Frank Sargeson

A New Zealand Q.Earter!J' VOLGME SEVEN 1953 Reprinted with the permission of The Caxton Press JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION JOHNSON REPRINT COMPANY LTD. 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Berkeley Square House, London, W. 1 LANDFALL is published with the aid of a grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund. First reprinting, 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America b? /4-92. THE UllFiARY LANDFALL A New Zealand Quarterly edited by Charles Brasch and published by The Caxton Press CONTENTS Notes 3 A Letter to Frank Sargeson 5 Absolute Error, Pat Wilson 6 The Free and the Strong, Lawrence Robinson 8 Two Poems, Louis Johnson 12 Brothers in Mourning, Gordon Dry/and 13 Two Poems, W. Hart-Smith 18 Presents, Dan Davin 19 The Return, J. R. Hervey 25 Fiction and the Social Pattern, Robert Chapman 26 Commentaries: THE GROUP SHOW, John Summers 59 THREE GUINEAS-LESS TAX, R. T. Robertson 62 Reviews: FIRES IN THE DISTANCE, Frank Gadd 69 JULIEN WARE, Bill Pearson 71 SONGS FOR A SUMMER, R. A. Cop/and 74 N.Z. POETRY YEARBOOK and 13 NEW ZEALAND POETS, Jonathan Bennett 76 T. S. ELIOT AND WALT WHITMAN, D. M. Anderson 78 A SECOND BOOK OF LEO BENSEMANN'S WORK, J. C. Beag/eho/e 80 AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE PACIFIC, H. D. Skinner 81 THE PLACE OF HOOKER IN THE IDSTORY OF THOUGHT, J. G. A. Pocock 84 Correspondence, G. Huntley, Ruth Reid, D'Arcy Cresswell 86 Paintings from the Group Show: Rita Angus, Olivia Spencer Bower, John Drawbridge, Juliet Peter VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER ONE MARCH 195"3 NOTES FRANK Sargeson's fiftieth birthday in March of this year is a more than purely personal occasion, as the letter of tribute to him in this issue from a number of younger writers of fiction indicates. No New Zealand writer before, no professional writer, artist as distinct from journalist, has reached fifty in the mature and full exercise of his powers in his own country. No artist: it has been said that a man may be born a poet (or novelist or painter) but has to make himself an artist. And there lies Frank Sargeson's achievement, a rare one at any time, and for us fruitful and precious to a degree it is impossible to ·estimate. There have been and are now talents enough and to spare in.New Zealand; what has been lacking is the will and the ability to use them for a single purpose, a purpose which must always be at once personal and beyond the personal and peculiarly diffi- cult to pursue. Talent alone is not enough, neither is genius alone; qualities of mind and spirit are demanded as well-intellect, understanding, character: the lives of Cezanne and of Yeats show clearly how much patience and devotion must be lavished on the raw material (of life, of art) before it can become the finished work. Other writers, pursuing their art single-mindedly, found New Zealand intolerable, inimical to the arts and to any freedom of life and spirit- as it was, as it is only now ceasing to be-and left it to live abroad. Frank Sargeson went abroad and returned to live as a writer, and a writer only, in New Zealand; which meant, at that time, to live as a virtual outcast from society. By his courage and his gifts he showed that it was possible to be a writer and contrive to live, somehow, in New Zealand, and all later writers are in his debt. Yet he was not quite alone. He was fortunate enough to find here an editor (and later a publisher) ready to print his work, and a small alert public eager to read it. He did not have to create unaided the standards of taste by which he would be judged; readers of English and American fiction (and New Zealanders have never been isolated from books and ideas) could appreciate his work without difficulty; his reputation began at home before he was known abroad. One quality above all in his work, in the view of life which it com- municates, marks him as a New Zealander, and that is its humanity, its concern for and trust in human beings, in what Croce calls 'that mute, inglorious host of good and honest men who are the underlying fabric which holds human society together'. This quality implies a religious attitude to life, which indeed underlies so much of our co-operative social activity as well as our social legislation, and the application of these abroad, as in Corso's work, in New Zealand's work on the United Nations, in Rewi Alley's in China. The attitude has in many cases been cut off from its origins and is ·usually expressed in secular form; New Zealanders are 3 not in any obvious sense a religious-minded people; but observers and critics who can recognize an attitude only when it bears a traditional label are likely to be misled in interpreting the outlook of many New Zealanders and the character of much New Zealand writing. Frank Sarge- son's work has dealt often with people wronged by society or warped by narrow conventions and creeds, those who are most in need of the concern which informs his picture of them. The tendency of his work has been to deepen our understanding and extend our sympathies, and so, we may hope, to strengthen one of the better traits of the (embryo) national character. Further, his work reminds us of the roots of New Zealand writing in English literature, and at the same time of its links with other colonial literatures, American, Australian, South African. All imaginative writers today draw, consciously or not, on a multitude of sources; it is the writer's sense of the tradition in which he is working which enables him to make good use of his sources, to give meaning to the present by relating it to the past out of which it has grown and to other presents which have grown from the same past. To work within a tradition and to add to that tradition, as Frank Sargeson is doing, is to reaffirm the continuity of human experience, the unity of man, and to point to the inexhaustible richness of the life that is open to men in New Zealand as elsewhere. 4 A LETTER TO FRANK SARGESON DEAR Frank Sargeson, Your fiftieth birthday this month is an appropriate time, we feel, to pay tribute to you as a short story writer and a novelist. Your work has had, in the past twenty years, a liberating influence on the literature of this country. We may not all have read your early stories in Tomorrow. But we do know that it was your voice that said something true and original of life in New Zealand during those years. We remember the excitement aroused by the collections, Conversation with My Uncle and A Man and His Wife, and the stories and short novels that followed in Penguin New Writing and New Directions. It seemed very important that the significance of these New Zealand stories had been recognized by two of the most discriminating publications in England and the United States. You had broken down our isolation in the world ofletters still further. You proved that a New Zealander could publish work true to his own country and of a high degree of artistry, and that exile in the cultural centres of the old world was not essential to this end. One could be provincial, in the best sense, and of the world at the same time. We didn't imagine that what you said, or the way you said it, presented a complete picture of this country or described it in the only way possible. But you took a most important step. You turned over new ground with great care and revealed that our manners and behaviour formed just as good a basis for enduring literature as those of any other country. You have worked with patience and endurance at a task which has never provided as much as a living wage, a task which in our community has provoked suspicion and derision more often than sympathy or understanding. To your public example you have added personal advice and encouragement. Your generosity is well known. Your dedication is an example and an inspiration. As time has passed and we have read I Saw in My Dream, Up Onto the Roof and Down Again and I, For One, we have seen your highly individual vision deepen in its moral significance. It is not often that a writer can be said to have become a symbol in his own lifetime. It is this quality of your achievement that has prompted us to remember the present occasion. David Ballantyne Roderick Finlayson 0. E. Middleton John Reece Cole Janet Frame Bill Pearson lames Courage A. P. Gaskell He/en Shaw Dan Davin G. R. Gilbert Greville Texidor Erik de Mauny Bruce Mason Phillip Wilson Maurice Duggan 5 PAT WILSON ABSOLUTE ERROR ABsoLUTE Error went down the street. His brow was sunny, his tie was neat, Yes, and his smile was sweet. But there was one thing spoilt him all, Roused him up raw and rude as gall, Wayward and wild as a ball. 'I'll find it yet, this thing that eludes me,' · He was saying, 'whatever it is that deludes me And continually be-rudes me! 'I'll search, though it takes a thousand years, Though the sun goes black and the moon's in tears Sourer than prickly pears .

Load more