The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

the relevant footnote refers only to controversy
over her name and tribe. Rather than
producing a general introduction which
takes an uncritical view of the man and the
novel, it would be more useful to students
and teachers if the editor also pointed out
the biographical gaps and the critical disagreements.
Where Richardson has entered into our
seminal mythologies is not in the historical
background to his Canadian works, but in
his complaints about the hard life of a
writer in Canada, complaints which have
struck a sympathetic chord in twentieth
century writers and critics. Stephens has
sympathetically quoted all the usual
Richardsonian lamentations, ignoring the
fact that the 250 copies of The Canadian
Brothers sold was a very respectable number
for a book published in Montreal in
1840, and that Richardson was charging
double the going price. That the reception
of Richardson's work did not meet his
expectations should not be interpreted as a
failure of Canadian culture, circa 1840.
Except where the publishing history of The
Canadian Brothers is concerned, the information
contained in the Introduction summarizes
material already available, rather
than introducing new insights. The focus of
the Introduction is on the Canadian relevance
of the novel, and no attempt is made
to give an overview of Richardson's writing,
or more than a sketch of his life. There is
no bibliography, either of works by
Richardson or of works about him, which
would encourage further reading. Although
we should all be grateful that a good modern
edition of The Canadian Brothers is
now readily available, joining CEECT's
Wacousta and the Canadian Poetry Press'
Tecumseh, those using this edition for
teaching purposes will need to supplement
the Introduction with reading in other
sources.
The major difficulty with critical analysis
of Richardson's life and work is that it has
been centered on his Canadian experience
and on the "Canadian" works, despite the
fact that he lived more than half his life
outside Canada and that the non-Canadian
works outnumber the Canadian ones.
Would we read The Canadian Brothers if
the author were not Canadian? Should we
read The Canadian Brothers 7 . Stephens ultimate
conclusion is that the "...triumph of
The Canadian Brothers itself is the
unflinching honesty of its documentation
of this tragedy [the battle of Queenston
Heights] that demands to be told about a
past that cannot be changed." The time has
come to look at Richardson's life and work
as an entity within the international context
in which he lived and wrote. What we
need is a scholar, emotionally distant from
both Richardson and Canadian culture,
who will sift all the biographical material
for hard data, and who will read all his
extant works,—poetry, history, autobiography
and fiction,—before producing a synthesis
that is not culture-bound.
Translations
Herwig Friedl, Albert-Reiner Glaap, Klaus
Peter Miiller, eds.
Literaturubersetzen: Englisch. Gunter Narr Verlag
nj^
Hildi Froese Tiessen, Peter Hinchcliffe,
eds.
Acts of Concealment. Mennonite/s Writing in
Canada. U Waterloo P $18.00
Reviewed by Gabriele Helms
The translation of literary texts is the common
theme of the fourteen papers in
Literaturubersetzen: Englisch. The editors
have compiled a reader of essays that
develop concepts of and perspectives for
the practice and didactics of literary translations,
as they document responses to and
experiences with the programme "Translation
of Literature" ("Literaturubersetzen") that