{"id":6172,"date":"2020-10-09T18:25:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T22:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.attlc-ltac.org\/?p=6172"},"modified":"2020-10-09T18:25:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T22:25:48","slug":"george-johnston-1913-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.attlc-ltac.org\/fr\/george-johnston-1913-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"George Johnston – 1913-2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1913, George Johnston retired to the Quebec countryside after twenty-nine years as professor of English at Carleton University. Family man as well as poet, translator and teacher. Publications include six books of original poetry, one memoir of the painter, Carl Schaefer, four books of translated poetry, three Icelandic sagas in translation, and a modern Icelandic short novel in translation. Forthcoming translations: a Faroese novel, a book of Norwegian poetry (poems of Knut Odegard), and an Icelandic saga. A few articles, short stories, critical reviews and radio programmes. Languages translated: Old and Modern Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and French. War service: four and a half years, pilot in the RCAF.<\/p>\n

George Johnston memorial<\/a> by Stephen Morrisey from the League of Canadian Poets.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div>
A Poet of Subtlety and Grace<\/em><\/h5>\n
Although virtually unknown in Canada, the expert in Old English and Norse had an international reputation as a translator<\/h6>\n

By Sandra Martin
\nSaturday, August 28, 2004 – Globe & Mail page F8<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permisson<\/p>\n

By profession, George Johnston was a professor of Old and Middle English. By vocation, he was one of the finest poets of the age and a revered scholar and translator of Old Norse and Faroese. By inclination, he was a calligrapher, a beekeeper and a gardener. And by reputation, he was a man as beautiful of appearance as he was of spirit.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0He brought such a sense of delight, such spontaneity to Chaucer, that I caught it like a virus,\u00a0\u00bb broadcaster Robert MacNeil wrote in his book Starstruck, about being a student in Mr. Johnston’s class at Carleton University in Ottawa in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

P.K. Page, herself a dab hand at metre and rhythm, praised Mr. Johnston’s deceptively simple and light verse by saying he was \u00ab\u00a0a master watchmaker who can also build Big Ben.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

His editor, writer John Metcalf, railed: \u00ab\u00a0He was a formalist poet of great subtlety, who has been excluded from any ongoing account of Canadian poetry, yet he stands at the centre of the best there is and you can only explain his neglect by saying people are uncouth and ill-educated.\u00a0\u00bb
\nMr. Johnston, who died on Aug. 10 of Alzheimer’s disease, was born in Hamilton on Oct. 7, 1913. His father, an Irish immigrant who worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway, was said to have passed his working days reciting Milton over the thunder of the locomotives.<\/p>\n

After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto in 1936, Mr. Johnston spent the summer bicycling through Hitler’s belligerent Germany before settling in England, where he earned a living as a freelance writer. When war was declared, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and served as a reconnaissance pilot, mainly in Africa.<\/p>\n

At war’s end, he returned to Canada and married Jeanne McRae, the woman who would be his wife and partner for the next 60 years. He went to U of T to do graduate work before embarking on his academic career, first at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. (1947-49) and then Carleton College, later University, where he taught until his retirement in 1979.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0He was well established [as a teacher of Old and Middle English] at Carleton when I arrived in 1966 and we took a liking to each other,\u00a0\u00bb said James Downey, a past president of the University of Waterloo. \u00ab\u00a0He was tall and handsome with gorgeous blue eyes and he had a certain eccentricity about him — he wore a gold earring years before anybody else did.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

Mr. Downey, now a senior administrator at the university, remembers that Mr. Johnston kept an old sawhorse in his office, on which he would lay out his students’ essays, and he used a straight-back farmhouse chair at a time when his colleagues opted for modern furniture.
\n\u00ab\u00a0And no telephone. He would not allow a telephone in his office.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

From Anglo-Saxon, Mr. Johnston developed an interest in Old Norse, Icelandic and Faroese. One of the more significant influences on his mature poetry was the sabbatical year he spent in England in 1956 studying Old Norse, which eventually gave him an additional career as a translator of sagas.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1960s, he spent a year in Denmark learning Danish and made the first of four visits to the Faroe Islands to immerse himself in the spirit of the people and the place. Subsequently, he added Icelandic and Norwegian to his linguistic and teaching repertoire.<\/p>\n

His translations, including The Saga of Gisli (1965) The Faroe Islanders’ Saga (1975), The Greenlanders’ Saga (1976), Rocky Shores (1981) and Seeing and Remembering (1988), made him appreciate the intricate formal techniques of both the sagas and more modern Nordic poetry and adapt these forms into his own work.<\/p>\n

Although he was virtually unknown in Canada, his translations eventually earned him an international reputation. \u00ab\u00a0People have told me that you can go to Iceland and ordinary people on the street will say, ‘Ahh, George Johnston,’ and start reciting things,\u00a0\u00bb Mr. Metcalf said. Mr. Johnston was also writing his own poetry, much of it composed while he was walking and all of it committed to memory. The Cruising Auk was published in 1959.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0They seem to belong to a complete and self-sufficient world that unifies the book: a small city like Ottawa that has not yet acquired the anonymity of a huge metropolis is viewed as if through reflecting mirrors that distort and change perspectives,\u00a0\u00bb literary critic W.J. Keith wrote of the poems in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature<\/em>. \u00ab\u00a0Their wit and satiric edge are sharpened by the apparently simple stanzaic forms, playful metres and rhymes,\u00a0\u00bb he concluded.<\/p>\n

Home Fires<\/em> followed in 1966, a collection that Mr. Keith described as involving some of the same characters and \u00ab\u00a0displaying similar qualities of lively wit and fluent movement\u00a0\u00bb but also evincing Mr. Johnston’s more mature form of using colloquial speech, varied rhymes and personal experience.<\/p>\n

He continued to experiment and to refine his technique in Happy Enough<\/em> (1972), Losing a Grip<\/em> (1979), Ask Again<\/em> (1984), Endeared by Dark: The Collected Poems<\/em>, which Mr. Metcalf edited for The Porcupine’s Quill<\/em> in 1990, and What is to Come<\/em> (1996).<\/p>\n

All of this time, Mr. Johnston and his wife were raising their six children, three sons and three daughters.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0He was great fun,\u00a0\u00bb said Mr. Downey, who remained a friend for 40 years. \u00ab\u00a0We used to have dances and lobster dinners in the University Club, where George loved to cut a rug. He and Jeanne were just full of it [life]. It is not too much to say I loved them both.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

Victoria-based Ms. Page met Mr. Johnston at a literary party in Ottawa in the 1970s. \u00ab\u00a0He was very tall with a white beard. I felt he was Scandinavian, but he said he wasn’t,\u00a0\u00bb she remembers.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0He was wildly witty and his early poetry was hysterically funny,\u00a0\u00bb she said. \u00ab\u00a0He had a big family and they all adored each other and a lot of his poetry was about his kids.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

Added Mr. Metcalf, who knew Mr. Johnston since the late 1980s, \u00ab\u00a0The thing that struck you when you met him for the first time was his kindness and gentleness more than any immediate sense of brilliance or intellect. It was just this incredible kindness towards people.\u00a0\u00bb
\nMr. Johnston’s sonnet Cathleen Sweeping, about watching a girl (his three-year-old daughter) engrossed in her task, makes the poet, his \u00ab\u00a0thoughts as small and busy as her broom,\u00a0\u00bb first doubt and then \u00ab\u00a0delight\u00a0\u00bb in the child’s insouciant energy and optimism.<\/p>\n

About this poem, Ms. Page has written: \u00ab\u00a0He celebrates the world and our comings and goings. He reminds us that we are human and that we can love one another and he rarely forgets the big summing up.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

Montreal writer Robyn Sarah, in an essay in The Globe and Mail<\/em> in 2000, called the poem a \u00ab\u00a0miracle of compression\u00a0\u00bb and a \u00ab\u00a0seemingly effortless fusion of form and meaning.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

She said his models came from the English lyricists and from Old English, but he went his own way, never courting the spotlight or becoming a \u00ab\u00a0career\u00a0\u00bb poet.<\/p>\n

Ms. Page, who remembers Mr. Johnston pulling a comb of honey out of his suitcase on a visit to Victoria, corresponded with him for years. He had a very sophisticated ear, she said, and that, and his humour, may be part of the reason he isn’t better known. \u00ab\u00a0Everybody is writing free verse now and they haven’t educated their inner ear to hear subtle rhythms and he was capable of writing in the most extraordinary verse forms.\u00a0\u00bb
\nShe once described his poems as sounding as casual as neighbours’ talk, but as intricate as lace.<\/p>\n

Writer Mark Abley met Mr. Johnston in the 1980s and came to know him well during the years Mr. Abley was book editor and literary columnist for The Gazette in Montreal.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0I think he would have been much better known if he had engaged in the back-scratching and backbiting activities that so many writers do, but he didn’t need to do that to feed his ego. Besides not playing the game, his work tends to be more formalist than has been the norm in Canadian poetry for the past 30 years,\u00a0\u00bb said Mr. Abley, who has committed some of Mr. Johnston’s poems, including In It, to memory. \u00ab\u00a0It is a funny poem, but a very serious poem and because it has that patterning, you can say it to yourself on the bus.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

Among his younger admirers was poet Carmine Starnino, who said that \u00ab\u00a0neglect hurts readers as much as poets.\u00a0\u00bb In his view, Canadian poetry cannot really come of age until Mr. Johnston’s work is widely circulated and included in major anthologies.
\nIf Mr. Johnston himself felt ignored, he never complained publicly.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Mr. Downey visited the Johnstons in Huntingdon, Que., near the U.S. border, where they had retired. Mr. Johnston kept bees and continued a wide correspondence in his beautiful italic script and he and his wife read aloud to each other in the afternoons from Dickens, George Eliot and the Bible until the fog of Alzheimer’s closed in on him.<\/p>\n

Mr. Downey said he spoke on the telephone to Jeanne a day or two after her husband’s death and \u00ab\u00a0got the distinct impression that she wouldn’t mind following his lead.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

As on the dance floor, so in life. Jeanne McRae Johnston, who had lovingly cared for her husband through the ravages of his illness, succumbed to a heart attack on Aug. 20, nine days after his death. \u00ab\u00a0I’m sure she hung on just to keep an eye on him,\u00a0\u00bb Ms. Page said fondly.<\/p>\n

A joint memorial service was held for both of them yesterday at the United Church in Huntingdon.<\/p>\n

THE HUMOUR IN THE VERSE
\nIn It
\nThe world is a boat and I’m in it
\nGoing like hell with the breeze;
\nImportant people are in it as well
\nGoing with me and the breeze like hell —
\nIt’s a kind of race and we’ll win it.
\nOut of our way, gods, please!
\nThe world is a game and I’m in it
\nFor the little I have, no less;
\nImportant people are in it for more,
\nThey watch the wheel, I watch the door.
\nWho was the first to begin it?
\nNobody knows, but we guess.
\nThe world is a pond and I’m in it,
\nIn it up to my neck;
\nImportant people are in it too,
\nIt’s deeper than this, if we only knew;
\nUnder we go, any minute —
\nA swirl, some bubbles, a fleck . . .
\nO Earth, Turn!
\nThe little blessed Earth that turns
\nDoes so on its own concerns
\nAs though it weren’t my home at all;
\nIt turns me winter, summer, fall
\nWithout a thought of me.
\nI love the slightly flattened sphere,
\nIts restless, wrinkled crust’s my here,
\nIts slightly wobbling spin’s my now
\nBut not my why and not my how:
\nMy why and how are me.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div>

Translated Works<\/strong><\/p>\n

Original: ANONYMOUS
\nF\u00e6reyingasaga and Gr\u00e6nlendingasaga
\nStofnun \u00c1rna Magnsonar \u00c1 Islandi
\nReykjav\u00edk: 1987, 142 p.
\nTranslation: Thrand of Gotu
\nErin, Ontario: Porcupine’s Quill Press, 1994, 188 p.<\/p>\n

Original: JACOBSEN, J\u00f8rgen-Frantz
\nBarbara
\nCopenhagen: Gyldendal, 1938
\nTranslation: Barbara
\nNorwich, England: Norvik Press, 1993, 258 p.<\/p>\n

Original: \u00d8DEGARD, Knut
\nBiesurr, Laksesprang
\nJ.W. Cappelens Forlag A\/S, 1983
\nTranslation: Bee-Buzz, Salmon-Leap
\nPenumbra, 1988<\/p>\n

Original: SIGURDSSON, Olafur Johann
\nBref Sera Bodvars
\nReykjavik: Heimskringla, 1945
\nTranslation: Pastor Bodvar\u2019s Letter
\nPenumbra, 1986<\/p>\n

Original: \u00d8DEGARD, Knut
\n(Poet\u2019s selection)
\nNorway: 1967-1979
\nTranslation: Wind over Romsdal
\nPenumbra, 1982<\/p>\n

Original: Translator\u2019s selection
\nFaroe Islands (Torshaun), 1900-1974
\nTranslation: Rocky Shores
\nPaisley, Scotland: Wilfion, 1981<\/p>\n

Original: ANONYMOUS (Olafur Halldorsson, ed.)
\nGroenlendinga Saga
\nReykjavik: Graenlands annal, 1976
\nTranslation: The Greenlanders\u2019 Saga
\nOttawa: Oberon, 1976<\/p>\n

Original: ANONYMOUS (Olafur Halldorsson, ed.)
\nFaereyinga Saga
\nReykjavik: Jon Helgason HF, 1967
\nTranslation: The Faroe Islanders\u2019 Saga
\nOttawa: Oberon<\/p>\n

Original: ANONYMOUS (Bjorn K. Porolfsson, ed.)
\nGislasaga Sursson
\nReykjavik: Islenzk Fornrit (vol. VI)
\nTranslation: The Saga of Gisli
\nLondon\/Toronto: Dent & University of Toronto Press, 1963<\/p>\n

Original: MATRAS, Christian
\nUr sjon og ur minni
\nThe Faroese Academy and Penumbra
\nTranslation: Seeing and Remembering
\nThe Faroese Academy and Penumbra<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div>