LITERARY LIFE IN EREWHON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 504, 18 February 1949, Page 15

LITERARY LIFE IN EREWHON

f Rec article, which we aré permitted to reprint from "Letras e Artes," Rio de Janiero, is, we believe, the first appreciation of New Zealand writing in our time to appear in a Brazilian literary journal. The author of the article, Dr. Paulo Ronai, is 42 years old, a Hungarian by birth, and a naturalised Brazilian. He was one of the editors of the "New Hungarian Review,’ and lectured at the University of Budapest in classics and modern languages. He is the editor-in-chief of the complete edition of Balzac’s works in Brazilian; his publications include "Balzac and His ‘Human Comedy," and an anthology of modern short stories written in Europe. He has translated a collection of Brazilian poetry into Hungarian, and into Brazilian, Rilke’s "Letters to a Young Poet," and works by Dickens, Galsworthy, Conrad, James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield. The translation from the Brazilian of "Literary Life in Erewhon" has been made by Mrs. SR. Nathan and J. C. Reid.

ROM the youthful urge for adventure there always remains even in spirits otherwise immobilised and resigned a spark which rekindles at the call of the exotic. At any rate, this proved so in my case when I received recently a parcel of books from, New Zealand. With regard to this far-off country, I know only what is known to most people, which is almost nothing. The name of New Zealand lives in my mind associated with Katherine Mansfield, who left it as a young girl never to return, I have now learnt that not only have there been New Zealand writers who have followed the path of Katherine Mansfield, but that both before and after her there have been other writers who have helped to develop a distinctive persqnality in New Zealand literature. The books which I received, thanks to the interest and courtesy of a Néw Zealand scholar, are partly studies of history and. economics and partly literary criticism; all show high cultural ,standards and lively intelligence. From these, and from several specimens of the literature of New Zealand, I have had some opportunity of learning what is being written in this distant ‘dominion of the British Crown. Letters Lag Behind General Culture The level of literary achievement does not yet reach that of the general

culture, which is high. This country, in which everybody knows how to read, possesses many writers and a large number of readers, But New Zealand readers rarely read what their writers produce, and the writers write only rarely primarily for them. In other words, the reader in New Zealand reads ‘mainly English

books, and New Zealand writers wish to be published and read in England. However, recently there have been signs of change in this state of things. One notes frequent complaints on the part of authors of the lack of opportunities and of publishers; at the same time, several literary periodicals have’ not managed to survive; the interesting review New Zealand New Writing (an imitation of / Penguin New Writing) could not reach its fifth number. Although the works I consulted were clear and representative, it is naturally impossible to form an idea, even an approximate one, of a literature chiefly through reflections suggested to the critical and historical sense. But it may be interesting to set down briefly a few of my impressions and reactions. In New Zealand writing, "non-fiction" has had the advantage over fiction. The earliest writers confined themselves more or less to descriptions of the country, while those of the later period seek to draw conclusions or to make analyses. Hence the predominance, on the one hand, of works of geography, ethnography, and sociology; on the other, of pedagogical, political and __ historical works over novels and poetry. Such analysis supposes a collective conscience more or less crystallised and which is formed by a few. "Showing the World" A country of large areas and small population, of an excellent climate and good natural resources, New Zealand has always made use of her exceptional opportunities for enterprise. The absence of tradition facilitated the

realisation of daring experiments and reforms, to the point of making New Zealand into a country noted for its advanced social legislation, always preoccupied with what J. C. Reid calls "showing the world." (The approximate Brazilian idiom for this phrase would be "looking like an Englishman.") And (continued on next page)

‘Literary Life in Erewhon

(continued from previous page) so we find the curious fact that several of the novels of the end of last century and of the beginning of this one, are utopias. It was not by chance that Samuel Butler placed his ‘"Erewhon" in New Zealand. Reading accounts of the principal writers of New Zealand fiction, one is struck also by the great number of women, a characteristic sign of a literature which, not yet reaching professional rank, is necessarily cultivated by those who have more leisure. It was not long ago when every New Zealand writer was an immigrant "with the memory of a sea voyage" and a great nostalgia for England, which con‘tributed to the conventionality of the

novels of the first phase, and which retarded the forming of a local consciousness. Another difficulty which faced writers was the parochialism which surrounded them in the absence of contact with other, mature cultures. Katherine Mansfield had _ to tear herself away from her country to enable her to become in England a great writer, partly through her nostalgia for, and reminiscences of, New Zealand. "She discovered she was a New

Zealander when she departed from her country." (Ian A. Gordon, Katherine Mansfield, New Zealander.) According to J. C. Reid, other reefs for local literature are the ‘excessive sociologism and the lack of a metaphysic. The preoccupation of* many recent writers with the creation of a New Zealand novel or New Zealand poetry hamper also the development of novels and poetry "tout court," of universal value. The natural features of New Zealand, magnificent, varied and impressive, help the writers little, as they are as yet little humanised and lived in; man has not yet had sufficient contact with them to mingle with them his memories, including his intimate experiences. (M. H. Holcroft, Creative Problems in New Zealand.) Maori Influences A great potential asset of literature of New Zealand is the absorption of the Maori civilisation by that of the AngloSaxon, or better still the amalgamation of the two cultures. Many of the first writers about the Maori suffer from excessive romanticism, while in most of the moderns, the understanding is just skin-deep as few of them really get inside the Maori mentality. Among the more recent short stories I read concerning the Maori was one which critics have considered one of the best of its kind (Roderick Finlayson Sweet Beulah Land.) It may have been | because of my lack of familiarity with

the setting or from some deficiency in the story itself; I am certain, however, that I was more impressed by the tone and «atmosphere than by the details of the tale. There is here, as in other stories, such as those by Frank Sargeson, a conscious seeking for half-tones, the joinirig of strands which are slack and loosely sewn; and a systematic use of "points," all of which seem to be characteristic of recent New Zealand writing, and which show the predominant influence of Katherine Mansfield, Chekhov, Virginia Woolf among others on New Zealand writers. Nothing else proves more convincingly how small the world is than this fact of literary influence. In a recent New Zéaland novel which caused some

discussion, Cliffs of Fall, by Dan Davin (1945), a New Zealand critic traces influences of Dostoievsky, Gide, Kafka, Joyce and Graham Greene. There are no more possibilities for marginal cultures. ‘From a variety of pamphlets received in this precious parcel of books, one realises that New Zealand at the present time still com tinues to be prominent in the field of experimentation, A complete reform of education with the radical elimination

of traditional values -in Latin, in modern languages, in English grammar, in mathematics, and the introduction of a "central core" (a minimum of obligatory subjects) includinf social studies, under the main inspiration of American education, has provoked violent protest from University teachers with humanistic tendencies (e.g., Professor W. Anderson "The. Flight from Reason in New Zealand Education"; J. C. Reid, "Educational Change in Soviet Russia.") This first contact with the culture of a country so far away reminds us more than anything else ‘that apart from particular local problems, the central prob> lems which civilisation has to resolve are substentially the same in all parts of the world. For this reason, all the more merit to those who arrange the contacts. I was surprised to learn from writings of Mr, J. C. Reid, lecturer in English at Auckland University College, and the author of works to which I owe a good deal of the information in this note, that he knows the country and Jiterature of Brazil much better than his country is known here. In New Zealand, such scholars as he can obtain the greater part of what exists of English and French translations of Brazilian literature, O Cortico of Aluisio de Azevedo, Canaan of Graca Aranha, Domitila of Paulo Setubal, as well as the nearBrazilian A Selva of Ferreira de Castro, not to mention books on Brazil by Stefan Zweig to Bernanos.