MAKING IT NEW: "modernism" in B.E. Baughan's New Zealand poetry. A thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Canterbury by Nancy May !:farris University of Canterbury 1992 i i ( { CONTENTS. ABSTRACT. (p. VI). Endnotes. (p. IX). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. (p. X). PART A: PROVENANCE, COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS. CHAPTER ONE: THE BIOGRAPHICAL FACTOR. (i) Early Years in England (p. 1). (ii) Post University in England (1891-1900), (p. 5). (iii) New Zealand (pp. 9-23): (a) Early Years. (b) Mysticism. (c) Writing after Shingle-Short. (d) Social Work. Endnotes (p. 24). CHAPTER TWO: GENERAL INTRODUCTION. (i) Baughan's Early Volumes (p. 32). (ii) Baughan and her New Zealand Literary Contemporaries (p. 35). (iii) Baughan's Australian Literary Contemporaries (p. 46). (iv) The New England Influence (pp. 50-68): (a) Making Connections; (b) Major Ideas of the Time; , (c)Baughan's Empathy with Carlyle and Emerson; (d) Whihnan in the Antipodes; (e) Literary Spinoffs: "New Worldism", Baughan's Stepping-Stone to "Modernism" . Endnotes (p. 69). iii CHAPTER THREE: BAUGHAN AND THE GENERATION TO FOLLOW. D'Arcy Cresswell, Geoffrey de Montalk, R. A. K. Mason, Rex Fairburn, Ursula Bethell and Robin Hyde. (pp. 75-91). Endnotes (p. 92). PART B: AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEXTS. CHAPTER FOUR: "SHINGLE-SHORT". (i) Introduction (p 94). (ii) The Poem's Transcendentalist Underpinning (p. 96). (iii) Literary Spinoffs: "Modernism" in the Poem (p. 102). Endnotes (p. 111). CHAPTER FIVE: "A BUSH SECTION". (i) Introduction (p. 112). (ii) The Poem as a Personal Allegory (p. 119). (iii) The Poem as a Colonial Allegory (p. 123). ,/ (iv) Literary Spinoffs frOln Baughan's "New Worldisln" (p.126). Endnotes (p. 138). CHAPTER SIX: "MAUl's FISH". (i) Introduction (p. 140). (ii) Making Changes: (a) Debunking Anglophilia (p. 142). (b) A New Way of Seeing (p. 150). (c) Literary Spinoffs: Toward a New Poetic (p. 153). Endnotes (p. 162). iv CHAPTER SEVEN: "BURNT BUSH". (i) Ideas in the Poem: (a) The Subjective Nature of Perception (p. 165). (b) One-ness: a Fusing, of the Personal and Colonial aspects. (p. 170). (ii) Literary Spinoffs (p. 173). Endnotes (p. 177). CHAPTER EIGHT: "THE PADDOCK". (i) Introduction (p. 178). (ii) Elizabeth's Monologue: the Work Ethic; Knowing One's Place (p. 181). (iii) Janet's Monologue: a Feminist Perspective; Escaping Restrictions (p. 184). (iv) The "Song of the Wind": the Long View, Exposing Human Myopia (p. 189.) (v) Hine's Monologue: Change, and the Penalty of Not Changing (p. 193). (vi) Literary Spinoffs: Make it New /Make it Yours (p. 199). Endnotes (p. 206). CONCLUSION (p. 208). Endnotes to Conclusion. (p. 232). BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 235 - 252). Primary Source References. (i) Books (p. 235). (ii) Letters (pp. 236 - 238). Secondary Source References. (i) Letters To The Writer (annotated where appropriate, pp.238 - 239). (ii) Letters to Baughan from Vedanta Swami (p. 239). (iii) Interviews: bibliographic reference (p. 240). v (iv) Newspapers Cited (annotated, where appropriate, pp. 240 - 241). (v) Periodicals Cited (annotated, where appropriate, pp. 241 - 243). (vi) Books (pp. 243 - 252). (vii) References Concerning Idealisln (p. 252). APPENDIX: Interviews: (a) Mrs Gwen Goodwin (p. 253). (b) Mrs Betty Waller (p. 256). (c) Mrs M. A. Skey. (p. 261). vi ABSTRACT. This thesis examines one woman's attempt at revolution in New Zealand poetry. It will suggest that we may need to re-assess our perception of Blanche Edith Baughan - as a nascent "modern",} rather than a "colonial" poet. The generally accepted view is that significant modern poetry emerged in New Zealand in the nineteen-twenties, and came to full flowering in the nineteen-thirties, and that Blanche Baughan was a "forerunner". She has achieved a modest reputation as an innovator in New Zealand poetry, perhaps as our first "true colonial voice ".2 This thesis proposes that Baughan was more than simply a "forerunner", that she had in fact, by 1908, introduced many of the changes currently credited to New Zealand poets of the succeeding generation. The title "Making it New" alludes to the catch-cry of Modernist poetry ("Make it New!") as expressed by Ezra Pound. Although Baughan is in no way connected to the Modernist movement, her directive to creative colonials, "Be thou new!" (from "Maui's Fish") has obvious parallels.3 Two major factors account for the difference between Baughan and her New Zealand literary contemporaries - her mysticism and her freedom from the prevailing "Anglophilia". Baughan was reluctantly English at a time when pro-English sentiment was pervasive in both the life and the literature of the colony. This significant pre-condition of her "modernism" has been barely touched on, and the reasons behind it unrecorded, by literary historians and critics. A short biographical background will account for her attitude and reveal some hitherto unpublished facts. Baughan considered herself a mystic. Her mysticism, her classical education, her interest in philosophy and in social reform, together gave her a vii close empathy with the writings of the American Transcendentalists and of Thomas Carlyle. Their influence, which may be traced both in the message, and (occasionally), in the style of her texts, is supported by her possession of personal copies of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, his On Heroes, Emerson's Essays and Representative Men, and Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas and Other Papers.4 The significance of Baughan's transcendentalism - indeed its very existence - has been over-looked by critical comment to date. This thesis views it as a key factor in her empathy with the American Transcendentalists, and flowing from that, it sees in Whitman's "New Worldism" as defined in his "Democratic Vistas", Baughan's main stepping-stone to "modernism". Accounting for Baughan'S markedly different outlook and its effect on the matter and method of her poems required the inclusion in this thesis of four inter-related themes: her biographical past; her mysticism; her education (in the broadest sense, including the influences, particularly of the American Transcendentalists, on her poetic thought); and, finally, her conversion of transcendentalist concepts and precepts to the "modern" elements in her work. The thesis is organized in two related halves. Part A (chapters one to three), deals with the influences on her work. It includes, as well, an examination, from hindsight, of Baughan's "modernism" in relation to that of the main New Zealand poets of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Part B (chapters four to eight), consists of an exploratory study of her major poetic texts, the five very long works I have termed "colonial allegories": "Shingle­ Short", "A Bush Section", "Maui's Fish", "Burnt Bush" and "The Paddock". In Part B, I will seek out the poems' transcendentalist underpinning, their debunking of "Anglophilia" - and of conservative attitudes in general - and the practical spinoffs of Baughan's emphasis on change and newness at the vi ii level of the text. This study is confined to the allegories. Baughan's other works, whether in poetry or prose, are mentioned only where necessary either to illustrate her development or to clarify some point in the thesis. ix Notes. 1Baughan was modern for her time. She was not of course Modernist. Nevertheless, some of her innovations, though not deriving from the Modernist movement, have characteristics in common with it - her attempts at "open form", for instance, and her use of demotic expression. Unless otherwise specified, the term "modern" as it applies to Baughan's work, means comparatively modern. It means that it contains characteristics associated with poetry of recent times, not expected in Victorian/Edwardian poetry. I will retain inverted commas where the word applies to Baughan's work, to avoid confusion with other meanings and connotations. 2 P. C. M. Alcock uses the phrase in "A true colonial voice: Blanche Edith Baughan" Landfall , CCII [June 1972], p. 164. A few paragraphs in E. H. McCormick's Letters and Art in New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940) appear to be the first (muted) public recognition of Baughan's contribution since the initial small wave of enthusiasm nearly thirty years earlier. (McCormick notes her "frontal attack on the special problems of New Zealand verse", for which strategy he finds "no parallel" amongst her New Zealand-born contemporaries (p. 104). Six years later, in Creative Writing in New Zealand (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1946), J. C. Reid writes of her "[refusal] to be bound by the rather sterile forms of Edwardian Verse". He comments on her "rather sophisticated attempt to use the native New Zealand idiom for literary purposes" (p.19). In 1960 Allen Curnow describes Baughan'S "A Bush Section" as "the best New Zealand poem before Mason" (The Pengllin Book of New Zealand Verse, Penguin (N.Z.) Limited, 1960), p. 38. Vincent O'Sullivan sees Baughan in a precursory role. In the introduction to An Anthology of New Zealand PoetnJ (London: Oxford University Press, 1970 ), p.33, he writes, "With the exception of Blanche Baughan, no poet before the First World War looked squarely at what was done, thought, and felt, in the full context of colonial or early Dominion life". Ian Wedde considers that "it is with Blanche Baughan that we first sense the beginnings of the internal relation of where to the language of the poems" ("Introduction", The Pef/gllill Book of Nc>ro Zealand Verse Auckland: Penguin Books (N Z.) Limited, 1985), p. 33. Patrick Evans writes, "she was the only poet in New Zealand to challenge the language of Victorian Romanticism that seemed obligatory in the long period till the Great War ... " (The Pwgllill History of New Zealand Literatllre Auckland: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 50. (Of course there were brickbats as well.