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If Spike
I admit that I find very few interesting possibilities in the subject. Not that the war has not influenced the College—of course it has. The Army call-ups have, for instance, and the man power regulations and the transport restrictions and the dearth of books and liquor. These have made the College very dull, but the War in its more catastrophic and tragic aspect has hardly touched most of us.
This is all too obvious and trivial and in any case the impersonal rectitude of the normal editorial is a tone very distasteful to me. It seems to be an occasion for the exercise of your notorious talent for fantasy. Whether the result will be to the taste of Spike's readers I do not know. Every sincerely written editorial is the fruit of its author's mania, but to be acceptable its mania should be of some recognized kind. Thus to satisfy any large section of its readers an editorial in a University publication should be written by a democrat, a socialist, a Christian, or a lover of culture. But one cannot always wish to satisfy and I should be very grateful to receive something from you as soon as possible.
If I had to write an editorial, I would probably proceed as follows (assuming Victoria College has not changed after
There is at the moment an invasion on in Europe, and the murder, fire and passion of this world arc there. If the murder and the fire and the great dreams are there they cannot be here.
And that is no paradox, for it is not only the men that are away here, it is also the capacity to desire, and to dream. Those great enthusiasms that live in a people are not expandable like gasses. They can be placed and shifted. They can be shifted from the country to the town, and they can be shifted from the town to the battlefront. When they are shifted to the battlefront they are not here. The ideals have moved. Because they are at the front it is less possible even for us left here, to have ideals. We grow duller, less noble. And that is no paradox.
Presented to you here is Victoria's
Presented to you here, however, are many pieces worth reading, informative, interesting, and some of solid merit. And it is better that this collection should be published, that for Lhe writers left here the coma should not be too smothering, and that for the readers left here the void should not be too haunting.
There is not a total void, at any rate; there is still thought and feeling, there is still sincerity here.
And in other countries, in England for instance, there are remarkable new movements in literature in the offing. Unfortunately, these movements are not such as are bred in Universities. Their principal traits are generosity, adventure and magic, and their origin is the most primitive urges.
Even some of this has perhaps precipitated in Spike
There isn't much murder, fire or passion at Victoria College in
Death? Here the soldier is at an obvious advantage. Two points should be remembered however. First, that many—perhaps the majority—of servicemen have not gone into action against the enemy. They have known only the dreariness of training and waiting. Secondly, killing and nearly getting killed one self stimulates people only for a while—after that it seems to depress them.
Many of our most lurid lights are on other shores—not, perhaps, completely eclipsed but scarcely burning more brightly. There is another reason for the less exciting tone of University publications and speeches. The avant-garde of thought at this College at the end of the thirties was almost entirely under some degree of Communist influence. And now the reversal of the Communist Party's policy has caused its influence to become respectable and therefore dull.
You say' There is maybe no flame and there is certainly no flame if we compare the little smouldering here with the conflagration in the distance.' That is' The flame of the candle before the church altar is no flame at all if we compare it with the flames of the municipal incinerator.'
Send me a short note to finish off this little game.
The answer to your last letter should not be a short note as you request, but a bible. First of all murder and fire are not considered by you to be essential elements of New Zealand culture because the students of V.U.C. do not think of them. You would be all right, if these students had other pressing intellectual problems, because then you could say' Look, it is not murder and fire,—it is public oratory,' or' it is Communism,' that has their fancy.
But you can't say that, and whatever is in the mind of the present generation of New Zealand students has not yet been expressed. One can only make a more or less correct estimate of potentialities, based upon the more obvious sources of student thought and upon the attitude towards life one observes amongst students. One can only ask:' What would these people write about if they wrote?'
It is doubtful whether one can even do that. The only way of forecasting the culture of the future is really to create it. But in my projected editorial, guesswork and nothing else has been my purpose and I will boldly persevere, right or wrong.
'We wore out our passports quicker than our shoes,' and' We used to make love offhand' are two lines from a poem on this generation by the German refugee poet, Bert Brecht. Love indeed was a thing one met the day before the train left, the week before the military unit was transferred.
Dreams became things met during only a moment,' May I introduce you to a dream,' said fate, and a minute later a policeman came to move you on. Admirations were no longer centred on one per son; symbols were no longer derived from one mythology. Life became a cinema of impressions! art of images.
If to our generation in New Zealand, as elsewhere, love is casual, there is murder and fire behind the stage. Fibs among young girls especially about a picturesque sex-life, are at an all-time they are yearning for the perfect performance. Young girls struggle to suppress their humanity for a constant pattern, to dance their faultlessly-proportioned ballet smoothly and gracefully, so that they may be best adapted to their calling.
There are two conflicting lines of thought about women. Some people say that they are becoming emancipated and others contend with Nietzsche, that their task is' only' the recreation of the warrior, the warrior' meaning 'man.' The first point of view is democratic and the second one is considered to be unutterably wicked. Yet: when have women been so completely the recreation of the warrior as in this period? They have sacrificed their humanity and the tenderness of their souls to be that passing dancing-figure the hunted' warrior' of today requires for his short pastime.
And the students of Victoria College? They too, in as far as they are women, suppress their humanity in order to be desirable. They fight against their tenderness and against their cruelty. They know that tenderness is not what men are looking for and that for cruelty they would not have time. Behind this is the murder and fire of to-day's battlefields.
The murder and fire of to-day's battlefields stand just as much behind a hundred other manifestations of modern life. I have no space to mention them. But what would these women write if they became articulate? Or what would any of those write who are left behind? Their work would reflect the great change: how the domesticated minions they knew have absorbed the elemental miseries and the fury of adventure in their bodies and become generous casual companions. In fact some quite talented poets in Australia have already done so.
A new, more impulsive life would glimmer through, as it also glimmers through even in news-papers, films and radio.
Furthermore, I do not agree that the proportion of soldiers who are in the actual battle, or the conscious thoughts of the inarticulate majority of them has any bearing on my little theory. As long as hundreds of millions of newspapers spread the story of the defence of Stalingrad, the invasion of
Europe, or the Wingate expedition, as long as there is an airforce fighting in this war,' passion' and death dominate the scene.
'Common sense' has been haunting you, dear Charybdis. You would like to explain the easiness of women by the dearth of men, and the degradation of Varsity by the fact that Communists have become respectable.'
Too much stupidity is taken for materialism these days. "More women than men—there you have a hard solid fact—what are you going to do about it,' you seem to say.
But in the realm of the spirit it is the difference in women's conceptions that matters. The fact of their numbers is just an accompanying detail.
The decline of spiritual pugnacity behind the battle-line, the slumber of the striving instinct was the tendency I wished to indicate in the' editorial.' The' solid' fact that the pugnacious element of V.U.C. (the Communists) have become respectable is just a corroborating detail.
So I hold my thesis that the battlefield has influenced Victoria College, both from the written sources, papers and magazines, as from the unwritten force that seems to open our spirits for the reception of a sense of space, which was unknown to most of the pre-war grocer world.
"
Roll back the memory over the rice pudding and the reindeer steak."Anton Vogt
A Poem is a combination of words in which rhythm is created by various devices, the basic device being the break-up of the poem into groups of several words—' lines.' Rhythm is a pattern in the sound of words which combines with the meanings and images thev evoke to produce a special effect on the reader. It lends a stress and emphasis to the words through which it is heard, it vests them with a special significance. 'This is something more than ordinary speech' it implies.
Unless the poet deliberately seeks to amuse, his meanings and images should be worthy of the form he dares to employ. To use the strange incantations of poetry to say things that can be said in prose more simply and as adequately is to be like the young men in the mountain huts who. with such elaborate excuses, would crawl over to the women's bunks—to recite poetry.
Poetry is a way of writing which can give a more than normal power to words. The man whose world differs from the world that other people have written about may have need of that power if he is in express his vision. If you were to put the' meaning' of his poem into other words you might be left with a paradox or hackneyed platitude. That does not matter. What does matter is that he has spoken in his own accents and that he had to do this to tell what happened to him. For him paradox and platitude have become real.
It is no romantic lust for individualism that leads me to insist that it be' in his own accents.' If he uses the accents of anybody else he will mask his own experience with the language that belonged to the experience of someone else. The very things that were his and his alone to say will not be said.
My justification for writing down the above truisms is the publication last year of Mr. Anton Vogt's second volume of verse, Poems for a War," a work which has attained some popularity and which is a terrible illustration of their truth.
Before discussing the topography of the pit into which Mr. Vogt has fallen, let me say this as to the agency of his fall. He seems to possess to a high degree the sensitiveness—the ability to receive impressions from the outside world—which is a necessary attribute of the poet. But he does not possess the other qualities which enable that sensitiveness to be exploited so as to produce a work of art.
The most obvious consequence of this unmitigated sensitiveness is his excessive susceptibility to other people's style—notably that of W. H. Auden. Imitations of Auden are scattered throughout Poems for a War. 'For Norway in Loving Memory,' which might otherwise have been quite a good poem contains many other lines as derivative but not as funny as the one above this essay. From 'The Declaration'—a poem which begins with a line the human tongue can only with extreme violence be forced to utter
let me quote a couplet from the penultimate stanza,
The first of these lines is from Auden's
The second line is objectionable in a more subtle way. It sounds like poetry (Auden's poetrv) but in fact can have no significance for its author or anyone else. The territorial settlements disturbed by the European dictators were no older than Mr. Vogt himself—the function of' old' is to contrast with 'new.' To this the meaningless 'different' is added and an iambic pentameter thus formed. No more suitable text could have been found for Verlaine's injunction,' Take eloquence and wring its neck." The rest of this poem is on much the same lines. Mr. Vogt may find it amusing evidence
Mr. Vogt is as sensitive to other people's ideas as he is to their style. Many of his poems are reflections on the trend of events in our times of the kind to be expected from any sensitive and moderately intelligent man who knew his Auden and was acquainted with Marx. Despite the form of poetry they are made with little more passion or insight than in innumerable student editorials.
Frequently even the rhythm of verse is lacking in Vogt's poems both in' public' and private' themes, and they can only be read as prose. Sometimes sensible prose.
where the observation in the first two lines of good prose is acute and moving; it is marred by the pretentious echo of Eliot in the third. Sometimes silly prose. For instance, this gush' For England, In Grateful Appreciation'
In some of the more personal poems Vogt is led by the' fashionable madmen' (original sense) into the most absurd attitudes as when he declares—he of all people—
In his poems about
the triteness is of a more timeless kind but expressed with the same amiable slackness.
It would be misleading to suggest that there is nothing of value in 'Poems for a War.' There is not, I believe, very much. But Vogt's pathos is not always distasteful—the middle stanza of 'Blues' is good and here and there he writes with a naive, maudlin lyric note that is his own. He says that some day the world will be at peace—
unfortunately he follows with this reflection
At the beginning of this article I said that poetry produces in the reader a special pleasure which I left undefined. It will remain undefined. I may say, however, that it is something more than the recognition in' poetry' of one's own vocal superficialities as large as life and three times as tearful. That is the pleasure the more debased Victorians derived from Mrs. Hemans. I do not believe it is the pleasure Mr. Vogt wishes to provide for the more enlightened of the New Zealanders. Party for that reason but principally for more barbaric ones I have dia ussed his work with greater brutality than is customary in the literary criticism of this country. After all' De mortuis nil nisi bontum" is a bad motto for a reviewer of poetry. Hubert Witheford
I Have Often pondered the question of good translation and at times tried translating myself.
It is a curious activity, as it seems rather like changing something, a living phenomenon, into the complete nothingness that is one's own being. The French or Latin or Greek is a burning reality, the translation—some piece of that void—our self—and just as trivial. We started with the uncompromising desire to say just what our model had said in his own tongue and ended with a dead fragment of self.
Or is there perhaps something eternal that stuck in our translation? Has our urge and our ingenuity resulted in something that quite miraculously succeeded in reflecting the beauty perceived? How little knows the translator, when he fights the inassailable brilliance of the original, line after line with his little skill, anxious to let neither the breath nor the lovely vestment be lost.
If one studies translations of verse one watches the scene of countless adventures searching to catch and preserve something of the eternal which is their model. They use all the postures which adventurers use in real life. Some are only Pharisees, some are like Pilate, but others are like Icarus. A few even like Perseus bring the head of their Medusa safely home. I shall try to give the reader a picture.
A great poet is found by a very particular tone of his own which distinguishes him. For the first time one finds in an anthology:
One can already know that Webster must be a great poet. For one hears in these lines that there is a Webster silence and a Webster sound. Pharisees are those translators who do not even discover the distinguishing tone of their selected genius.
Those who are searching for the absolute cannot be bothered long with Pharisees, so we will just throw one glance into the valley and then beat our wings. Baudelaire's Receuillement is translated as follows by Dorothy Martins, in her selection from the symbolists (
What makes us reject Dorothy Martins as a true adventurer is not that she gives despair a heart— that is just bad poetry. It is that she makes evening come down on Baudelaire with the soft caress. Dorothy Martins, incidentally, is the woman who in' Les Voyelles' translates Rimbaud's vowels literally, so that' E, blanc' became' E, white' and 'U. vert' 'U, green.'
Sometimes it is only a very small thing here and there which betrays the Pharisee. With Ludwig Lewisohn, for instance, is very hard to collect the evidence that he has never left the valley. But the evidence is there. He translates Stefan George:
This is fairly competent poetry. It only escapes being moving. The way in which we discover Lewissohn had never, at any time, any understanding of what George represents is through two very small slips. In the first line Lewissohn writes' in my life too' instead of' in my life' and in the fourth line writes' an angel' instead of' the angel.' This indicates that the translator has never felt the two main passions of Stefan George's life: the passion for his own Life and the passion for the
This requirement, feeling as the poet has felt, is rightly considered the first axiom of translating.
But one should not too much exhibit this understanding. Baudelaire and Horace who have an almost unmistakable tone running through their work have often been translated with the Horatian phrase and the Baudelarian adjective when no literary rendering could be made adequate. An exception is Sir Edward Walsh's fine translation of the Odes (
Arthur Symons and George Dillon have caught the tone of Baudelaire in their translations, but they have not been able to follow the infinitely varied and rapidly changing moods of Baudelaire. They do not see the full richness of experience he refers to. They think he is always saying the same. They overuse words like' drunken.'' sorceries.'' phantom,' languorous.' Arthur Symons wrote:
Mr. Symons here remembers that Baudelaire smoked opium and liked passionate breasts. These details have been added to make Baudelaire's poem more Baudelarian. Arthur Symons however was, let nobody forget it, a true adventurer, a man who was haunted by the diabolic as few Englishmen have been, a man who could speak the language of the Francois Villon:
What a difference for instance with George Dillon, who is sometimes man-to-man and sometimes languorous, gives sometimes a sob and sometimes a chortle. You see him rearranging himself in his chair to say some of the cruel things of life. You feel that there is not a single artifice that this man cannot use, but in his translations of Baudelaire at least all inner coherence is lacking.
George Dillon has published his translations together with Edna St. Vincent Millay (
But how beautiful and how fortunate if a translator does not feel only a general mood, if he also follows the exploitation and the caprice which lift every good poet out of his mood, if he can see the significance of a little artifice here and a little arabesque there. In such a translater the real fire of an old poet far away may burn again, and in his generation an old elan and an old enthusiasm may find a new life. So it happened when Elizabethans translated that believer in life, that magical giver, Catullus. It is possible that the rollicking generosity of the Elizabethan age was spurred on by the complete conquest of Catullus' fire in this ayre of Thomas Campion?
If we read this qualitatively and remembering the tune, as we ought, we find back the whole of Catullus: not only the passionate acceptance of today (the general mood) but also the countless little whims and witty symbolisms which make the graceful marionette Catullus to the real Catullus we know. There is first of all Catullus' awe for celestial bodies becuse they are so large and round and burning: 'soles' (suns—the ordinary word would be astra)' soles occidere et redire possunt.' Campion shows how beautifully be grasps this little touch and puts' heaven's great lamps.' Then there is death, and that smiling pity of Catullus at people—and little sparrows tripping into eternal darkness (illuc unde negan redire quemquam).Campion renders this irony although it remains rather on the background in' Vivamus mea Lesbia' with his playful refrain one everlasting night.' To recognise this effect one has perhaps need of the tune.
I am far from saying that these little subtleties are the essence of Catullus's poem—they are only that forming grain of yeast—and equally far from considering the great merits of Thomas Campion's translation to be the simple matter of rendering them. I only point out that there is no whim how ever hidden, not a single arabesque in the Roman's fanciful mind when Campion does not intuitively catch and preserve.
In America there was a man fairly recently, who was able to see death simply as a mystery of nature, a simple dark ceremony, and who never asked for explanations; his name was Edward Robin son. This ability made it possible for him to express what Sappho meant in her epitaph on the girl Timas.
Why is this the only good translation of Sappho in the English language? Because Robinson has not just conveyed paganism: he has caught all the subtleties of Sappho's paganism: the pageant, the Lesbian maidens, and Death whom they cannot and do not wish to explain. Of the mystery of death the girls know only that 'she will not come back again.' More they do not want to know. And the girl who died was just as ignorant: she just' found' her home 'to be' death.
There are of course other translations in the English language just as beautiful, and some of them are written by people who are otherwise as poets not well known. The only good rendering from the Russian which I have encountered does for instance not occur in Bowra's Book of Russian Verse (
The translation has serious weaknesses, and very obvious ones. But nobody who reads it can doubt the greatness of Pushkin. Just as a contrast I will quote the rendering of C. M. Bowra from
In a recent issue of the Australian Magazine 'Angry Penguins' there was a translation from Rainer Maria Rilke, written by Ruth Speirs. It describes Eurydice, while Hermes guides her through the underworld:
This is not a bad piece of work. The translator obviously understands Rilke. and she does not over-saturate her version with' Rilkean' adjectives. If she does not manage to get poetry out of her model, it must certainly be a cruel jest of the Muses who just like strip-teasers always make off at the crucial moment. Ruth Speirs has seen the light and the Muses have vanished. Here is the work. What has happened?
We first observe that almost every line has the same sweet sound with a modulation towards the end almost too tender for words, and a sigh which is graciously at the last moment changed into a honey-sweet smile. It is the Rilke sigh, the Rilke smile, repeating itself and haunting us, like a maddening refrain in our sleep. Then we observe that except for this sigh, this smile, this Rilke sweetness, nothing has been transferred into the English; it is only the infinitely precious caressing touch of the light Rilke. Except for that nothing; not a breath of life; the translator has eliminated her whole personality in translating. She flows along caressing and touching things, just like the light Rilke, and she does not stand erect as a separate entity, like Campion did, or Robinson, to understand, feel and express—as soon as Rilke began to speak, just like a bad lover, she was no longer there.
The reason why good translation is so rare is exactly this: that the translator himself needs a strong personality, and when working, he needs to preserve it.
There have been experiments of late to translate without rhyme and without measure, concentrating on the essence of the original, and it seemed as if translating could in this way by the use of modern versification be reduced to a technical exercise. Cecil Day Lewis translated Virgil's Georgics (
But the Georgics without their strong metrical pattern become completely uninteresting, much more uninteresting than the back numbers of a farmers' weekly. Virgil in the formless verbosity of the thirties is not Virgil. Nor can a completely correct word-for-word rendering of Hoelderlin, with no style except whatever lingered there from the original by complete accident, be called Hoelderlin. These books are very commendable and extremely tasteful cribs.
Another modern theory by which a man with poetic taste is capable of translating anything from Germany, and was first enunciated by the great poet Stefan George. His procedure was imitating the word-music of each line of the original as closely as he could in his German. He has imitated by many poets in Germany and abroad. The catch of the matter was, that George was completely at home with the intention of his models, who were usually contemporaries. He consequently had a deep feeling for the subtleties of their word-music. But when translating Baudelaire, or Shakespeare or Dante, Stefan George did not apply his theory and gave renderings which are often extremely free.
Carol North Valhope and Ernst Morwitz, who produced the only readable translation of eGorge's poetry followed the rule of their Master, and as might have been expected, they failed. They did not fail through lack of understanding of Stefan George or through lack of versatility. They just failed because they were followers of George, and were not capable of approaching George's intentions as separate personalities. So even their clever procedure did not help them: the provision to his rule which George had taken for granted—a translator must also stand on his own feet as a poet-was their undoing. It is interesting that Ernst Morwitz has made a beautiful translation of Sappho into German—he was capable of this because his being a pupil of Stefan George did not prevent him from approaching Sappho with an independent mind.
This causerie begins to look like a catalogue. Yet I must mention one more modern experiment in translation: Leishman and Spender's rendering of Rainer Maria Rilke. This will probably stand as the most important translation of recent years, because nobody can deny it to have a definite literary value as well as a profound understanding of Rilke. Stephen Spender, as well as Leishman, has a sense of style which the other poets of the thirties lack.
There is one flaw which prevents this work horn being a really great translation: the too intellectualist approach of the translators. It is of course better to have a slightly wrong approach than none at all, like Ruth Speirs, but it remains unfortunate. Rilke touches things, his wisdom is intuitive, he never formulates. The essence of the translating gentlemen is that they always formulate, that nothing has significance to them until it is clipped of its wings and safely formulated. When Spender writes great poetry, it is because his sincerity reaches a greatness, but what was sincerity to the earth-hating Rilke? There is an interesting instance in the sonnets to Orpheus, where Rilke writes, typically:
And Spender and Leishman translated, typically:
Curiously enough the translation contains two adjectives and two adverbs belonging to them, whereas the original docs not use the formulating effect of a single adjective, a single adverb.
The translation of poetry then will never become a mass trade, conducive to the preservation of world peace. It will remain the domain of just a few adventurers, and it will contribute to all national literatures just a little.
Pierre de Ronsard (
We Used to meet the Brown family summers on the beach. Little Otago in those days was a fat little boy with golden hair and big blue eyes.
He used to like to sit on the rocks and smell the sewer; other times he would take a little stone and go squash crabs out of sight of the bach, or maybe he would be up looking through the cracks of the ladies' dressing shed.
On hot summer afternoons he would beg his dad for a penny and would bribe his little cousin Nancy to play games. They would go away by themselves into the lupins, ignored by the other children. They always played races, little Otago was always jockey, and they always won.
On this afternoon the family was having a birthday party on the beach. Grandpa was asleep and little Otago bad covered him with sand several hours earlier. Father had finished the three bottles of beer and had become quite affectionate towards Mum, but she had been baking all day and felt more like a nice lay down with her shoes off and her stays undone. She was annoyed to see little Otago dawdling down towards her with an expression of infinite boredom on his face. Nancy was walking beside him and from time to time attempted to hold his hand, which he would snatch away with an angry squeak. 'What's the matter?' said mum, 'You're a nice one not enjoying yourself on your birthday!' 'I dunno,' said little Otago, and in his petulant eyes was all the ennui of those peaceful Edwardian days. His sailor suit was crumpled and his little boots were full of sand.
'I don't want to play with Nancy,' he said, 'its too hot,' and wandering across to the rocks he bent over a deep pool to see if he could find a crab. But he could see only his own face, which had a mottled and indistinct appearance in the ripples of the pool. Sadly he immersed one foot, feeling his boot slowly fill with water. Looking down at his leg which was flushed a dull red with the sun, he wanted to be deep down inside the pool. He picked up a shell and put it to his ear; the sea was sing ing sailor songs to him and the flapping of his collar seemed the wing-beats of a great white bird. Come out of that Otago!' shouted his mother; he came back slowly, his wet boot squelching in the sand. She made him take it off. He sat down and looked at the little clouds far out to sea; they seemed wistful and lonely just like himself.
He began to feel that it hadn't been a nice birthday, and remembered for the first time that afternoon the green wooden engine he had seen in Mr. Johnston's store and had prayed for each night before he went to sleep. It had not been among the gifts he had received that morning. Looking at his mother's back he felt a sudden disappointment as he realised that he could not depend on her or on God. Perhaps there wasn't even a Father Christmas. There wasn't anything he wanted to do, he didn't think there ever would be.
All the grown-ups had gone to sleep. Nancy was sitting on grandpa's stomach, with a brown dribble of caramel falling from her lower lip. The sun gleamed on one of the beer bottles; he felt a swift intuition of new, unspeakable joys. He picked up the bottle in both hands. Nancy looked at him enquiring, imbecilic. He hit her hard on the head with the bottle and she fell backwards over grandpa.
This Essay suggests that the first question to be asked about any given thing by those in whom the metaphysical instinct is strong is' How real is it?' To those who will grant that this is the case the essay points out that we cannot put real things in their proper perspective unless we recognise that when we ask 'How real is X?' we are asking 'How interesting is X?'
Interesting is used in a very ordinary sense. Any single person could build his own metaphysical structure from his private opinions as to what is interesting. Indeed we may expect that all the most interesting metaphysical systems will have a highly personal architecture. But the first sentences of some metaphysical systems will have a more public interestingness than those of others. And in as much as we wish to talk about a science of metaphysics, we shall in this essay endeavour to talk about publicly interesting metaphysical sentences.
Taking up our argument in earnest, we put the question, 'What is the value of metaphysics?' and Why do we bother about such a science?' Here it is most instructive to refer to F. H. Bradley's remark, in the preface to 'Appearance and Reality, 'that' Metaphysics is finding bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find those reasons is no less an instinct.' This epigram points many morals. The first on which we would place emphasis is that we speculate on metaphysical topics not for the sake of what we can prove, but because we are made that way. The second is that it is very easy to lose your way in such an enquiry and end up by trying to do something absurd.
From this we should conclude that even if metaphysics has a value in its own right, which we must pursue, we can only steer clear of trouble by looking backwards to see whether what we are doing is of any use to us in our everyday life.
To quote Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, the aim of metaphysics is to make' a synthetic statement in ultimate terms of the nature of the real, so far as that is obtainable from the human standpoint.' We have argued that before trying to make such statements, we should ask how it is going to help us to be able to make them, and should not be guilty of setting out to prove what we already know. In this it will be observed that we believe as Bradley did not, that the topics of metaphysics are not ultimate truths (for their reference is utterly beyond us) and that its proper study is the topography of phenomena.
On the other hand it is necessary to insist that it is impossible to get out of making metaphysical assertions. And this not merely in the sense that, as a philosopher said, the man who asserts that there is no metaphysics thereby asserts a rival metaphysics of his own. But because at every turn of our daily life, as well as in our most ambitious projects of thought, we are forced to decide whether this or that is real or unreal, important or unimportant, significant or insignificant. We may like to pursue the elusive, but hardly the illusory.
If metaphysics is a statement about reality from a human standpoint, then it is the pattern or structure we find when we look back over our decisions as to what is real. We must be careful about trying to make deductions from what we can see of this pattern. We may be justified if we claim that the study of metaphysics has helped us to put things in perspective. We should be rash, and criminal, if we claimed to have deduced facts about what transcends human experience.
However, in order to take stock of our many statements about what is real, we shall probably want to find some way of interpreting them in other terms. Otherwise they will be unmanageable. Since we cannot have any knowledge of what transcends human experience, we have to interpret reality in terms of ourselves. There is some prejudice against this. We commonly think of the real as being
In conclusion, we would state that our motto in philosophy is that we must have lived through a philosophy before we formulate it as a system. The only person in whom solipsism is good manners is an oyster. The only person who has any right to a transcendent theology is God. Men may compare notes with other men about what it is like being a man.
It So Happens that many of the articles in this year's Spike are relevant to the problem. 'What is to be our attitude towards the 'culture' of these islands?' Every year Spike prints judgments on its contents and thereby provides some evidence for answering the complementary question, What have persons associated with New Zealand culture to say about the writings of the young? (Editor's Note.)
This year, I feel, on the basis of the verse I have been privileged to read, might almost be called the year of weariness, Mr. Davey is weary of the drought-parched earth (though perhaps only on one particular day); Mr. Hayman's skull is weary; and Mr. Witheford, though he does not specifically admit weariness, yet seems so much in love with easeful death that he contemplates the embarrassing prospect of living with positive distate. After the necessary re-reading of the pieces of verse that survived the first round, indeed, I almost yearned for a nice big hunk of Robert Browning, baffled to fight better, going breast-forward, landing with a wallop on God. The College poets didn't seem to steer in that direction, even with the example of T. S. Eliot, whose characteristic approach is so very different from that of our hearty Victorian. There is probably some significant lesson to be learned here about civilization in New Zealand, if only one could work it out.
Let we get back to the verse as verse, however. There was a surprisingly small number of poets in the ring—either the breed is dying out, or habits of self-criticism are coming on; or perhaps there is merely a general shunning of publicity. Mr. Meek, with his comparative maturity of craftsmanship, I thought was probably ineligible for competitive honours. For a time I inclined to Mr. Davey's 'Dragonfly' as the best bit of verse submitted; it is pleasant, and conveys a gentle lyric mood, quite unpretentious but quite truly felt and truly rendered. But a fifth or sixth reading tends to wear away its surface too much: it hasn't been worked over enough, it's words tend to repeat (moment, flashing, flashed), or are not precise enough ('ringing' ducks, 'chiffon' wings); nor does a poised violin bow sway gently, the violinist being sober. The last two lines, however, deserve a high mark. Mr. Hayman also is fairly successful in getting a mood across in 'The Perverter of my Dreams,' but his lines are not at all consistently good. No man who starts off as well as he does has any right to finish up with the broken doll motif.
On the whole, I think Mr. Witheford takes the honours; anyhow his 'Ein Feste Burg' does. The other exaMples of his talent move me less—though 'Moment' finishes well—and what he means by the line 'And reddened waves dark ecstasy defiles' I confess bafflles me. 'Ein Feste Burg' seems to demand more punctuation than two dashes, three commas, and one full point. Nevertheless it is an original conception, and though it is rather crowded with metaphor it is held together fairly tightly and makes a pretty consistent whole. It calls for several readings before it becomes entirely clear, but it stands up to them. This seems to me to be the acid test, and I accordingly put 'Ein Feste Burg' first, with 'Dragonfly' the runner-up, and 'Moment' in third place.
If lateness of entry disqualifies, I think the prize should go to 'The Poet's Mantle.' In any case it is the only one of the contributions that is fully original. If lateness is no bar I am inclined to prefer 'Freedom and Planning' as being the most mature and most finished contribution, though not
('We New Zealanders,' 'Ern Malley and the Angry Penguins,' and 'Causerie on Translation' were not submitted for judgment. Mr. Money's article was actually handed in on time, consequently it wins the prize and is printed below.)
Contemporary social science has been responsible for one of the most significant advances in modern knowledge, for it has given us for the first time the techniques and concepts which make possible an empirical analysis of our culture pattern. We are able to diagnose the factors influential in its formation, and hence to attempt a prognosis. Mankind has for centuries been interested in formulating ideologies, but now for the first time we have the beginnings of valid prediction and control of social and cultural change.
If any one name stands out as a milestone in the process of achieving this new understanding, it is that of Freud. His brilliant insights provided the initial techniques and definitions for a scientific understanding of human personality. His main concern was the individual personality; but a younger generation is concerning itself with personality in its group manifestation. In other words anthropologists and sociologists have learned what psycho-analysis had to say about the individual and have applied the concepts to the group—a kind of group analysis.
The cultural anthropologists led the way with their careful studies of primitive societies, and their task was facilitated by the relative smallness and cultural homogeneity of the groups studied. The great industrial societies of our own civilization presented much greater difficulty, and it has been only in the last decade or so that much headway has been made. One of thhe most masterly studies is that of Erich Fromm in ' Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom.'The Fear of Freedom. London. Kegan Paul.
In a very cnvincing argument Fromm argues that since the Renaissance western man has achieved freedom from external restraint, particularly that exercised by institutionalized authority. Such freedom has been insufficient, however, for it has left man isolated, filled with doubt and anxiety and terribly afraid. This process was implemented by the Reformation with its Lutheran and Calvinist doctrines and theologies. It has been further facilitated in the modern world of competitive aggressive industry and mass production.
Man has gained freedom from external restraints, but is still a victim of his inner restraints, insecurity, anxiety and fear. Such a condition is intolerable. An outlet must be found somewhere. Hence the frantic and almost neurotic compulsion to work and accumulate wealth and goods. More sinister are such mechanisms of escape as authoritarianism, destructiveness and automaton conformity. Yet, it may not be too late to seek to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual selves, one in which inner restraints are no longer secret saboteurs.
At this point we face problems of political organization. Fromm declares in no uncertain words that the fullest freedom is possible only if the irrational and planless character of society is replaced by a planned economy that represents the concerted effort of society. Whether we agree with Fromm or not on the value of freedom as an end or goal, we cannot but admit the validity of his argument. We may, however, ask what chances there are of achieving such a rationally planned society.
In seeking an answer it will be only too easy to be swayed by emotional preferences, whereas a scientific attitude isneeded. This requirement is met by Burnham in ' James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution,"The Managerial Revolution. New York: John Day,
Burnham's thesis is that we are in the midst of the managerial revolution, and will wake up to find ourselves in a new type of social organization in which the managers and executors are the socially dominant class. With convincing analysis he argues that the social organization of capitalism and private enterprise is almost gone; likewise that socialism, or the Marxist ideal of a free, classless and international society, is at the present stage of history incapable of achievement. Burnham deliberately refrains From making value judgments and asserts that we must not let our hopes and dreams prevent our seeing the truth. He shows in detail how the managerial revolution is succeeding in Germany, Russia and, although more slowly, in U.S.A. One scarcely need mention what light his whole discussion throws on the N.Z. schene.
It is Burnham's belief that the uncontrolled forces which have during the centuries been responsible for social change will again maintain full sway, and that managerial society will be arrived at without deliberate or volitional effort. It will certainly be a planned society in the sense of being super-organized. It will also, most likely, be one which has complete disregard for freedom—even the freedom from external restraints already gained.
Perhaps Burnham is correct. Perhaps man's control over physical phenomena has so greatly outstripped his control over social phenomena that there is no chance for a very long time of the latter's catching up with the former. Perhaps, however, seeing the trend of social change, it will be possible even to plan for freedom, to devise a plan whereby the undoubted values of a rationally-planned society can be achieved without a ruthless dictatorship of a managerial class. One envisages a completely independent research body whose job is to plan for rational planning within the community, and ultimately the world—due precautions against beaurocracy and dictatorship being taken.
Maybe it is a distant dream. Moreso the need for dreamers.
It is Perhaps lair to state that I, the judge of this competition, never won in a similar contest nor did my principles allow me to enter one run by any photographic club or society.
From the results of some competitions, I feared that success included all the nasty little ingenuities of retouching, all the insistence on the virtues of 'composition' (spare my days), and the weighing up of meaningless technicalities. Reluctantly I was convinced that competition winners and the judges had a remarkable facility for escaping reality.
My own dogma is that a camera should be used, not to escape from the realities of life, but to examine them, critically if necessary, even banally ii banality is honesty. Accordingly the rules I drew up for the Spike competition made it clear to competitors that technical excellence, composition, skill, would be virtues less prized than an honest documentary approach. Our traditional guide book illustrations, the floral grandeur of our former Christmas numbers, the inflated value given to scenery which is never evaluated in terms of the men or wild life who live on it; these, unfortunately, have their places. But it is time that photographers realised that the only compensation in not being artists with line, oil paint or water colour, etching, engraving or lithograph should lie in their ability to use the mechanical limitations of photography faithfully to record the way of life of the common man, Mum, Dad and the kids, Brother Bert and Sister Flossie, and to include their background, whether it is Devonport or Petone, Taranaki farmland or Otago frosts, to give a flavour that is peculiarly New Zealand.
Judged by these standards most of the competitors fell down the back stairs with a lot of grease on their pants. A few recovered sufficiently to walk home without bruises, and two competitors even landed bokays. First I placed A. R. Anderson whose 'Radiologist' shows a New Zealander overseas doing a job in a hospital. This photograph is lively, relates a man (himself of interesting personality) to his work, and gives drama to routine without any false note. Anderson's other entry, 'Ruins, Baalback,' was interesting, but too tailor-made to be convincing. Second place goes to G. C. Heron whose 'study' is a clean example of a documentary shot and achieves a sincerity that is better than studio work. Heron's other work is good, and his Maori slants, 'Action Song,' and 'My Mother Bids Me . . .,' are worth third and fourth places respectively. Of the other competitors only V. O'Kane, Cross Roads,' comes within co-ee of a cheer; it is as authentic as the crop of weeds on the roadside.
Fairburn's Stuff is generally worth reading, and I read whatever comes my way, mostly with gratitude. But this may be described as second-rate Fairburn. So I am not altogether grateful. It is not the conviction that I have paid two shillings for a sixpenny pamphlet that worries me so much as the feeling that Fairburn has not given of his best. Indeed, perhaps Fairburn himself is visited by an uneasy suspicion that he has defrauded me, because his last sentence calls his essay inadequate and rather scrappy. He is right: in fewer than sixty pages he deals with—or touches on—our complaceny, our liquor laws, our cultural problems, our mediocrity, Mr. Leslie Lefeaux, our architecture, democracy, public schools, our sexual morality, abortion, and religion, suburbs, the uses of public corporations and co-operative groups, state socialism and private enterprise, the reform of parliament, immigration, erosion, censorship of the cinema, our book-reviews, our divorce-law good and bad manners, social security, rehabilitation and conscientious objectors. There may be a few other things stuck in the cracks.
Well, you may say, all that isn't bad for two bob, in days when you get nothing for nothing, and damn little for sixpence. The trouble is that though I agree with most of what Fairburn savs, and hope that the little book will shock the people who can be usefully shocked, some of it is bad. Take this:
'I think the very least we can do for the returned men is to see that they are made comfortable, and given the very fullest opportunities in re-establishing themselves. Those who need looking after should gel the very best treatment we can give them. There is an old saying to the effect that "when the wrong is righted, God is forgotten and the soldier slighted." We have a powerful obligation to see that our soldiers are not slighted.'
Now that seems to me simply not worth saying. It's the sort of thing any member of parliament might say, and with about the same elegance. But unless in Auckland, where Fairburn lives, they're very peculiar people (and it is true that the observation that this is so has been made), I can't see that the public conscience needs stirring-particularly with the R.S.A. around. There, however, you have it: Fairburn who ought to write us a really solid and weighty essay (I don't mean dull), with every stroke telling, just gets scrappy. It's his own word.
Of course it's a fundamentally serious essay. Fairburn is a fundamentally serious person, with a sense of social responsibility—better still, with a sense of responsibility towards New Zealand. 'As a New Zealander' he is distressed by many things that happen here, impatient of the dullness and mediocrity we not only tolerate but encourage, revolted by the falseness and pretentiousness of many aspects of our social life, bored by its insipidity, alarmed at our sloth and lack of courage. As a New Zealander he gets off his bike and savs in good round terms that 'We New Zealanders are one of the dullest, most stupidly conservative, most unenterprising races on this planet. By a long course of self-hypnotism extending over several decades we have persuaded ourselves of the opposite —that we are bold, enterprising, intelligent people, unhampered by the shackles of the past. The sooner we realise what damned nonsense this is, the better for us.' And again, 'Compared with New Zealand, England is an unconventional sort of place .... The Englih people have a sense of freedom, a breadth of outlook, and a taste for variety that make New Zealanders look like domestic animals by comparison.' (All the same, thinks Fairburn. the sexual morality of our young people isn't at all bad. and he is not giving a Presbyterian definition.)
Well, such things as those can't be said too often —at street corners or leaning up against the bar, or wherever you best get and give intellectual stimulation, or, at least, conduct your public rows. If they make people re-examine their premises, well and good. But as serious argument, in a fundamentally serious essay, they won't do. Dull, mediocre, stupid, false, pretentious, conservative, un
Manchester Guardian, some other periodical than the New Statesman. I take it that he has read some English novels. Does he think the English social satirists—or the French—invented their subject matter? Has New Zealand alone attained the distinction of creating a bourgeoisie? Come, come, Fairburn. And then you say, 'The depression did a great deal to cure us of sentimental illusions about England.' It appears that we still have them.
Fairburn's comparisons really won't do. Nor will his recommendation for the improvement of parliament—a house of representatives of wide general culture plus a second chamber of economic experts. One gets the impression that he has not learnt to think in terms of politics—by which I don't mean like a politician. The same for his recommendation for film censorship—a board of 'writers and educationists, with an intelligent secretariat to do the spade work.' There's a case for censorship in the abstract; but, Fairburn knows, or ought to know, the writers and educationists who would be appointed to the work! When we have a board of censors that includes Fairburn and G.M., I know we'll be living in the City of God. And if New Zealand is one-tenth as mediocre, stupid, false, pretentious, conservative and unenterprising as Fairburn says it is, the City of God is a fair way off. I don't think it is quite as mediocre, stupid, false, pretentious, conservative and unenterprising as that; but there is, I think, a certain divergence between the immediate aims of Fairburn on the one hand and Peter Fraser and Bishop Liston on the other.
Still, Fairburn is on the side of the angels—my sort of angels. Some angels rush in where fools fear to tread. Fairburn is good on public buildings and abortion and large families and social security and national culture and other things. After wrecking the show he warns us against too many negations. 'We must be more interested in affimations if we wish to live as men should live.' That is well said, though of course there are times when the first duty of man is negation. The Everlasting Nay can be as creative as the Everlasting Yea; and much more so than the Everlasting acquiescence which is so much our New Zealand bane. We are all too prone to cease from mental fight a good while before we have built Jerusalem in any portion of this green and pleasant land—or even before we have done anything about some of the bits of it that are less green and pleasant. Of course we mean well—Fairburn might have said that about us. Even our acquiescence has good intentions.
One of the things we need is Fairburn chucking his weight about, but in a weightier way than this. We need Fairburn the pamphleteer, but the pamphleteer at his best. We need Fairburn the poet and the artist as well. We need those particular affirmations because they are affirmations of values in the only sense that such affirmations can valid—by the action of creation. There is no virtue in affirmation as such. We need affirmations of life, not affirmations of death. We need a tradition, but a continuous and lively tradition, a serious tradition because it is dealing with serious things, continuous because it is rooted in a continuous life. Continuous does not mean static. We need a tradition that is made up of values critically thought over and continually reaffirmed in changing ways to meet the changes of our life. That involves the artist of whatever sort. A tradition that is really worth while is continuously creative, continuously self-critical, affirmative and denunciatory by turns. Fairburn's real job is helping us with that tradition—the something uniquely and indigenously New Zealand which must be ours if our life on these islands is to be worth much more than a tin of fish. He has got 'We New Zealanders' off his chest. Now its time for a new book of poetry, from the same chest.
A Few Months ago an Australian periodical Angry Penguins issued a special number 'to commemorate the Australian poet Ern Malley ': a new poet was found. To the reader familiar with the spirit of this publication (Angry Penguins' writers are on the whole mediocre, mutually admiring and consciously modern), it was natural to view its discovery with some suspicion. This suspicion was intensified by the method of presentation used by the editor, Max Harris.' Ern Malley prepared for his death quietly confident that he was a great poet and would be known as such .... I have been placed in somewhat the same quandary as Max Brod disposing ol Kafka's writings .... [Malley] deliberately invoked death upon himself to provide the deepening and consummating forces of poetic experiences.' In this same number of Angry Penguins there were also two poems on Ern Malley by Max Harris and a cover design by Sidney Nolan representing one of Malley's more esoteric images. In the introduction are biographical notes supplied by Malley's sister, which state that Malley had been a motor mechanic and insurance salesman who died at the age of 25 after refusing an operation for Graves disease. After his death 16 poems and some observations on poetry were discovered.
Some weeks later Ern Malley was revealed to have existed only in the imaginations of James Mac-Aulay and Harold Stewart, two university students in the armed forces. They claim to have written Malley's life work in an afternoon, deliberately writing bad verse, quoting and misquoting from books which happened to be available. They did this 'to debunk a literary fashion which has become prominent in England and America.'
It is not hard to find evidence for this claim. Among the 16 poems there is much that is derivative, much that can be read only as prose and many lines that appear merely nonsensical.
Here are three phrases from 'Night Piece.' a poem of twelve (short) lines— 'umbelliferous dark,' 'rusty invidious beaks,' 'trembling intuitive arm.' But there are other things—
There lines and other isolated lines and stanzas in Malley's work seem to us to be poetry, neither derivative nor unnecessarily obscure. Again in the last stanza of Palinade is the real drama of Malley's imagined situation, the drama of a man desperately driven to essentials by approaching death.
The explanation given by Stewart and MacAulay is therefore not wholly convincing. The situation is one which outshines the more pallid hoax of Chatterton. No plausible forgery this, but creative work self-despised; it appears the product of a mind unsure of its own values and so averse to criticism that it hastens first to jeer and to destroy. (One is reminded of a defiant young mother, married against the advice of her family, who forestalls her relatives' comments by insisting that her child is a moron, quite uninteresting, and hopelessly plain into the bargain.)
But what is the background of this hoax? Why should it have happened in Australia; could it, in fact, have happened anywhere but in a Dominion among people limping after an older culture; grabbing at the trailing skirts of an established tradition; trying on fashions, new two seasons ago at 'Home, derisive of the resultant image as they note the descrepancy of garment and surrounding? Would such a hoax have been thought of except in a civilization which tries to answer the question of culture's existence with a simultaneous 'yes' and 'no,' which relegating music and painting, and poetry and printing to 'long-haired dabblers' affirms that business and politics are solely important and wishes its children to be taught to use their leisure 'properly'? Is there anything to suggest that the poetry of Ern Malley was so presented because of the mingled desire and scorn, which colonials feel towards all kinds of artistic activity?
It appears that both Stewart and MacAulay were in the habit of writing poetry. They belonged to a conservative clique of Australians calling themselves 'Jindoworobak,' whose recurrent themes— gumtrees and billabongs—recall the similar imagery of Kowhai gold, bellbirds and rata for which for a century have burgeoned in New Zealand verse.
We suspect that Stewart, whose talent for poetry was the more pronounced, had been composing 'modern verse' in secret long before the hoax started—and that in a society which despises 'modern verse' as more shameful than sexual vice. Even such a mild group as the Jindoworobaks must, at times, have felt themselves against society, struggling to lift a vast mass of indifference, to penetrate the superior insulation of a people who measured reality in terms of wool and beef and butter-fat. Such a struggle gave to Australians, as it gives to New Zealanders' poetic (and art) activities, a very rigid group formation and consequently, once a Jindoworobak always a Jindoworobak. So it would follow that to Stewart, as a member of a conservative group, 'surealist' would become tautological with 'bad.'
Here one could build up a probable procedure of the Malley hoax. The characters—Stewart, who has developed a curious split in his poetic consciousness and secretly creates 'bad' verse, 'surrealist' verse; and MacAulay a gay, undoubting Jindoworobak. They decide to write 'Malley' and 'debunk a literary fashion.' They make up a general concept and produce some 'ideas.' Then Stewart writes the more serious verse of the hoax while MacAulay adds burlesque to the concepts of his friend. Because the poetry was not meant to be taken seriously it was written without care, each image jotted down as it occurred (which is unfortunately also the case with the poetry they intended to parody). As a result the Malley hoax is only a partial success, as poetry or as parody. But as a dramatization of the status of art in the South Pacific it is invaluable. Poetry is despised; then it is found in a game; then, perhaps, it is still despised.
'Thus It is dangerously easy in the midst of an upheaval such as the present to take seriously the contentions of inexperienced enthusiasts who maintain there must be something basically wrong with an economic system that permitted pre-war unemployment and breakdown of markets and that allowed the present upheaval to come to pass."
'You will find if you look through the Bible that many features of the Atlantic Charter are incorporated in it.'
'History teaches us that the people who have lived in Britain have always been superior to the people who have lived in Germany. We should learn from history that our supreme duty is to utterly destroy the power of the German people. They are not like us. From the earliest days we have been free and friendly, quick to co-operate with other friendly nations.'
Though her touch was light, it was sure, in that, with all its frankness of expression, she never once suggested the taint of purience unbecoming even in a modern American girl.'
I wish to congratulate you on the inclusion of a racing column in the 'People's Voice.' . . . While not personally interested in horse-racing, which has no appeal to me, I welcome the column as a political feature. A recognition of the place that love of horse-flesh has in our colonial tradition, a part of our national heritage.'
'Anyone taking up farming is taking up an admirable form of life which is simultaneously a hobby and an entertainment.'
'For what is morality after all? It is to live so that the God who according to some of us exists in one way, according to some others in another way, who, according to some others does not exist at all, but whom we all desire to exist, that this God should be satisfied with our acts.
Mrs. Janison, widow, looked round complacently. 'I'm alright,' she told herself firmly, 'There's certainly nothing wrong with me. Why I'm the best dressed woman in the bay and I'm good too.' She patted the brown skirt and tugged the end of her rabbit-skin collar into place, then she stilled back into the deep curving armchair and hopefully stared at the open window.
'Perhaps someone will come to-night,' she mused; 'I'll leave it open all night.' But strangely enough, though she wanted a visitor so urgently, she had no wish to see either of the other two inhabitants of the house. It was for some stranger that she waited, and when her brother-in-law and his son clattered by in the passage outside, Mrs. Janison jerked her head round to the door panting.
'They're not to come in. I won't let them in.' She studied the door. Yes, the two bolts were shot home and that table was a pretty good support wedged up against it. It would take a very strong man to get through there and her brother-in-law and his son were both small men.
'Weeds,' she thought contempuously. 'Now if a big man came through the window I wouldn't shriek.'
She sank back into the chair and the house became very, very still again, a stillness that was made greater by the solitary ticking of a clock in the sitting-room next door. Mrs. Janison became drowsy and her head began to nid-nod in time to its rhythm.
'What fools Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Levick are, the way they carry on,' she was thinking half-asleep. 'Making all that fuss about dying, reading up the obituary notices to prepare themselves for death. I'm good, I'm not afraid of dying.'
Her head sank lower and lower till above the ticking of the clock another sound rose and fell, a grunting whistling sound that was Mrs. Janison snoring.
She slept while the electric light, unhampered by a shade, spread its cold light over the crowded room, over the boxes and bottles on the shelves, over the age-old calenders and yellow newspaper clippings covering the walls, over the huge panopied bed mounting guard on the room like a dragon. Up on the ceiling a fat moth was flopping stupidly and Mrs. Janison stirred and gasped in her snoring.
There was a patter outside the window and a dog leaped in, attracted by the light. It fawned up to Mrs. Janison's feet and snuffled round her slippers. Mrs. Janison woke with a shiver.
'You hairy clown,' she shrieked,' You filthy bitch. Get out of here. Get out, I tell you.' She kicked her legs at the dog till her racing heart flooded her face purple. The dog cringed back towards the window and shot out into the night with a whimper.
Her brother-in-law kept dogs. That was yet another of the host of indefinable grudges she bore towards him. Mrs. Janison only liked cats; well if he kept dogs, she kept cats. There were two cats curled up on her dressing table now. She looked at them and became filled once more with an overwhelming venom for her brother-in-law. Hatred of him clutched at her throat till it seemed to choke her. 'If he wasn't here, if only he wasn't here. Him and his miserable son. What if it is his house, what if he did take me in. He's lived here long enough. It's my turn. If they weren't here I'd have boarders. Three in his bedroom, three in the back bedroom, one in the sitting-room —£10 a week I'd get from boarders, if he wasn't here.'
She was shaking with rage, and the bobbles on the cording of the armchair shook with her.
'I won't eat his miserable meals. He thinks he can cook for me, ME, the best dressed woman in the bay. I'll throw all his dinners in his face like to-night. I'll drive him out. He'll be pleased to go when I've finished with him. Ten pounds a week from boarders I could have if he wasn't here.'
Then her excitement and anger dropped away from her like a blanket. She felt tired and aim-legs. She patted the bobbles on the cording of the armchair and shuffled her feet. It was not much use keeping the window open, no-one ever came. But she didn't stir to shut it even though the first pattings of rain were flicking in through the flapping curtains. A rainy night. It was a rainy night, she mused, when she had left home on her honeymoon. She let go the window with her eyes and slid them along the wall till they came to a photograph. Yes, that was her husband. She'd hung his photo there herself, twenty years ago. He was dead then, miserably dead. Well, he'd been a bad one.
'Men like that shouldn't marry young girls,' she mumbled. 'Men like that shouldn't ever marry at all.'
She gloated over his powerless thin eyes.
'Well he can't hurt me now,' she chortled.
She reached out to a table and dragged a heavy, metal-bound Bible on to her knees. There was a knocking on the next wall.
'It's very late. You'd better go to bed,' called her brother in law.
Mrs. Janison went purple.
'Don't come near me,' she shrieked back. 'I've bolted the door. I won't let you in. I won't let you in. Keep away from that wall. Keep away I tell you.'
The knocking stopped.
'Ugly old snake, she sobbed.
She turned over the pages of the Bible.
'Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,' she began to chant, rocking herself. 'I still know my Bible, I've no need to read obituary notices.'
She turned over the pages, happily, slowly, caressing the gilt letters, smoothing out bent corners. But the Bible was heavy and Mrs. Janison was very tired.
She let the book slip, gently slip, slowly slip, off her knees, down her legs, onto the floor. The deep curving armchair grew deeper and larger so that she seemed to sink down, down into its depths. So warm it was, so strong, so kind, like a good man protecting her. It lulled her, calmly, gently. crooning a love song.
'He's come at last,' she murmured,' Now I can close the window.'
But she didn't stir from the chair and the gathering rain, pouring steadily through the window, spattered the sleeping cats till they mewed and leaped for shelter onto the bed. Mrs. Janison didn't move.
Mrs. Janison's eyes were closed and her hands were folded.
Mrs. Janison didn't mind dying.
' Even here among the dead,We can't escape the raging red!"(Extrav
1944 )
One Can Have various reasons as to the nature and function of official organs of students' associations. I for my part, always liked to think of them as nothing more nor less than papers that give an opportunity to students to write on all sorts of subjects—without editorial policy and without purpose. As such, and only as such, they seem to fulfill a useful function among student bodies. But it would be entirely useless and extremely unfair to criticise a paper the editors of which hold different views, from my own point of view. In what I am going to say, I shall endeavour to adopt the standpoint of the editors of Salient—and my judgment will be purely functional: do the editors achieve the desired result? The answer must be, after a protracted perusal of the pages of Volume 7, a plain and decided No! And unfortunately I cannot concur with the editor's view that Salient compares very favourably with Critic and Canta.
The editors apparently have decided to use the pages of Salient in order to rouse the social and political consciousness of students, to make them alive to the problems of the world in which we live and to force them to take an active interest in daily issues. This is certainly a very worth-while purpose especially if one realizes how utterly apathetic students in general are. The series of articles on Poland, Finland, China, etc., dealing with burning questions on the modern world is highly to be commended. The preference given to reviews of films dealing with topical facts is another desirable feature. But for one reason or another, they are not aware of the fact that one has to be subtle in these things; and that propaganda is an art.
In the first place we must complain about the solid seriousness that pervades the articles in Salient. If seriousness is just a sign of the sense of responsibility, it is alright; but if it is based on nothing but a lack of a sense of humour, it is a fault that will render the reading of the paper tedious; that will make students weary of glancing at the pages, and in the end will prejudice them against the subject matter. In fact only twice this year was a glimmer of brightness to be seen in the' Ugliest man competition' and the advertisement for the pram.
As to the subject matter of the often well written and in themselves interesting articles on political problems, I find they always deal invariably with the one problem: the attempt of Fascism to lay its hands on countries like Poland and China under the disguise of Democracy. In the first place this is an over-simplification of the problem; and the mere fact that a country's relations with the Soviet Union are not excellent does not necessarily mean that there are Fascists at work.
Secondly the writers have an unfortunate habit of passing with few comments over the serious political problems involved and of stressing with all the glee and enthusiasm of a reporter writing for Truth, the brutality of the invader, the sound and fury of the battle, the heroism of the soldier and similar topics. This is all very well, but takes too much space in a paper that appears only fortnightly A more fundamental discussion of the real issues would be more desirable. But that is not all. The readers' attention is thus inadvertently drawn away from politics and directed to nothing but the war and the fighting for its own sake. Problems that do not lend themselves to such a treatment are avoided and it thus happens that the political problems of New Zealand, which are surely important enough, are not given due consideration.
This then boils simply down to very, very bad journalism. In fact it is no journalism at all. Imagine for instance what one could have made of such a story as 'Rex v. Barr'! Instead we find a lengthy and weary narrative that hardly differs from the official law reports. In one place there was an attempt at journalism; and in this case it amounted to nothing but a ridiculous imitation of the Style of Time:' Salient met affable, fair-moustached Signalmen . . .'
The trouble is that our would-be journalists take themselves too seriously. They make an at-tempt to be utterly respectable, and only succeed in being utterly uncritical. They do not wish to embarrass the country's war effort; but, may one ask—would the letting off of steam on part of a handful of students interfere with the war effort? Unfortunately the Government have themselves attributed in the past rather too much attention to student publications; and to-day the editors apparently believe that the censor's concern with their paper was justified. The way in which they want to 'expose wavering elements'; the number of times the word 'Progressive' appears on the pages of Salient give the paper an air of solemnity which, by its very nature it hardly deserves.
Exactly the same spirit shows itself in the film and book reviews. No attempt is made at serious criticism. If the picture or the book describes heroism in the physical fight against Fascists it is good; otherwise useless. How a person can dismiss 'The Seed Beneath the Snow' as a picture of Fascist middle-class life, etc. is hard to understand. An intelligent reading of the book must reveal that the author is no longer concerned with politics as such, that he has moved away from the spirit of 'Fontamara,' and that he is interested in religion. A similar unintelligent, pseudo-political-consciousness, is revealed in the reviewer's statement that in the village of 'The Moon is Down' there must surely be also some party politics. I am surprised he did not inquire for the local Communist party!
But there is no point in adding more examples. On the whole, the editors tried to do their best and made a serious effort to run Salient well. The lay-out is not always successful (too much black print, uninspiring headings, poor photographs, etc.). But in general there was a successful attempt to do good and faithful reporting of College news. There were only two unfortunate slips: the one about the I.R.C. meeting, for which the editor apologises; and the other about the rudeness of the Tennis Club, for which the editor does not apologise. And finally I wish to apologise myself for my rudeness—but I thought, when I was asked to write a review of Salient, that there is more point in drawing people's attention to its faults, than in writing a panegyric of something which we all know is not perfect.
We Must apologise to the people who sent in notes—these were received from three clubs. But the purpose of printing any account of such matters in Spike is to enable an impression of the general situation to be gained and this was not possible in the circumstances. In any case we feel that Salient covers this field adequately.
'Spike' In previous years has tended to inject too stern a note of criticism into the Non-sports Club notes. This has been done brilliantly, as in Salient or in the Debating Club. Here we find, in fact, that there has been too great a concern with the war, with anti-Fascism, with 'progressiveness,' while ideological foundations have been disregarded. Speaking as an ex-serviceman, remembering the exhortations of departed comrades that we should study as
Firstly, then, let the men of science, the men of fact, speak. 'In the opening meeting of the Chemical Society, talks by two students were presented. Dr. P. P. Lynch, pathologist, gave, at the second meeting, an interesting account of Forensic Chemistry. This meeting proved one of the most successful yet held, 64 students being present. A Freshers' meeting has also been held, when Freshers gave short addresses.'
The Biological Society has had several talks and trips. At the annual meeting four films were shown; of special interest to Zoology students were those on 'Reproduction in Mammals,' and 'The Animals of the Rocky Shore.' Dr. Mercer, bringing along the latest wartime apparatus, gave the first talk this year, on 'Blood Transfusion.' The next talk was of a botanical nature, Mr. T. C. Birch on 'What is Forestry? '; and Dr. Cairney lectured on 'Hydatids in Human Beings.' A day trip to Titahi Bay led by Dr. Oliver was held in May, and many specimens identified.
Aside from two amusing Freshers' evenings the Maths, and Physics Society has held three lectures, by E. M. von Keisenberg on 'Radio'; by Flying Officer J. W. Hutchings on 'Clouds,' and by R. H. F. Denniston on 'Infinity.' Also, of exceptional interest were visits to the Physical Testing Laboratory, the Radio Corporation, and the Railways Power and Signals Section.
What have the men of Religion, the men of Faith, to say? The Evangelical Union claims to be a 'fellowship of students who, knowing Jesus Christ as Saviour, desire while at University to make Christianity vital and to witness to the reality of power of the Saviour in every relationship of life. A weekly meeting is held every Friday evening. This has been addressed largely by outside speakers. Sunday teas have been held from time to time and have included Lt. R. S. Miller and Mr. A. Tucker as speakers. An important item for the E.U. this year was the Annual Inter-Varsity Fellowship Conference held at Paremata during the May vacation. Study circles on Oecumenism and 'The Church and the Future' proved very profitable.
The Catholic Students' Guild commenced us activities for
The Student Christian Movement has provided regular means for students to gather and discuss the 'cursed everlasting questions.' Against this, it may be said with some justice, that they have tended to forget the Pilgrim Fathers' attitude, 'all truth is God's truth,' and so may not have fearlessly faced all the stubborn facts. Frequent meeting for worship of God is another activity of the S.C.M. The S.C.M. is not concerned with abstractions: Christian education was the theme of its May Camp; a group has been meeting to study the U.S.A.; and in a series of Saturday evening discussions, it has considered some problems which beset the community at large. Finally, as part of the World Student Christian Federation, S.C.M. members have shown special interest in the question of student relief.
Music is a form of culture which has several manifestations in Victoria College. The Music Makers' Club has three major aims: 1. Fostering musical performance among students. 2. Providing opportunities to listen by arranging concerts at College, and student concessions to concerts in
The Gramophone Committee reports that as the gramophone was under repair during the first term, recitals were not commenced until the second term. However, up to the middle of July, 24 programme were presented. Several special jazz sessions have been held. In addition there have been several presentations of full-length operas. The W.E.A. have also made extensive use of the gramophone. This year, full use has been made of the funds availatle. The committee set out with the object of increasing the representation of modern composers in the collection, and progress to-wards this end continues satisfactorily.
It is largely owing to the commendable efforts of Professor Wood and Mr. John Miller that the resurrection of the International Relations Club has taken place; and that this club has acquired a name for enthusiasm and vigour. Its public discussions have each been introduced by a competent guest speaker: Professor Miles on 'The Polish Question'; Mr. Harold Miller on 'The Foreign Policy of the U.S.S.R.'; the Consul-General for Belgium on 'The Future of the Smaller European States.' They have also supported two study groups, on the cultural, social and political backgrounds of Russia and Germany respectively.
The Debating Club, we are told, still lives. An infusion of new blood on the committee started the year off and the first debate, 'That the complete annihilation of Germany is necessary in the interests of world peace,' attracted an audience of 80 (shades of the greater past!). Other subjects were: 'That the exclusion of aliens would be to the advantage of New Zealand';' That the Government has successfully controlled the manpower of New Zealand in the best interests of the war effort'; 'That the product of the American motion picture industry has an undesirable effect on the public' A debate was held with the W.E.A. Needless to say, we lost.
The activities of the Photographic Club have included fortnightly talks on all aspects of photography a visit to Mr. Perry's studio, demonstrations of developing, printing and enlarging, and a rather sad exhibition. The club owns a fine enlarger and other apparatus, and members can use the Biology darkroom.
As this last is another 'resurrected' club, we could perhaps point out that no epitaph on College culture is final, so long as the College itself continues to exist; new students, of a fresh genera-tion, will come to mock the verbal monuments wrought for them by the rash mourners of the past. There is, in fact, some hope for intellectual culture in Victoria College.
As this magazine was going to press we were shocked to hear of the death of George Burnard. He received his LL.B. degree from this College in
Graduates For
Master of Arts With Honours.—Denniston, Ralph Hugh Francis (1st class in Mathematics); Dixon, Haddon Charles (2nd class in Philosopy); Dixon, Mary Vera (third class in English); Ferguson, Janet Fergus (1st class in French); Hill, Helen Clara (2nd class in English); Lindsay, Maureen Daisy (2nd class in English); Money, John William; Russell, George Harrison.
Master of Arts.—Bade, Beatrice Francis (in Education; Lewin, John Philip (in Economics); Scully, Maurice John (in Latin); Stone, Sylvia Helen (in French and German).
Bachelors of Arts.—Baumgart, Norah Jean; Blamires, Helen June Patricia; Boyd, Ellie Mac-donald; Brown, Beryl Mary Harley; Burchfield, Robert William (degree already conferred); By-croft, Doreen May; Chamberlain, Gwenifer; Dowden, Ruth; Finlay, Marie Therese; Garai, Irgeburg; Holm, Jean Lydia; Hughes, Olwen Enfys; Hunt, Robert; Kinsella, Arthur Ellis; Lissington, Patricia Mary; Lockwood, Joan (degree already conferred); McBean, John Stewart; McDonald, Alexander (degree already conferred); McKay, Alison; Parsons, Mira Sarah; Pettit, Phyllis Muriel; Porter, Freda Mary; Ruffell, Alan; Ryan, Mary Bridget; Sinclair, Robert Henry; Todd, Francis Murray; Tossman, David; Turner, George William; Wah, William; Wall, Barbara; Wilde, Norman (degree already conferred).
Masters of Science with Honours.—Grigg John Lawrence (3rd class in Chemistry); McDowell, Ian
Campbell (3rd class in Chemistry); Oliver, Robin Lang-ford (2nd class in Geology); Swedlund, Bernard Eskil (2nd class in Chemistry); Te Punga, Martin (2nd class in Geology).
Bachelors of Science.—Bloor, Hugh Grosvener; Cairney, June; Coomba, Beatrice; Drummond, James Ewen; Durham, Reginald Alexander; Filmer, Daisy Bird; Hamann, Sefton Davidson; Hay, Raymond Edward; Heyhoe, John Harry; Hodgson, Ernest Ralph; Johannson, John Ker; Jones, Ross Dickens; Kiddle, Kenneth Walter; King, David Thane; Lever-Naylor, Peter; Macmorran, Alison Mary; Maplesden, Peter Wilson; Marsden, Ernest David Lindsay; Marwick, Marion; Ross, Janet Macdonald; Underwood, Joy Philippa; Von Keisenberg, Ernest Marshall; Watson, William James Graham; Wilton, Pamela Naomi.
Master of Laws.—Turnbull, Ivan Leonard (in International Law and Conflict of Laws, Contract and Torts, Law of Companies).
Bachelors of Laws.—O'Regan, John Barry; Quilliam, James Peter; Speight, Graham Davies.
Masters of Commerce.—Hocking, Bertram (in Economics and Law of Trusts); O'Kane, Vincent Paul (in Economics and Economic History).
Bachelors of Commerce.—Eade, Stanley Gren-fell; Forbes, Norman; Goldstone, Myer Mendel; Harrison, Charles Stanley Mark; Hobbs, Leslie Milward (degree already conferred); Murphy, Brian Egmont (degree already conferred); Wood, Douglas Reginald.