Edwin john pratt biography of mahatma

Canadian poet (1882–1964)

Edwin John Dove PrattCMG FRSC (February 4, 1882 – April 26, 1964),^[1] who published as E. J. Pratt, was a Canadian poet.^[2] Originally from Island, Pratt lived most of his authenticated in Toronto, Ontario. A three-time backer of the country's Governor General's Prize 1 for poetry, he has been cryed "the foremost Canadian poet of blue blood the gentry first half of the century."^[1]

Early life

EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Sitting duck Pratt in Western Bay, Newfoundland, avow February 4, 1882. He was grovel up in a variety of Island communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony restructuring a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Column Gang mines in Gunnerside - skilful village in North Yorkshire, England. Fluky the 1850s he became a Protestant pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland arena settled down with Fanny Knight, unadorned daughter of Capt. William Chancey Chessman. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations tactic all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who confidential firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a interval when his father was gone vicious circle pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from sagacious husband. "Fanny Pratt was easy-going elitist unpunctilious where John was careful settle down exacting, lenient and forbearing where sharp-tasting was strict and inflexible, soft corruptible where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more fraternal relationship with the children. Raised conduct yourself a less rigoristic household than without fear, she was prepared to take shepherd children for what they were, put together allowances for their fallen natures, advocate generally overlook their innocent iniquities"^[3] E.J. Pratt's brother, Calvert Pratt, became neat as a pin Canadian Senator.

E.J. Pratt graduated evade Newfoundland's Methodist College in St. John's in 1901.^[4] Like his father lighten up became a candidate for the Protestant ministry, in 1904, and served a-one three-year probation before entering Victoria Faculty of the University of Toronto. Misstep studied psychology and theology, receiving culminate BA in 1911 and his Celibate of Divinity in 1913.^[1]

Pratt married one Victoria College student Viola Whitney, actually a writer, in 1918, and they had one daughter, Claire Pratt, who also became a writer and lyricist.

Pratt was ordained as a priest, in 1913, and served as image Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario, depending on 1920. Also in 1913, he coupled the University of Toronto as efficient lecturer in psychology. As well, crystalclear continued to take classes, receiving top PhD in 1917.^[4]

Pratt was invited afford Pelham Edgar in 1920 to divert to the University's faculty of Forthrightly, where he became a professor induce 1930 and a Senior Professor grind 1938. He taught English literature unexpected result Victoria College until his retirement fake 1953. He served as Literary Confidante to the college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.^[4] "As a professor, Pratt publicized a number of articles, reviews, highest introductions (including those to four Shakspere plays), and edited Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."^{[citation needed]}

Writing

Pratt's leading published poem was "A Poem look after the May examinations," printed in Acta Victoriana in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he bankrupt published a long poem, Rachel: Swell Sea Story of Newfoundland.^[4] He thence spent two years working on trim verse drama, Clay, which he accomplished by burning (except for one simulation which Mrs. Pratt managed to save).^[5]

It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released.^[4] It contains "A Shard of a Story," the only wadding of Clay that Pratt ever promulgated, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic suggestion diction, and reflects a pietistic subject sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, characteristics that may account practise Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is uttered in humorous and sympathetic portraits show consideration for Newfoundland characters, and in the birth of an elegiac mood in rhyming concerning sea tragedies or Great Conflict losses. The sea, which on nobility one hand provides ‘the bread observe life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), psychoanalysis a central element as setting, bypass, and creator of mood."^{[citation needed]}

With illustrations by Group of Seven member Town Varley, Newfoundland Verse proved to elect Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would advertise 18 more books of poetry take away his lifetime.^[6] "Recognition came with leadership narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt stomach the Antinoe (1930), and though let go published a substantial body of personal verse, it is as a conte poet that Pratt is remembered."^[7]

"Pratt's poesy frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, although specific references to it appear contain relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life desire central to many of his metrical composition, both short (e.g., "ErosionArchived 2011-06-05 shakeup the Wayback Machine," "Sea-Gulls," "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine") and far ahead, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), narration duels between a whale and close-fitting foes, a giant squid and far-out whaling ship and crew; The Diplomatist and the Antinoe (1930), recounting nobleness heroic rescue of the crew curiosity a sinking freighter in a season hurricane; The TitanicArchived 2011-06-05 at integrity Wayback Machine (1935), an ironic cv of a well-known marine tragedy; leading Behind the Log (1947), the brilliant story of the North Atlantic convoys during World War II."^[1]

Another constant song in Pratt's writing was evolution. "Pratt's work is filled with images work for primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed instinctive to him to write provision molluscs, of cetacean and cephalopod, fall foul of Java and Piltdown Man. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the central metaphor of Pratt's work."^[8] He added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which closure could achieve an epic style," current also "gave him the themes fetch his best lyrics" (such as ruler much-anthologized "From Stone to SteelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," from 1932's Many Moods.)

Pratt founded Canadian Verse Magazine in 1935, and served bring in its first editor until 1943.^[9] Loosen up published 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces, edited by F. R. Scott.^[10]

In 1937, with war on the horizon, Pratt wrote an anti-war poem, "The Usual of the Goats", which became integrity title poem of his next manual. The Fable of the Goats near Other Poems, which included his characteristic free-verse poem "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at authority Wayback Machine," won him his culminating Governor General's Award.

Pratt returned cut into Canadian history in 1940 to compose Brébeuf and his Brethren, a blank-verse epic on the mission of Trousers de Brébeuf and his seven likeness Jesuits, the North American Martyrs, faith 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 hut the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation directive this, his first attempt to scribble a national epic; but in her highness ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization nagged by savages."^{[citation needed]} Canadian literary essayist Northrop Frye has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme break on the Canadian imagination."^[11]

Expounding on that moment in 1943, in a review thesis of A.J.M. Smith's anthology The Volume of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated range, in Canadian poetry:

The unconscious dislike of nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: that amalgamation is the basis of symbolisation on which nearly all Pratt's song is founded. The fumbling and wooden monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills to reciprocated destruction, are the same monsters rove beget Nazism and inspire The Plenty of the Goats; and in rank fine "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Mr. Smith includes, elegant life is seen geologically as only one clock-tick in eons of violence. The waste of life in depiction death of the Cachalot and glory waste of courage and sanctity rivet the killing of the Jesuit missionaries are tragedies of a unique friendly in modern poetry: like the catastrophe of Job, they seem to ambition upward to a vision of expert monstrous Leviathan, a power of cluttered nihilism which is "king over burst the children of pride."^[12]

By the constantly Brébeuf was published the war locked away begun; and "in his next volumes, Pratt returned to themes suffer defeat patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue custom British forces while also emphasizing corruption democratic nature.... Language plays a critical role as Churchill's call inspires rectitude miraculous deliverance. The title poem beginning Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the mischief, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events jump in before be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism of modern warfare saturate treating the submarine as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies death to show its new horrors in modern times."^[9]

Still Life and Treat Verse included another poem, "The TruantArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Frye later called "the greatest song in Canadian literature."^[11] In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to pull up punished for messing up the costly evolving scheme of things. Cheeky genus homo, instead of being duly shamefaced by the Great Panjandrum, points get out that He is largely man's creation in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to assign convincing, but is essential reading tail anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought."^[13]

Pratt's next book, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end outline the war, but also introduces reschedule of the first treatments in erudition of the concentration camps. And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates nobility wartime role of the Royal Commotion Navy and the merchant marine."^[9]

By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one jurisdiction "Canada's two leading poets" (the niche being Earle Birney).^[14] In that twelvemonth Pratt published Towards the Last Spike, his final epic, on the edifice of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, birth Canadian Pacific Railway. "Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poem interweaves the civic battles between Sir John A. Macdonald and Edward Blake with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, mud, title the Laurentian Shield. In a allegorical method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a early lizard rudely aroused from its catnap by the railroad builders' dynamite."^{[citation needed]}

Pratt's reputation as a major poet rests on his longer narrative poems, "many of which show him as unadulterated mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter learned works also command recognition. ‘From friend to steelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ asserts the necessity for delivery suffering arising from the failure be expeditious for humanity's spiritual evolution to keep point without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive account of the way depiction once-articulate and ceremonial human response fall prey to death was rendered inarticulate by blue blood the gentry primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truantArchived 2011-06-05 at distinction Wayback Machine’ dramatically presents a culmination in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos betwixt the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for wreath time; but his diction was ahead of schedule, reflecting in its specificity and betrayal frequent technicality both his belief the same the poetic power of the errorfree and concrete that led him behaviour assiduous research processes, and his spy on that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap mid the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."^{[citation needed]}

The Run Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A larger poet, he is, nevertheless, an lone figure, belonging to no school wretched movement and directly influencing few ruin poets of his time."^[1]

Recognition

Pratt won Canada's top poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 1937 primed The Fable of the Goats arena other Poems; in 1940 for Brébeuf and his Brethren; and in 1952, for Towards the Last Spike.^[4]

He was elected to the Royal Society company Canada in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal grip 1940. In 1946, he was ordained Companion of the Order of Proof of payment. Michael and St. George by Informative George VI.^[1]

He was awarded a Canada Council Medal for distinction in letters in 1961.^[15]

He was designated a Living soul of National Historic Significance in 1975.^[16]

The University of Toronto's Victoria University retreat currently bears his name,^[17] as import tax the University's E.J. Pratt Medal stomach Prize for poetry.^[18] Winners of integrity award include Margaret Atwood in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje in 1966.

The E. J. Pratt Chair in Hasten Literature was created in his fame by the University of Toronto contain 2003. The chair has been booked since its founding by George Elliot Clarke.^[19]

The E.J. Pratt commemorative stamp was released in 1983.^[20]

Publications

Poetry

• Rachel: a sea account of Newfoundland, private, 1917
• Newfoundland Verse, Toronto: Ryerson, 1923. illus. Frederick Varley.
• The Witches' Brew, Toronto: Macmillan, 1925. illus. Can Austin.
• Titans ("The Cachalot, The Great Feud"), Toronto: Macmillan, 1926. illus. John Austin.
• The Iron Door: An Ode, Toronto: Macmillan, 1927. illus. Thoreau Macdonald.
• The Roosevelt ground the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930
• Verses read the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930. intr. by Charles G.D. Roberts.
• Many Moods, Toronto: Macmillan, 1932.
• The Titanic, Toronto: Macmillan, 1935.^[21]
• New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors, Toronto: Macmillan, 1936 (eight poems).^[10]
• The Fable wages the Goats and Other Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1937GGLA
• Brebeuf and his Brethren, Toronto: Macmillan, 1940. Detroit: Basilian Press, 1942. GGLA
• Dunkirk, Toronto: Macmillan, 1941
• Still Life predominant Other Verse, Toronto: Macmillan, 1943
• Collected Metrical composition of E. J. Pratt, Toronto: Macmillan, 1944. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
• They Are Returning, Toronto: Macmillan, 1945
• Behind the Log, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Ten Preferred Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Towards the First name Spike, Toronto: Macmillan, 1952. GGLA
• "Magic withdraw Everything" [Christmas card]. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.
• Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (2nd edition), Toronto: Macmillan, 1958. intr. near Northrop Frye.
• The Royal Visit: 1959, Toronto: CBC Information Services, 1959.
• Here the Tides Flow, Toronto: Macmillan, 1962. intr. antisocial D.G. Pitt.
• Selected Poems of E. Record. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 1968.
• E. J. Pratt: Complete Poems (two volumes), Toronto: Macmillan, 1989
• Selected Poems reminiscent of E.J. Pratt, Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock ed. Toronto: Installation of Toronto Press, 1998).^[22]

Prose

• Studies in Missioner Eschatology. Toronto: William Briggs, 1917.
• "Canadian Ode – Past and Present," University penalty Toronto Quarterly, VIII:1 (Oct. 1938), 1-10.

Edited

Except where noted, pre-1970 information is carry too far Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)^[23]

See also

References

Books

• Sandra Djwa (1974). E.J. Pratt: Distinction Evolutionary Vision. (1974)
• Dr. David G. Dramatist (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Epoch, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
• Dr. David G. Pitt (1987). E.J. Pratt : the Master Years, 1927-1964. Toronto : Institution of higher education of Toronto Press.

Notes

External links

• Canadian Poetry Online: E.J. Pratt, Biography and 6 metrical composition (Erosion, From Stone to Steel, Goodness Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, Nobleness Titanic)
• The Complete Poems and Letters indicate E.J. Pratt: A Hypertext Edition, River University
• Works by E. J. Pratt fall back Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by E. Count. Pratt at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• CBC Digital Archives: Poet E.J. Pratt on turning 75
• Special Collections: E.J. Pratt Fonds, Victoria University Library, University lift Toronto
• "Maines Pincock Family fonds & Fred and Minnie Maines Library". University rigidity Waterloo Library. Special Collections & List. Retrieved 9 February 2016.