NETTIE PALMER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 630, 5 April 1929, Page 14

NETTIE PALMER

(Written for THE SUN) Those o£ you who have seen Serle's anthology will remember that one poem was printed as a foreword —a key to the whole book. That poem, shining in its italics, was Nettie Palmer’s and it was more than a poem; it was a creed. If ever an Australian nationalist exists, it is she. And she has a vivid, fastidious lance to lend this young cause. I remember her telling me once of an interv.w that Louis Esson had with Yeats. Yea’* advised him to take not European subjects, but the commonplaces of his country, and turn them into prose and verse. Although I agree that it is the iperit of the writing that will place the great New Zealand novel when it comes, I cannot help thinking that local colour will be more than incidental. The book will be great because it has tlxe feel of the land, not blatantly, not guide-book-wisely, but surely, breatliingly. And, as has already been said, it will be a hard thing, because we are infantine yet, and our national characteristics are showing slowly. Australia's are easier. A continent changes island-stock. Even the smallest work by an Australian is worth scanning if it contains elements of a national consciousness. It takes unselfishness and energy to follow up the works of a country so vast. So many write because they think they have the gleam when often

hope is their only merit. When a nation’s standards are formed, its ideals realised, such writers find their own level, but, in these intermediate stages, the sifting of bad, half-bad, half-good, good, is not so easy as it appears. It is like the legend of the pins and needles mixed in a confusion of sizes. The good fairy comes along and with an incredibly handy wand makes them scuttle into their proper ranks and stations. Once they are in, you would wonder how it looked so hard. Their places seem inevitable. It’s that way with literature, but it takes a brave and canny wand to sort the needles from the jrins in a writing world like Australia’s. It takes courage to write anything save praise of one’s contemporaries, and what is more, It takes discrimination to know which works deserve even blame. Some are worth neither. Still further, it takes constant watchfulness, and constant scanning of publisher’s lists, for little books spring up overnight like mushrooms, and their binding is no indication of their worth.

A few years ago Nettie Palmer published a bibliography of Australian literature. It was hailed as a boon by her countrymen. She was known to them then as the author of two books of poems, published in London, delicate and distinctive work. She was one of the supporters, too, of the little magazine "Birth,” to which all contributions were voluntary. It had its own anthologies, and was run for no one's profit. It was her enthusiasm that struck me most, and the utter unselfishness that made her take such trouble over any promising talent. Her days are packed as tight as a honeycomb.

A trip to the Old World in her early youth, during a post-graduate course after a brilliant career at Melbourne

! University, opened her eyes to the possibilities of her own country as an ego, an entity. The sight of other lands preserving and cherishing their literature and traditions whetted her interest in her own. On her return she added to her other qualifications those of lecturer and critic. By now her penetrating critiques are known from Malaysia to Deal, wherever "The Bulletin” rolls on its way. Character, whatever cynics may say, enters into one’s writing. A gift is not a thing apart from either flesh or spirit. Both her verse and her prose are lanterns of charity. “It is not easy to rejoice with those who rejoice —such is the tyranny of a grudging spirit,” says Chrysostom, but that grudging spirit could not live in such clay as Nettie Palmer’s. One sometimes smiles when one thinks of the war there must be at times between that tolerance and her rigid literary conscience, for everything is not grist that comes to her critical mill. In "The Bulletin's” Christmas Number, the editor of the Red Page mentioned as a proof of “The Bulletin’s” literary stability a number of manuscripts lying on his table. One of hers was, of course, among them, for she has been for some years now one of its most cherished contributors. If any important Australian book appears, its "Bulletin” review is fairly certain to end with her name. This Christmas Angus and, Robertson chose her for the compilation of a book of Australian short stories that has been widely reviewed here and elsewhere. The selection of such stories involves both time and knowledge. To do the work properly a critic needs a flair for atmosphere, a knowledge of technique, an instinct for taut endings, a sense of word values, and an acquaintance with the writing of the country. They chose a mistress of the pointed word, the flashing phrase, and better still, a mistress of Australiana —in two words, Nettie Palmer. If this seems naked eulogy, ask any Australian. He will absolve me. EILEEN DUGGAN.