Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Thoughts Concerning a Career

Thoughts Concerning a Career

I do not wish to lose my religion. In nature, in the mere sight of the natural world, in looking over wide distances, I find a self-delighting peace. Similarly in the physical achievement and physical pride of work. This is the primary source of my poetry, and all that I know of a God I know from natural things. The shape and colour, the life of Nature, is the very stuff of poetry. And my knowledge of God is fundamental for my well-being.

At varsity my mind is blurred and cramped. I am sensitive to the attitudes of those around me, and unconsciously absorb those attitudes: and at varsitypage 10 most are neurotic, even those whom one would least expect to be so, such as footballers.

One may say: all cultural activity is lost in manual labour. I have no liking for the absorption of undigested slabs of learning, I know now that later in life I will write prose and good prose. This will not be aesthetic prose, but rather realist. That is I will describe the life of people, ignorant so-called, but men and women nevertheless.

One may say: the chance of a ‘good job’ will be lost. I do not value monetary success: I value my own happiness. It is necessary to eat to live: so one must work. If one should marry, one must support a family. If I should marry, I would wish to be a balanced individual, not an ‘intellectual’. I think I could support my family, in any case.

Briefly: if I am to be a writer, a good writer in the Tolstoyan sense as I know I can be, a ‘career’ is not my way to it. It is impossible for me to lose my culture; for that is fundamental. But I do not wish to be an intellectual, though I know comprehensively what it is to be one; I wish to be a sensitive and balanced adult. Daddy is this: and I have much of his nature in me. Mother has much of this; but women are rarely intellectuals, and she though cultured and intelligent is not one.

It is not the job I do, it is what I am that matters. I do not much fear death, poverty, or persecution such as that of the COs. I do greatly fear any loss of integrity in myself. Intellectuality demands a false bottom to the mind, a loss of emotional intuition. In this mechanist age one can accept, escape, or revolt. The cynical intellectual, such as the earlier Huxley, accepts; the romantic intellectual, such as I would be, escapes from reality to aestheticism; the realist writer, such as I would wish to be must revolt from contemporary modes and grow up on his own. Because of the reserves of strength which heredity and environment have given me, I can do this.

1945 (10)