101 Letters to a Prime Minister (10 page)

Doesn’t this sound like a passage that Paul the Apostle might have written in one of his letters to the Corinthians?

Rilke’s letters overflow with understanding, generosity and wise advice. They shine with loving kindness. Not surprising then that Franz Xaver Kappus wished so ardently to pass them on to posterity.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

R
AINER
M
ARIA
R
ILKE
(1875–1926) was a poet and writer of lyrical prose. He was born in Prague, and studied in Germany. His works were heavily influenced by his studies in philosophy and his knowledge of Classic literature, and focus primarily on the themes of solitude and anxiety. Some of his most famous works include the
Sonnets to Orpheus
, the
Duino Elegies
,
Letters to a Young Poet
and
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
. He was an avid traveller, and his journeys to France, Sweden and Russia, and the relationships he formed in those countries, marked his work. He died of leukemia.

Dear Mr. Harper,

Growing up, I was aware of the title that was popularly given to Milton Acorn: the People’s Poet. I assumed that this was because his poetry was down-to-earth, the language plain, the meaning reaching into the accessible depths of common experience. What I hadn’t realized until much later was that the People’s Poet also had a political edge. That edge is made abundantly clear in the book that accompanies this letter, Acorn’s
The Island Means Minago
, a varied collection of poems, personal essays and short plays. If you turn to the last pages of the book, you will find information on the publisher:

On the next page, towards the bottom, there’s also the following information:

An address is given for the organization behind both NC Press and its companion newspaper, New Canada:

Was a revolutionary Canada ever a real possibility? Well, some people, way back in 1975, thought it was. Since then, I imagine the Canadian Liberation Movement has vanished, at least formally under that name, or if it still exists, that Box 41 is a peephole onto a lonely place.

But any revolution that uses poetry as one of its weapons has at least one correct thing going for it: the knowledge that artistic expression is central to who and how a people are. I wonder if the Fraser Institute has ever thought of publishing poetry to make its point, and if it hasn’t, why not?

The portrait that Milton Acorn draws of Prince Edward Island, his native province, will likely be unfamiliar to you, as will be his reading of Canadian history. Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities. Hence the need for poets.

So Milton Acorn was, of necessity as a poet, a dreamer (a tough
one, mind you). He dreamt of a Canada that would be better, fairer, freer. He could not abide what he felt were the American shackles of capitalism and economic colonialism that held us down. He was an Island revolutionary. One might be inclined to smile at the extent to which some people’s dreams are delusions. But better to dream than just to endure. Better to be bold than just to be told. Better to imagine many realities and fight for the one that seems best than just to shrug and retreat further into oneself.

The Island Means Minago
represents yet another thing a book can be: a time capsule, a snapshot, a museum shelf of old dreams—that is, a reminder of a past future that never became (but is perhaps still worth dreaming about).

I’m making it sound as if
Minago
(Minago is the name the Mi’kmaq gave to P.E.I.) were nothing more than a political tract, which it is not. It is a book of poetry, a cry far richer than a tract. So I’ll finish this letter the proper way, with one of Acorn’s poems:

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

M
ILTON
A
CORN
(1923–1986), known as the People’s Poet, had a seminal influence on Canadian literature. He was born in Charlottetown, and spent most of his life travelling between the growing literary scenes of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. He worked with many famous Canadian writers including Irving Layton, bill bissett, Al Purdy, Dorothy Livesay and Margaret Atwood. Acorn was a poetry-workshop instructor and founder of the
Georgia Straight
. He won the Canadian Poet’s Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award for
The Island Means Minago
. Other famous works include
Dig Up My Heart
and
Jawbreakers
.

Dear Mr. Harper,

The book that accompanies this letter is one of the great literary icons of the twentieth century. If you haven’t already read it, you’ve surely heard of it. The story it tells—of an anxious, dutiful travelling salesman who wakes up one morning transformed into a large insect—is highly intriguing, and therefore entertaining. The practical considerations of such a change—the new diet, the new family dynamic, the poor job prospects, and so on—are all worked out to their logical conclusion. But that Gregor Samsa, the salesman in question, nonetheless remains at heart the same person, the same soul, still moved by music, for example, is also plainly laid out. And what it all might mean, this waking up as a bug, is left to the reader to determine.

Franz Kafka published
Metamorphosis
in 1915. It was one of his few works published while he was alive, as he was racked by doubts about his writing. Upon his death in 1924 of tuberculosis,
he asked his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy all his unpublished works. Brod ignored this wish and did the exact opposite: he published them all. Three unfinished novels were published,
The Trial, The Castle
and
Amerika
, but in my opinion his many short stories are better, and not only because they’re finished.

Kafka’s life, and subsequently his work, was dominated by one figure, his domineering father. A coarse man who valued only material success, he found his son’s literary inclinations incomprehensible. Kafka obediently tried to fit into the mould into which his father squeezed him. He worked most of his life, and with a fair degree of professional success, for the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute of the Kingdom of Bohemia (doesn’t that sound like it’s right out of, well, Kafka?). But to work during the day to live, and then to work at night on his writings so that he might feel alive, exhausted him and ultimately cost him his life. He was only forty years old when he died.

Kafka introduced to our age a feeling that hasn’t left us yet: angst. Misery before then was material, felt in the body. Think of Dickens and the misery of poverty he portrayed; material success was the road out of that misery. But with Kafka, we have the misery of the mind, a dread that comes from within and will not go away, no matter if we have jobs. The dysfunctional side of the twentieth century, the dread that comes from mindless work, from constant, grinding, petty regulation, the dread that comes from the greyness of urban, capitalist existence, where each one of us is no more than a lonely cog in a machine, this was what Kafka revealed. Are we done with these concerns? Have we worked our way out of anxiety, isolation and alienation? Alas, I think not. Kafka still speaks to us.

Kafka died seven months into the public life of Adolf Hitler—the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch, in which the ugly
Austrian corporal had prematurely tried to seize power, took place in November of 1923—and there is something annunciatory about the overlap, as if what Kafka felt, Hitler delivered. The overlap is sadder still: Kafka’s three sisters died in Nazi concentration camps.

Metamorphosis
makes for a fascinating yet grim read. The premise may bring a black-humoured smile to one’s face, but the full story wipes that smile away. One possible way of reading
Metamorphosis
is as a cautionary tale. So much alienation in its pages makes one thirst for authenticity in one’s life.

Christmas is fast approaching. I’ll see with the next book I send you if I can’t come up with something cheerier to match the festive season.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

F
RANZ
K
AFKA
(1883–1924) was born in Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), and is considered one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century. Much of Kafka’s work is disturbing, dealing with nightmarish situations and dark themes including alienation, dehumanization and totalitarianism, a literary style now known as “Kafkaesque.” He is best known for his novella
Metamorphosis
as well as for two of his novels,
The Trial
and
The Castle
, which were published posthumously. He earned a doctorate in law and wrote in his spare time, spending most of his working life at an insurance company.

Dear Mr. Harper,

It is Christmas tomorrow, and we live in a country where the first-mentioned fundamental freedom in the Charter of Rights is the freedom of conscience and religion. It is a time to celebrate. But curious how, despite the vast, lawful liberty that is ours to enjoy, we Canadians are so constricted in our religious expression. So “Merry Christmas!” is fast disappearing from public greetings, replaced by formulations such as “Happy Holidays” or “Holiday Greetings,” which are held to be safely generic, the original
meaning of holiday—holy day—being conveniently forgotten.

Yet “Merry Christmas” is just a blessing being offered. Does it offend? Would you or I be offended, actually offended, if someone shouted to us, “Happy Diwali!” or “Happy Hanukkah!” or “Happy Eid!” with a smile and a wave of the hand? Wouldn’t we rather be gratified by the well-wisher’s kind intentions, even if we are not Hindu, Jewish or Muslim? Similarly, when we gift a “Merry Christmas” to a stranger—and how good it is to reach out to strangers—is our intention not kind? Our spiritual stomach is full, so to speak, and we are offering blessed food to another. If that person should reply, “Thank you! Blessed be your Baby, my Prophet thought most highly of him,” we don’t take offence that their stomach is already full. In fact, we are happy for them. Better an abundance of food than a lack, no?

I love it that one religious group stops working, halts the making of money, to celebrate the birth of a Baby. We tend to forget babies too much, I think. We tend to neglect magical thinking.

Most of our compatriots take their religious freedom as meaning they are free not to practice any religion, and they address life with big questions and big myths they get elsewhere. That’s fine. To each his or her own path.

But it’s Christmas tomorrow, I repeat, and by all accounts you are a Christian, and rightly entitled to say “Merry Christmas,” though you are far more discreet about your Christianity than your predecessor as party leader, the Honourable Stockwell Day. It made people uncomfortable, his liberal use of his constitutionally given religious freedom. You are more savvy and cautious. You seem to be somewhat of a closet Christian, not speaking much or sharing much of Jesus of Nazareth.

Still, it’s Christmas tomorrow and there’s a Baby to be celebrated.

So, in the spirit of the occasion, I offer you this time not one book, but three, and books not to be read alone, like an adult, but to be shared with children.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
, by Chris Van Allsburg, and
Imagine a Day
, written by Sarah L. Thomson and illustrated by Rob Gonsalves, are picture books of contagious magic. You will look at them, at each page, and marvel.
The Brothers Lionheart
(pardon the terrible cover—it’s the only edition I could find), by Astrid Lindgren, of the famous Pippi Longstocking series, is a novel for children with fewer illustrations, and black and white, but it is just as magical. I hope you and your family enjoy all three books.