COMPOSER AND DETECTIVE

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

COMPOSER AND DETECTIVE

HEN, last October, the Christchurch Classical Association (with the Art and Cultural Committee of the Canterbury Centennial Association) presented a memorial programme on Samuel Butler, the audience attended what was, in addition, possibly the world premiére performance of music from Butler’s oratorio Ulysses. Valerie Peppler (soprano), Walter Robinson (baritone) and Ernest Jenner (pianist) took part, presenting the Overture, the recitative "Fresh Perils Crown Our Path," and the aria, "Man in Vain of Fate Complaining"; an introduction and allegretto; Circe’s recitative, "Who Knocks?" and aria, "What Glorious Presence Greets Mine Eyes," and a March. Next Monday, July 23, at 8.0 p.m., the hour-long memorial programme will be broadcast from 3YC. A. C. Brassington and Professor L. G. Pocock pay tribute to Butler by reviving his theory that the Odyssey was written not by blind Homer but by a young and intelli-

gent woman-an opinion which with one. exception has never beén taken seriously by any classical scholar, "since Butler published his, Views in 1892. Mr. Brassington, a Christchurch barrister and solicitor, has lectured in International and Constitutional Law at Canterbury College for many years, He and Professor Pocock, who holds the Chair of Classics at the College, are .keen students of Butler and members of the Christchurch Classical .Association. In his Butler researches, Mr, Brassington had access to letters from Butler’s friend and biographer, Henry Festing Jones, to O. T. J. Alpers (written in the early 1900’s and now part of the Turnbull Library collection), which support Butler’s own story of how he came to his belief in the Odyssey’s authorship. Mr. Brassington recalls how George Bernard Shaw, when he visited Christchurch seventeen years ago, said, "Some day there will be a statue of Butler, in (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) New Zealand on the range of mountains he described in Erewhon in Canterbury Province." Shaw was present, Mr. Brassington tells his listeners, at the lecture in London during the nineties when Butler expounded his theory to the Fabian Society. When Butler sat down, Shaw rose to his feet and spoke so strongly in support of Butler that the audience which had laughed at him all the evening, went away impressed with the case Butler had presented. Professor Pocock investigates Butler’s theory with lucid scholarship, tracing the likely origins of the story of the Odyssey. "It was not till I got to Circe," Butler wrote, "that it flashed upon me that I was reading the work, not of an old man, but of a young woman." Professor Pocock makeyg no bones about admitting that up to a point, Butler’s case is a strong one. "Right or wrong," he said to The Listener the other day, "his book The Authoress of the Odyssey is a wonderful piece of literary detection."