SEA WRITERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

SEA WRITERS.

A COMPARISON.

BT KOTARE.

The earlier part of Captain Munro's book " The Roaring Forties and After" fascinated mo. Thero is no literary artifice? in the telling of his vivid yarn. Tho exuberance of youth still surgos within him, and ho recaptures again all the ,fine, careless rapturo of those splendid days when he first went down to the sea in ships. He has achieved reality; he lives again all tho swift reactions of eager youth to tho mystery and splendour and menaco of the sea. Here aro no pious reflections of disillusioned maturity on tho foolish enthusiasms of his boyhood. He loves it all now as he loved it then. Captain Munro does not remember in tranquility tho emotions that onco raced through him; ho feels them all again as strongly and. as vividly as when ho first sailed in strange waters and matched himself with the proud might of tho sea. Consequently, to accompany tho author in this record of his days of sail is much more than to touch aloofly with your finger-tips a phase of lifo which the fates have probably denied to you. You aro in tho thick of things with him. You see and feel as lie felt and saw. You have added not meroly to your knowledge, but to your experience. That is how he grips me, anyway. Conrad. ... The great writors about the sea all naturally regard it from their own angle. Conrad has given, us pictures that for colour and atmosphere aro unrivalled in our literature. In his " Youth" ho has written magnificently of his first voyage. Tho attitude of mind of his hero is in all essentials that expressed in " Tho Roaring Forties." But Conrad is, of course, always ,the conscious literary artist. Even his most glowing pages are shadowed by tho melancholy which marked the philosophy of his later years. Conrad knew the sea, but his psychological prepossession mado liim give it a definite personality that reflected very strangely his own temperament. Tho sea was not in his blood. He came from a land thathad no sea border, and whose destiny had been wholly, in far-inland places. So Conrad never loved the sea. It was to him a thing of wild, ineffable beauty, but at tho heart of it was a bitter hostility to man. It was never fully conquered. One victory for man or a series of victories ended with themselves. The struggle still went on. The sea relentlessly continued the conflict, and usually, in the end, its menacing malignity had its way with those that presumed to fight it. ' ; Ho worked it into his philosophy. It became to him a grim symbol of the tragedy of living. The ship struggled on, to reach tho liaven where it would be or to make the . port of missing ships. There on the wild tumult of waters, with darkness shrouding the faco of tho deep, tho'little ship strove to keep on its appointed way. On- the deck the ship lights fell; "thero within that narrow space was human effort and human companionship. All around was danger and darkness "and a relentless will to dpslrov. And that is liow iffliijr foyage of lifo' appeared to him. Man was set amid the darkness, 'With hostile forces thrusting at his heart. Around his feet a little light df'his own devising. A little friendship and human interest gave what colour and warmth life was capable of. But the enemy swept him away in tho end. Two things alone made life tolerable: a senso of duty and the" courage to follow it; faithfulness and pluck, the job to his hand and the grit to carry it through. Masefield. Masefield has a wider, more intense, experience of the sea thun Conrad. He began younger for one thing. He served his sea-years before tho mast. He had no romantic episodes liko Conrad's experience of gun-running during the Carlist troubles in Spain. Ho won his soul in tho forecastle, while Conrad carried his heavier responsibilities and enjoyed his greater comforts among the officers. Masefield lias written of tho call of tho sea in many a poem of compelling power and beauty. One road leads to the river, . As it goes singing slow; My road leadß to the shipping, "WTiero the bronzed sailors so. Lures me. leads me, calls mo To salt, green, tossing sea; A road without earth's ropd dust • Is the right road for mo. A wot road, heaviug, shining, ■And wild with seagulls' cries, A mad, salt, sea wind blowing The salt spray in my eyes. Masefield comes of a sea race. Tho sea is at least in his blood. But all these songs of the call of tho sea are written to explain why he went to sea in the first place, and why ho continued thero during his youth and early manhood. ; j He is, perhaps, soeking, too, to explain why his shipmates, who doubtless resolved after each voyago that they would never go to sea again, always wearied after a few weeks ashore, and took tho old road to the docks again. His poems try to capture a mood in retrospect. Masefield did not go hack to the sea again; he satisfied old urge by writing about the sea. Moods.

Besides that initial impulse which drove him to the sea, besides the fact that there was something in him which for a tints only the sea could satisfy, there is the surprising passion for beauty which he, like Dauber, kept alive during all his strenuous, often sordid, years of seafaring. He sought, and still seeks, for beauty as Galahad sought the Holy Grail. It was this quest that kopt him a slave to the sea for so long. .And ho found what, ho sought. He found in the soa a beauty that satisfied even his craving. In tho end he found nn unexpected beauty that matched tho glory of the sea, in tho courage and struggle and comradeship ot tho men in tho forecastle. He is essentially tho poet as Conrad is the philosopher. He saw tho sea through tho poot's eyes. And that is why his finost sea pooms, strangely enough, do not make the appeal to sailors that they make to landsmen. Kipling regards the sea as a setting for the achievements of man, tho conqueror. Man has made" tho deep as dry, used it as his pathway to tho ends of the earth. It is a vast giant of uncertain temper, and can work much damage when it is in the mood. But man has bent it to his purposes. It exists now to do man's will. It is in ft special sense tho co-worker of tho British race in fulfilling their mission as the chosen peoplo of tho modern world. Captain Munro deserves mention in this great company, not because on literary grounds ho can compare with any one of them, but because his attitude to tho sea seems to be more sane, certainly mora intelligible, than that of the bigger mem The sea is his element. He has seen it in all moods, has fought with it and conquered, has fought witli it and been overcome. But in all its forms ho loves it. This is liis true home. The sea is his comrade, not always on best behaviour, but tho best of 'pals for all that. And, having no philosophical or poetic or imperial prepossossions, he tells a direct talo of. how the sea and ho have companied together in the far places of the earth.