GOD AND MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 317, 20 July 1945, Page 5

GOD AND MAN

Sir,-A.G.W. (Taoroa) in your issue of May 18 says: "Thete can never be any question of equality between God and His dependent creatures." This postulates a knowledge of God which we do not possess. According to Canon L. W. Grenstead: "God is as completely beyond definition as religion." Nevertheless we find that Jesus said: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The possibility of man’s equality with God is therefore contemplated in scripture, But that in passing. The main question that arises in my mind from reading A.G.W.’s letter is: if God made me and all other men, then He must also have made Hitler and Mussolini. Now Dean Inge says: "We Christians believe that, if there is a God, He must be unchangeable and eternal, and if it is His nature to create a world, must He not create always?" To me this means that if God has made a Hitler and a Mussolini once, He will make them again. I wonder if A.G.W. anticipates that this will in due course hap nen?

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).

More letters from listeners will be found on page 25,

LETTERS FROM LISTENERS

(continued from page 5) "LOTS OF POETRY" Sir,"This poetry," says JC.B., A lot of breath expending, "Is awful stuff, it’s merely bluff, And not worth recommending. "When poet’s bread is Marris-fed Romantics are in clover, I much prefer, as maniier, The meat of Denis Glover." But J.C.B. perhaps can't see, In rushing to attack ’em, His sword he’s struck without much luck, Because his flank is open. «-It adult he would wish to be The poets who infest himLet age construe his own review, And then perhaps he’d best ’em.

RUTH

FRANCE

(Christchurch).

Sir,-J.C.B.’s large meal of poetry seems to have been too much for his digestion. It is hardly good taste in a critic to load his review with so much of his own reactions, so that it is merely an expression of his own personality rather than the cool and detached judgment of a good critic. Such Agateism only intensifies one’s own disagreement with his statements. Certainly all forms of art need to be disciplined, so that they are not a mere outpouring of emotion, but discipline is not the main essential of the artist. Rather it is an indefinable flame or instinct, Robin Hyde may have lacked discipline in her work, as in her own tortured personality, but it was this very rebellion that gives her work the flame that is absent in the work of some whom J.C.B. praises. Nor is this instinct lacking in the work of other poets who have no great fuss to make, but a quiet confidence with words.

F.

R.

(Christchurch),

Sir,-I hope you will allow me a last note in the "lots of poetry" controversy. I feel I owe it to "J.C.B." now he has intervened on his own behalf. "J.C.B." says he cannot understand my "assumption" that he was "guying poetry." I can’t blame him for sidetracking here, because I switched the points myself when I wrote, "guy poetry if you like," etc. But that was addressed to the Editor, and meant the whole effect of the article, including the title and the funny little line drawings. My "assumption" as to what "J.C.B," was doing was fixed by the purport of the article to be a review of some new verse publications. On that assumption I read it; on that assumption I assaulted it. As for my having any "Sacramental theory" of poetry-there our side-track leads us to cross-purposes. I too, according to circumstances, might approach King Lear, or Samson Agonistes without putting my shoes from off my feet; but I can think of no occasion for wearing them on my hands. I shall take "J.C.B.’s" appeal to his "secular mood" seriously when I find him discussing Samson Agonistes under the headline "Blind Man’s Buff" or diverting himself with King Lear under "Bringing up Father." The: fact is-*J.C.B." well knows-> that ‘he wrote the article in a character

assumed for the occasion, intending so to make his criticism more pointed and more palatable. The trouble comes of the incompatibility of this character’s behaviour with "J.C.B.’s" own opinionsand signature. Perhaps A. R. D. Fairburn is right, and he was "writing down to what he conceived to be the public taste." If so, in the name of the public, I took exception. "J.C.B." might note the perfectly good Parliamentary debating points scored by Clyde Carr, and reflect that his estimate of Mr. Carr’s verses — which I thought, if anything, kindly-may be made to seem unjust to some, because of some highly secular digression that needn’t have been there at all. "Cannot the critics be Irishmen too?" pleads another correspondent. Of course. Let them put on, if need be, "the coat of savage Swift" — the phrase is "J.C.B.’s" own-but not wear it to Donnybrook Fair. ‘ "J.C.B." mentions my own verse, graciously and with forbearance. But he has not (as he "trusts’") entirely excluded levity. "Or do I sin only when I express distaste?" he asks, I have said nothing to imply that I would not have praised where he praised and blamed where he blamed. May I say too (in invisible capital letters) that if "J.C.B." should express distaste for any verse of mine, I would cry "mea culpa" first, and not lightly acquit myself. But I would not like to think I had pestered him. The answer to his mock predicament is that there wasn’t "Lots" of Poetry at all; his own shrewd and just observations-to be discovered in his article, I insist, only by the exercise of some patience-give the lie to the pose. What’s not worth reading is not worth writing about. Yet I must allow "J.C.B." that he may have done well, if there are still many New Zealanders who need undeceiving about a certain order of verse. I had thought the horse was dead, but perhaps a touch of the whip may still do good, so long as we're not so intent on the flogging that we forget to feed the live beast.

ALLEN

CURNOW

(Christchurch).

Sir-A. R. D, Fairburn is most exact in his analysis of what was rather ‘tiresome in J.C.B.’s review of New Zealand poetry. It was objectionable as a concession to Philistinism, a "writing down" to popular taste. This may not have been deliberate. J.C.B. may be a Philistine by instinct, whose profession has disguised him as one of the literati. Or he may be infected by the anti-poetic, tough-guy pose which makes barbarians of too many people in this countrynot excluding the literati. Alternatively -and this is probably the case-the sight of "lots" of New Zealand poetry drove him to take desperate refuge in the Philistine point of view; in the same way that poor but too pretentious art will drive one to an outburst of coarse comment. x The fault lies in the obligation-made plain by some ‘of J.C.B.’s critics-to review all New Zealand poetry with equal seriousness; as if its New Zealand origin bore some relevance to its merit. The ‘merit of poetry must be regarded as absolute if honest people are to take

it seriously. —

MARGARET

JEPSON

(Christchurch),