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Arachne: A Literary Journal. No. 1

Various Notes

page 35

Various Notes

Lebanon

Impressions of a Unesco Conference. M. H. Holcroft. The Caxton Press, 9/6.

If the author of this book were not Mr. Holcroft and the publishers not the Caxton Press it would hardly deserve very serious notice: it would be taken for what it is, a series of journalistic articles dressed up in book form and published at a price which the contents do not justify. It is interesting enough if you do not expect too much; but it is unworthy of its author and its publisher.

Mr. Holcroft has given us here some impressions of the Beirut conference of Unesco which he attended as a New Zealand delegate. His book constantly provokes the question, 'What is Unesco all about?' and there would have been little point in his writing it if he had not intended to tell us. But what he notes as the attitude of the New Zealand delegates, who 'seemed to feel that the aims and purposes of Unesco could be taken for granted,' has somehow crept into the book and made this account of those aims and purposes nebulous. Unesco's work may be difficult to describe; one can only say that apparently it was too difficult for Mr. Holcroft. I for one after reading the book carefully remain as doubtful as before of Unesco's value: is it really more than another large vague body of 'officials' radiating good will into thin air? 'The world's resources in knowledge are being pooled, very slowly, for the common good,' Mr. Holcroft assures us. Perhaps, perhaps not. Mr. Holcroft deals so largely in generalities that we are not left much the wiser.

I understand that the Education Department has ordered a great many copies of the book. If this is the kind of work used to induct New Zealand children into international affairs it is time to protest. Lebanon will not help them to understand Unesco: it is more likely to make them think it a talking shop beyond their comprehension—or beneath their contempt. Mr. Holcroft retails solemnly so many trivialities (e.g. the passages about Eileen, pp. 12-3, 42-3, and most of the chapter called 'Important People') that it is hard to take him seriously; he is constantly, to use his own words, 'soaring on woolly wings to the higher regions of platitude.' His writing was never notable for clarity. The great value of his trilogy of essays about New Zealand lay in certain imaginative perceptions of which he had a firm if not always a precise grasp, and in their social criticism. The philosophical superstructure which he built up on those perceptions was of the shakiest—his thought never seemed thoroughly tested or his terminology scrutinized; the obtuse, padded style could not, one felt, permit of clear thinking. Tnis book has all his earlier faults of writing without any of those fine intuitions to which his contemplation of the New Zealand scene led him. If it is given to school children it should be given to them as an object lesson in the inflation of language: 'A feeling of agitation began to flow along the New Zealand tables from the Mexican delegates . . .' (p. 51); of administration, 'Like all activities of mind, however, it moves towards an intense and spontaneous proliferation' (p. 73); 'Yet a conference may supply guidance in hard tasks, and out of common experience and resources may come an impulse that will be like the spreading of light above a shaded landscape' (p. 19); 'It was a day for speeches of more than usual amplitude' (p.

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84). There are many such examples; Mr. Holcroft is remorselessly platitudinous, alarmingly given to reflections like this: 'There is a compulsion for good as well as for evil; and I think sometimes that efforts which seem to be wasted when the cause is lost are preserved in an essential way in the real world that exists outside time' (p. 61). With the fluffy thinking that such passages point to goes a dullness of response to things seen and heard; the travel impressions have no sharpness of detail; except for the philosophizing, anybody might have written them.

Perhaps Mr. Holcroft was tired during the conference or when he wrote these pages about it, but that is no excuse for publishing them as a book. 'It is widely believed,' he writes, 'that we are a humourless people.' The belief will be greatly strengthened if this book goes abroad. It is infinitely regrettable that a man of his gifts and in his position should be contcnt to put his name to such inferior work.

Charles Brasch.

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Demonstration House

A House And A Handbook

The Architectural Centre has given the people of Wellington their first real chance to appraise a modern house in contrast to the mixture of eclecticism, builder's streamline and dullness that most of us live in. And in order to help us understand the basis on which it was designed the Centre has published a handbook in which we are told that 'The Architectural Centre consists of people who believe that good and decent living in our modern world must be consciously planned for; that good planning means good design, in large things and small; that good design rests ultimately on need and purpose. The general aim of the Centre, therefore, is to assert and maintain the value of design as an element of living, for the community and the individual.' This seems to be a half truth containing an unfortunate premiss upon which to base an action that is being made vigorously public. Good design can well enrich a life but that does not hold true for everybody. Most people indeed are suspicious, and for the same reason that the Centre is apparently suspicious of theory and 'highbrow' ideas that many people regard as the higher products of human activity, an attitude revealed in the last few issues of their journal Design Review. After all, good design is not an absolute; it is tied all the way to the spiritual, ethical, social physical and aesthetic values of the beholder, what he believes in at the present time and also what, within the limits of his conditions, he may develop into believing. These limits have to be remembered. No cultural renaissance is possible without remembering them. This demands a deep understanding of human beliefs and actions and that does include an understanding after all, of dogma and its use, which involves revolt against dogma.

The handbook goes on to describe how good design was achieved, resting of course, on need and purpose, and written as Hollywood makes its pictures for an audience with adolescent minds. . . .

'Most houses are the brain child of three parents—an owner, a designer, and a contractor. The demonstration House had only one. Despite this state of near orphan-hood it was not a neglected baby.

'The house was conceived in the spring.'. . .! The section titled 'A Family Matter' reveals little analysis of human relationships, but, surprisingly, a concern for mechanical efficiency, orientation, etc. Elsewhere, a vague nod is given to the uses of disconnected rooms.

However the House itself is no standard Hollywood product. It does make a bold challenge to many absurd conventions, re-asserts the value of sun, colour and texture in house design and a certain freshness and straightforwardness of detail. But the limitations of its background are revealed in many ways, especially by the cost. £4,444 is unreal, and poor propaganda to boot, when the accommodation offered the children makes the traditional ten by eight bedrooms in the spec. built equivalent seem the height of luxury in privacy, size and convenience. On the other hand the prospective owner can look forward to seemingly acres of glass, a patio and large windows that embrace a view of state houses. The see-saw between miserliness and extravagance never seems to rest on a horizontal plane of adequacy. Why should eighty per cent. of a house be flooded with sun, or even light for that matter? Contrast enriches and emphasizes. A darker and more introspective area (surely of some use) would have dramatized sun through floor to ceiling glazing and

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shadow would have thrown into vivid relief the furniture and other objects subjected to the process of good design. It may even enhance the spatial form of a house, which, if it is right, does not necessarily mean spaciousness beyond the normal need. These things may be a matter of personal taste, but they at least provide some limits other than exuberance.

Similarly a garden may be used in contrast to the sophistication of a sitting area (as suggested by the House). But unfortunately the patio seems to have been arrived by a desire to have the one small wind-sheltered garden related as well to the kitchen, the utility room and the children's bedrooms (in a hesitant fashion by way of a corridor). All this at expense of plan and pocket. A sheltered court is easily gained by way of a humble wall: the house can be itself. The handbook' claims that the U-shaped plan is infinitely more liveable than a box-shaped one, a claim that is not substantiated by history of the House. The children have little or no privacy of their own despite the two living areas. There is no place to leave toys and the other paraphanalia of childhood lying around. Is there any virtue in tidying up every time? And can everything be tidied up anyway? there is no place that is essentially their own. For they are thrown carelessly into the life of the parents through the lack of differentiation which is emphasised by the fact that both parents and visitors have to trek past their curtained and glassed-off cubicles every time they wish to use the master bedroom. Again, an invitation that children will accept at times, is the open-ness and lack of definition of the more adult parts of the House, which will be, at times, an imposition on the parents and their visitors. Children are different beings from adults and though they develop through contact with an adult world, their emotions and reason are obviously dissimilar and are employed in a remote world of their own much of the time. There are many occasions especially for older children, on which there should be no reason why they live their own life despite adults and if a measure of privacy does not exist, they will seek it elsewhere. Which makes the claim 'a house to stay home in' rather odd. Naturally when they are younger the children play around the feet of the mother and for this purpose the utility room is apparently designed. But the room will be put to many uses, such as storing books, for the living room does not offer much provision for these and other things. The eternal putting away of things after each use would therefore be beyond most housewives. Indeed the very inflexibility of the House would make many sigh for l'ancien regime of boxes and corridors. I am not suggesting that the children be put in a castle at the bottom of the garden but that a balance could be reached by a line of reasoning that does not purport to be either highbrow or revolutionary.

The House, then, appears to be designed for an idealized family to a particular aesthetic that places emphasis on design rather than on architecture in its human and spatial senses. In contrast to the surrounding mess it is almost alone and certainly a self-consciously virtuous voice.

F.S.

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Pastor Niemoller

One can hardly avoid an acute interest in the visit of Niemoller to this country. As much as anyone else in recent years, he has caught the popular imagination, and become, in his own lifetime, a legend. But the nature of the attraction must be clearly recognised.

It is hard to believe that people listen to Niemoller in such numbers because he is a Christian—visiting churchmen are not draw-cards in this country. The Open Air Campaingers, if they think that an audience of 3,000 is a sign of Christian revival, are deluding themselves. I would suggest that the thousands flocked to the Pastor for two reasons. First, because he is, in a very prominent way, The Man Who Defied Hitler. And second, because he is by no means in sympathy with the communists. As much as anything else, the visit of Niemoller should be viewed as an aspect of the communist vilification campaign. For the rest, he should be regarded as a man of unquestionably great personal courage, a man who acted in a way in which we would all like to act if we were faced with a conflict between interest and principle.

But the act of defiance should not be taken as the acme of political and spiritual rectitude. I do not know Niemoller's past in detail; I can say no more than this—that the bare record as presented by the daily papers contains attitudes and actions which are pro

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foundly undemocratic, and in no way progres-sive. This much, too, seems certain: that anti-Nazi movements, both in Germany and the rest of Europe contained elements drawn from the extreme right as well as the extreme left, and from all intermediate grades. One cannot agree with a political standpoint merely because it did not lead to defiance with a recognisable evil government. Niemoller's courage should be, and has been, everywhere applauded; for that reason alone, though, he should not be treated as an apostle of right religion, as an exemplar of political conduct. Politically, he seems to be no more than a Christian conservative, a man who would be at home with Adenauer and other highly suspect elements in Germany's present political life.

W.H.O.

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Journal for the Dissatisfied

I would suggest that readers of ARACHNE subscribe to Here & Now, in spite of the exorbitant price, not so much for what the first issue has brought as for what future issues may possibly provide. New Zealand is badly in need of a Journal to hammer out its immediate problems. A vivid curiosity about what happens to the country and to the world is a requisite of a full national life. I therefore think that intelligent articles such as that about Mr. Holland in the first issue justify every encouragement. The variety of the journal is admirable for a first issue, and although some articles might have been fuller, others more penetrating, and a tightening up of permanent features seems required, the vestiges of a true periodical are there. Hard work can build it up and cut away the impurities.

I regret, of course, the absence of a point of view or any aim except to keep people thinking, and more especially to keep them 'hot' about a variety of things. The editors should study how much a paper like the New Statesman and Nation thinks about improvement and construction. The article of the waterfront, without its multifarious trimmings, would set an example here.

It is not miraculous that all these gentlemen in a very bad temper give only little attention to literature. Let me except Helen Shaw, whose reviews have a softer tone, but are, strictly, I think, works of the imagination. The short story was thoroughly casual. A definite literary event like the appearance of the poems of Hubert Witheford is met with insolence and stupidity. "His imagery is most effective when he turns to the physical world," says the critic. A delicate reader might ask whether many images arise from other than the physical world. The point seems here that those who do not understand a poet habitually say that they prefer him when he is 'concrete,' even when, like Hubert Witheford, he is hardly ever so. "Feeble signals to passing ideas" is another of the reviewer's phrases. Passing signals to the Constant Idea would be more to the point.

E.S.

Publications Received.

"LANDFALL," Vol. II, No. 3, (The Caxton Press), 5/-.

"CANTERBURY LAMBS," No. 3, (The C.U.C. Literary Club), 1/6.

"HERE AND NOW," Vol. I, No. 1, 2/-.