A Colonial Literature.

Manawatu Herald, 4 October 1904, Page 2

A Colonial Literature.

In a scholarly article on the above, the Post observes : “It would be idle to enquire whether the output of New Zealand literature up to the present is small or large for the age of the community The term ‘ age ’ applied to a country such as this is full of ambiguity. Though its history is as yet but a speck in the record of nations, it is really the heir of all the ages. In race-development it is as old as England, it is only in national life that it is young. And so far as the general spirit of a literature is dependent oil national life our local efforts must for a long time remain crude and insignificant. But so far as the inspiration of the individual is concerned, there is no reason why gifted and inspired persons should not be found in New Zealand as Well as in England or Germany. If we have not got them the loss is ours; but we cannot plead in excuse that we are not old enough to have formed the soil out of which they Spring. The conditions of the problem are very complex. Prom one point of view we rest for our literary culture on the older countries of Europe. From another, it is just our close contact with and dependence on those older literatures that checks the growth of originality among ourselves. If we were cut adrift from all older influences, we should suffer a period of intellectual and spiritual starvation. But, like other Robinson Crusoes, we should soon become independent, and evolve sources of nutriment, limited, no doubt, in scope, but endowed with stronglymarked characteristics, ho far it is just doubtful whether what we learn from the Old World compensates for the incubus which it lays upon us.