THIS CULTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 364, 14 June 1946, Page 22

THIS CULTURE

Sir,-I gather from your various correspondents that it is advisable to discuss T. S. Eliot at breakfast, keep away from racecourses, and always raise one’s hat to a Van Gogh print. The T. 8. Eliot part is difficult as, being a late riser, I have very little time even for breakfast. Part two is easier, as I pass a derelict racecourse every morning on the way to town and find no difficulty in keeping away from it. Part three is simple, as my neighbour has a very good print of Van Gogh’s "Cypress Tree" and I could now recognise it almost anywhere. A visit to England also seems to be a great help. Here again I am lucky, having lived in various parts of England and Scotland for nearly six years during which time I must have viewed acres of "Great Masters"; but while I often remembered to do the right thing and devoutly utter, "What depth, what feeling," the only result was an overwhelming desire to escape into the open air where I might be fortunate enough to espy some normally proportioned human beings (without ribs in their legs) and a few really natural trees and flowers. ete. The greatest snag of all, in my quest for culture, appears to be in the world of music, where my main interests lie. Here, to my horror, according to. your authorities, one must discuss Debussy or Ravel. I’m glad one need not listen to them as my culture, as yet, extends only to the more crude Mozart and Beethoven whose major works are, to me, an ever-recurring delight. Beethoven used to throw his shaving-water out of the window in a most uncultured manner.

Maybe my case is hopeless. But hope springs eternal, etc. If I promise to rise earlier and thereby succeed in managing to sandwich a few carefully-chosen words about T. S. Eliot between bites of toast; if I keep within safe distance of racecourses; if I discuss Debussy and Ravel whenever possible (thanking the Lord that I don’t have to listen to them), and go next door now and again to say "how do you do?" to Van Gogh’s "Cypress Tree"-please, Mr. Editor, can I be cultured? Please say I can.

HOPEFUL

(Day’s Bay).

Sir,-Being a great ignoramus I dare hardly ask, but, I should like to know what art is. Can anyone give a simple answer to this? Or is it too profound a subject for one who has but a smattering of knowledge? "One Who Wants To Run Away" deplores New Zealand’s lack of culture: people discuss sport, gardening and politics, but no art. Now what is true art and what makes people go in for it? When a man has achieved a picture, a novel, or a sonata acknowledged by the critics to be true art, what is it that he has created or expressed? We know there are men who will go on trying to express their special art even though they spend their lives penniless and unknown in a garret. What makes them do it? I gather it is not always or merely beauty that the writer or painter expresses. Nor can it be intellectual truth alone, for art appeals to the eye or ear and-rouses emotions. Charles Morgan, referring to literary art says, "Art is news of reality not to be expressed in other terms." If this be so is it present, mundane reality, objects, people, conditions, and emotions here (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) and now, or is it some ultimate and hidden reality? Is the musician, painter, or poet a person who has caught a glimpse of a splendid something which is outside ordinary experience-something towards which mankind is moving, some higher, ecstatic state of living or a foretaste of heaven itself? If so, is art a branch of the Christian religion and the artist one who, largely unconsciously, is helping to bring about the Kingdom of God? Or is art just a frill to life, like flowers on a hat, and an escape frora the frequent drabness and sorrow of

existence?

OUTSIDER

(Frankton Junction).