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Article: A Passion That Melted Snow: Canadian Writer Robertson Davies
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 5, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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People always laughed, Robertson Davies said, when he told them
that his novels "explore the passionate underlife of the Canadian
people." They'd say to him, "Oh, we haven't got any passionate
underlife. Look at all that snow," as he told the story. "But you
just go to a party and you get more passionate underlife than you can
deal with in about two hours." People laughed, but Robertson Davies
was trying to tell them the truth: that not far beneath the cool,
controlled exterior of northern peoples like his own there breathes a
world of wonders, of myth and mystery, of destiny and disguise.
He once asked, rhetorically, why people bothered to believe in
saints if such legends were so ...