"WHEN THE WIND BLOWS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 356, 18 April 1946, Page 22

"WHEN THE WIND BLOWS"

the Wind Blows when it first came out and I’ve read it more than once since. I read Mr. Holcroft’s review of it in a subsequent Listener. I’ve read Ian Hamilton’s answering letter in The Listener and, by chance on the same day, I read Shakespeare’s 146th Sonnet: "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy story; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men *And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then." | Sir,-I read Frank Sargeson’s When These lines are the only ones of Shakespeare given us in the Oxford Book of Christian Verse. They present the problem of the Christian soul in its mortal body. I think with a legitimate transposition they also present the problem of the artist in any and every society, and also give a picture of Mr, Hamilton’s compost heap, by which metaphor he suggests that in his latest novel Frank Sargeson exemplifies this power to feed on death. Mr. Holcroft, in his admittedly tentative review, misses this sustained theme of a soul, in its inevitable isolation, using repeated deaths in this way. But I think Mr. Hamilton sounds a note of commiseration with "Henry" that: is unjust to the author’s successful com-posting-to continue the metaphor-of self-pity in the interest of rebirth. When the Wind Blows ends on the same note of resurrection as is found in Shakespeare’s sonnet. It is only stillbirth that knows the pangs of creation and misses the joys. There is little doubt that this power of rebirth through death is the keynote of Mr. Sargeson’s achievement as an artist, and is surely the source of all truly creative art. That it is also the basis of the Christian philosophy perhaps gives an indication of where salvation is to come from if it’s coming at all to modern societv.

E. P.

DAWSON

(Tauranga).