Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 15, 1975, Winnipeg, Manitoba Master s world and those who cannot sparkle Are not invited again Robertson Davies is cautious Cool courteous he is Best heard in the stillness of a Bookish study with the grave ticking of an old clock in the background. Robertson Davies has a cutting wit a cruel wit As a teacher he is a performer a Man who astonishes but his Way with the wounding word is legendary among his students. Robertson Davies is the quintessential edwardian gent Bent on order and serenity the buttering of Toast and the sipping of Sherry and the taking of snuff All to be done in Good time and proper procession. Robertson Davies is unaccountably shy. Robertson Davies is enormously erudite his Range takes in Goethe and Mann and Jung but also the Champion annual and no no Nanette. Robertson Davies can dominate an evening of masculine talk on bizarre sexual practices his books if they Are gone Over with a Geiger sensitized to erotica Are full of Peculiar sexual imagery. Robertson Davies sees woman As the All Wise the fount of Wisdom the Law giver. Robert son Davies disapproves of women. Robertson Davies is victorian. Robertson Davies is an eccentric a loner and a believer in the autocracy of Talent which he Calls democracy. Robertson Davies has created for himself an environment which is a pathetic parody of an Oxford that no longer exists. Robertson Davies was born in Thamesville Ontario but sounds As if he were brought up by bbl announcers. Robertson Davies is Over 60 but his books Are becoming less conventional and . Robertson Davies if you believe the people who study him is All these things there is More to him than meets the Eye but less than meets the inner ear he writes so much of magic and illusion that interviewers Are always looking for the sleight of hand the trick the veil which hides the real Man. Robertson Davies Davies. Who the hell is Robertson Davies there Are those who say Massey College a residential graduate school was created especially for Robertson Davies. Vincent Massey who bequeathed the College to the University of Toronto was an Oxford Man a Balliol Man just As Davies is. They were both cultured men men of letters both could be said to share the vision of transplanting some of the accumulated Wisdom of the old world to Canada a sort of Balliol upon Saddle Creek sharing the rituals the purposes the scholarly pursuits of the ancient collegium. Davies denies this is so. He was not consulted on the College until the very end he says his Only Mark on the place was in the design of his own quarters called in typical Massey fashion the master s residence and in the siting of the Library. Yet there is at least one University academic who remembers when the College was still building crossing the site and having Davies bound out at him a flamboyant figure in his eccentric Silver Beard Large hat 8 weekend mama me nov. Is 1975 Bymark de including cover by Why and edwardian cloak demanding to know Why he there. It was hard to believe. There he was indignantly hovering and yet once he Learned i was part of the University Community everything was All right. I still find it hard to believe. It s behaviour he would satirize unmercifully in his and it is also True that Massey College resembles Davies in some peculiarly physical ways. It is a modern building on an ancient cloistered pattern it turns inward away from the noise to the peace and serenity of its inner life just As Davies behind his urbane Shell needs to turn inward to renew himself. Buses pass less than 20 feet from the master s bedroom yet none of this penetrates the College Walls. This is very Davies. He loathes parties and badly needs to be Able to shut himself away from people one of the rougher periods of his life came As a Newspaperman when for a time the daily pressures did t allow him time for Retreat. He came close to panic then and has ordered his life since so it will not recur. If the building was t designed for or by Davies the Way it is run unquestionably bears his imprint. Davies despises people with rigid minds people who cannot adapt their thinking people he says with Well fattened intellects and rickety but this does t carry Over to rigidity of form. On etiquette tha rules of behaviour on social Intercourse he is the most unimaginable reactionary. Junior Fellows who Don t Wear their academic gowns to formal dinner will feel the weight of the master s displeasure. All diners Are expected to arrive Early and stay till the last latin is said. There Are monthly soirees after these dinners. Junior Fellows mingle with academic heavyweights in the formal setting of the master s apartments Sherry and dried fruits Are de Rigueur. Those who cannot sparkle at conversation Are not invited again made to feel like Well As one put it. Recalls another i remember when they first passed the snuff in its Silver Box i had t a clue what to do. Did you blow sniff Chew or smoke the stuff snuff for cod s it is possible to make too much of this the croquet Lawn the High flown academic talk the stiff formality of the High table the Well bred English Butler who magically appears just when the staff who Call the master the master the whole idiot transplant and yet it s important for it s in this atmosphere that one of Canada s Best writers spends nine months of his year. Is it True As some of his critics say that he s writing about the past about a Canada that has gone about his boyhood in Post victorian victorian Ontario that he is busily applying the insights of jungian analysis to improbable characters from an improbable past Davies own Point of View is naturally different. I m writing about people who Are still there. I m writing about a Canada i see which has rejected its past not uie Ted is inline and is not very Happy with either. I Here people in this province who might As Well he i Viii in Ilic Ilith to Millry. You can find them All lie rejoin easy assessments of his work Lazy assessments. He himself is. Not a Lazy Man How Many is ii now Twenty six books four of them in the last Low years nor is to a simple Man. It is Clear from even a cursory Reading of Davies books that he is not As one dimensional a Man As he might seem to someone who just wandered into Massey College knowing nothing about his background. Then who could be that simple j the latest of Davies books was published this i october. World of wonders follows fifth business and theman Ticoras the third of the linked novels Davies has produced in the last few years. Though there were some negative reviews it completes what a wide spectrum of critics agree is a dazzlingly Complex achievement. His earlier work was witty elegant erudite beautifully structured but essentially Light weight. Leaven of malice an engaging satire of Small town ways was typical As were the three Marchbanks books which were drawn from columns originally written for the Peterborough examiner a family newspaper he edited for 20 years. The latest three novels Are intricate in Structure and written with great clarity put together like the Workings of a Swiss watch. Collectively they Deal with the lives of a handful of residents of a stifling Ontario Small town following them from childhood till late Middle age watching them As they grow older and More mysterious. Davies is a devotee of jungian depth psychology and uses it both As the subject and method of his books. Just As the protagonist of the Manti Core finishes the Book in a perilous and mysterious process of rebirth at the hands of a Swiss psychologist or. Joanna von Haller so Davies uses the linked novels to slowly strip the mysteries from his creatures exposing their real selves and their real motivations which magically Are yet More mysterious and Complex with the mystery removed. Not unlike it must be said Davies himself. The life and vigor of Davies imagination underscore the apparent distance Between his writings and his life As Sherry sipping Don How could this edwardian gent produce these magical books dream these mysterious dreams conjure these improbable characters How can the complexity of the books be reconciled with the victorian probity of his life i think the answer lies in a peculiarly modern conceit that the victorians were All manners with no passion and no inner life. Critics keep asking How can this ponderous academic produce the bizarre passions of the Manti Core the answer lies less with Davies than with the modern habit or letting it All hang Oul a conceit which Davies in turn finds impossibly vulgar. He touched on this when i asked him his reaction to continued ;