Literature

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26348, 31 December 1946, Page 2

Literature

AUSTRALIAN WRITING

NEW PROSE AND VERSE The Overlanders. By Dora Birtles. The Shakespeare Head. Silent His Wings. By Coralie Clarke. Rees. Australian Publishing Company. The Unceasing Gound. By W. HartSmith. Angus and Robertson. 6s. The Hidden Springs. By Charles Campbell. Angus and Robertson. 6s. Under Aldebaran. By James McAuley. Melbourne University Press. 6s. Australian Poetry, 1945. An anthology. Angus and Robertson. 6s. The film industry has delighted for a good many years in perverting to its uses some very fine novels. It is therefore only just that a writer should turn the tables on the cinema by taking the plot for a novel from a film. Miss Dora Birtles, an Australian novelist, has done just that in The Overlanders, based on the film of the same name. After reading through this attempt one can only hope that film directors will now realise how more sensitive authors must feel when they see the mangled remains of their novels in their final screen version. “The Overlanders” as a film might, for all I know, recapture vividly an epic achievement in Australia’s warhistory. As a book, it does not. The dead smell of celluloid seems to rise from every page. The characters are actors in grey and white who never come alive. The style of writing, a poor ragout of some, well-known authors of the “realistic” school, is as artificial as are the characters in the book. A blushingly bowdlerised endless flow of “Australian” dialogue interspersed with connecting passages of a self-conscious “starkness” makes neither good literature nor even good reading. A very different facet of the Australian spirit can be recognised in Coralie. Clarke. Rees’ elegy Silent His Wings... The writer’s love for her brother killeji in action vibrates in every word, her sincerity shines on every page; but—one must admit with regret that she was not quite able to reach her self-set goal. To blind spiritual appreciation of her brother’s sacrifice with an examination of the material causes which occasioned it, is a difficult enough task. It is doubly so when the poetess can draw neither on sufficient imagery nor on more experience in technique. If it were not for Mrs Rees’ very apparent sincerity one might be tempted to write off her poems as an awkward excursion into the emotions. As it is, one must hope that her receptiveness may yet be matched with a more sensitive mode of expression. Whereas in “Silent His Wings” emotion outstrips expression; fhe opposite may be discerned in W. Hart-Smith’s “ The Unceasing Ground.” This collection of poems can be divided rather sharply in to a too deliberately mystical section in which the poet’s conceits (used technically) envelop like a rank growth the slender emotional core; and into a rationalistic set in which spare imagery enhances the slight contents. Mr W. Hart-Smith’s technique generally holds one’s interest. but one is still left at the end with an impression of pretentious emptiness. The saving grace of occasional farfetched fantasy which lends to “The Unceasing Ground” a passing interest has not even been vouchsafed to Charles Campbell in The Hidden Strings. One 'may feel grateful that these verses do not, despite the title of the collection, hide very much. They are as straightforward as their commonplace emotional themes. They jingle along at an easy trot, they rarely break into a canter and never into a gallop, and they as rarely fall back into a walk. The sameness of indistinguishable little thoughts us matched by an even lope; they are read, and they leave no memory, and that is perhaps just as well. Under Aldebaran, by James McAuley, however, stands by itself as the manifesto of an Australian poet who hgs something to say and who can say it. Mr McAuley foregoes obscurantism as his observation ranges so wide that words need not be used as a cloak to obscure the absence of thought. There is elegance in his biting satire and a shy lyricism in his self-seeking. He has in himself the secret of style which is not a thing divorced from contents, but a frame for thought. No stumbling here, no groping, ’only the clear expression of a mind rather frightening in its relentless statement of truths < put to the test of experience, and in its wrestling with symbols which have not yet revealed their full meaning. True, there is a tendency to flippancy when the issues go too deep, yet even this turning aside is revealing. Great promise has fulfilled itself in this collection of poems. If this is indeed the spirit of a new Australia, then it need not fear for the future. This is a book to be read. How different, though, is the work of this one man from the motley collection “Australian Poetry, 1945.” The verse of some 30 Australian poetasters assembled in this volume is, on thp whole, akin to each other in its depressing littleness. A few exceptions there are. principally in the poetry of Dorothy Hewett and Peter Finch Otherwise, however, one is irresistibly reminded of Roy Campbell’s ironic epigram on some South African novelists: “You praise the firm restraint with which they write—l’m with you there, of course. They use the snaffle and the curb all right, but where’s the horse? ” This is, no doubt, rather a severe summing-up, but it is inevitable when evaluating. these verses. One cannot even say in mitigation that the collection is well edited Some readers may like the plan adopted for this. book in printing the authors in alphabetical order, but I think that it may have gained at least in unity by a grouping of the verse according to subject-matter and mood. Although, with the exception of McAuley's “ Under Aldebaran ” and a few verses in the anthology of Australian poetry, there is little of value to be found in the books under review, one must record that on the whole the typography and the binding are of a reasonably good standard Craftsmanship, even in the externals, once again outstrips art in the offerings from Australia’s muse. H. S. Iv.-lv.