Vol. 5 No. 9 November 1995 $5.00 Fighting Memories Jack Waterford on strife at the Memorial Ken Inglis on rival shrines Great Escapes: Rachel Griffiths in London, Chris McGillion in America and Juliette Hughes in Canberra and the bush Volume 5 Number 9 EURE:-KA SJRE:i:T November 1995 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and th eology CoNTENTS 4 30 COMMENT POETRY Seven Sketches by Maslyn Williams. 9 CAPITAL LETTER 32 BOOKS 10 Andrew Hamilton reviews three recent LETTERS books on Australian immigration; Keith Campbell considers The Oxford 12 Companion to Philosophy (p36); IN GOD WE BUST J.J.C. Smart examines The Moral Chris McGillion looks at the implosion Pwblem (p38); Juliette Hughes reviews of America from the inside. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen Vol I and Hildegard of Bingen and 14 Gendered Theology in Ju dea-Christian END OF THE GEORGIAN ERA Tradition (p40); Michael McGirr talks Michael McGirr marks the passing of a to Hugh Lunn, (p42); Bruce Williams Melbourne institution. reviews A Companion to Theatre in Australia (p44); Max T eichrnann looks 15 at Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth COUNTERPOINT (p46); James Griffin reviews To Solitude The m edia's responsibility to society is Consigned: The Journal of William m easured by the code of ethics, says Smith O'BTien (p48). Paul Chadwick. 49 17 THEATRE ARCHIMEDES Geoffrey Milne takes a look at quick changes in W A. 18 WAR AT THE MEMORIAL 51 Ja ck Waterford exarnines the internal C lea r-fe Jl ed forest area. Ph oto­ FLASH IN THE PAN graph, above left, by Bill T homas ructions at the Australian War Memorial. Reviews of the films The Bridges of Madison County, Clocl<as, The Young Cover: Australian War Memorial. 22 Poisoner's Handbook, Six Degmees of Photograph by Emmanuel San tos. Photographs pp18-19 LONDON IN PARTS Separation, The Usual Suspects, Show­ by Emmanuel Santos Actor Rachel Griffiths discovers h erself girls, and Carrington. Graphi cs pp1 2- 13, 29, 33-35, 36, in London again . 39, 54 by Siobhan Jackson Photographs pp6, 24 53 by Bill Thomas 24 IN MEMORIAM Photographs pp25, 26-27 MONUMENTS TO DIFFERENCE Peter Malone remembers by Andrew Stark Ken Inglis reflects on how Sydney and Ivan Hutchinson. Melbourne remember our war dead. Eureka Street magazine 54 jesuit Publications 29 WATCHING BRIEF PO Box 553 ONE FOR THE TOAD THANKS MATE Ri chmond V1C 3 12 1 Tel (03) 9427 73 11 Jon Greenaway celebrates the spring 55 Fax (03) 9428 4450 racing carnival in a rainforest. SPECIFIC LEVITY V OLUME 5 N UMilER 9 • EUREKA STREET 3 EURI:-KA STRI:-ET COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts M oRAe FRASER and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser The score Consulting editor Michael McGirr SJ Assistant editor u"m Swm- .s SO NOT ouT thi, month, which pu" "' Jon Greenaway E in Alan Border and Garfield Sobers territory, and looking Production assistants: forward to a Bradman average. Many readers have loyally supported the magazine since Paul Fyfe S], Juliette Hughes, Catriona Jackson, Chris Jenkins SJ, we began this risky publishing venture in 1991, in a recession Paul Ormonde, Tim Stoney, and during the Gulf War, and with publications out of Siobhan Jackson, Dan Disney religious institutions closing more often than they opened. It is with some pleasure, then, that I can report that 1995 Contributing editors has been our most successful year to date. The increase in Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ subscription rates since March has been extraordinary, and Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ newsstand sales also show a marked increase. Perth: Dean Moore Readers might also like to know that articles first Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, published in Eurel<a Street are now regularly reprinted in Gerard Windsor the major metropolitan dailies and many other magazines European correspondent: Damien Simonis and publications. We have also become a resource for radio and television journalists who, in our experience, are much Editorial board more interested in matters of belief and value than is Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), commonly thought inside religious circles. Relations Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, between the church and the media are not always success­ Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales, fully negotiated, but the problems and misrepresentations Marie Joyce, Kevin McDonald, arc not all one-sided. Jane Kelly IBVM, At the October Melbourne Writers' Festival, David Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ Tacey, author of Edge of The Sacred, remarked that he was Business manager: Sylvana Scannapiego struck by the renewed and pressing interest of readers, and Advertising representative: Ken Head his university students particularly, in publicly examining Patrons issues of belief, and aspects of what we call the spiritual, Emel<a Street gratefully acknowledges the that were deemed taboo or simply not chic in the 1960s and support of Colin and Angela Carter; the '70s. 'We wouldn't have dreamed of talking about that kind trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; Denis Cullity AO; W.P. & M.W. Gurry; of thing then,' Tacey claimed. Geoff Hill and Janine Perrett; We do more than dream about discussing it now. But the Roch e family. the forum, Tacey noted, is less likely to be the conventional one. Tacey was adressing a sold-out crowd on a dank Emelw Street m agazine, ISSN I 036- 1758, Melbourne Sunday morning at the Malthouse Theatre. The Australia Post Print Post approved panel, chaired by Fr Paul Collins, included English novelist pp34918 1/003 14 and theologian, Sara Maitland, and the executive editor of is published ten times a year Hindustan, Mrindal Pande. The session, called 'All that is by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, Sacred', was sponsored by Emeka Street. A similarly sold­ 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 121 out Eurelw Street session last year featured Seamus Heaney, Tel: 03 942 7 7311 Fax: 03 9428 4450 talking freely and eloquently, with none of the '60s inhibi­ Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by tions he also remembered, about God and the mysterious Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. metres of poetry. Printed by Doran Printing, 46 Industrial Drive, Braes ide VIC 3 195. This year, in the theatre next door, another crowd was © Jesuit Publications 1995 listening to a panel discussion of grunge realism. Afterwards Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and both audiences compared notes, and converging enthusiasms. fiction, wi II be returned only if accompanied by a Eurel<a Street began, in 1991, with a commitment to stamped, self-a ddressed envelope. Requests for publishing the best writing we could fi nd or encourage on permission to reprint material from the magazine public affairs, theology and the arts. We believed then that should be addressed in writing to: the three categories were not separate and not incompatible. The editor, Eureka Sueet magazine, We are even n1ore sure now. • PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3 121. -Morag Fraser 4 EUREKA STREET • N ovEMBER 1995 COMMENT: 2 P ETER STEELE S ,AMu' HCANCY'""""" Rnd fell :~~~~'~ j~~ u~i~~if e we'<e 'howu' i' <ealised, not Joseph Brodsky wrote not long ago that 'as arts go, simply recalled, in the m aking of the poem. poetry is not a mimetic but a revelatory one'. It was said of one well-known Irish politician, The claim is provocative, not at least because it 'Give him enough rope, and he'll hang you .' Irish fortifies the power of this particular art- apes can animosities can be lethal, as every significant Irish mime, but it takes an altoge ther different class of be- writer has testified in this century. T o write with ing to reveal. There are few to whom this view of po- enough sensitivity to register the climate truly, and etry would be more congenial than it is to Heaney. with enough robustness to survive and flourish, is it- He writes as if everything is paten- self an art of sorts. Each new book of tially luminous with m eaning. This Heaney's bears the stamp of that art- does not preclude his writing about one scarcely practicable to perfection, but dreadful matters, which indeed he does. revealing beyond its local circumstanc- It means rather that for him potato- es. As, increasingly, he has reached east peeling or thatching or the ea ting of an and west to find spiritual comradeship oyster is always potentially an act of in his art- in Dante, in Irish legend, in divulging. It may be symptomatic: it Greek tragedy, in Beowulf-he has in will certainly be significant. effect been trying to dream, alertly, for One of his favourite words, in print humanity. or in conversation, is 'vigilant'. A Cath- That in itself makes him a 'tradition- olic farmboy in N orthern Ireland in al' poet, if by that one means a poet who 1939 could have plenty of reasons for actively expects that things will be keeping a weather-eye out for trouble, passed down to us, held out to us, from and that remains true in the Year of Our Lord 1995; moment to moment. Heaney's many poems addressed the traces of outrage and of immitigable grief char the or dedicated to family, friends or historical confreres later pages. But he also impresses, decisively, as one have the affability of all such writing, but, more who is perpetually keeping vigil for the em ergence of significantly, they still tap into the wellsprings of the true, or the beautiful, or the good, in the midst of m eaning, freshets in murky times. Writing a sonnet life's various shafts.