THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22063, 20 September 1933, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer.

A correspondent from the sun-kissed Central-land, who confesses to have found ripe wisdom in this column, comments:—

Yesterday a part of your discussion was devoted to the writings (or effusions, to use the term appropriate to your profession) of love-lorn humans.

I wonder whether you ever came across that exquisitely tender letter, very apparently written by some quite illiterate person, who uses these words as though they were a refrain; • meek and lowly, pure and holy, lovely Rose of Sharon. John o’ London recently published it, to my great pleasure. Then again, a certain notorious literary gentleman of the nineties wrote something like this: "... dip your fingers in the cool twilight of Gothic things. Notwithstanding that_ this was written by a poet whose genius was later disallowed on account of his morals, it nevertheless ranks, I think, as part of a beautiful, if somewhat exotic, love letter. Trusting that you will deal charitably with my memory in the absence of any references.—l am, etc., Of No Importance. Well-chosen words, and graceful additions to the journal of anyone who preserves the felicitous of thought and expression.

To our mind there has yet to arise the poet who could more perfectly enshrine the sentiment of romantic passion than a lady who, like the writer our correspondent mentions, was more famed for moral turpitude than otherwise. Her name was Sappho:— I render your beauty the sacrifice of all my thoughts, and worship you with

all my senses. On {esthetic grounds we may dare to express a small regret that the early Church thought it well to consign her writings to the bonfire. In the published work of a Dunedin writer we find a passage whidu it seems to us, is not inferior to many a gleaming and memorable phrase in the literature of older countries. Here it is:—• Nautilla, the flower thrown up from the sea, foreign lands are In your eyes, strange clouds and cataracts are In your hair.

There Is no mystery I would solve by you. and there Is nothing I desire but you. Not all the poetry in literature is to be found in nicely-spaced capital, letters and studious manipulation of is a lesson some of our multitudinous New Zealand poets might profitably imbibe.

But our correspondent was referring particularly, as we have permitted ourselves to overlook for the indulgence of irrelevant musings, to the spontaneous or unstudied poetry in letters. Litterateurs with an eye on their unrelaxing duty to art, and the other on the posthumous*'publication of their letters may, as he Shows, coin the immortal phrase. But how ineffably superior the pure impromptu, struck, perhaps, by a mute inglorious Milton with no consciousness of creative fervour. Mr Aldous Huxley quotes a remarkable letter of a suicide, which illustrates the sublimation of which anguish may be (but generally is not) capable. Perpend:—

No wish to die. One of the best of sports, which they all knew. Not in the wrong, the boys will tell you. This b ——at Palmer’s Green has sneaked my wife, one of the best in the world; my wife, the first love in the world. Comment, one feels, might be indecent. But we are reminded, thinking of our feats of penmanship as victims of the tender passion, that, as Mr Huxley adds, a talent for literary expression is perhaps rarer than a talent for love.

From the Puritan Shockery Book: “ Take one large box of plaster of paris, six feet of armature. Mix plaster well and place over armature, then mould lightly into the form of a female, slim, tall, rounded, such as never wort. Revolve slowly, but do not stir.” No need to stir! The very sight of the becorsetted lay figure in a shop window is stirring enough. Herewith some of the emanations:—

, , . why is there not a censor for shop window displays, such, as one, has thrust upon one in the busiest area of our city? Methinks if this vulgar display were exhibited in a poor locality there would immediately be a prosecution.

, , . I would also offer my protest against the unseemly exhibit. ... If it is supposed to depict how bold our womenfolk have become, then God. help the country! I regard it as an insult to our sex. ... I was so shocked and indignant. . . . Why should women’s sense of modesty be outraged so often in these days? How can we expect the young people of to-day to have modesty ? . . . Such a shocking exhibition. . . . I would also like to point out the disgusting exhibition of underclothing seen on suburban clothes lines almost daily, . . .

The Cnidean Venus, chastely draped, who is to be viewed in the confines of Vatican City, must permit a fleeting smile of satisfaction to animate her demure countenance as she learns of the champions she has won to her support.

This word was needed. Red flannel undergarments dancing with abandon in close association with pink woollen nether-wear upon suburban clothes lines are not an edifying spectacle, as any student of Diaghalev will tell you. It may be that inhibitions have their own release. Through the closed pores of respectable mankind they seep, perhaps, into the near habiliments and, at the lecherous bidding of the wind, dance in close embrace their obscene fandango on washing day. There have always, praise be, existed the pure in our midst, to recall our thoughts from imprudent wanderings and our roving eyes from that which is deemed immodest. It may be a city council which acts as moral stabiliser, a bishop, or a wear-more-clothes foundation, or we may have to take our guidance from the right minded writers to the editor. It matters not so long as our distractions are confined.

It may bo Mr Huxley’s Terrible Infant that acts. as cleansing purge to dim, (esthetic musings on the part of those who have no right to trust their own dictates concerning what is nice. One must imagine a breath-taking turn in the music hall, and the soaring galleries filled with entranced spectators, seeking vicariously a little colour for their sombre lives.

... In God’s bright limelight eyes An angel walks and with one rolling glance Blesses each hungry flower In the hanging gardens. " Divine,” they cry, having no words by which To call the nameless spade a spade, “ Divine Zenocrate! ” There are dark mysteries Whose name Is beauty, strange revelations called , , Love and a gulph of pleasure and of awe Where words fall vain and wingless In the known , „ , . And Undescrlbed, is God. Divine, divine! ” The god-intoxicated shout goes up. “ Divine Zenocrate ! ” ... “ Father,” the terrible infant s voice is slirilli " Say, father, why does the lady wear no skirts? ” We must be thankful for the discerning persons in our midst who, recognising Sin where lesser mortals may, in blindness see only an advertisement for underwear, do not hesitate to sound their redeeming clarion call.

These disruptive forces, which would present the human limb as something free from obscenity, are ever present undermining the seemly reticences of society. We turn with shame to reports of the loathly excesses of the Chicago Fair: “There is a Folies-Bergere show, a glimpse of a Colonic Nudiste through a keyhole (you see your own head on a painted naked body), beer saloons. . j . Some of them have floor shows

comparing favourably with Broadway’s naughtiest.” But the saviours of society wore not asleep. Up rose a lady to speak her protest against “ lewd and lascivious dances and exhibitions,” and down sate a judge, we blush to tell, to receive her. Excerpt: “ Honi soit qui mal y pensc,” remarked the learned jurist. “But such dancing!” “ Some people would put pants on a horse,” the judge imperturbably replied. “ But art classes with nude models! ’ “If you ask me,” said bored Judge David, “ they are just a lot of boobs to come and see a woman wriggle with « fan or without fig leaves. But we have the boobs and we have a right to cater to them. . . . Case dismissed.”

It is a terrible thing, gentle reader, when even the judiciary decries that noble impulse which had its flowering in Victorian Boston when, we read, “tablelegs were draped ... in petticoats, and no doubt . . . patted and pinched considerably between the courses."

But we, who have the watch dogs of morality ever with us, may never know such undisciplined legal decisions. Our Bench, as has been frequently observed, is upright, honest, incorruptible, and our boobs are safe from deleterious sights. The shrill, piercing voice of Mrs Do-As-We-Say-You-Should-Do, the alarm siren, as it were, which sounds when skirts are threatened, is tuned and waiting. How could we not be a pure and thankful people? For our protection from the corrupting view of limbs unsheathed; for our salvation from the demoralising sight of backless gowns; for our swift rescue from the subversive vision of a canvas nude, and our delivery from the foul, lascivious thoughts a plaster figure in a corset may inspire, we thank thee, great Terrible Infant, known as Unco Quid!

Lacking the services of a Poet Laureate, New Zealand may be grateful for a poem of thanksgiving which has been amended especially to coincide with the safe return of our own Forceful Forbes. It may be sung, shouted, cheered, and vociferated to a familiar melody:— When Georgie comes sailing home again. Hurrah, hurrah I ■ The taxpayers sing this glad refrain. Hurrah, hurrah I The banks will pay. And the pubs will shout. And the Red Flags, they will all turn out. And we’ll all be gay when Georgie comes sailing home. But remembering that for the subject of our rejoiclpg this is also a serious and in a sense, perhaps, a melancholy return, not untinged with, shall we say, apprehension, an alternative ode is appended, which may be intoned solo:

Under the lordly Speaker's chair, Find me a Bench, and place me there; Gladly .1 went, and tor all I care, ’ You may put mo now through the mm. This be the legend grave for me, Here he sits where he e’er would be. But If he can’t, he has had hts spree, And the country’s footed the bill. One of the attractive things about Ministerial tours is that the public participates in them. Your best friend goes abroad, and all you can do is envy him, but when the. Prime Minister travels every man-jack of us has a share, % at least in the financial aspect of the trip. This is a consoling thought.

Brussels police, charged with maltreating English schoolboys wearing souvenir Nazi badges, declare^ that the boys have no knowledge of kicking. Presumably the police considered it their duty to remedy this defect in their education.