New Zealand Poet Defends ‘Bohemian Reaction’ in Society

[an unsigned newspaper account of a public lecture]

The ‘Bohemian reaction’ was the detonator which set off the explosion of self-knowledge that may lead a man either to destruction or to further [knowledge?] James K. Baxter said on Monday night. Mr Baxter was giving an address sponsored by the Otago University Literary Society entitled ‘Poetry as Bush Carpentry’ to an audience in St Margaret’s College Hall.

His main thesis dealt with the Bohemian-suburban relationship as it affects the poet, contending that the poet needs to react against the social norms ‘in order to find himself. Does the poet not return to society, examine it or try to understand it?’ he asked. ‘Surely the society in which he lives is part of the necessary material of his art?’

But the making of poems was a difficult, ‘even dangerous occupation’, said Mr Baxter. ‘For the poet is a man who, without sanctity, claims the original viewpoint and some of the spiritual freedom which society has granted (or refused to grant) to the saints. Jacques Maritain has pointed out the dangers of revolt against the norms of society; that a man may, in casting off the leading strings of the nursery, reject all transcendental values and fall eventually into idolatry, worshipping his own creations. It is questionable, however, if an artist once visited by the daimon is in a position to turn back.’

He maintained that ‘a breakdown in the relation of man to his environment has occurred even within our lifetimes.’

‘In the monstrous shape of the atom bomb could we observe the symbolic disintegration of the natural order; a world where relation is supplanted by use, and the charred corpses of the children of Hiroshima evoke meaningless horror or a further justification in terms of abstract thinking.’

Mr Baxter stayed last night in Dunedin and is returning to Wellington this morning.

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