C. J. DENNIS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22443, 2 July 1938, Page 18

C. J. DENNIS

When Clarence James Dennis died last week there died one who had vigorously expressed and helped to create the strong national spirit which has been evident for a good many years in Australian literature. The powerful individualism of certain Australia writers, among whom Dennis was one of the most remarkable, has so far found no counterpart in New Zealand. Men like Henry Lawson, “Banjo” Paterson, and C. J. Dennis wrote of scenes, characters, and social phenomena which were unmistaxably Australian. Only Australians could have written as they did, and that, surely, is the solitary convincing test of a national art. They chose subjects that were at hand in their own country, precisely characteristic of it, and in that way unique. Although Dennis wrote in slang, and although his books had to be provided with glossaries to help the uninitiated, he may just as well be styled a poet as writers whose diction belongs to the drawing-room rather than the street corner. Dennis knew Australian life, particularly Melbourne life, as it was in the picturesque days before Little Lonsdale street and Little Bourke street grew respectable. Coupled with this knowledge of the.people round him, he had the imagination of a poet. For imagination and ingenuity it is difficult to think of anything better that has come out of Australia than Dennis’s description of sunrise and sunset, recorded in the slang terms of the ring. “The Stoush o’ Dav,” as it is called, is to be found in “The Sentimental Bloke,” the book which first made Dennis popular. Its sales were enormous, and on the merits of his performance, it must be said that the author deserved every penny that he made by it. The language of the poems in “The Sentimental Bloke” catches the strong flavour of Australia as Damon Runvon’s idiom catches that of his sinister segment of M ew York life. The areat merit , of “The Sentimental Bloke” is the anneal it makes to ordinary people.. Anybody can appreciate it; and it

A Memorial Note

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOB THE PBB3BJ [By lAN DONNELLY.]

must have been enjoyed quite as much in the comfortable suburbs as in its source-environment of Spadger’s lane: as much, or even more. Naturally enough, Mr Dennis followed up this success with other narrative poems in similar style; but he was never to do better than he had done with “The Sentimental Bloke,” and there were times when he fell far below the original standard. However, “The Moods of Ginger Mick,” published a year after history had been made on Gallipoli by the Australian forces, did for the Australian soldiers something not very different from what Rupert Brooke’s sonnets had done, in a more classical style, for other troops. It was the saga of the rabbit-seller from Spadger’s lane. It had frankly sentimental ingredients; but there are times of stress when a touch of sentiment does no harm. Dennis knew that, and he did not hesitate. For many years he had been writing verse regularly for the “Herald,” Melbourne; and it is pleasantly appropriate that a piece of verse published on June 8 should have been a defence of the Australian manner of speech. He was protesting against the efforts of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, to standardise Australian voices, efforts which it defended by saying that the people were becoming “accent conscious. This is part of Dennis’s protest:

For the world grows regimented and the olden orders pass With those ancient heroes that we .knew of old. Out beyond the sandy ranges Culture grows and fashion changes And a bloke has got to talk the way he’s told. For the craze for “standardising” has i Australia in its grip And Lawson's friends, Joe Wilson, and his mates have got the pip.

These old battlers, so accustomed to the old Australian drawl, Find it hard to knuckle down to modern ways. Tho’ the purists may deride them, ’Twas their speech identified them. For they talked the Aussie lingo all their days.' But the Man from Snowy River strives to change his "Oi” to “I” And Clancy of the Overflow now wears an old school tie.