Return of the Sphinx, page 4
These characters and their actions play out the Oedipal legend not only from a sexual and inter-generational perspective but also in recreating the rivalry and alienation between Oedipus’ children, who turn on one another in their attempts to gain power. The result is the destruction of Thebes. In their inability to work together, Chantal and Daniel bring about the same end for their kingdom. For MacLennan, Thebes is not merely Canada – it is all civilization.
At the end of the novel, Alan Ainslie symbolically makes a pilgrimage across Canada and then retreats to his cottage in the Laurentians. There, he thinks back to a time when his wife was alive and his children were young and innocent. Despite his personal commitment and sacrifices he realizes he has failed – as a husband, as a father, and as a politician. He was unable to protect his wife from being run over. He is alienated from his children. All his work toward bridging the English and French divide in Canada is undermined when Bulstrode announces the creation of yet another Royal Commission to study the problem. He realizes that the vision of being able to effect change is illusory: that mankind’s belief in self-determination is both arrogant and ridiculous. Ultimately, “nothing he could think, say or do could be of the least significance to anyone” (RS 165). Ainslie turns away from the hope once offered by belief in his own agency. In an epiphanic moment,
He at last accepted that he had merely happened into all this. Constance, Chantal, Daniel, Gabriel – they and all the others had merely happened into this loveliness that nobody could understand or possess, and that some tried to control or destroy just because they were unable to possess or understand it. Merely happened into this joy and pain and movement of lives, of hope, fear, shame and the rest of it, the little chipmunk triumphs and defeats. He believed it would endure. He thanked God he had been of it, was of it. (RS 303)
Unlike his earlier novels, Return of the Sphinx, concludes uneasily. There is no clear resolution, nor is there hope for a better world. Indeed, in the same way that Ainslie comes to realize he has no answers, the reader is also led to this realization. As Ainslie meditates on the landscape in front of him he knows that the Sphinx has returned. He knows, too, that trouble and chaos will follow. His only solace is the knowledge that something far deeper and far more powerful continues to work mysteriously in the universe – something in the land that is eternal and timeless – that it is “too vast even for fools to ruin all of it” (RS 303).
COLLETT TRACEY
Carleton University
NOTES
1 The Nova Scotia Museum, Department of Tourism and Culture.
2 The Quiet Revolution was less a revolution than a shift in the social and political climate of Quebec. It followed the death of Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis (1890–1959), the long-serving conservative premier of the province. Allied with the Catholic Church, Duplessis had slowed the pace of modernization in Quebec. His political party, the Union Nationale, was defeated in 1960 by the Liberals, led by Jean Lesage. The publication of Les insolences du Frère Untel (1960), a reformist critique of Quebec education and society by J.P. Desbiens, helped usher in a new era in Quebec life and politics.
3 The social activism of these individuals would extend well beyond Quebec. Trudeau, Pelletier, and Marchand would be recruited by Lester B. Person. Lamontagne and Jacques Herbert would also enter federal politics. Laurendeau would co-chair the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and biculturalism. All would have a significant impact on Canadian politics.
4 Engel was in the master’s program at McGill University. She worked with MacLennan and Constance Beresford Howe, practising novelists who taught in the English Department, and went on to become a significant novelist in her own right, winning the Governor General’s Award for her controversial novel Bear.
5 H.M. to John Gray, 21 January 1964, Macmillan Collection. McMaster University, Hamilton, ON.
6 H.M. to John Gray, 23 October 1966, Macmillan Collection.
7 The Molson Prize is awarded for great distinction in the arts or social sciences. When MacLennan won it in 1966 it was worth the considerable sum of sixty thousand dollars.
8 H.M. to John Gray, 20 August 1967, Macmillan Collection.
9 The Gazette. 26 August 1967.
10 “Return of the Jinx,” Vancouver Province, 18 August 1967.
11 “Compassion Saves a Tract for the Times,” Globe and Mail, 19 August 1967.
12 19 August 1967.
13 19 August 1967.
14 Published in 1966, Valley of the Dolls was an immediate success. The novel explores the sex, drug, and alcoholic excesses of show business through three heroines who were supposedly based on Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland. It is considered to be one of the most commercially successful novels of all time, having sold over thirty million copies.
15 9 September 1967.
16 Letter to Gray, 15 November 1967.
17Saturday Review, 19 August 1967.
18 28 July 1967.
19 “Top Fiction,” 1 August 1967.
20 Calgary Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, No. 33.
21 “The Night before Expo Opened,” ViewpointCBC TV, 26 April 1967, and “The Night Expo Closed,” ibid., 30 October 1967.
22 August 1967.
23 H.M. to Edmund Wilson, 29 July 1967.
24 The Oedipal Complex.
25 In the legend, Theseus was King of Athens and considered a great reformer by the Athenians. He built and occupied a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis and is a key figure in numerous Greek myths and legends, including the story of the slaying of the Minotaur in King Minos’s labyrinth.
26 Sophocles’ play, Oedipus at Colonus
27 H.M. to Mrs Bishop, 31 August 1967, Library and Archives Canada.
WORKS CITED
Correspondence between Hugh MacLennan and John Gray is located at the Macmillan Archive at McMaster University, Hamilton.
Bartlett, Donald R. “MacLennan and Yeats.” Canadian Literature 89 (Summer 1981): 74–84.
Buitenhuis, Peter. Hugh MacLennan. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Toronto: Coles, 1969.
Cameron, Donald. “The Tennis Racket Is an Antelope Bone.” Journal of Canadian Fiction 1 (Winter 1972) 40–7. Reprinted in Conversations with Canadian Novelists: Part One, 129–48. Toronto: Macmillan, 1973.
Cameron, Elspeth. Hugh MacLennan: A Writer’s Life. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
– ed. The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan: Selected Essays Old and New. Toronto: Macmillan, 1978.
– “MacLennan’s Sphinx: Critical Reception and Oedipal Origins.” Journal of Canadian Fiction 30 (1980): 141–59.
Cockburn, Robert H. The Novels of Hugh MacLennan. Montreal: Harvest House, 1969.
Duran, Gillian. “Terrorism, Human Nature and Hugh MacLennan’s Return of the Sphinx.” Literature and Ideology 15 (1973): 51–8.
Goetsch, Paul, ed. Hugh MacLennan. Critical Views on Canadian Writers. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1973.
Hoy, Helen. “‘The Gates Closed on Us Then’: The Paradise-Lost Motif in Hugh MacLennan’s Fiction.” Journal of Canadian Studies 14 (Winter 1979–80): 29–45.
Kattan, Naim. “Le Visage de Montreal vu par des romancier de langue anglaise.” Le Devoir (22 April 1967): 10, 11.
Lucas, Alec. Hugh MacLennan. Canadian Writers 3. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970.
McDonald, Larry. “Psychologism and the Philosophy of Progress: The Recent Fiction of MacLennan, Davies and Atwood.” Studies in Canadian Literature 9 (1984): 121–43.
MacLennan, Hugh. Return of the Sphinx. Toronto: Macmillan, 1967.
– Rivers of Canada. Illustrated with photographs by John de Visser. Toronto: Macmillan, 1974.
Mathews, Robin. “Hugh MacLennan: The Nationalist Dilemma.” Canadian Literature: Surrender or Revolution. Toronto: Steel Rail, 1978.
Rogers, W.G. “Book of the Week.” Saturday Review. 19 August 1967.
Rouillard, Jacques. “The Quiet Revolution: A Turning Point in Quebec History.” In D. Francis and D. Smith, eds. Readings in Canadian History Post-Confederation. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2002.
Smith, A.J.M., ed. Masks of Fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1961.
Spettigue, Douglas. “Beauty and the Beast.” Queen’s Quarterly 74 (Winter 1967): 762–5.
Stedmond, J.M. Rev. “Return of the Sphinx.” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (July 1968): 383–4.
Sutherland, Ronald. “Hugh MacLennan.” Canadian Literature 68–9 (Spring-Summer 1976): 40–8.
Twigg, Alan. “Patricius.” In For Openers: Conversations with 24 Canadian Writers, 83–96. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 1981.
Verduyn, C., ed. Dear Marian, Dear Hugh. The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1995.
Woodcock, George. “Surrogate Fathers and Orphan Sons.” Journal of Canadian Studies 14 (Winter 1979–80).
– “A Nation’s Odyssey: The Novels of Hugh MacLennan.” Canadian Literature 10 (Autumn 1961): 7–18. Reprinted in Odysseus Ever Returning, 12–23. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970.
– Hugh MacLennan. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1969.
–“Hugh MacLennan.” Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1969.
RETURN OF THE SPHINX
BOOK ONE
ONE
The land defied everyone’s idea of what a land ought to be; just the land by being where it was, what it was and how it was. A month and a half ago people had been saying that another cold cycle had established itself, for seven inches of snow had fallen on the tenth of May; after that came weeks of cold rains and now, suddenly, this.
It was a Saturday afternoon hotter than Singapore and almost as humid. The atmosphere was a golden soup with the sun afloat in it and Gabriel Fleury had played golf at a club on the verge of the city. He was not a good golfer – he preferred winter to summer on account of the skiing, at which he was very good – but it was the only summer game he knew and physical exercise was the one permanent security in his life. Without it he felt disagreeable to himself. He felt a lovely release on the relatively few occasions when a good ball soared away; he liked the fresh grass of the fairways and the coolness of copses when he hunted for lost balls and best of all he liked the sensations afterwards: relaxed muscles, a sense of being easy with things.
On this afternoon they gave up after nine holes on account of the heat, and the other three of the foursome went to their showers immediately. Gabriel sat alone in the shade of the club veranda and gazed out over fairways deep-green from the long rains of June. The changed air of the last three days had created a different kind of country; if it lasted like this for a year it might even create a different culture. The heavy aspect of the trees in this unusual light, the velvet shadows over the alluvial land near the river, reminded him of France in deep summer and his mind ached a little and not without pleasure. Several miles away the city sweltered like a kiln, but here the soft air and subtle light imparted to the entire landscape a European formality that called his memory home.
He had been sitting there with his thoughts for more than half an hour before Tarnley appeared, dropped into the empty chair beside him and made some philosophical comments on the climate. A climate with such violent changes ought to produce a violently dramatic people, he said; it was strange that it hadn’t done so.
“Give it a little more time,” Gabriel said and Tarnley shot him an appraising glance.
Gabriel had never met Herbert Tarnley before that afternoon, though he had heard of him often enough. In a country where rich men had been flourishing like flowers and weeds in a well-manured garden, Tarnley had become a minor legend. In his appearance he was no typical North American businessman. He looked a little like an English statesman of the Edwardian period with a face sceptical, civilized and sure of itself. He wore his authority as unobtrusively as he wore his clothes and, though older than any of the other three men in the foursome that day, he had been the best and steadiest player. Though Gabriel had noted that no man could own a pair of eyes like Tarnley’s without having earned them, the man did not seem any ordinary user and destroyer of people like most of the tycoons he had met.
Gabriel took out his cigarettes, offered the package and was refused with a wry smile.
“I gave those things up long ago,” Tarnley said. “I let them bully me out of them. If I didn’t feel better without smoking I’d be ashamed of myself. These days you can’t pick up a newspaper without being told by some scientist that whatever you’re doing is going to kill you.” He smiled wryly again. “And I can remember a day in 1917 when I told myself that if I was alive a week from then I’d have lived forever!”
“If I may say so, you don’t look old enough for the 1914 war.”
“I was old enough. Indeed I was old enough for it.” Tarnley had a strange smile. “To be perfectly frank with you, the second installment didn’t even interest me once I knew we were going to win it. It was in the first one that it all started. I mean when it all started. I suppose you were in the second one?”
“After a fashion.”
While Gabriel smoked they talked of minor things until Tarnley glanced at his watch, remarked that it was five o’clock and asked if Gabriel would mind driving him back to the city when he left the club.
“Jack drove me out and I’ve only just discovered it’s his anniversary. He and his wife had been planning a quiet dinner out here and they hadn’t expected me. I suddenly decided I’d better come to Montreal to look things over for myself. I’ve been here more than half the week. But if it’s a trouble to you, don’t bother. I can call a taxi.”
“It would be a pleasure,” Gabriel said, and rose and went to his shower.
While the water splashed over him he wondered idly what this strange rich man wanted of him, his instinct saying that he wanted more than a drive back to his hotel. He left the shower feeling a little cooler and soon he and Tarnley were in the Saturday-afternoon traffic returning to the city. Tarnley began talking of France with the tenderness of a connoisseur of old furniture and glass, without a trace of sentimentality, and Gabriel warmed to him. Tenderness of this sort went so rarely with the kind of ability Tarnley must have. Finally he heard Tarnley asking why he had emigrated and remarking that so few Frenchmen ever did.
Gabriel smiled. “As you said yourself, it all began in the 1914 war.”
“But you must have been a baby then.”
“My father died of his wounds a little while after the war ended. My mother came from Ireland and after his death she took me with her to Dublin and for a time we lived with her family. It was toward the end of the Irish troubles and in spite of being Irish nationalists they sent me to an English public school for a while.”
“I guessed that much from your accent, of course. But Jack told me you did your university work in France.”
“Yes, I did.”
After a moment of silence Tarnley asked, “Are you a brother of Armand de Fleury, by any chance?”
“For heaven’s sake! He’s my second cousin. Where did you run across him?”
“I’ve known him for years. One of my hobbies is riding, and that explains it. The last time he was over here he was my guest for a few days. You know, when I first saw you I thought for a moment you were Armand himself. The resemblance is amazing. You could pass for twins.”
“That, I’m afraid, is all too possible.”
For in Gabriel’s family so many distant cousins had married each other over the years that they all looked somewhat alike. Gabriel had a theory that the concentration of genes had never given the outsiders a chance; he also had a theory that his family was like the Catholic Church: a united front to all heretics, but on the inside a maze of variations, of loves and guilts and broken hearts all held together by the bond of a common loyalty which was a kind of fate. There was so much love-hunger in his family, so much greed for the love of others of their own blood, so much doubt in each individual of his worthiness or ability to win it, so much difficulty in understanding that outsiders were also real people like themselves. Those who were secure in love were exploited by those who were insecure in it, these latter seeking authority within the family and usually getting it, so that Gabriel, his sense of flesh being their sense of flesh, he slowly acquiring an understanding of what motivated them while none of the others ever did, had come to the conclusion that all the politics of the world originated in the nurseries of large families like his own or in the despair of outsiders who craved to belong to such groups and didn’t: thence were translated into public life, but the origin always the same, the process the same, love-hunger growing imperceptibly into hunger for power.
“There’s no question in my mind,” Tarnley was saying, “that your cousin is one of the three greatest riders alive. I love watching him. That man commanding a horse – it’s as though his body is a part of the animal with his brain ruling the whole combination and loving it. When I see him like that he’s one of the proudest sights I’ve ever looked at.”
Gabriel laughed. “You make me envious of him. You know, Mr. Tarnley, Armand was the only one of the whole lot of us who was ever able to turn the family curse into a way of earning a living. And I doubt if the others have ever forgiven him for doing it.”
The de Fleurys – Gabriel had dropped the de from his name when he crossed the Atlantic – were of the petite noblesse of the French provinces. Their first remembered ancestor had been honored on the battlefield by Henri IV and had previously been a small land-holder in the far southwest. Before the King’s death he had been granted land in Dauphiné where his descendants had remained ever since. During and after the Revolution they had been consistently on the wrong side of politics and had lost most of their property, and for this failure they had compensated by increasing their pride. The pride of the unappreciated, Gabriel believed, was the strongest and most self-destructive emotion anyone could nourish.
