"Atlantis " Again

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

"Atlantis " Again

TOe legend of tha lost country of Atlantis, overtaken by catastrophe in the full flush of its prosperity, to disappear for ever beneath the ocean, is one which has always stirred the popular imagination. Mr. James Bramwell in "Lost Atlantis" (Cobden-Sanderson) discusses the evidence for the existence of such a country aa Atlantis, and then examines the different theories as to its location. Plato's dialogue "Critias" is really the main foundation for the Atlantis legend, and Mr. Bramwell seems to us to strain probabilities rather too far when he suggests that Homer's Phaeacia is the same as Plato's Atlantis, and that both are descriptions of a country having an authentic existence. Coleridge's Xanadu was, of course, inspired ultimately by Purchas' description, but no one would suppose that his account of the Pleasure Dome of Khubla was in any sense a description of an authentic scene; rather it was a vision, illumined by the light that never was on sea or land, of pure poetic essence. Plato's Atlantis may as well be left in the same category.