Introduction
A scholar, poet, naval officer and secret intelligence agent, gifted amateur musician, biographer, and translator, George Whalley (1915-1983) was an exceptionally accomplished individual. He was an eminent man of letters in Canada whose scholarship on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and contributions to Queen's University overshadowed his talents as a poet. Whalley wrote poetry for five decades, from 1933 to 1982. He made at least two-hundred and fifty poems and published seventy-five from 1933 to 1967. Among them are some of the finest poems of the second world war. They arose from Whalley's experiences aboard Royal Navy ships, his involvement in the pursuit and sinking of the Bismarck, his work as an Admiralty intelligence officer in London, North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and elsewhere, and his time on leave from the conflict, which included falling in love with and marrying Elizabeth. As David Lewis argues, Whalley's "war poems display a mature range and scope that is unrivalled by any of the other second-world-war poets with whom he clearly deserves equal mention" (732). "Whalley deserves to be considered Canada’s major war poet," argues John Ferns, "and 'Battle Pattern' one of the great Canadian poems as well as one of the best and most moving poems written about war." As a counterpart to The Complete Poems of George Whalley, which prints Whalley's entire poetic ouvre for the first time, the Selected Poems of George Whalley: A Digital Edition is intended to open a window into Whalley's process of composition.
Whalley thought much about poetry and the process of making it. Following the second world war, he embarked on an inquiry into art and artistic experience, problems he thought were not adequately treated in philosophy, psychology, and criticism (Poetic Process, page xvi). He built the inquiry out of his extensive reading in literature and philosophy during and immediately after the war. The first fruit of that labour was an MA thesis he finished in 1948 at Bishop’s University entitled “A Critique of Criticism: Prolegomena to the Study of Poetic Process.” Within a few years this study was transformed into Poetic Process: An Essay in Poetics, which was published in 1953 after Whalley completed his PhD at King’s College, London and took up a position in the English Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, having returned to the place he was born. From that time Whalley continuously thought about the making of art, the activity of thinking, and the shape of the language in which the drama of our thoughts and feelings find shape in their unfolding. In an essay entitled “On Translating Aristotle's Poetics,” he points to how in the Greek language of Aristotle’s time the words for poet (a maker) and poetry (“the process or activity of making”) are rooted in doing and making (Aristotle’s Poetics, page 11). The words that dominate the essay – action and energy – signal the focus of Whalley’s thinking about poetry.
The purpose of this digital edition is to reveal Whalley’s “intelligence and imagination at work” in the making of his poems, an aim analogous to his intention in translating Aristotle anew (Aristotle’s Poetics, page 6). Included here are nine poems, which are chosen for two reasons. Each one has a rich collection of extant manuscripts and typescripts through which we can trace Whalley’s process of composition. This selection of poems – two from the 1940s, four during the 1950s, and three from the 1960s – begins with works written in the period during which Whalley wrote the greatest number of his poems and ends in the period during which Whalley last published verse. The poems, with information regarding the earliest extant draft and the first publication, are as follows:
- “Battle Pattern,” drafted 4 June 1941 and published in No Man an Island in 1948;
- “Letter from Lagos,” drafted 9 December 1945 and last revised 6 May 1946, and published in The Complete Poems of George Whalley;
- “Night Flight,” drafted 21 December 1951 and published in 1952 in Queen’s Quarterly, in 1953 in The Mitre, and in 1958 in The New York Book Review and Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems;
- “Elegy,” drafted 6 January 1952 and published in 1953-54 in Queen’s Quarterly in and in 1955 in Canadian Anthology;
- “Lazarus,” drafted 6 September 1952 and published in 1956 in Queen’s Quarterly and in 1957 in Best Poems of 1956: Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards 1957 and in 1958 in Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems;
- “Dionysiac,” drafted 31 May 1959 and published in 1965 in English Poetry in Quebec: Proceedings of the Foster Poetry Conference October 12-14 1963;
- “A Minor Poet is Visited by the Muse,” drafted 23 July 1964 and published in The Collected Poems of George Whalley;
- “Calligrapher,” drafted 29 November 1964 and published in 1967 in Yes;
- “Pig,” drafted 30 October 1965 and published in 1967 in Quarry.
“Pig” is the last poem Whalley published in his lifetime. Several previously unpublished poems appeared in the 1986 book The Collected Poems of George Whalley, which was edited by his friend George Johnston.
Also included in this edition are complete digital reproductions of the two books of poems Whalley published during his life: Poems 1939-1944 (1946), and No Man an Island (1948). The extant letters from Whalley’s side of the correspondence with Jim McNeillie and R.W.W. Robertson of Clarke, Irwin, and Company are here to illuminate the process of bringing No Man an Island into print.
Detailed notes accompany each of the individual poems. These notes are intended to help readers navigate through the history of composition embodied in the many fragments and drafts for each poem. For Poems 1939-1944 and No Man an Island, a single provides a brief overview of the context in which they were published.
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In a letter to his daughter Katharine dated 28 July 1970, Whalley offered a rare insight into his process of writing:
More often than not, when I am writing something I have a germinal idea that I can scarcely formulate. The first draft (and more often than not, two or three later drafts) fishes out the germ and places it among the materials that will nourish it into the light. The purpose (I think) is not to arrive at a formulation of the “germ” but to let the germ come to life and grow – to declare itself through the life it makes for itself. What the germ declares is not itself, but the life implicit in it, in the way that an acorn is no substitute for an oak tree; and the end of the process is not so much something seen as an activity of seeing, dominated no doubt by the germinal idea, in which all the materials, the large structure, the texture, and the tune are essential rather than ancillary.
Though not all of the poems follow the same trajectory, some evidence of the movement Whalley describes in the letter can be seen with “W.K.E.,” which was published in No Man an Island. The initials are for William K. Evers, a friend and rowing mate of Whalley’s at Oxford before the war. When he learned of Evers’ death on 12 January 1941, Whalley wrote a brief note in his diary: “Letter from Peter Scott, including news of Bill Evers’ death in Egypt in Spring” (Diary IV, 61). The same day, he wrote a letter to his mother, Dorothy Whalley, relaying the news. Reading back in time from “W.K.E.,” one can see in the letter an early step in the process of composing the poem without attributing to Whalley the conscious decision to make it. A section of the original lengthy paragraph reads:
He was a leading light at Henley when we won the Visitors – and well he deserved to be for he had rowed Head of the River three times and had six or seven oars hanging on his wall. It was a joy to see him handle a book, for he loved them and his hands showed it. His rooms were full of books and I remember many occasions of tea in his digs […] with talk about books, poems, military history which he never tired of reading, TE Lawrence, Liddell Hart and other of his literary heroes. That wonderful enthusiasm that made his explanations vivid patient and contagious made him an excellent rowing coach. Always I think of his hands for they were very graceful, the hands of an artist that could have drawn music from a piano or fiddle. He had a funny little habit of rubbing the top of his forehead with the tips of his fingers when he was reading or thinking. When last I saw him he had taken a position in a school in Devon as a history master and surely he would have made a brilliant success of it. The war took him from that for he had been a keen OTC man and doubtless felt some obligation to serve although he was in a reserved profession. Then one day in Egypt a bomb comes out of the sky and Bill has finished with his books, his walks, his crumpets in the JCR, his rowing. (Letter to Dorothy Whalley dated 12 January 1941)
Later in the war Whalley writes again of Evers. A diary entry dated 26 September 1943 recalls the letter he wrote to his mother:
It is his hands particularly that I remember – scholarly hands, musician’s hands which, had he played the piano, would have had a touch of firm delicacy. And it’s sitting in the JCR, reading, that I remember him – one hand in graceful repose, holding the book with the scholar’s caress as though he could taste the texture of the paper and the binding and were savouring their texture. His other hand would rub abstractedly the forehead at his hair’s parting. Behind his spectacles his blue eyes were full of peace, of boyish concentration – and [there] was something boyish to his ready smile and his enthusiastic springy walk. To see him handle a book made one realise what subtlety of texture there is in paper; what mysterious artistry there is in the perfectly formed letter, the perfectly balanced page – and all that reached him through his hands and one could feel it most intimately to watch him. He had a scholar’s mind – clear, incisive, devout; but unerringly just and appreciative; so that we had come to expect from his pen and his lectures work compatible with the generous warmth of his friendship. He was most loved because he always seemed able to draw out, accentuate and appreciate the best in anybody he met.
Those hands of his were beautiful and spiritual and creative; not made for dealing death. Now it is not surprising (though at the time it was a bitter grief) that an Italian bomb killed him at Mersah Mutruh in the fall of 1940 before the Libyan fighting had entered its long pitiful remorselessness. I cannot see those hands with blood on them. (Diary VII 29-30)
Immediately following the entry Whalley begins revising and refining it. The memories of Evers twice committed to paper can be seen as the germs that are becoming refashioned into verse:
It is his hands that I remember –
Scholarly hands with the firm
Delicacy of a musician’s.
And when he held a book
His hands savoured the texture
Of the paper and the binding.
The subtle and mysterious
Artistry of the letter
Perfectly formed and the perfect
Balance of a page
Seemed to be sensed by touch
And watching him you knew it.
In the first autumn of war It is not to be wondered at
Before the tragic heartbreak That in the first autumn
Of the desert ebb and flow Before the bitter fighting
An Italian bomb killed him Broke the desert solitude,
At random at Mersa Matruh A random bomb killed him.
His hands were spiritual
gentle and creative.
I cannot imagine them
With blood (Diary VII 30)
One more step in the process of composition appears in manuscript dated 3 November 1943.
When he held a book
His fingers savoured the texture
Of the paper and the binding.
It seemed that the mysterious
Artistry of the letter
Perfectly formed and the perfect
Balance of a page
Were known to him by touch.
And when you watched his strong
Sensitive fingers you knew
His deep quiet delight.
This differs in the first part from the published version, reproduced here:
It is his hands that I remember:
scholarly hands with the firm
delicacy of a musician’s.
When he held a book
his fingers savoured the texture
of paper and binding.
It seemed as though he knew
by touch the mysterious
artistry of the letter
perfectly formed, the perfect
balance of a page;
and when you watched his strong
sensitive fingers you shared
the depth of his delight.
You cannot imagine hands
so spiritual and gentle
turned to the uses of war.
It is not to be wondered at
that in the first autumn
before the bitter fighting
startled the desert solitude
a random bomb killed him.
There are other examples. In one instance, the origins of three poems, “Initial Assault – Sicily,” “Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward,” and “Five Years,” are embedded in a lengthy diary entry containing his eyewitness account of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily (Diary VII 19-26). Another entry in a diary recounting a secret intelligence operation codenamed “Tenderly” is a prose version of what became “Gunboat Sortie” (Diary VI 26-9).
Through this digital edition, readers can make their own inquiries into Whalley’s process of composition and explore some of the questions about art and the experience of making art that preoccupied Whalley for much of his adult life.
Works Cited
Baxter, John, and Patrick Atherton. Aristotle’s Poetics: Translated and With a Commentary by George Whalley. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1997.
DiSanto, Michael John. Ed. The Complete Poems of George Whalley. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2016.
Ferns, John. "Life of George Whalley." http://georgewhalley.ca. Web. 17 Sept 2016.
Johnston, George. Ed. The Collected Poems of George Whalley. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1986.
Lewis, David. Review of The Collected Poems of George Whalley. Queen's Quarterly 94 (1987): 730-32.
Whalley, George. "Calligrapher.” Yes 16 (October 1967).
---. Diary IV. 1936-1938. Whalley Estate Papers. Southwold, England.
---. Diary VI. 1939. Whalley Estate Papers. Southwold, England.
---. Diary VII. 1943. Whalley Estate Papers. Southwold, England.
---. “Dionysiac” English Poetry in Quebec: Proceedings of the Foster Poetry Conference October 12-14 1963. Ed. John Glassco. Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965. 133-5.
---. “Elegy.” Queen’s Quarterly 60.4 (Winter 1953-54): 551-3.
---. “Elegy.” Canadian Anthology. Ed. C.F. Klinck and R.E. Watters. Toronto: W.J. Gage and Company, 1955. 445-47.
---. “Lazarus.” Best Poems of 1956: Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards 1957: A Compilation of Original Poetry published in the English-speaking World in 1956. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1957. 95-6.
---. “Lazarus.“ Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems. Ed. Irving Layton. Pan, 4 Issues of Poetry: Number Two. New York, 1958.
---. “Lazarus.” Queen’s Quarterly 63.1 (Spring 1956): 69-70.
---. Letter to Dorothy Whalley. MS. 12 January 1941. Loc # 5043. Box 2, File 41. Queen’s University Archives, Kingston.
---. Letter to Katharine Whalley. TS. 28 July 1970. MS. Katharine Clark Papers. McBride, BC.
---. “Night Flight.” New York Book Review. 1 June 1958. 2.
---. “Night Flight.” Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems. Ed. Irving Layton. Pan, 4 Issues of Poetry: Number Two. New York, 1958.
---. “Night Flight.” Queen’s Quarterly 59.1 (Spring 1952): 24.
---. “Night Flight.” The Mitre: Diamond Jubilee Issue 60.3 (1953): 42-3.
---. No Man An Island. Toronto: Clarke & Irwin, 1948.
---. “Pig.” Quarry 16.2 (January 1967): 10-11.
---. Poems 1939-1944. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946.
---. Poetic Process: An Essay in Poetics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1953.
---. “W.K.E.” MS. 3 November 1943. Whalley Estate Papers. Southwold, England.