AS PANTS THE HUHU

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 8

AS PANTS THE HUHU

by

AUGUSTUS

AKE Shakespeare," said the opossum, taking at the same time a potato chip from the steaming plate on the barrel, I never met an opossum capable of taking so many things at once-besides the dramatist.and the potato chip there was room in his mouth for a hand-rolled cigarette and a gulp of stout with raspberry.’ He could inhale, masticate, swallow and expound all these according to their nature without any incongruity and without effort. "There was a poet whose mind found images in crocodiles and serpents while celebrating Egypt’s queen, could see the dawn and the glow-worm together, run through the animal ‘kingdom from the lion, the bear, the leopard to the toad, the worm and the woolly aphis." He emptied his glass with a sweep to silence my doubts about the last-named creature. "Same again," he called to the pubkeeper who spent his life gazing out the window at a woodshed painted red. This was a country pub and the whisky had a persuasion that had died on city lips about the time women got the yote. The opossum had to come in off the road just as I was paying for my fourth. We were joined now by a hedgehog and a weka, whose motor-cycle and side-car were visible as*the door swung back. HE newcomers nodded to the opossum and said, "How’s things, Ted?" to the pub-keeper. We all sipped in silence for a while. "Been talking to this joker about our survival," ‘announced the opossum at last, unwilling to let the subject drop and too conscious of the strangers to carry on without including them. "Oh? Yeah?" said the hedgehog uncertainly, releasing the lever which operated his spiky venetian blinds and relaxing against the counter, "Certainly is pretty grim. Just passed an uncle of mine back et the turn-off. Flat as a pancake and dry as a starfish.:My aunt was beginning to wonder why he wasn’t back from the board meeting last February. at’s three councillors and a Mason she’s ale in two years. Pretty: grim, all right." "I was, of course, « referring?" ‘replied the opossum with such hauteyr as the licking of a cigarette paper could convey, "not to our mere physical survival, but to our cultural survival," "Oh? Yeah?" said. the: hedgehog, And the weka turned on him-a bright, inscrutable eve, downing his* handle-with-a-dash. The opossum went on: "Possum traps, spéed fiends, sheep-dogs-these have long been our bane. They represent merely the natural hazards to which as mortals we are susceptible. I discount them." He did so with one gulp. "But our cultural survival, that is a different matter. I have just cited (to my friend here) the man Shakespeare as an illustrious example of poets who once knew the difference between a toad and @ newt and saw their place in the scheme things." "What is the difference?" I. demanded. _ J 1 "It is a Very great one-nowadays the poet talks only in terms of zeppelins

and railway-tunnels and coal-mines and similar conceits as Freudian as they are fantastic." I could see he wished to ‘evade any zoological enquiries. I could sense also a certain ganging-up as the weka’s eye drooped with slow approval and the hedgehog passed the chips to our orator, "T DON’T know which is worse," contributed the weka, "to leave us out of the picture altogether, or, to’ keep on with that antiquated stuff like Little Boy Blue-‘looking after’ sheep, dressing in blue, blowing horns-" f "to say nothing of such alien terms as ‘meadow’ and ‘corn,’" chimed in the opossum. "Could you, as a parent encouraging a child in this outmoded doggerel, look a modern hogget in the eye and claim to be representing in living verse the relationships between man and our domesticated ccs I began to feel uneasy, "But, grateful as I am for the weka’s observations, I had in mind the loftier . modes of literary expression. "Though," the opossum added hastily, not wishing to lose his allies, "the same ‘objection is valid also for nursery-rhymes, folklore and gnomic utterance, fields wherein the accumulated wisdom and experience of the race are wont to re.ceive their abiding symbolism. "There is, for example, the tale of the tortoise and the hare, which’ aims to assert: the (very dubious) superiority of perseverance over brilliance. Every New Zealander has met with this tale though he may never have met with a tortoise -possibly not even with a hare. This, too, in a country which abounds in shedgehogs to. represent tedious progression, and racehorses with whose fleetness our populace is unhappily familiar." There was no stopping the creature now.. "The fox and the wolf carry off between them half the aphoristic honours of the language, yet who has seen them? As ‘symbols for depredation, cunning or violence they should long ago have been replaced by mayne? the magpie and the shark. "Then there’ aré the omissions-we ‘animals must feel slighted when, say, the real and unexampled succulence of the "lative whitebait finds no place in proverb, while the quite apocryphal headburying of the alien ostrich is a byword." "Yes, but-," I ventured. "Just to glance at another aspect of this. waste-land ‘of the infant’s inheritance. All this stuff, while beguiling the bratling ear and prattling tongue, insinuates a neglect of logic which could be disastrous in our time. How are silver bells consequent upon cockle shells, or either of these upon the concept of @ garden’s growth? "Worse, many such rhymes and tales, where they are not merely irresponsible are positively immoral. Consider, too, the traumatic potential of ‘there came ‘a big spider" and how Jack the GiantKiller might bruise the infant psyche." "Yes, but what constructive suggestions-" I began again. The opossum ground out his butt under his heel, and with two steps placed

Himself in elocutionary posture in the centre of the bar. He coughed and began. ‘Tua-tua-tara Don’t you think you are a Nanti-social croaker? Sink your tuatority In the thingma-jority Be a blokey joker. We applauded politely and the opossum once more’ picked up his glass and his theme. "You observe, of course, the choice of a native animal-not that that’s so important as choosing one which is to be found now in this country," he hastily amended. "But notice that the seeming nonsense syllables which appeal so much to the young carry nonetheless a subtle charge of social significance which must impinge upon the burgeoning moral tissues. ""The language is familiar but not vulgar, the movement is easy. The enjambement in the second line is of a modern order." "Oh, quite, quite," I acti: "Eryou mentioned the higher flights of liter-ature-just what is your quarrel] there, apart from: zeppelins and pneumatic drills?" "Same story, same old story. Since the days of Homer, animals have traditionally provided the symbols for man’s more elusive spiritual and emotional ex_periences. At one time pretty well every animal had its special cult, its priests and oracles, its shrines and _ sacred offices. There were Pig-worshippers, Lion-men, Bull-brethren, Mouse-maid-ens. "Animals and gods exchanged bodily forms and their philanderings in one guise or another have provided the imagery if not the staple for our most _ splendid poetic utterances, But what we today? ' \*If, our poets bother with us at all continue to fool with the phoenix rising from the ashes, the pelican rending its own breast, the scorpion stinging itself to death, the chameleon, the swan and its song, and that other melancholy

bird with its breast against the thorn. It has all become ‘Jug, jug, to. dirty ears,’ " AND you suggest,’ I said, "that we need some master-singer, offering at high strains in new and lofty measure the celebration of our age in terms of the wallaby and the whitebait?" "Precisely. Not only in verse, but in prose, too. Look at Lyly, look at Greene, Burton, Jeremy Taylor, Browne-their prose is studded with instances and images from natural history, ancient or medieval, factual or fabulous. To an animal the most gorgeous period of English prose is a-dazzle with the plumage of birds, the multifarious murmurings and movements, the gestures and gyrations of the brute generations-forgive me for lapsing into the mode, but you see what I mean. "Our case," he looked for acquiescence from the others who kept eyeing the door and quietly shuffling away down the counter, "our case is that the more man tabulates, tickets and tuberculartests us the less he distinguishes us and our ways of life. What do you suggest should be done?" I pondered. the question for some time. "It seems we have here three animals ‘jn search of a proverb, You will, I’m afraid, have to adapt your ways to ours. Our problems aré what they are and cannot be changed. It is you who must change ‘your characteristics to provide us with the new animal imagery." They left me, each deep in thought. I shall not therefore be surprised to .find future generations of wallabies living in each other’s pouches in the hope of providing a metaphor for flat-dwell-ers. A turreted hedgehog might find immortality among the poets of tank warfare, even as the caterpillar has. By evolving one efficient wing the weka rising in spirals might cock a sanguine eye at orators on the cost of living. And the opossum may eventually, at its death, billow upwards in a cloud of smoke, mushroom-shaped. ;