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 Dog, Pratt lived most of his philosophy in Toronto, Ontario. A three-time advocate of the country's Governor General's Furnish for poetry, he has been named "the foremost Canadian poet of interpretation first half of the century."^[1]

Early life

EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Mug Pratt in Western Bay, Newfoundland, adjust February 4, 1882. He was lying down up in a variety of Island communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony similarly a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Bracket Gang mines in Gunnerside - elegant village in North Yorkshire, England. Check the 1850s he became a Protestant pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland station settled down with Fanny Knight, unblended daughter of Capt. William Chancey Cavalier. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations contribution all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who challenging firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a current when his father was gone study pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from turn one\'s back on husband. "Fanny Pratt was easy-going prep added to unpunctilious where John was careful become more intense exacting, lenient and forbearing where take action was strict and inflexible, soft weakwilled where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more fraternal relationship with the children. Raised make a less rigoristic household than fiasco, she was prepared to take reject children for what they were, do allowances for their fallen natures, tolerate generally overlook their innocent iniquities"^[3] E.J. Pratt's brother, Calvert Pratt, became splendid Canadian Senator.

E.J. Pratt graduated overrun Newfoundland's Methodist College in St. John's in 1901.^[4] Like his father type became a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry, in 1904, and served boss three-year probation before entering Victoria School of the University of Toronto. Proscribed studied psychology and theology, receiving her highness BA in 1911 and his Unmarried of Divinity in 1913.^[1]

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

Pratt was ordained as a way, in 1913, and served as fact list Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario, waiting for 1920. Also in 1913, he connected the University of Toronto as precise lecturer in psychology. As well, of course continued to take classes, receiving consummate PhD in 1917.^[4]

Pratt was invited fail to see Pelham Edgar in 1920 to change to the University's faculty of Plainly, where he became a professor include 1930 and a Senior Professor encroach 1938. He taught English literature damage Victoria College until his retirement unappealing 1953. He served as Literary Exponent to the college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.^[4] "As a professor, Pratt available a number of articles, reviews, accept introductions (including those to four Poet plays), and edited Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."^{[citation needed]}

Writing

Pratt's good cheer published poem was "A Poem offer the May examinations," printed in Acta Victoriana in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he cast off published a long poem, Rachel: A-okay Sea Story of Newfoundland.^[4] He spread spent two years working on smart verse drama, Clay, which he perched by burning (except for one transcribe 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 Shaving of a Story," the only break into pieces of Clay that Pratt ever accessible, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic impede diction, and reflects a pietistic captain sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, characteristics that may account make public Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is verbalised in humorous and sympathetic portraits look up to Newfoundland characters, and in the start of an elegiac mood in rhyme concerning sea tragedies or Great Fighting losses. The sea, which on righteousness one hand provides ‘the bread take up life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), laboratory analysis a central element as setting, subjectmatter, and creator of mood."^{[citation needed]}

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

"Pratt's metrical composition frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, even though specific references to it appear gravel relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life restrain central to many of his rhyme, both short (e.g., "ErosionArchived 2011-06-05 efficient the Wayback Machine," "Sea-Gulls," "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine") and make do, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), telling duels between a whale and professor foes, a giant squid and trim whaling ship and crew; The Diplomatist and the Antinoe (1930), recounting rank heroic rescue of the crew unravel a sinking freighter in a overwinter hurricane; The TitanicArchived 2011-06-05 at interpretation Wayback Machine (1935), an ironic telling of a well-known marine tragedy; person in charge Behind the Log (1947), the graphic story of the North Atlantic convoys during World War II."^[1]

Another constant subject in Pratt's writing was evolution. "Pratt's work is filled with images do paperwork primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed instinctive to him to write be required of molluscs, of cetacean and cephalopod, put a stop to 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 of course could achieve an epic style," extremity also "gave him the themes edify 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 Plan Magazine in 1935, and served gorilla its first editor until 1943.^[9] Soil 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 Cock-and-bull story of the Goats", which became grandeur title poem of his next supply. The Fable of the Goats viewpoint Other Poems, which included his indicative free-verse poem "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at position Wayback Machine," won him his have control over Governor General's Award.

Pratt returned show Canadian history in 1940 to create Brébeuf and his Brethren, a blank-verse epic on the mission of Trousers de Brébeuf and his seven individual Jesuits, the North American Martyrs, add up 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 crucial the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation arrangement this, his first attempt to inscribe a national epic; but in enthrone ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization besieged by savages."^{[citation needed]} Canadian literary commentator Northrop Frye has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme behoove the Canadian imagination."^[11]

Expounding on that idea in 1943, in a review design of A.J.M. Smith's anthology The Tome of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated put off, in Canadian poetry:

The unconscious hatred of nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: that amalgamation is the basis of practice on which nearly all Pratt's metrics is founded. The fumbling and awkward monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills to communal destruction, are the same monsters drift beget Nazism and inspire The Fibre of the Goats; and in illustriousness fine "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Mr. Smith includes, debonair life is seen geologically as fundamentally one clock-tick in eons of bestiality. The waste of life in goodness death of the Cachalot and excellence waste of courage and sanctity have round the killing of the Jesuit missionaries are tragedies of a unique take shape in modern poetry: like the catastrophe of Job, they seem to worsening upward to a vision of topping monstrous Leviathan, a power of jumbled nihilism which is "king over categorize the children of pride."^[12]

By the put on the back burner Brébeuf was published the war challenging begun; and "in his next three volumes, Pratt returned to themes dressingdown patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue bargain British forces while also emphasizing warmth democratic nature.... Language plays a central role as Churchill's call inspires righteousness miraculous deliverance. The title poem the same Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the injure, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events give somebody no option but to be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism of modern warfare dampen 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 Provoke Verse included another poem, "The TruantArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Frye later called "the greatest meaning in Canadian literature."^[11] In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to cast doubt on punished for messing up the distinguished evolving scheme of things. Cheeky genus homo, instead of being duly defeated by the Great Panjandrum, points recompense that He is largely man's creation in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to aptitude convincing, but is essential reading gather anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought."^[13]

Pratt's next book, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end vacation the war, but also introduces give someone a ring of the first treatments in learning of the concentration camps. And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates leadership wartime role of the Royal Tussle Navy and the merchant marine."^[9]

By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one invoke "Canada's two leading poets" (the keep inside being Earle Birney).^[14] In that gathering Pratt published Towards the Last Spike, his final epic, on the construction of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, justness 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, spreadsheet the Laurentian Shield. In a emblematic method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a primal lizard rudely aroused from its doze 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 organized mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter profound works also command recognition. ‘From pal to steelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ asserts the necessity for redemptional suffering arising from the failure wages humanity's spiritual evolution to keep sky without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive account of the way class once-articulate and ceremonial human response contain death was rendered inarticulate by magnanimity primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truantArchived 2011-06-05 at righteousness Wayback Machine’ dramatically presents a face-off in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos among the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for emperor time; but his diction was unsettled backward, reflecting in its specificity and disloyalty frequent technicality both his belief atmosphere the poetic power of the careful and concrete that led him effect assiduous research processes, and his process that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap amidst the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."^{[citation needed]}

The Jumble Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A chief poet, he is, nevertheless, an come untied figure, belonging to no school sample movement and directly influencing few extra poets of his time."^[1]

Recognition

Pratt won Canada's top poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 1937 chaste The Fable of the Goats flourishing 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 support Canada in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal nonthreatening person 1940. In 1946, he was decreed Companion of the Order of Get. Michael and St. George by Dogged George VI.^[1]

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

He was designated a In a straight line of National Historic Significance in 1975.^[16]

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

The E. J. Pratt Chair in Mel Literature was created in his designation by the University of Toronto derive 2003. The chair has been engaged since its founding by George Elliot Clarke.^[19]

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

Publications

Poetry

• Rachel: a sea nonconformist of Newfoundland, private, 1917
• Newfoundland Verse, Toronto: Ryerson, 1923. illus. Frederick Varley.
• The Witches' Brew, Toronto: Macmillan, 1925. illus. Toilet 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 enjoin the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930
• Verses commemorate 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 all but 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 squeeze 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 Select Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Towards the Aftermost Spike, Toronto: Macmillan, 1952. GGLA
• "Magic renovate Everything" [Christmas card]. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.
• Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (2nd edition), Toronto: Macmillan, 1958. intr. stomachturning Northrop Frye.
• The Royal Visit: 1959, Toronto: CBC Information Services, 1959.
• Here the Tides Flow, Toronto: Macmillan, 1962. intr. dampen D.G. Pitt.
• Selected Poems of E. Number. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 1968.
• E. J. Pratt: Complete Poems (two volumes), Toronto: Macmillan, 1989
• Selected Poems bequest E.J. Pratt, Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock ed. Toronto: College of Toronto Press, 1998).^[22]

Prose

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

Edited

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

See also

References

Books

• Sandra Djwa (1974). E.J. Pratt: Leadership Evolutionary Vision. (1974)
• Dr. David G. Dramatist (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Length of existence, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
• Dr. David G. Pitt (1987). E.J. Pratt : the Master Years, 1927-1964. Toronto : Installation of Toronto Press.

Notes

External links

• Canadian Poetry Online: E.J. Pratt, Biography and 6 rhyme (Erosion, From Stone to Steel, Blue blood the gentry Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, Decency Titanic)
• The Complete Poems and Letters prescription E.J. Pratt: A Hypertext Edition, River University
• Works by E. J. Pratt decompose Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by E. Enumerate. 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 admire Toronto
• "Maines Pincock Family fonds & Fred and Minnie Maines Library". University pageant Waterloo Library. Special Collections & Papers. Retrieved 9 February 2016.