Robertson Davies and the Alchemy of Adversity
Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, playwright, and critic who penned the observation that “extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it,” was himself a living testament to the very principle he articulated. Born in 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario, Davies lived through the upheaval of the twentieth century—two world wars, the Great Depression, and massive social transformations—yet emerged as one of the English-speaking world’s most celebrated literary figures. His quote, characteristic of his deeper philosophical meditations on human nature, reflects a lifetime of observing how individuals respond to life’s crucibles. Though the exact date and context of this particular quote remain somewhat elusive in the historical record, it likely emerged during his later years when Davies had become a prominent public intellectual, offering wisdom on literature, human nature, and the creative life through essays, lectures, and interviews.
Davies’s background was anything but typical for a Canadian writer of his generation. His father, Rupert Davies, was a newspaper owner and Senator, providing the family with both intellectual stimulation and material comfort—yet also exposing young Robertson to the complexities of public life and moral responsibility. His mother, Florence McKay Davies, came from Welsh stock and infused the household with cultural refinement. This privileged upbringing might have produced merely another society figure, but Davies’s parents had enrolled him at Upper Canada College and later sent him to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he studied at Balliol College. This education abroad was transformative, exposing him to a broader intellectual and theatrical world than he might have encountered in Canada alone. Yet Davies harbored a secret artistic ambition that his respectable family background seemed to discourage: he wanted to be an actor.
What makes Davies’s life particularly remarkable—and what few people today fully appreciate—is how thoroughly he rejected the conventional path expected of him. After Oxford, he briefly pursued acting in London, performing with the Old Vic Theatre, a decision that shocked his respectable family. When that dream proved economically unsustainable during the Depression, he returned to Canada and became a journalist and editor for the Peterborough Examiner, a position that would have seemed like a retreat from his ambitions. However, Davies possessed what he called “a double life”—he continued writing fiction, drama, and criticism while maintaining his respectable journalism career. This duality, far from being a compromise, became the foundation of his extraordinary intellectual range. He wrote plays for the Canadian dramatic movement, including “Eros at Breakfast” and “Fortune My Foe,” while simultaneously building a reputation as a sharp-tongued critic and editor who held conventional thinking up to merciless scrutiny.
Davies’s philosophy of human nature—which underpins his statement about extraordinary people and terrible circumstances—was deeply influenced by his wide reading in psychology, mythology, and literature. He was fascinated by Carl Jung’s concepts of the shadow self and individuation, the Jungian notion that human development requires integrating the hidden, rejected aspects of ourselves. He was equally influenced by the Romantic tradition in literature and philosophy, which celebrated the transformative power of struggle and passion. Rather than viewing hardship as something to be avoided or merely endured, Davies saw adversity as a crucible in which character could be forged. This perspective was not naive optimism but rather a sophisticated understanding grounded in both literary tradition and psychological insight. His novels—particularly his celebrated Deptford Trilogy (The Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders)—explore precisely this theme: how trauma and difficulty can become the catalyst for profound self-understanding and spiritual growth.
The quote has resonated particularly strongly in contemporary culture precisely because it offers a counternarrative to the modern preference for comfort and the avoidance of struggle. In an age of self-help literature that often promises happiness through the elimination of all obstacles, Davies’s wisdom suggests something more challenging and ultimately more true: that our difficulties are inseparable from our growth. The quote has appeared in countless motivational contexts, from corporate leadership seminars to grief counseling groups, from educational institutions to the social media posts of individuals navigating personal crises. Yet Davies would probably have found much of this popularization somewhat reductive, for he was never interested in simple inspiration divorced from intellectual rigor. His point was not that suffering is good or that we should seek it out, but rather that when extraordinary people encounter terrible circumstances, they have the capacity—through consciousness, imagination, and courage—to transform that experience into wisdom.
One of the lesser-known aspects of Davies’s life that illuminates this philosophy is his deep involvement with Masonic symbolism and ritual. Davies joined the Freemasons in the 1940s and remained devoted to the organization for the rest of his life, serving in various leadership roles. Far from being a mere social club, Freemasonry, for Davies, represented a structured path toward self-knowledge and spiritual development through symbolic transformation. The Masonic journey of apprentice to journeyman to master mirrors the alchemical transformation of the self that Davies consistently explored in his fiction. This connection between ritual, symbol, and personal transformation gave intellectual substance to his conviction that difficulty could be purposefully metabolized into growth. When he wrote about extraordinary people surviving terrible circumstances, he was drawing on a deeply held philosophical framework that saw life itself as an initiation.
As Davies’s literary career progressed—culminating in the international success of his Deptford Trilogy and subsequent novels—he became increasingly willing to articulate his philosophical convictions in public contexts.