LITERATURE AND NATIONALITY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1558, 30 September 1912, Page 4

LITERATURE AND NATIONALITY.

« NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIAN WRITERS. . On Friday night Mr. W. F. Ward, M.A., LL.B., delivered his presidential address before tho Victoria College Debat> ing Society on "Literature in Australia and New Zealand." The lecturer remarked that in Australia and New Zealand the conditions had not so far been favourable to the production of a true national literature. These countries had not so far realised their nationality, and until that was done their literary productions must hi lacking in many of the finer qualities which characterise the literature of older lands. It took England -three hundred years before the nation-buildtnsr process could overcome the disunion brought about by the Conquest, and find its expression in Chaucer. It look an American War of Independence to i provide an atmosphere in which the spirit of a Lowell or an Emerson could flourish. It might l>e that our literary genius in its highest, form must wait till we havo emerged from a conflict, with the nations of the East. Another factor consisted of tho economic, conditions, which did not permit of the existence of a cultured leisured class, which seemed necessary in order to provide patrons for literary aspirants. In Australia somo writers had reached a (onsiderable level, and though the station and diggings have efllled forth much excellent work, the vork of Australian writers on deeper themes hris been marked by pessimism, produced possibly by the ni'onotonv of Australian scenery, and accentuated by the misery which characterised the lives of her sweetest singer l -. Tn New Zetland we have a host of writers who have as a common bond an exultant joy in the glories of iiature, this also, like the. characteristic note of Australian literature to which we have, just, referred, having its source in_ thy natural configuration of the land. Foremost among our verse writers the lecturer placed Alfred Dommett. ■'