A NOVEL OF EXPLORATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 327, 28 September 1945, Page 14

A NOVEL OF EXPLORATION

CLIFFS OF FALL. By Dan Davin. Nicholson and Watson, London.

(Reviewed by

E. H.

McCormick

N the introduction to his anthology of New Zealand verse, Allen Curnow has remarked: "In New Zealand we lack capacity for the tragic emotions, pity, wonder, or- terror." God knows there is tragedy enough lurking beneath the surface of our lives, if we have eyes to see it. But in so far as the generalisation applies to New Zealand writing, it contains sufficient truth ‘to pass. with little question; as a whole New ,Zealand literature. lacks depth, and where its’ shallow waters have been ruffled the disturbing agent has been violence. rather. than emotions that could be dignified with the name tragic. Melodrama is a common enough ‘constituent of New Zealand fiction but its sublime counterpart is almost wholly absent. Mr: Curnow attributes this "deficiency te our prolonged colonial status and too-easy material conditions. "We are stunted emotionally," he says, "because we have not dealt direct with life, but through intermediaries; and prosperity, ‘security,’ has confirmed our illusions, shaken though they have ‘been by depression. and war." One _assents, while reflecting that tragedy is a comparatively late growth in most literatures and, moreover, that it has flourished only in rare epochs of civilisation. The publication of Dan Davin’s Cliffs of Fall, a New Zealand novel with tragic implications, is therefore an event, a further sign perhaps that New Zealand literature is growing ‘in stature and maturity. os * * * HE publishers of Cliffs of Fall found it difficult to say what the book ‘is. I suggest they might have described it as a novel of exploration, in one sense, a novel of New. Zealand exploration, though I hope no member of the New Zealand Alpine Club will be misled by this description or by the title. This is no romance of high adventure on mountain peaks, of derring-do on glaciers, of cosy nights in shepherds’ huts. The cliffs of the title, drawn from the magnificent poem by Gerard’ Manley Hopkins, are of the mind, "frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed," the abysses- are of the soul. Thé countryexplored is the mind of a young man who, caught in a con-' flict between love ..and ambition, strangles his lover and takes his own life. The novel also opens up a tract of New Zealand territory rarely visited before by so gifted a writer. The book begins with the return of Mark Burke to his home, a_ small household farm on the outskirts of a provincial town which I take to be Invercargill. In the: years he has spent at school and -university, Mark has grown away from the simple pieties and narrow interests of his Irish Catholic family and, while the scenes and occupations of his boyhood offer some relief from his mental turmoil, he chafes at the restraints placed on him by his well-meaning but meddling relatives. For with Mark personal independence

is a passion and he is consumed by an ill-defined but overmastering ambition. As far as. this ambition becomes explicit, it takes shape as a desire to leave the country. In one of the long colloquies that act as a sort of chorus in the novel he says: "I will go on here for a while and then leave New Zealand and carve out the career of my ambition. I know inside .myself that I don’t set much value by it, but I must do it as a man must eat when he is hungry." And again: "I want to get out of this country and over the sea." But one obstacle already stands in the way of Mark’s calculations. Marta, the girl he has befriended and, in a fashion, retrieved, is pregnant. Abortion is a solution that both reject, and Mark is determined that he shall not be sidetracked into marriage and mediocrity lived ,out in a suburban bungalow. Summoned by an urgent plea from Marta, he cuts short his vacation and returns to the university city, recognisably Dunedin, where the remainder of the action takes place. The rest of the day of-his return he spends with a friend in alcoholic and conversational diversions, the night with Marta, now condemned «by the decision that has crystallised in. Mark’s mind. The following night the lovers meet, and in a secluded part of the bush that girdles the city Marta is strangled. To conceal his part .in the «crime, Mark. informs Marta’s family that the girl is missing and joins them in a search of the bush, ending in his discovery of the body. In a nightmarish sequel Mark seeks for the imaginary killer, and, lured on by an emanation of his frenzied mind, throws himself over a cliff into the sea. * * * T need hardly be said that there is no parallel to this novel in New Zealand fiction; indeed one of its. English reviewers, seeking some key to. his puzzlement, went outside the range of English literature and resorted to the ‘names of Gide and Dostoievsky. There may have been some such influences at work-many ‘streams of thought and reading have contributed to the novel-

but a more useful comparison can be made with the writings of the "University Wits," the group of young Elizabethan dramatists of whom Marlowe was the leader. In the simplicity of its structure and the unity of its theme, in the extensive use of a form of soliloquy, in the abundance (sometimes the superabundance) of its imagery, Cliffs of Fall, or at least parts of it, resembles a poetic drama more closely than the average novel. And, conceding the immense difference between the Elizabethan age and our own as well as the gulf betwéen one of the great minds of English literature. and a writer of talent, one recognises an affinity between Dan Davin’s hero and a creation of Marlowe -Doctor Faustus or that grotesque symbol of ambition, Tamburlaine (though Tamburlaine, one remembers, was in his love for Zenocrate a feeble thing-she at least did not die by his hand). In many respects a child of our own time and environment, Dan Davin is linked with the Elizabethans by the boldness of his conception, the tumultuous upsurge of his ideas, and the scope of his imagination. Were he living in a less tolerant-or less indifferentage, he too, one suspects, would have been arrainged for his "vile heretical conceites" and "damnable opinions." * % * LIFFS OF FALL is a failure, but one of those brave failures that are worth a dozen timid successes. It would have been easy for the author to have turned out a work of fiction on conventional lines, but he has deliberately chosen a difficult theme and an unusual method of presentation. One fault is that he has not been unorthodox enough in choosing his medium. The basis of the novel is, broadly speaking, realistic; that is to say you are supposed to believe that the characters might have existed in the surroundings shown and that their actions would have followed from the situation described. Until the climax is reached, one is assailed by few doubts. In spite Of the author’s unrealistic method of setting down ora tions and debates in place of normal conversation, one finds the family scenes convincing; and it is possible that a young man, as Mark is described, might have played with the idea of this drastic and diabolical way. out. But when you apply the canons of realism to the act itself, the mind recoils in_ disbelief. Quite apart from any ethical considerations, no one as intelligent as Mark is supposed to be would resort to so clumsy a solution as murder; while with people of lower intelligence and mental integrity-people more in keeping with the setting of the novel-the situation would more probably have ended in the sort of muddled tragedy that gets into the courtroom or, alternatively, in some unhappy compromise. (Murder, marriage or abortion don’t exhaust the possibilities.) ' Then again the reader is worried by the.author’s equivocal attitude towards his hero. Is one supposed to admire this monster of adolescent egotism? Very often it appears so. On the other hand (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) there is a passage towards the:end of the novel in which Mark is shown as repentant, belatedly reflecting: "If only I had had the courage to keep her, if I could have risen to that piece of unselfishness . . . in carrying her I should have carried myself. That was the test and I didn’t see it." If it is not to be, regarded as a rather lame gesture of reconciliation with conventional morality ("honesty is the best policy’), surely it is a damaging comment on the character so elaborately built up in the earlier sections. 'Tamburlaine had no scruples or regrets. The feeling emerges that the author should either have worked out the story on more plausible lines or, preferably, have broken completely with the traditional novel framework. It has already been suggested that the poetic drama might have provided greater scope for his talents, but that is not a living form of literature. Perhaps the situation could have been presented in something like the form of novel developed by Kafka or, at a lower level, by Graham Greene in his later work; in fact, the last section does verge in that direction. Had this been done, from the outset we should have been removed at least one step from reality, the test of plausibility would have been irrelevant, and we should have read the novel not as a representation of actual men and women but as a study of diablerie and tragic conflict.

Besides this central weakness, ‘there are a few minor faults that may as well be noted. It seemed to me an artistic error to translate the image of the title so literally at the close, and in spite of the frequent apt use of metaphor (defined as "the last despairing attempt to utter the ineffable’), on occasions the comparison seemed overstrained or the metaphors piled up in such number that they enveloped the ineffable in a blanket of darkness. It is overdoing things to speak of the froth in a milk bucket subsiding when "the fuel for its anger no longer poured in so furiously," nor am I happy about the bush "staring" at the edges of a disused road "as a dog might look at a snake, anxious, but preparing to attack." (This ornamental figure contrasts with the superbly organic simile of the parasitic vine which appears in the strangling scene.) And in one of the most remarkable passages of the book, describing the ecstasies and aftermath of physical union, the profusion of images brings what is intended to be, and is, profoundly serious-dangerously near the brink of absurdity. The last drop of essence must, it seems, be distilled from each metaphor and each small originality of thought; the author cannot resist. the urge to race "after an. idea like a dog after a rabbit,’ as he puts it in one of his apter comparisons. Xe * %* LIFFS OF FALL aims high, approaches and sometimes touches so lofty a plane of achievement that one is forced to accept its implied challenge with whatever means one has, even. where they. are only the blunt t8ols of earth-bound pedagogy. But it would be unfitting, and, what is more, unjust to stress the adversely critical note. If it is not apparent already, I must now make it clear that I admire the novel, that I read it with intense interest, and though I don’t think its author has produced anything like a masterpiece, I

feel that he might some day. Besides the ability to write, he has at least one essential -qualification of the serious writer-a compulsion to seek out the truth wherever that search may lead him. In this novel the search has led him, and us, to a clearer perception of some truths about this country. The situation he has evoked-the pull between the natural impulse to settle down in conformity and the claims of a _ wider horizon-though not peculiar to New Zealand, has particular local force in the hero’s desire "to get out of this country and over the seas." That is not enough to explain Mark’s act, but to a New Zealander it goes far in explaining his sense of frustration and the urgency of his feelings. And New Zealanders may see a special significance in the prominence assumed by abortion with all the moral and spiritual problerps it creates. Like his few serious predecessors amongst New Zealand novelists, Dan Davin has peered into some of the darker recesses of our minds, has examined those impulses: common to all mankind but given particular force or direction by time and environment. It is, however, in other directions that Dan Davin more obviously resembles those pioneer settlers to whom he gives a passing tribute-not, of course, in conventional terms. He has broken new ground in his study of the closely-knit Irish family, only one generation removed from peasant forbears, and he has interpreted afresh the New Zealand

visited by so few of our writers: the straggling city given over to the pursuit of business virtues and the higher learning; the illusion of a student bohemia nourished by counter-lunches and interminable conversation; the naive sophistication of "intellectual" circles; smalltown life with its incongruous but happy blend of the urban and the rural; and never far removed the oppressive sense of nature curbed but not tamed. All this is not merely good reporting; it goes beyond that, leading us to apprehend what we have seen only dimly before. In finally estimating the novel, one is perhaps less impressed by the actual achievement, considerable though this is, than by its potentialities. After this, what next? Will Dan Davin develop and discipline the poetic sensibility so evident here, breaking still more decisively with the orthodex novel form? Some Joycean experiment would not be altogether surprising. Or will he be drawn away by those more earthy interests that remind one, somewhat remotely, of the lumbering genius of T. J. Farrell? Again, will he exploit the rich vein of comedy, berdering on caricature, that crops out in the character of Old Mick? One looks forward with eager anticipation to Dan Davin’s next published work. These considerations, bearing on the future of one who may contribute greatly to our literary resources, raise a personal issue that is also national. For five years Major Davin, formerly a Rhodes scholar, served with distinction in the Second New Zealand Division. Is he now lost to this country? One may assume that, like his Mark Burke, he understands the limitations of the world beyond. He may also ‘have learned that his interest in his own people is now more than "academic"; Cliffs of Fall itself gives some support to that assumption. Whatever the facts may be,

we in New Zealand want Major Davin -we need him, if he is prepared to come back. And I am not sure that he does not need us, for a time at least, if he is to develop fully as a writer. Perhaps no scheme of rehabilitation, however generous, can be expected to cover a case like this. But a solution should not be beyond the powers of some ingenious and enlightened official. Meanwhile I hope that a New Zealand publisher will be found to supplement the exiguous supplies of the novel that a war-famished Britain has sent to this country. Cliffs of Fall should be in every library and in the hands of all who afe interested in the future of New Zealand letters.