O, TO BE IN ENGLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 357, 26 April 1946, Page 5

O, TO BE IN ENGLAND

Sir,-That England has a great deal to offer in culture that cannot be got here doesn’t need any argument. England has 45 million people and an old civilisation, and she is next door to Europe. These conditions produce centres of learning and the arts, and groups of people interested in them, which it is impossible to develop in a country like ours. There is, however, this danger in comparing the societies, that we may overlook the fact that millions of the people in England are not concerned .with these things. It might be said that Britain is inhabited by 45 million people, mostly interested in horse-and dog-trac-ing and soccer.*Visitors from the Homeland are apt to make this mistake: accustomed to moving in restricted circles of their own, where T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Vincent van Gogh are commonly discussed, they are disappointed and shocked to find as they move about in New "Zealand that they don’t hear such poets and artists mentioned. What they overlook is that if they moved out of their circles in England they would find just the same amount of ignorance and perhaps more of it. I can assure "One Who Wants to Run Away" that there are quite a number of persons in this country who are interested in Eliot and Hopkins and van Gogh, and what these figures stand for,

Thére are even some, as there are in England, who are overf-interested, and make the too common error of mistaking art for life. I» cherish the remark of a young New Zealander who took high University honours in English and distinguished himself as a writer. Speaking of one of his contemporaries he said: "She is the sort of person who asks you at breakfast what you think of T. S Eliot." This is not a point one can be positive about, because one can’t get the necessary statistics, but I feel sure that in proportion to population there are just as many persons in this country who care for literature and the arts as there are in England. Distant hills eet el ei ee! te ee es te

ll tll il may resemble Parnassus, but when we get there we may find the slope dotted with men and women looking for racing tips. Leave New Zealand and go to live in a suburb of London, Manchester or Bradford, or in some small provincial town; what certainty would there be that your neighbours or your business associates would be interested in Eliot, Hopkins or van Gogh? Look at the struggle that cultural periodicals have to live in England. Look at the circulation of a first-class critical journal like The Times Literary Supplement. Look at the number of writers and artists and intellectual writers generally who are glad to accept Civil List Pensions. By all means let us strive to go to the Homeland. I struggled to make my own pilgrimage to Mecca, and I would like to see every New Zealander enjoy the same experience. There is a great deal to learn there in every department of life. But let us keep a sense of proportion.

A.

M.

(We ellington).