C. K. Stead: The visitor comes ashore

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 22

C. K. Stead: The visitor comes ashore

Pound, Yeats, Eliot. By C. K. Stead. Macmillan, 1986. 393 pp. $ll5. (Reviewed by Tom Weston)

In late 1984, New Zealand finally saw “All Visitors Ashore,” C. K. Stead’s second novel. Ironically (given the subject matter), the book was first published in England, where its enthusiastic reception prefigured a subsequent New Zealand success. Mello Farbro, a central character, is a thinly disguised Frank Sargeson. In an earlier review of the novel, I suggested the expression "il miglior fabbfo” was the source of that somewhat exotic name. With the passage of time I have become more confident of that assertion. After all, there it is, the inscription to “The Waste Land”: For Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro. The step, then, from “All Visitors Ashore” to “Pound, Yeats, Eliot” is one of correlation. In logistical terms there may have been an overlap in the writing process; certainly, there is a consistency of thought. In “All Visitors Ashore” Pound, that "extraordinary force in the development of modern literature,” makes a cameo appearance in 1950 s Takapuna. In “Pound, Yeats, Eliot,” Stead acknowledges the Poundian presence. Is it too much to suggest that the discoveries Stead made in the course of writing the critical work saw an outlet in the fictional setting? These small intrigues do not alter an understanding of either work; they merely provide part of the fascination that is implicit in any detective story.

Say it not in ideas, but in things: William Carlos Williams in the 19205. Sixty years on, this is echoed by C. K. Stead: “A poetry firmly and unambiguously grounded in actuality — a real and recognisable world, a location, a geography.” If a concept of truth is relevant, it is an internal truth only. These are Modernist themes and Stead is an unabashed Modernist. Subsequent theoretical debate has been ignored. The difficulty now is to write of Pound or Eliot, or of the Modernist movement itself, without merely rediscovering the wheel. A great deal of critical attention has already been directed to all three. Pound once said, "make it new,” and I suspect many commentators are struggling to do just that: arguments are so often directed at the inconsequential. It is within this framework that this new critical work, a reworking of the earlier “The New Poetic" (1964), appears. Stead is realistic enough to acknowledge his many predecessors. The earlier work, subtitled “Yeats to Eliot” presaged the more recent work in that it was, too, a personal search and presented as such. There were reworkings, dead ends, repeats and then, a final clarification of position. But the important difference between the two works is in the distance covered. The earlier reported on Pound (and thus Modernism) in a peripheral or superficial sense. For the purposes of the earlier work, Eliot was the culmination of the search. Even so, in his treatment of Eliot, Stead provided

many a student with a useful explanation of Eliot’s complex (and often contradictory) theoretical positions. I first read "The New Poetic” having already been converted (if that is the right word) to Pound by Hugh Kenner’s marvellously evocative "The Pound Era.” I found the relative absence of Pound in Stead’s first work both surprising and troublesome, and so was not surprised to find a different perspective in the present study. Eliot now stands a little in the penumbra; Pound, although not fully revealed, stands more clearly spotlit. Stead’s work is quite different to Kenner’s: at one stage Stead speaks (in a slightly acerbic tone) of Kenner’s “customary decorum of the descriptive and explanatory.” Stead, on the other hand, is more inclined to write prose as Pound did: didactic, blazing his trail, making his mistakes in public.. It can be disconcerting and sometimes does not work. The honesty and integrity of the author, however, is unmistakable. Both Stead and Kenner agree on one thing and that is in their conclusion. Pound is the linch pin, the genius. “Pound, Yeats, Eliot” suffers some of the failures of Pound’s own essay writing. It sometimes lacks structure, it can be too earnest, it assumes an audience where there may be none. There are clear insights that are then hedged about with qualifications. Emphasis is given to seemingly unimportant issues and red herrings can be fully explored. And yet, this occasionally difficult style obscures some very good points. There has been a substantial and thorough scholarship. Portions of it will, no doubt, be important reference points for further research. The book concludes with a chapter on the English poet Donald Davie. Davie, initially opposed to Pound, slowly came to appreciate that poet’s genius. The exact purpose of this chapter is unclear, although it seems to provide a useful allegory of Stead’s own journey. This has some way to go yet. Stretching the metaphor used above, I suggest Stead has yet to see Pound completely in the spotlight. There is more that must be revealed, and no doubt C. K. Stead will now attend to this.