A.M. Klein memorialized as Canadian literary great

Colman, left, and Sandor Klein beside a plaque commemorating their father, A.M. Klein. JANICE ARNOLD PHOTO

Perhaps it’s fitting that seminal Canadian Jewish poet A.M. Klein, who was fascinated by the Catholic society he lived in, should be memorialized in a church.

Abraham Moses Klein of Montreal (1909-1972) has joined a growing pantheon of illustrious Canadian writers from the past enshrined at the historic St. Jax Montréal (formerly St. James the Apostle Anglican Church) on downtown Ste. Catherine Street.

On Oct. 6, a bronze plaque commemorating Klein, author of the Governor General’s award-winning collection The Rocking Chair and Other Poems (1948), was installed in the church’s Writers’ Chapel, in the presence of his two sons Sandor and Colman, and other relatives.

Since 2009, the Writers’ Chapel Trust, a non-profit, volunteer group, independent of the 150-year-old church, has been sponsoring a plaque annually to celebrate Canadian literature and its writers no longer living and often under-appreciated.

“A.M. Klein was massively important… It’s a great pity more are not familiar with his work,” said Michael Gnarowski,“first among equals” of the Trust, a retired Carleton University English professor and co-editor of The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada.

Klein was “a committed member of his community and a staunch citizen of Canada,” the inscription reads.

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The Ukrainian-born Klein is the first Jew among those commemorated, who include such iconic novelists as Hugh MacLennan and Louis Hémon, as well as some who have been largely forgotten, such as Gwethalyn Graham, author of the 1944 novel Earth and High Heaven, which caused ripples in the day with its depiction of the love between a Jewish man and Christian woman in Montreal.

Klein’s disappearance from literary consciousness was premature and remains mysterious. At the height of his creative powers, in the mid-1950s, he stopped writing and withdrew from society, according to biographies, due to severe depression. He died in relative obscurity.

McGill University Jewish studies professor Esther Frank noted that there’s been a revival of scholarly interest in Klein’s work in recent decades. She teaches his lone published novel The Second Scroll (1951), to which students of differing backgrounds respond well, despite its being a rather esoteric Zionist, or even messianic, allegory embedded with Jewish textual references, rendered in an unconventional style. The narrator is a Montreal journalist and editor on a quest to find an uncle he has never met, an elusive Holocaust survivor, which takes him finally to the newly established State of Israel.

The plaque has a quote from the novel: “‘From where comes a Jew?’ he asked. ‘From Canada.’ ‘Canada! A great distance!’”

Klein was something of a renaissance man. A McGill graduate, he studied law at the Université de Montréal and practised the profession, although without much appetite. Though erudite in the classical mould, Klein was equally immersed in the real world and the political and social issues of the day.

For many years, he was editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle and ran unsuccessfully for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner of the New Democratic Party.

And, apparently to make ends meet, he became a publicist and speechwriter for Sam Bronfman, head of Seagram’s and president of Canadian Jewish Congress – fodder for Mordecai Richler’s thinly veiled satire.

Frank thinks Klein’s facility in Yiddish (his mother tongue), Hebrew, English and French (and Latin, Sandor added) gave his writing its polyphonic quality, and his knowledge of the Bible and Talmud its depth. Immersion at McGill in Montreal’s emerging English poetry scene fuelled his natural lyricism.

The competing pressures of the different strands of his life show up in Klein’s writing, especially The Second Scroll, said Frank. “These struggles speak to students today… In my experience, few works have resonated as much with students, emotionally and intellectually… They seem to identify with his struggle.”

Colman Klein said the family is delighted with the tribute. “It’s not given to many people to leave works of lasting value, and my father left many, many,” including his journalism, which “gives a fascinating picture of life in Montreal before, during and after the war.”

He called The Second Scroll “a masterpiece, one of the great books of Canadian literature.” His father, he said, would be happy to once again to be “among his old buddies from McGill – Hugh MacLennan, Art [A.J.M.] Smith and F. R. Scott,” who are also memorialized in the chapel.