(1961)
Alphabet, a new semi-annual edited by James Reaney, is indicative of a growing tendency to regard the individual piece of writing neither as an isolated phenomenon nor as a part of its author’s total outlook or output but as a work whose real context is provided by literature as a whole. Thus, the structure is thematic rather than haphazard (as it would be in a review); and one is well advised to begin at the beginning and end at the end. (Presumably, the absence of a table of contents is intended to discourage browsing.) Such an arrangement is designed both to relate the various works to each other and to a central figure —Narcissus this issue —and to place them along an axis whose poles are Art and Life. Just about everything fits, from the poetry, (by James Reaney, Jay Macpherson, and Daryl Hine, among others), to Jay Macpherson’s pertinent article “Narcissus: Some Uncertain Reflections,” to Hope Arnott Lee’s autobiographical account of the difficulties of twinship, to John Peter’s book review which presents a “billboard image” of Irving Layton as a phallus-waving self-absorbed mirror-gazer.
There are dangers in this sort of selection: for instance, one feels that some of the pieces have to be stretched a little to fit the bed on which Mr. Reaney would have them lie. Also, in reading Alphabet: A Semiannual Devoted to the Iconography of the Imagination, and Reaney’s editorial, one must be careful not to confuse the terms symbol, myth, and icon, which are tossed around quite freely. One of the main pitfalls of “iconographic” writing is over-stylization, or the development of stereotypes; so far, Alphabet has avoided it successfully.
A word must be said in defence of the format, which should not really need any. There seems to be some feeling that Alphabet, being an experimental magazine, should have printed the titles sideways or indulged in some other pseudoartsy puerility to make itself look experimental, instead of adopting its rather conservative design. Considering that it was handset by Reaney himself (which accounts for the educational spelling mistakes and the wobbly lines) and that the emphasis in any literary magazine should be on content rather than appearance, one feels that the editor was well advised to keep things simple.
In conclusion, it should be made clear that Alphabet is not just another “little” magazine. It is, in a very lively sense, a “way of looking at things.” “Besides which,” (to quote the editor again) “it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”
If Reaney were looking for support of his view that symbolism is “a fact of our cultural life,” he need look no farther than Mad Shadows. This is the English title of La Belle Bête, a novel by the young French-Canadian writer Marie-Claire Blais. It is a book that will perturb the reader who is committed to the doctrine of “realism,” in the sense of “naturalism” or “social realism,” in fiction. If one looks for any but the most fleeting reflections of the contemporary French-Canadian scene, one will be looking for the wrong thing. The most fitting context for Mad Shadows is a mythological one: the most fitting myth, Narcissus.
Practically all the characters in the book are, in some way, Narcissus-figures; practically all are, in addition, either physically or spiritually warped. The central figure, Patrice, is a Beautiful Beast who is in love with his own image. His jealous sister Isabelle-Marie is clever, sadistic, and ugly. Their mother, Louise, dotes on Patrice as the image of herself and refuses to admit that he is an idiot. (She spends so much time mirror-gazing that one keeps expecting, “Mirror mirror on the wall…. ”) Lanz, her lover, is also her double—elegant, sensual and hollow. Both their beauties are deceptive: Louise’s face is eventually destroyed by disease, and Lanz is a paste-up composed of a false beard and wig and a gold cane.
The handling of the characters is direct and forceful. The reader is often told about them rather than left to infer, much as a folk-legend tells that a princess is good and a step-mother wicked. The technique has its drawbacks; for instance, when Isabelle-Marie is rather incongruously described as “a creature of innate purity,” or when Patrice asks, after his sister has disfigured him by pushing his head into boiling water, “Mother, why didn’t you tell me that I was an idiot?” The plot is treated in the same forthright manner. Time goes forward in a straight narrative line (no flashbacks); again, much in the style of the folk-myth. The action is violent, as are all the deaths; and emotions throughout are of the extremest nature.
Mad Shadows might be accused of melodrama, were it not for its saving graces. Because the book is completely self-sustaining and self-contained, small defects may easily be passed over and exaggerations accepted. The world of Miss Blais is not that of so-called “real life.” It is a world of the imagination, of myth, somehow more real for its exclusion of sociological paraphernalia. It possesses almost ritual undertones, and is able to create strangely evocative images out of strangely intense relationships. It gets down to the primal, and sacrifices naturalism and subtlety in the process; but the sacrifice is justified in a work so rewardingly original.
The total effect is overpowering; one almost needs a page of Henry James as an antidote.