I've avoided this discussion up to now, but David Lee Miller's
thoughtful post has moved me to respond. I've just just come home from
Europe (London, Rome) where opposition to the coming war is almost
universal, and I live in Canada, where the Prime Minister yesterday
announced in parliament that Canada would not be participating. Anyone
who wonders about the results of that statement should take a look at a
map of North America, and consider the uncomfortable consequences of
existing as a modestly prosperous nation of 30,000,000 people on the
other side of a very long border from a rich, powerful, and very angry
nation of nearly 300,000,000.  Canada's relationship with the US is an
intricate, almost domestic one, and the daily frustrations are going to
be immense; they are already being reported on my radio. If Canadian
bacon becomes Freedom Bacon that will be the least of our worries. Early
in the Vietnam war an American scholar -- Donald Guss, I think it was --
asked me very tentatively what Canadians were thinking about the US, and
I said, as kindly as possible, and keeping the domestic metaphor in
mind, that it was like having a drunken uncle. David Lee's post reminds
me of something I said -- inspired by who knows what passing faerie --
to the students in my 17thC course in my last year of teaching.  They
were angrily raising serious questions about all the many tough issues
-- women, war, God -- about which they did not agree with the authors
they were studying.  And all I could say was, "Look about you, and ask
what it is you are doing now as a matter of conscience, and with the
best motives in the world, that your descendants are going to blame you
fiercely for." Sudden silence in the classroom; they had no answer, nor
indeed had I.  I think the same can be said about Spenser in Ireland. He
chose the path he had to choose, in an age when violence was the natural
and approved response of an offended party -- whether state or
individual -- and he suffered deeply for it.  Furthermore, if we are to
believe the _View_ and Book V, he thought he was doing what was right.
The result is to pose us, continuously, some of the toughest possible
questions about the connections between art and human existence.  Shuld
we then to be asking about the authors that present us with these
dilemmas -- Spenser and Milton, Pound and Eliot -- to what extent the
dilemma is consciously made visible and reflected upon in their work? We
ought to make that demand, at least, of those who seek to shape our
imaginations so powerfully. best to all, Germaine.

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Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus)
VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto),
73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
[log in to unmask]   (fax number on request)
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