ERN MALLEYPOET OR HOAX?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 266, 28 July 1944, Page 14

ERN MALLEYPOET OR HOAX?

correspondent of The Press (Christchurch) who quoted a Sydney Sunday newspaper, a literary hoax of grand proportions was perpetrated this year at the expense of an Australian quarterly, by two students now in the Army. The periodical is called Angry Penguins, and is published and edited by John Reed and Max Harris. It prints verse by Australians and others, articles on art, and critical writings. The autumn number for 1944, a well-printed, well-arranged paper of 110 pages, contained a large section devoted to "The Australian Poet, Ern Malley," and his complete writings, occupying 27 pages, were printed with an introduction by Max Harris. But, according to the correspondent, the poems, the author, and the whole story of his work, are a hoax, claimed by two young men to have been carried out as a serious literary experiment "in order to debunk a literary fashion which has become prominert in England and America." The distinctive mark of this NS to the Sydney

fashion, they are reported to have said, was that it made its devotees insens-

ible of absurdity and incapable of ordinary discrimination. The two students who now claim to have written "Ern Malley’s’"’ poems, invented his life story, and sent his "works" to Angry Penguins, are James McAuley, 26, a lieutenant in the A.LF., and Harold Stewart, 27, a corporal in a military hospital. Their scheme went one step further than they expected it to go. Harry Roskolenko, an American officer and poet, included the poems in an anthology of Australian verse and sent them to New York, where they were published, Here is the story of what had gone before, as The Press printed it: Malice Towards None McAuley and Stewart decided to use the hoax as "a serious literary experiment," without malice towards the editor of Angry Penguins or a desire for publicity. The authors created a poet, "Ern Malley," and wrote his lifework in one afternoon with the aid of an odd assortment of books which happened to be on the desk at the time. The books included the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a complete Shakespeare, and a dictionary of quotations. They claim that they deliberately misquoted, constructed bad verse, and distorted. The first three lines of one poem entitled "Culture as Exhibit" were lifted straight from an American report on the drainage of breedinggrounds of mosquitoes. McAuley and Stewart then proceeded to invent the life of "Ern Malley," his tragic death at the age of 25, and the discovery of his poems by his sister, who; sent them to Angry Penguins for an opinion of their quality. Angry Penguins published the poems, described Ern Malley as "one of the . two giants of Contemporary Australian poetry," who possessed "a tremendous power working through a disciplined and restrained kind of statement, into the deepest wells of human experience." A Brave Ally A Sydney Sunday newspaper discovered that Ern Malley was fictitious, and the whole story come out. Harry Roskolenko made an effort to deflect some of the ridicule to which the hoax subjected the victims. He stood stoutly by his guns, and declared that if the so-called "Poems of Ern Malley" were a hoax, then the authors had succeeded in hoaxing themselves as well as the publishers. Of the 16 poems by "Ern Malley" sent to him by Angry Pen@uinsthe had decided that five were excellent poems and two of the five really very good, McAuley and Stewart should feel proud, he said, to have written such poems, even if the merit was subconscious. The Listener has now seen the issue of Angry Penguins in which the alleged hoax appears. It is certainly a carefully perpetrated hoax if hoax it is. Max Harris, in introducing the poems to the world, sees himself compared with Max Brod, who disposed of the writings of Franz Kafka. He speaks of Malley’s death at (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the age of 25 (from Graves disease) with a noticeable lump in his throat, and is convinced that "This unknown mechanic and insurance peddler’ who prepared his work for publication knowing that death was near was "one of the most outstanding poets we have. produced here." He quotes in full the letter from Malley’s "sister" Ethel, giving details of his life from birthday (March 14, 1918, at Liverpool) to cremation (July 23, 1943, at Rookwood), naming two Australian schools (Petersham and Summer Hill Intermediate High) responsible for her brother’s education, and his employers after he left school (Palmer’s- Garage, Taverner’s Hill, and National Mutual Insurance). Then come the poems, collectively called "The Darkening Ecliptic," headed by a little motto-‘Do not speak of secret matters in a field full of little hills-Old Proverb," and seven brief statements about poetry. (For example: "These poems are complete in themselves. They have a domestic economy of their own, and if they face — outward to the reader that is because they have first faced inward to themselves. Every poem should be an autarchy"). There are 16 poems. It is difficult to believe that they could have been written in one afternoon in the manner described by two young men who did not believe in what they were doing. They are of the species of verse which can be called "Surrealist." They may be nonsense to most of our readers, but much thought lies behind some of them, and a vivid imagination. The rhyme ‘schemes alone make it very difficult for anyone who has ever attempted the most irresponsible doggerel to believe that they were done in one afternoon. Here is a "Sonnet for the Novachord": ISE from the wrist, o kestrel Mind, to a clear expanse. Perform your high dance On the clouds of ancestral Duty. Hawk at the wraith Of remembered emotions. Vindicate our high notions Of a new and pitiless faith. It is not without risk! In a lofty attempt The fool makes a brisk Tumble. Rightly contempt Rewards* the cloud-foot unwary Who falls to tke prairie. By contrast, here is the first stanza from another poem called "Sybilline." In this case it is not so difficult to believe that it was written in a few minutes: HAT rabbit’s foot I carried in my left pocket Has worn a haemorrhage in the lining The bunch of keys I carry with it Jingles like fate in my omphagic ear And when I stepped clear of the solid basalt The introverted obelisk of night I seized upon this Traumdeutung as a sword To hew a passage to my love. A good many of the poems show as much work in their rhyme schemes as the "Sonnet" reveals, and to affect that kind of writing and spread it over 27 pages would seem to be so much more difficult than to do it in all sincerity that not many literary people are likely to accept the story of the "hoax" exactly as it has been told. They may instead suspect that the poems were written, over a period, by one or more persons who took themselves seriously at the time, and for one reason or another hit on this way of drawing attention to their work.