OUR WRITERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 8

OUR WRITERS.

NEW ZEALAND'S RECORD!

PERFORMANCE AND PROMISE.

THE PROBLEM OF THE NOVEL.

"We must first get rid of the idea that beautiful, - and - especially grand, natural scenery necessarily produces great art. .It does not. If it did Switzerland would be the most literary country'in- Europe, and the Highlands j of Scotland would swarm: with poets, instead of deerstalkers. We have one of the loveliest countries on earth, with an astonishing variety of beauty, but we -must not depend on it to create our. art. It is possible'for natural beauty about one to satisfy the aesthetic sense, or to overwhelm the spark of creation. Holland is not a beautiful country, in the* sense that New Zealand is, but it has produced great schools of painting. Nature alone does not make great art. j It must be transfused by the human mind." This was one of the passages in a lecture given at the W.E.A. Summer School at Paerata by Mr. A. E. Mulgan, on "New Zealand Literature." Mr. Mulgan pointed out that New Zealand was still ten years short of its centenary, and was much younger that the United States when they gave birth to Poe, Long-fellow, Mark Twain, „ Bret Harte, and Walt Whitman. Generally speaking, literature was a plant of slow growth, and the product of many influences, including leisure. In varying degrees the Dominions were still in the pioneering stage. That explanation, however, would not suffice indefinitely. There were now six and'a half million people in Australia and ten- millions in Canada, and their city communities had passed far beyo'nd the pioneering stage. Similarly the population of Auckland was going on for a quarter of a million, and one was justified;in looking to it to produce,literature ;n the not indefinable future. It was a curious thing, showing that' rigid' laws could hot be laid down in these matters, that two of the'most notable' hooka written in New

Zealand were . written long ago. Maning's "Old New Zealand!' was a classic and still read. Domett's "Ranolf and Araohia" was a classic, but was not read. The main reason was that it had every virtue except readableness. New Zealand Poets. The lecturer mentioned the, number of cultivated men and women' among early settlers, the advantages that culture had in the South Island! as compared with the North, and the essen-' tially English impress that circumstances had put upon that culture. Our literature had been and was strongly ■imitative. We had something to learn from our Australian cousins in the cultivation of a national spirit, but we should. beware of its excesses. It would be at our peril if we divorced ourselves from the stream of British culture. Mr. Mulgan thought that in poetic content New Zealand poetry was superior to j Australian, but New Zealand had not produced poets who, in national popularity, could be compared with some in Australia. Bracken owed his popularity mainly to a felicitous piece of sentiment, "Not 'Understood," and also to the phrase "God's Own Country," which was not a New Zealand copyright. The work of the poets who wrote at the e'nd of the nineteenth century and on into the I twentieth —Jessie Mackay, Arthur Adams, Blanche Bauglian, Arnold Wall, Mary Colborne-Veel and Hubert Church —was touched on, and the a'nthologies the "Treasury of New Zealand. Verse" and "Kowhai Gold," were mentioned, as books that should be on every New Zealander's shelves. The younger generation of poets, as represented in "Kowhai Gold" showed the influence of the Georgian poets in They seemed to M more occupied with pure beauty and less with moral and didactic aims, than the older generation. It had been said of them that they, did not believe in causes, but perhaps that was partly the result of post-war disillusionment. The Novelist's Difficulties Turning to prose writers, Mr. Mulgan described the Hon. W. P. Reeves as our foremost • man of letters, and said it was a pity that he had not written more. His style, as exemplified in "The Long White Cloud," was a, model of ease and lucidity. He knew that it was the business of the historian to be readable. Mr. James Cowan was another writer who presented facts in bright style, and his book on the Maori a'nd his history of the Maori wars, should, like "The Long White Cloud/' he in every -home. We Tver© very weak

in social and political memoirs, and the historian was thereby seriously handicapped, but the late Mr. Justice Alpers' "Cheerful Yesterdays" was a really brilliant -book, better written and more interesting than a large percentage of English reminiscences. In novels we had to put by the side of "The Story of an ■ African Farm," "Bobbery Under-Arms;" or "For the Term of His Natural Life." There were certain special difficulties in the way of winning a popular ■ success with a New Zealand novel. ■ The population of New Zealand wassmall-^it'was'note worthy how many more' books- were published in Australia, where the population was larger—and the -people' in.' England were not inter- ' ested in New Zealand life. That lifa lacked certain kinds of sensational or picturesque elements that helped ths novelist and macfe ' for popularity. It was unlike English life, and yet like it. There were no Babbitts in New Zealand —or only baby Babbitts. This meant, however, not that it was impossible to write an appealing New Zealand novel, but that there were difficulties to be overcome. Local colour by itself would 'not do. There must be sound-character drawing. One Great Success. It had been argued that New Zealand writing was too parochial and that authors should think less about New Zealand and more about the outside world., Tbi^.criticism had value in that it pointed- to. the. .fact, that all great art was more or less universal in its appeal; on. the. other hand, in all countries the majority of novelists had written of what was about them, the life they kne\V. Katherine Mansfield was New Zealand's one great success in the literary world of Britain and America. New Zealand did much to form her art, and in return she showed New Zealand writers the value of careful writing, of psychological insight, of analysis of character. She proved that a story writer could dis-i pense with galloping sheep farmers, remittance men, and such old stock-in-trade —that plot and local colour were not everything. . In conclusion, Mr. Mulgan said that in addition to the smallness of our population, our isolation and the resultant temptation to be self-satisfied, and the importance attached to material prosperity, were forces hindering the development of a national literature. The W.E.A. was one of those organisations that could help the movement, partly by remembering the material consideration that an author must liv«%