Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in R e v i e w
Sephardi (Spanish, North African) accent;
but this pronunciation implicitly contradicts
the poem's declared desire to renounce exile
and return to Zion: "The very language,
then, in which Klein envisions his freedom
from the bonds of the Diaspora testifies to
the continued power of those bonds." Wide
knowledge and a good ear alert Pollock to
stylistic and thematic tensions that others
might miss. Since tensions of this sort are
"at the heart of his best writing," Pollock
seeks ways of displaying them, not in order
to resolve their antagonism but to give
them full play. From that play emerges a
portrait of the artist as "Jewish modernist."
A Jewish modernist is an ambiguous
beast worthy of Dr. Seuss, and the problem
is to reconcile its conflicting appetites.
Pollock's solution is extremely neat, so neat
in fact, that he occasionally mistrusts his
own scheme. A single story runs through
Klein's writing, in which the creative, alienated
artist seeks meaning, value and community
amid the chaos of personal
experience and the barbarity of modern
life. Every poem, tale and essay is an
episode in a visionary quest conducted
through language and tradition for "the
One in the Many," a quest through which
the poet would become the very breath of
his—the artist is always male—people.
Despite hopeful moments, the quest fails
because the "curse of history" nullifies all
human effort by making meaning, value
and community torment rather than sustain
each other. History repeats itself, first
as tragedy, then as parody, and finally as
nightmare. This is the story of Klein's writing
viewed as a single work. It also happens
to be the story of Spinoza's life, of modern
man, of Jewish history as Klein tells it, and
of his own literary career, which ended in
silence. It is even the story of Pollock's The
Story of the Poet. The fact that the story
recurs everywhere indicates that he has
devised his own critical version of "the One
in the Many." He trusts in a dominant, unifying
theme even though, ironically, that
theme is the poet's failure to achieve a unified
vision. In effect, Pollock succeeds
where Klein fails by incorporating his failure
into the story.
Pollock is aware of this irony and periodically
confesses that his scheme is really an
illusion, a handy fiction that "at least has
the virtue of corresponding to the vision of
the One in the Many which Klein's story of
the poet unfolds." I am not sure that the
correspondence is always a virtue, although
I admit that it keeps Pollock intimately
attuned to Klein's poetic reflexes. Consequently,
while I admire his analysis of the
poems (The studies of "Pulver," "Portrait"
and "Rocking Chair" are terrific), and I
would not dare to carp at his Jewish scholarship
for fear of being pickled myself, I
suspect that his critical framework forces
him to make the same discoveries again
and again, whereas some of his best observations
occur when he manages to step
outside of his favourite story. For example,
Klein presents history as pain and chaos. It
is an enemy, a curse, a litany of suffering to
be transcended by a "unifying Jewish tradition"
which is "continuous" and "timeless."
But a litany is not really history. In other
words, Klein sees history in ahistorical
terms, and this may be one reason why his
vision of community fails, because communities,
and the traditions sustaining
them, are inescapably historical in nature.
Klein's portrait of Israel is pastoral, biblical,
mystical, but never of a modern state in
which Jews can find a home. His nostalgic
portrait of Quebec does acknowledge historical
reality, but only as a threat, never as
an opportunity. He longs to transform "the
stutter of history into the music of tradition,"
but he lacks a secure religious faith
that could orchestrate temporal chaos. If
the "One" is not God, then what moral,
rational or aesthetic principle is exalted
enough to subdue the vicious "Many"?
When the modern substitutes for religion—
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