A.M. Klein

A.M. Klein (1909-1972) in mid-1940's. Photo by Garcia Studios. Courtesy Library & Archives Canada, PA-125749.

A.M. Klein
Born	Abraham Moses Klein February 14, 1909 Ratno, Ukraine
Died	August 20, 1972 (aged 63) Montreal, Quebec]
Language	English
Nationality	Canadian
Ethnicity	Jewish
Citizenship	British subject
Alma mater	McGill U, U de Montreal
Genres	Poetry
Literary movement	Montreal Group
Notable work(s)	The Rocking Chair, and other poems, The Second Scroll
Notable award(s)	Governor General's Award]], Lorne Pierce Medal
Spouse(s)	Bessie Kozlov
Children	Sandor, Colman, & Sharon

Abraham Moses Klein (14 February 1909 - 20 August 1972) was a Canadian poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer, and lawyer. He has been called "One of Canada's greatest poets and a leading figure in Jewish-Canadian culture."

Life

Overview

Best known for his poetry, Klein also published a novella entitled The Second Scroll in 1951, along with numerous essays, reviews, and short stories. Many of his lesser-known works, including several unfinished novels, were published posthumously in a series of collections from the University of Toronto Press.

Youth and education

Klein was born in Ratno, Ukraine, but in the following years (probably at age 3 or 4) he moved with his family to Montreal, Quebec, the city in which he would live most of his life. Ratno had seen a series of pogroms and, like many Ukrainian Jews, Klein's parents sought a safer life elsewhere. As a result of the influx of Jewish immigrants to Montreal, its Jewish community flourished, even though many families lived close to the poverty line. The family of Irving Layton was another notable addition to this community.

Klein's father, an Orthodox follower of the Jewish faith, influenced Klein's early development. The son's early education and literary interests owed much to his plan to become a rabbi when he grew up, a plan that he never fulfilled.

Klein attended Baron Byng High School, an institution that would later be immortalized in Mordecai Richler's novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. There he became a friend of David Lewis, future leader of the socialist New Democratic Party. Klein introduced Lewis to his wife, Sophie Carson, when they were all students at Baron Byng. (Lewis later introduced Irving Layton to Klein. Klein became Layton's Latin tutor so he could pass his matriculation exams.)

Klein went on to study political science, classics and economics as an undergraduate at McGill University. It was there that he met a group of poets and critics, including F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, who would form the foundations of the so-called Montreal Group of Poets. Klein's first submission of a poem to the Scott and Smith-edited magazine, The McGill Fortnightly Review, was rejected on the basis of its author's refusal to alter the word "soul," which the editors felt was out of step with the modernist principles they espoused. Klein nevertheless became friends with the elder poets and was soon an avid modernist himself. After the Fortnightly Review folded, Klein and Lewis founded The McGilliad magazine at McGill in 1930.

Klein also came under the influence of Montreal Group member Leon Edel, the future Henry James biographer, who introduced him to the works of James Joyce and other writers. Klein would add Joyce to his list of life-long fascinations, an interest that bore fruit in a complex literary study of Joyce's Ulysses, published posthumously in the Klein volume Literary Essays and Reviews.

Early career

Describing Canadian-Jewish Writer A.M. Klein

After McGill, Klein studied law at the Universite de Montreal, where instruction was in French. He was a law partner first of Max Garmaise, whom he followed briefly to Rouyn, a small mining community in the North of Quebec. Then, back in Montreal, he joined with Samuel Chait (who was to become first president of the Federated Zionist Organization of Canada, when it was reorganised in 1967). Klein, Garmaise, and Chait had all been officers of Young Judea, a Zionist youth organization.

Klein spent many years as a consultant and speech writer for Samuel Bronfman, owner of the Seagram distillery. From 1932 to 1955 he was editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, a periodical to which he also contributed articles on such subjects as the rise of Nazism in Germany, the social position of Jews in Canada, and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

Klein published his early works in Canadian and American periodicals, although the Great Depression made it difficult for him to find a publisher willing to accept an entire book. He also published 2 poems in the 1936 anthology of modernist Canadian poetry, New Provinces.

Literary maturity and prominence

Klein in 1951, with his novella, The Second Scroll

Belatedly, in 1940, Klein's debut collection, Hath Not a Jew, was published in the United States. Although the book sold poorly, many of its poems would later become standard selections in anthologies of Canadian literature and posthumous collections of Klein's work. During World War II Klein published 2 more books, Poems and The Hitleriad, both in 1944.

His greatest achievement as a poet came in 1948 with the publication of The Rocking Chair, and other poems. The book earned Klein a Governor General's Award, and sold in numbers far exceeding the norm for a book of Canadian poetry.

Klein was a Zionist but his enthusiasm for the new Jewish state was tempered by a critical eye for political realities. His fact-finding mission to Israel in 1949 on behalf of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle inspired his last major work and only complete novel, The Second Scroll. Although The Second Scroll was not a commercial success in its 1st edition from Knopf in New York, a subsequent re-print in Canada's New Canadian Library ensured its survival as one of the significant works of modern Canadian literature.

Also in 1949, Klein ran unsuccessfully for the Canadian Parliament as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.

Increasing mental illness in the following years led to a suicide attempt and hospitalisation in 1952. By 1956 he had lapsed into the mysterious silence that saw him give up writing altogether and become a recluse in his home in Montreal's Outremont district, until his death in 1972.

Writing

The Canadian Encyclopedia states that "Klein has rightly been called the 'first contributor of authentic Jewish poetry to the English language.' His writings articulate the feelings of a generation that witnessed the destruction of European Jewry and the fulfilment of the Zionist dream."

Early poetry

In spite of his growing literary interests, Klein's poetry of the 1920s and 1930s, collected in Hath Not a Jew (1940), was largely concerned with Jewish themes, including the history of Jews in Western society ("Design for Mediaeval Tapestry"), the importance of religion as a mediating force in modern society ("Heirloom"), and tributes to important figures in Jewish culture ("Out of the Pulver and the Polished Lens," about the philosopher Spinoza).

Poems developed ideas forecast in Hath Not a Jew but also reflected Klein's anxieties over current events and the plight of Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. Poems such as "Polish Village," "Meditation Upon Survival," and "Elegy" were thoroughly contemporary accounts of persecution and suffering with which Klein, despite his relative safety in Canada, deeply sympathized.

The Hitleriad was a very different work, a mock epic written in a satricial style reminiscent of Alexander Pope in such works as The Dunciad. In it, Klein attempted to satirize Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cohorts, although later critics often noted that the inescapable bitterness of the subject caused Klein's humorous intentions to go awry.

The Rocking Chair

The success of The Rocking Chair, and other poems owed much to Klein's new-found focus on domestic Canadian subjects, particularly the culture of French Canada, which Klein, fluent in French and sympathetic to their minority status in North America, understood better than most English-Canadian writers of his day. The oft-anthologized title poem, "The Rocking Chair," uses the chair in a rural Quebec house as a synecdoche of French-Canadian heritage.

The book also included such poems as "Lookout: Mont Royal," "Grain Elevator," and "The Cripples," all of which showed Klein at the height of his creative powers and survived long after as lyrical encapsulations of specific aspects and locations of Montreal. A lengthy elegy at the end of the book, "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape," reflected Klein's indignation at the general indifference of the Canadian public to its own literature.

The Second Scroll

Taking cues equally from James Joyce, the Torah and Talmud, and the events of recent history, Klein structured The Second Scroll as a series of 5 chapters, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, each of which corresponds to a book of the Pentateuch. The story's narrator, an unnamed character based loosely on Klein himself, goes in search of his long-lost uncle, Melech Davidson, a Holocaust survivor who drifts to Rome and then Casablanca before immigrating to Israel. Just as the narrator is about to catch up to his mercurial uncle, Davidson is murdered by a group of Palestinians, leaving the end of the novel open as to whether Davidson was a martyr to the Jewish nation or a false Messiah whose heroic status was inflated by his nephew's eagerness to meet his elusive uncle.

Following the main narrative of The Second Scroll is a series of numbered glosses that add further commentary to the narrative in the form of poems, a liturgy, a playlet, and, most notably, a meditative essay on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo.

Recognition

Klein won the Governor General's Award for English language poetry or drama in 1948 for The Rocking Chair, and other poems.

In 1956, Klein was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal by the Royal Society of Canada.

Fellow Jewish-Montrealer Leonard Cohen is an admirer who has cited Klein as an influence and has written a couple of poems as well as a song, "To a Teacher," in Klein's memory.

He is honoured posthumously through the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, presented by the Quebec Writers' Federation.

A play inspired by the poems and life of Klein was produced by Tableau D'Hote Theatre and presented at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal in February 2009.

In popular culture

Mordecai Richler is said to have used Klein as a model for the character L.B. Berger in Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989).

Publications

Poetry

• New Provinces: Poems of various authors ((by Robert Finch, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, E.J. Pratt, F.R. Scott, & A.J.M. Smith). Toronto: Macmillan, 1936.
• Hath Not a Jew.... New York: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1940.
• The Hitleriad. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1944.
• Poems. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944.
• Poems of French Canada. Canadian Jewish Congress, 1947.
• Seven Poems. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1947.
• The Rocking Chair, and other poems. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1948.
• Poets between the Wars (by E.J. Pratt, F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Dorothy Livesay, & A.M. Klein; edited by Milton Thomas Wilson). Toronto & Montreal: McClelland & Stewart (New Canadian Library), 1967.
• The Collected Poems (edited with an introduction by Miriam Waddington). Toronto & New York: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974.
• Complete Poems (edited by Zailig Pollock). (2 volumes), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Volume 1: Original Poems, 1926-1934; Volume 2: Original Poems, 1937-1955, and Poetry Translations.
• Selected Poems (edited by Seymour Mayne, Zailig Pollock, & Usher Caplan). Toronto & Buffalo, NY:: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Plays

• Hershel of Ostropol, published in Canadian Jewish Chronicle 26 and 27, 1939.
• Conscience (adapted from the play The Hands of Euridice by Pedro Bloch, translated by Claude Vincent), produced in New York City, 1952.

Short fiction

• The Second Scroll (novella). New York: Knopf, 1951; Marlboro, VT: Marlboro Press, 1985
  • (with afterword by Moses Steinberg). Toronto: McClelland & Stewart (New Canadian Library), 1961
  • revised edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000
  • (with afterword by Seymour Mayne). Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009
• Short Stories (edited by M.W. Steinberg). Toronto & London: University of Toronto Press, 1983

Non-fiction

• Beyond Sambation: Selected essays and editorials, 1928-1955 (edited by M.W. Steinberg & Usher Caplan). Toronto & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1983.
• Literary Essays and Reviews (edited by M.W. Steinberg & Usher Caplan). Toronto & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1987.

Juvenile

• Doctor Dwarf, and other poems for children (edited by Mary Alice Downie & Barbara Robertson; illustrated by Gail Geltner). Kingston, ON: Quarry Press, 1990.

Collected editions

• Collected Works (edited by M.W. Steinberg & Usher Caplan). Toronto & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1982.

Translated

• Moishe Dickstein, From Palestine to Israel. 1951.
• Israel Rabinovich, Of Jewish Music, Ancient and Modern. Montreal: Montreal Book Centre, 1952.

Letters and journals

• Notebooks: Selections from the A.M. Klein papers (edited by Zailig Pollock & Usher Caplan). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
• A.M. Klein: The letters (edited by Elizabeth Popham). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

• Six Montreal Poets. New York: Folkways Records, 1957. Includes A.J.M. Smith, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek, and A.M. Klein. (cassette, 60 mins).

See also

• Montreal Group poets
• Canadian Jewish poets
• List of Canadian poets
• Timeline of Canadian poetry

References

• Caplan, Usher. Like One That Dreamed: A portrait of A.M. Klein. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1982.
• Marshall, Tom, ed. A.M. Klein: Critical views on Canadian writers. Toronto: Ryerson, 1970.
• Mayne, Seymour, ed. The A.M. Klein Symposium. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1975.
• Pollock, Zailig. A.M. Klein: The story of the poet. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
• Waddington, Miriam. A.M. Klein. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970.

External links

Poems

• "Commercial Bank"
• Canadian Poetry Online: A.M. Klein - Biography and 6 poems (Out of the Pulver and the Polished Lens, Heirloom, For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, Political Meeting, The Mountain, The Elegy)
• A.M. Klein 1909-1972 at the Poetry Foundation

Audio / video

• Describing the Canadian-Jewish Writer A.M. Klein at YouTube

Books

• A.M. Klein at Amazon.com

About

• A.M. Klein in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• "A.M. Klein: Portrait of the poet as person" Jewish Daily Forward
• "Personality and Authority: A.M. Klein's self-portrait" in Canadian Poetry
• The Collected Poems of A.M. Klein reviewed in Canadian Poetry
• "A.M. Klein's The Rocking Chair: Toward the redefinition of the poet's function" in Studies in Canadian Literature