The Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies - Vol. 4 ... - EPA

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which took place in the pages of the popular weekly Saturday Night, theeditors of Canada's Hungarian-language Communist press refrainedfrom further public debate with Kirkconnell and contented themselveswith name-calling. In 1944 they called Kirkconnell a "mad dog," andasserted that his Seven Pillars of Freedom contained all the "craftyintrigue, perversion and falsehood of this notorious professor." 37Whereas Kirkconnell's anti-Communist writings were designedmainly to warn the Canadian public against the dangers of a MoscowcontrolledLeft, some of his other pronouncements during these yearsserved to help Canada's immigrant minorities. Many Canadians stillregarded central and eastern European immigrants with suspicion.Such suspicions were particularly widespread during periods of crisis.In the troubled I930's, for example, radical tendencies intensifiedamong most Canadian groups, especially the country's immigrants.This is not surprising, because these people tended to suffer the most. Itwas the most recent arrivals who were least equipped to cope witheconomic difficulties and psychological stress. Indeed, it is a wonderthat not more immigrants became radicalized. But the few who did werenoisy; and they confirmed many native Canadians' suspicions andincreased their fear of all immigrants.The outbreak of the Second World War heightened these suspicions.Many native Canadians would not believe that immigrants from enemycountries could be depended upon to support the Canadian war-effort.Hungarians were included among those suspected of latent disloyalty,even though their home country was late and reluctant in joining theAxis war-effort, and Hungarian-Canadians repeatedly declared theirloyalty to Canada.But the general public did not believe such declarations.Fortunately for Canada's Magyar residents, Professor Kirkconnellundertook the task of convincing his fellow countrymen thatHungarians, like Canada's other central European immigrants, wereneither dangerous radicals nor potentially disloyal subjects.Kirkconnell devoted more than a third of his book, Canada, Europeand Hitler, to this subject. He conceded that Canadians of continentalEuropean descent, unlike their English-speaking compatriots, had noparticular affection for Britain. But Kirkconnell maintained that thisfact did not mean that these immigrants were disloyal to Canada. Infact, their allegiance, like that of French-Canadians, was first and foremostto Canada. A thorough examination of the public and pressstatements of Canada's ethnic groups of European background ledKirkconnell to conclude that:
While some of the groups have been seriously exposed to the propagandaof Communism and Fascism, and a minority among them haveeven succumbed to such external pressure, the majority, by reason ofthese very attempts at penetration, are all the better aware of thechallenge to democracy and liberty involved in the rise of Hitler. 39New Canadians in general, and Hungarian-Canadians in particular,were fortunate during the war to have had a spokesman like Kirkconnell.Popularizing New Canadian LiteraturesStill another way in which Professor Kirkconnell assisted Canadiansof European background was to encourage and popularize the works ofimmigrant poets and writers. He himself discovered the richness of thevirtually unknown non-English and non-French Canadian literaturealmost by accident. Canadian texts of literary history and criticismnever even mentioned works written in other than English or French.The country's immigrants were presumed to have no literary traditionof their own. But Kirkconnell found that a section of Wesley College'slibrary was filled with books and journals written in Icelandic, producedby authors in both Iceland and Canada. Further investigationrevealed that much Icelandic poetry had been written by members ofManitoba's compact little Icelandic community. Later, when Kirkconnellacquainted himself with some of the city's other ethnic groups,he realized that Winnipeg's Magyars, Ukrainians, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians,Germans, Greeks, and Italians were also creating their "considerableliteratures." 40The discovery of a new, wealthy branch of Canadian literatureprompted Kirkconnell to study New Canadian letters systematically.He began to amass his own collection of literature produced byCanada's European immigrants, to seek out their poets and writers, andto start accumulating biographical and bibliographical information onthem. In 1935 he published an anthology of New Canadian poetry, to befollowed by a series of studies on New Canadian belles lettres, publishedmainly in the University of Toronto Quarterly. In his memoirs, ProfessorKirkconnell evaluated the literature of New Canadians as follows:Taken together, these minor literatures present an unrivalled picture ofhuman predicament, of lives uprooted from a country and plantedafresh with difficulty in Canadian soil. 41The volume of this literature was so extensive that, by the time he retired
Page 1 and 2: Canadian-American Review of Hungari
Page 9 and 10: the best possible settlers who woul
Page 11 and 12: than a decade later they were follo
Page 13 and 14: Sociologists have yet to explain sa
Page 15: fifteen minutes, and spent the rest
Page 18 and 19: from the "Canadian poetry" of Icela
Page 20 and 21: garian community of Western Canada,
Page 22 and 23: lowed translations from other, more
Page 27 and 28: from teaching in 1968, Kirkconnell
Page 29 and 30: Magyar poets and writers to the rea
Page 31 and 32: tive of his helpful attitude and un
Page 33: 33. Kirkconnell, A Slice of Canada,
Page 36 and 37: The groaning of the slaves on Egypt
Page 38 and 39: ecause most such lines are imbedded
Page 40 and 41: ;Two spheres contend with one anoth
Page 42 and 43: matched it to this feeble hurdy-gur
Page 44 and 45: NOTES1. The only full-length study
Page 46 and 47: terest in Hungarian literature, has
Page 48 and 49: limitations of Bowring and others:
Page 50 and 51: Jones' Five Hungarian WritersJ 4 Su
Page 53 and 54: REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Poetry in E
Page 55 and 56: ooks written in English. A table of
Page 57 and 58: passive, or into noun phrases in En
Page 59 and 60: REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Religious P
Page 61 and 62: magas és a mély magánhangzójú
Page 63 and 64: SPECIAL SECTIONToldiAn Epic Poem (1
Page 65 and 66: CANTO ONE"He lifted, with one hand,
Page 67 and 68: "Who should be squire of this whole
Page 69 and 70: What meant this hubbub in a widow's
Page 71 and 72: "Lad, here's your share! Don't say
Page 73 and 74: The heavy stone flies on: where wil
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The homes of moorhen, plover, gull
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Perhaps I'll shed my blood, some no
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CANTO FIVENicholas went wandering a
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Her tongue was like a coulter in th
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Rosemary pots mourned on its window
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Such were her words. No more would
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As if a nest of hornets rose to sti
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Upon an isle, by a Czech's hand the
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REVIEW ARTICLEQuo Vadis Transylvani
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Hungarians in Rumania in terms of t
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down by serious shortcomings in bot
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alanced presentation of the Vienna
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talent enables Wass to depict the s
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Carpathian Federation, and printed
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Now and then, however, this rule de
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temper such an indictment by recogn
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OUR CONTRIBUTORS (continued from pa
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TO THOSE WISHING TO SUBMIT MANUSCRI
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