.”
In reading Davies’ novels, one is impressed by the depth of knowledge of several unusual and often recondite subjects. In one novel, a group of local performers attempts to stage a Shakespearean play, revealing in detail the perils of amateur productions—perils which Davies had experienced many times. In another novel, a young woman, laboring to complete her doctoral project, delves deeply into the archetypes of Arthurian legend and the art of the opera; she attempts to complete E.T.A Hoffmann’s Arthur of Britain. Her struggles include mastering the arts of composition and orchestration in the style of the original composer, relating plot line and character development to both the nature of operatic performance and the archetypal themes evoked by the legend. She must also deal with harsh, narrow-minded criticism from the supposedly educated and enlightened evaluators. In another novel, Davies reveals the challenges in determining the authenticity and value of art works. Other novels focus on Canadian history and architecture. His Deptford Trilogy “portrays myth and fairy-tale as transmitters of the human inheritance.” Other works examine the nature, purpose, and value of alchemy, the art of the magician, and the skills of the unconventional physician.
Grant examines the development of Davies’ thinking after he suffered an emotional breakdown, requiring psychotherapy. For several decades he developed a growing appreciation and in-depth knowledge of the ideas of Carl Jung. He came to believe that art, literature, and music “can speak directly to the depths of experience in us which we possess without being conscious of them, in language which we understand imperfectly.” His plays included “deliberate exposition of Jungian ideas….” For Davies, Jung’s “theory of the archetypes was deeply satisfying…[giving] him a satisfactory explanation for the appeal that certain kinds of characters and story had for him.” His protagonists would attempt to “embrace that which is embedded within—perhaps go past one’s personal aversions to embrace some of the archetypal contents belonging to the collective unconscious of the race.” Dunstan Ramsay, a central character in The Fifth Business, believes that “…myth is an expression of patterns that recur in history and individual lives….” Even ordinary lives are undergirded by mythical elements—and by gaining insight into these elements, an individual can gain control over his or her own life.
In one of his speeches, Davies talked about a language that has been lost by modern artists—the language of mythology and religion. He was not advocating any particular religious beliefs or cult-like interpretation of human affairs. He simply believed that mythology and religion give us countless insights into the spiritual and psychological issues of human kind. One cannot help noticing when reading his novels that there is a stark contrast between the simple characters’ ordinary lives and the fact that they are maneuvering in a world of abstruse subjects. How and why Davies managed to create this paradox is a central theme in Grant’s biography.
Davies admitted that he was skeptical about the biography being written about him. He believed that “…the ideal biography in which the shaping power of a particular childhood context has been thoroughly understood, and the inner life of the subject is completely exposed, is possible only in fiction—or in the records of the Recording Angel.” Fortunately for the reader, Judith Skelton Grant was that Recording Angel.
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 41 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.