Why is Australian Literature Sad?

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1824, 15 March 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Why is Australian Literature Sad ?

Music, religion, and literature are especiallly susceptible to the influences of race, climate, and wordly condition. Just as in geography we can tell the plants of a region by its latitude or altitude, bo we can by the same means form a fair idea of its arts and religion. In northern countries the tragic element predominates ; in southern, the comic, although often it is but veneer, hiding far more hideous passions than those of the north, and without their dignity. As the poet has written, beautiful as are southern lands, fond of merriment as are the inhabitants, it can often be said of them that " Every prospect pleases, And only man is vilo ; " but this does not interfere with the general piinciple. The religions of the north are gloomy and ascetic ; those of the south frivolous and joyous. The artists of the north avoid the primary colors and use the tertiories and the neutrals, while those of the south delight in the glories of blue, yellow, and red and their bright secondaries. The greatest tragedies of the world were written in England ; comedy owes its birth to sunny Italy. Galvinism was born in austere and barren Scotland and Switzerland; Boman Catholicism, with its beautiful worship, its glorious ceremonial, its wonderful use of form and color, finds its true home in the south. Even in music the influence of latitude is wanted. Italian music, even if tragic, is full of life and melody ; German music is ponderous, and relies upon harmonic combinations. So the illustrations could be continued in every branch of art and culture. It has often been asked why Australian literature, a puny, sickly plant at present, is so uniformly tinged with gloom. It should not be ; it will not be in the time to come, when it finds a soil in which it can take root. This is a southern land in the sense, the adjective is used in Europe. It is fruitful. There is no misery or distress or hunger, or nakedness, save such as has been caused by the faults of the sufferers. There is no need of tears, except those which must fall over the clay of tho3S we love; a tragic ending that occurs everywhere. The people are essentially mirthloving ; they would take every day a holiday if they could. They can with difficulty be got to go to the theatre to see the grandest tragic master-piece of the world, but they will fight for admission when some French absurdity is produced. They want to laugh, they would sooner read the labored humor of Mark Twain, than the profound philosophy, so full of insight into the human heart, of George Eliot. They are weaned of the old Puritan faith that built up the great English speaking world, and want a new religion in which there will be no Shadow of a Judgment to Come ; which will do away with eternal punishment, and a Personal Principle of evil. There is much indeed in their nature that resembles that of a child; they prefer toys to books. Of course the day will come when this will change ; when a great nation will be called upon to deal with great subjects ; but itis far off. How is it then Australian literature is so uniformly the reverse of cheerful? Partly because Australian writers have not yet learned to think outside of English grooves. They are still, perhaps unconsciously, imitators. They build upon English models, and their characters are but echoes of those in famous British works. As a matter of fact, Australian character has not been formed ; at least what there is new in oharacter in these colonies is not interesting. In California, pronounced types, till then not illustrated by English writers, met on its goldfields, and it was possible to form a new school of fiction ; now about exhausted. Distinct types have also grown up in the Eastern States, and have resulted in another school. For an Australian writer to be original, he must confine himself to the scenery and conditions of life in Australasia ; and here he has a field. If he is a keen observer, he may also |strike out, occasionally, characters essentially racy of the soil. But our literateurs are confined almost entirely to towns, and therefore are unable to meet with originals. A writer who lives in Melbourne or Sydney might as well be in London, so closely does life in these cities bear a resemblance. The great reason, to my mind, for the sadness of our literature, i 3 the unenviable conditions under which the literary man in these colonies cultivates his art. From the first he must know^ his life will be a failure. The rewards will not be for him. Were he another Dickens, he would obtain no recognition. London is the only place where literary men have a chance to gain the enormous rewards that nowadays fall to the lot of those who are successful in the race, and the Australian writer, poor because his pay is necessarily small, has no hope that he can try the verdict there. At first he is buoyed up with the natural pleasure of seeing the fruits of his brain in type. That soon falls ; and he is left high and dry without hope or aim. He may become a country editor, and fret out his life writing on matters he detests ; or he may become one of the great army of the lost — those who have missed their aim. So we often see men who under brighter auspices, would have become an honor to their country and race, mere vagabonds upon the face of the earth ; seeking refuge from the numbing despair that has seized upon them, and the work of despair in the minds of the sensitive is terrible — in the fatal poison, alcohol. Wise indeed is the young man who, having chosen a literary career, sticks to the practical side, that of ordinary newspaper work. He is then -a mere tradesman, and of course he makes money, gets married, and is happy ever afterwards. But there are men who cannot keep down the spirit that hap been born in them ; and for those men there is only the darkness of despair in store. Gifted with extremely sensitive natures, ever hungering for sympathy and congenial companionship, keenly susceptible to pain, and greedy of pleasure, generally without a grain of worldliness, the lot of such men is terrible. No wonder their fate affects their writings ; that through even the brightest of their productions the wailing of the minor key, that key in which despair writes its symphonies, jp ever heard. Their life is one continued tragedy and it colors every line ihey pen. They will not dance to please the multitude, for there is no music in their hearts. If we turn to the lines and works of the few men who have .made some mark in Australian literature, we will find plenty to confirm these remarks. The works of Charles Harper, the oldest of our poets, are pervaded with hopelessness ; perhaps to some extent caused by the models he followed. The sombre gloom of his writings does not belong

to the sunny land in which he lived. A | strain of deep melancholy runs through all of Adam Lindsay Gordon's poems, suggestive of the tragic end. On Marcus Clarkes more versatile mind, the non-result of his work exercised > a baneful influence. Those who have read his latest works must have noticed the growth of that morbid feeling that caused his untimely death. And so with a long list of others, little heard of by the world, but whose struggles have been as bitter, whose end has been as tragic. Through all runs that touching strain, that reminds us of poar Ariadne's death cry in Ouida's terrible story: — " Forgive me ; I have missed the wwar!"} r ! " Is there a remedy? I do not think so. These men live before their time. They are not wanted ; there is no field, no audience ; so the car of the terrible Juggernaut, the workday world, rolls on, and grinds them to powder. The great deaf and dumb Image hears no wail, no cry ; its calm and impenetrable face never alters. Its eyes are fixed only upon one class ; it sees nothing but success ; it welcomes only those who are wanted; the others go under the wheels. It has been said that literary men should also be business men ; that they should be cold, calculating, and selfish. Not long since I read an article in which the writer thanked Heaven the old race of literary men was dead and was replaced by a new which oarried literature on as a business. Precisely so. That is why there is no literature worth talking of now-a-days, why the old life and color and poetry have departed, and are replaced by ingenious tinsel work that will live as many days as it took to produce. Heaven has ordered that the priests of humanity should be differently gifted and constituted to other men ; and probably Heaven understood what was necessary. And those who write books as men make oabineta or boots were not in the eyes of our Great Maker when he created the awful problem of man. Donald Cameron.