John Glassco
Encyclopedia
John Glassco was a Canadian poet
, memoirist and novelist. "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations." He is also remembered by some for his pornography
.
to a well-off merchant family, John Glassco (Buffy to his friends) was educated at Selwyn House School
, Bishop's College School
, Lower Canada College
, and finally McGill University
. At McGill he became part of the Montreal Group
of poets centred on that campus, which included F.R. Scott
and A.J.M. Smith
. Glassco wrote for and co-edited the McGill Fortnightly Review with Scott, Smith, and Leon Edel
.
Glassco left McGill without graduating to go to Paris
with his friend, Graeme Taylor, when he was 20 years old. The two settled in the Montparnasse
district of Paris which was then extremely popular amongst the literary intelligentsia. Their three-year stay formed the basis of Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970), a description of expatriate life in Paris during the 1920s.
The book is presented as a genuine memoir, although Glassco had lightly fictionalized some aspects of the work. In it, he describes meeting various celebrities who were living in or passing through Paris at the time, such as James Joyce
, Ernest Hemingway
, Gertrude Stein
, Alice B. Toklas
, Ford Maddox Ford, Frank Harris
, Lord Alfred Douglas
and others. In the notes to the republished edition in 2007 further characters are identified as thinly disguised descriptions of Man Ray
, Peggy Guggenheim
and others.
Glassco, a bisexual, was, in the words of Leon Edel, “a bit frightened by certain kinds of women and nearly always delighted if he could establish a triangle.”
In 1931 Glassco contracted tuberculosis
. He returned to Canada and was hospitalized. In 1935, after having a lung removed, he retired to the town of Foster in Quebec's Eastern Townships
. He served as mayor of Foster from 1952 to 1954.
.
"Glassco's poems — unlike his prose — are largely concerned with ... life in the Eastern Townships ... full of images of derelict farmhouses and decaying roads that peter out in the bush; but reflections on the human condition are never far away from the descriptions of the countryside, so that the life of the land and the lives of people are woven together.... But not all Glassco's poems are bucolic. Some provide a link with his prose by moving into the mythology of literature and history: ‘The death of Don Quixote’ and ‘Brummel at Calais’ show Glassco as a master of echoes, and of parody and pastiche in the best sense; they evoke the philosophy of the nineteenth-century dandy and decadent (Brummel
, Baudelaire
, Wilde
) that is also evident in his prose writings."
The Canadian Encyclopedia says that Glassco's "translations of French Canadian poetry are, along with F.R. Scott's, the finest yet to appear — his greatest achievement being the Complete Poems of Saint-Denys-Garneau
(1975)."
Glassco also edited the 1965 anthology English poetry in Quebec, which originated from a poetry conference held in Foster in 1963.
, was privately printed in 1967. The poem was inspired by The Rodiad
(1871), falsely ascribed to George Colman the Younger
, and Glassco continued the hoax by claiming that his own poem was a republication of an 18-th century original by Colman. Glassco's The Temple of Pederasty, on the theme of sado-masochism and male homosexuality
, was similarly ascribed to Ihara Saikaku
with "translation" by the wholly fictitious "Hideki Okada". Glassco also used the pseudonym "Sylvia Bayer" to publish Fetish Girl, on the theme of rubber fetishism. He wrote The English Governess (Ophelia Press, 1960) and Harriet Marwood, Governess (1967) under yet another pseudonym, "Miles Underwood". Glassco completed the unfinished pornographic novel Under the Hill
by Aubrey Beardsley
, in an edition published by the Olympia Press
in 1959.
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
, memoirist and novelist. "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations." He is also remembered by some for his pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
.
Life
Born in MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
to a well-off merchant family, John Glassco (Buffy to his friends) was educated at Selwyn House School
Selwyn House School
Selwyn House School is a private independent boys' school located in Westmount, Quebec. Boys can attend from Kindergarten through to Grade 11. The school was founded in 1908 by Englishman Captain Algernon Lucas...
, Bishop's College School
Bishop's College School
This article is about the school in Canada. Alternatively, visit Diocesan College in Cape Town, South Africa.Bishop's College School is a private school in Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada....
, Lower Canada College
Lower Canada College
Lower Canada College of Montreal is an elementary and secondary level private school.The college was founded by the Church of St John the Evangelist in 1861 as St. John's School and changed its name to Lower Canada College in 1909, replacing an older school by that name that was founded in...
, and finally McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
. At McGill he became part of the Montreal Group
Montreal Group
The Montreal Group was a circle of Canadian modernist writers formed in the mid-1920s at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, which included Leon Edel, John Glassco, A.M. Klein, Leo Kennedy, F.R. Scott, and A.J.M. Smith. Most of the group's members attended McGill as undergraduates. Due to this...
of poets centred on that campus, which included F.R. Scott
F. R. Scott
Francis Reginald Scott, CC commonly known as Frank Scott or F.R. Scott, was a Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party...
and A.J.M. Smith
A. J. M. Smith
Arthur James Marshall Smith was a Canadian poet and anthologist. He "was a prominent member of a group of Montreal poets" -- the Montreal Group, which included Leon Edel, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, and F.R...
. Glassco wrote for and co-edited the McGill Fortnightly Review with Scott, Smith, and Leon Edel
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel was a North American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel....
.
Glassco left McGill without graduating to go to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
with his friend, Graeme Taylor, when he was 20 years old. The two settled in the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
district of Paris which was then extremely popular amongst the literary intelligentsia. Their three-year stay formed the basis of Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970), a description of expatriate life in Paris during the 1920s.
The book is presented as a genuine memoir, although Glassco had lightly fictionalized some aspects of the work. In it, he describes meeting various celebrities who were living in or passing through Paris at the time, such as James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
, Ford Maddox Ford, Frank Harris
Frank Harris
Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...
, Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...
and others. In the notes to the republished edition in 2007 further characters are identified as thinly disguised descriptions of Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
and others.
Glassco, a bisexual, was, in the words of Leon Edel, “a bit frightened by certain kinds of women and nearly always delighted if he could establish a triangle.”
In 1931 Glassco contracted tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. He returned to Canada and was hospitalized. In 1935, after having a lung removed, he retired to the town of Foster in Quebec's Eastern Townships
Eastern Townships
The Eastern Townships is a tourist region and a former administrative region in south-eastern Quebec, lying between the former seigneuries south of the Saint Lawrence River and the United States border. Its northern boundary roughly followed Logan's Line, the geologic boundary between the flat,...
. He served as mayor of Foster from 1952 to 1954.
Poetry
Glassco went on to earn a strong reputation as a poet. His Selected Poems won Canada's top honor for poetry, the Governor General's Award, in 19711971 Governor General's Awards
Each winner of the 1971 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.-English Language:*Fiction: Mordecai Richler, St...
.
"Glassco's poems — unlike his prose — are largely concerned with ... life in the Eastern Townships ... full of images of derelict farmhouses and decaying roads that peter out in the bush; but reflections on the human condition are never far away from the descriptions of the countryside, so that the life of the land and the lives of people are woven together.... But not all Glassco's poems are bucolic. Some provide a link with his prose by moving into the mythology of literature and history: ‘The death of Don Quixote’ and ‘Brummel at Calais’ show Glassco as a master of echoes, and of parody and pastiche in the best sense; they evoke the philosophy of the nineteenth-century dandy and decadent (Brummel
Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell , was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV...
, Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
) that is also evident in his prose writings."
Translations
Glassco translated both poetry and fiction from French. He edited the 1970 anthology The Poetry of French Canada in Translation, in which he personally translated texts by 37 different poets. He also translated the work of three French-Canadian novelists: Monique Bosco (Lot's wife / La femme de Loth, 1975) Jean-Yves Soucy (Creature of the chase / Un dieu chasseur, 1979), and Jean-Charles Harvey (Fear's folly / Les demi-civilisés, 1982).The Canadian Encyclopedia says that Glassco's "translations of French Canadian poetry are, along with F.R. Scott's, the finest yet to appear — his greatest achievement being the Complete Poems of Saint-Denys-Garneau
Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau was a French Canadian poet and painter, who "was posthumously hailed as a herald of the Quebec literary renaissance of the 1950s." He has been called Quebec's "first truly modern poet."-Life:...
(1975)."
Glassco also edited the 1965 anthology English poetry in Quebec, which originated from a poetry conference held in Foster in 1963.
Pornography
Glassco's long poem Squire Hardman, on the subject of flagellationFlagellation
Flagellation or flogging is the act of methodically beating or whipping the human body. Specialised implements for it include rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails and the sjambok...
, was privately printed in 1967. The poem was inspired by The Rodiad
The Rodiad
The Rodiad is a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation published by John Camden Hotten in 1871, although falsely dated to 1810. It has been ascribed, apparently falsely, to George Colman the Younger. A candidate for its authorship is Richard Monckton Milnes...
(1871), falsely ascribed to George Colman the Younger
George Colman the Younger
George Colman , known as "the Younger", English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was the son of George Colman "the Elder".-Life:...
, and Glassco continued the hoax by claiming that his own poem was a republication of an 18-th century original by Colman. Glassco's The Temple of Pederasty, on the theme of sado-masochism and male homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, was similarly ascribed to Ihara Saikaku
Ihara Saikaku
was a Japanese poet and creator of the "floating world" genre of Japanese prose .-Biography:Born the son of the wealthy merchant Hirayama Tōgo in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku, and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin School of poetry, which emphasized...
with "translation" by the wholly fictitious "Hideki Okada". Glassco also used the pseudonym "Sylvia Bayer" to publish Fetish Girl, on the theme of rubber fetishism. He wrote The English Governess (Ophelia Press, 1960) and Harriet Marwood, Governess (1967) under yet another pseudonym, "Miles Underwood". Glassco completed the unfinished pornographic novel Under the Hill
Under the Hill
Under the Hill is an unfinished erotic novel by Aubrey Beardsley, based on the legend of Tannhäuser. The first parts of it were published in The Savoy and later issued in book form by Leonard Smithers...
by Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, in an edition published by the Olympia Press
Olympia Press
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...
in 1959.
Poetry
- The Deficit Made Flesh: Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 19581958 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Brazilian manifesto for concrete poetry, which focuses on visual and other sensory qualities...
. - A Point of Sky. Toronto: Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 19641964 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Among the many books of poetry published this year, Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead is greeted with particular acclaim...
. - Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 19711971 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...
. - Montreal. Montreal: DC Books, 19731973 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Canadian poet and author, Michael Ondaatje adapts his 1970 book of poetry, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, into a play which this year is first produced in Stratford, Ontario; it will appear in...
. - Selected Poems with Three Notes on the Poetic Process. Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 19971997 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*January 20 — Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at President Clinton's inauguration....
.
Memoirs
- Memoirs of Montparnasse, Leon Edel intr. Toronto, New York: Oxford UP, 1970. Louis Begley intr. New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2007 ISBN 978-1-59017-184-4
Pornography
- and Aubrey Beardsley. Under the Hill; or the story of Venus and Tannhauser. Paris: Olympia, 1959.
- The English Governess. as "Miles Underwood." Paris, 1960.
- Harriet Marwood, Governess. New York: Grove P, 1968.
- The Fatal Woman: Three Tales. Toronto: Anansi, 1974.
Edited
- English Poetry in Quebec, 19651965 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Meic Stephens founds Poetry Wales...
. - Poetry of French Canada in Translation. Toronto: Oxford UP, 19701970 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* May – "La nuit de la poésie", a poetry reading in Montreal bringing together poets from French Canada to recite before an audience of more than 2,000 in the Théâtre du Gesu, lasting until 7...
.
External links
- Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews, No. 13 (Fall/Winter, 1983). In Memorabilia Mortis John Glassco (1909–1981).
- The English Governess, by "Miles Underwood"