Headstrong Poet & Small Press Publisher
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Jack Lindsay Headstrong poet & Small press Publisher Skills Health Stability Jack One Right Bastard ....................................2 Dead as a Maggot Charismatic ................................................4 Crook as Rookwood Completely Rooted Classical Education ..................................3 Non-conformity Sick as a Dog Lindsay Daddy Issues (Worship Norman) ......5 A Bit Buggered Intellectual Bullshit .................................3 Hearty Freeload ......................................................3 Absolutely Stoked Queer Proper Gander ...........................................4 Roving Eye / Don’t Mention Vitality The Wife ......................................................3 Unconscious SENSUAL Snotty Brat .................................................3 Woozy Streetwise .................................................4 Dazed Head-achy No Worries Magnetic Mystic Masterly DULCIE DEAMER ‘The Queen of Bohemia’. Good company, a friend and lively What is your ecstasy, in art or in life? What RAW Talent (secret) conversationalist, but anti-intellectual. is your life’s intended masterpiece? What We often spar. would you sacrifice to achieve it? You are a Lindsay. Concepts, and Big Ideas. (He has learned from You are as controversial, iconoclastic and bitter experience to tone this down amongst opinionated as your father, Norman. He is friends.) a god in Australian art, an artist, etcher, Jack believes in the total opposition of art and cartoonist, sculptor, novelist, iconoclast, hater, money. He is, in theory, a communist. In practice, and philosopher. You are perhaps as talented he is a remorseless freeloader. as he. If only you could win his love, his Born with the new century, Jack and his two respect. brothers grew up in Brisbane after Norman You will be a poet. The poet. abandoned them in 1909. A shy, unusually HOPE You will be Norman’s true disciple, and he will bright young man, he won a scholarship to the Enigmatic sculptor and street tough. love you. newly established University of Queensland. A comforting presence; an enigma Jack Lindsay is angry young poet, son of the Jack wore a black silk bow tie in scorn of wrapped in a mystery. immortal Norman. Separated from his father the Brisbane philistines. He campaigned for as a child, he longs for acceptance. Aboriginal rights. He won first class honours in Jack is charismatic, moody, preachy, and both Latin and Greek. His erotic poem, ‘Rivals’ cynical. He has little time for unimportant proved too hot even for sub-tropical Brisbane things like dress or personal hygiene. He is when published in a university magazine. The living The Life. The Life of a Hero Poet, free issue in which it appeared was withdrawn and of mundanity, transcending mere Existence, censored. reaching towards Eternity. Jack’s speech is From deep-felt mystical experiences in the peppered with Capital Letters, Important bush near Brisbane, Jack has evolved a spiritual outlook based on poetry and nature worship. JACK: THE WOUND, THE SCAR, THE LIE MOIRA DARTLY Sydney Sun women’s page social and gossip scribbler. We swap gossip and Jack’s Wound: Insecurity be entertaining and insightful, but Despite Norman, he is beginning to possible patrons. She can be playful It is difficult being the son of a often he is a total prat. find his own way. but still mourns the drowning of her living god. Norman Lindsay, though Jack’s Lie: Norman knows best Negative Aspects boyfriend three months ago. controversial and combative, stands Jack has been slow to recognise Jack can be a total prat, especially at the apex of Australian art. Jack Norman’s many flaws and to strangers and those he is trying grew up separated from his father, contradictions, both as an artist, a to impress. (He is no longer so and seeks to win Norman’s love by visionary, and as a human being. tough on his friends). being his most devoted disciple and That dawning recognition is Healing equal as a poet. painful. As an artist, Jack can heal herself Jack’s Scar: Obsession Associated Emotions through the creation of a great Jack covers his insecurity with Anxiety, pretentiousness, tendency work. massive over-compensation. He to bluff, doubt, shame, obsession. He might also come to realise his lives a Noble Existence. He is Above own happiness is not dependent the Throng. He is artist and poet Positive Aspects Jack is a perfectionist. He has on Norman, or that he will ever and scholar and true disciple of KEN SLESSOR moulded his talent and is a fine be able to win his father’s love by Norman’s Creative Vision. Jack can slavish devotion. Dapper poet and Sun journalist. A poet, totally dedicated to his path. gentle friend, talented poet, Virgil-like guide and constant companion. In 1921 Jack began a new life in the dingy studios and sordid attics of Sydney. Though living in bohemian squalor, Sydney seemed like the true landscape of the unfettered mind, one richly adorned with the voluptuous and erotic images of Norman’s art. And while the verse did not flow as freely as he thought it would, there was opportunity for rollicking good play. In 1922, after a period of grinding poverty, Jack met Janet Beaton. Janet’s family is wealthy and well-known and she was living comfortably on a small allowance in a flat in Darlinghurst. It was not exactly love at first sight, but both were attracted to each other, and Janet was wealthy. ‘I had been bellyaching because my daimon-of-poetry was perishing for want of sustenance in a barren philistinism, and here all the while Pallas Athene had been smiling at me. Yes, Janet was Athene, the protector, not Aphrodite, the lover. When Jack moved in, Janet made him cut his hair and get his trousers pressed. They married in October 1922 and took a cottage at Bondi, which is still mostly scrub and sand dunes. Marriage provided financial security and allowed Jack to begin his poetic mission in earnest. And despite the marriage, drinking and flirtation are still crucial injunctions in what Jack calls ’the code of submission to life’. Desperate for his father’s approval, Jack became a fervent disciple of Norman’s doctrinaire ‘Creative Vision’. This inspired him, along with fellow Poet Kenneth Slessor, to found Vision: a Literary Quarterly in 1923, designed to foster Norman’s hoped-for artistic renaissance. To detail the exact nature of Norman’s manifesto is unnecessary: it was contradictory and convoluted. Basically, if its old, male and European, it’s good. Praxiteles, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Rubens, Beethoven, Byron, Keats and Balzac! If it’s new or modern or experimental, its bad. If it mentions the Bush or the Outback, it’s The journal lays dying for want of money and contributors. Jack is doggerel. Male Heroes can live a True Life of Poetry and Art, while the only one who still has faith. Even Kenneth seems to moved to (passive) female Muses provide the inspiration. The masculine other projects. Creative Mind exists apart from the mass mind of mundanity, Jack’s has produced two books of poetry: Fauns and Ladies and The which, essentially feminine, constantly attacks it with the aid of Passionate Neatherd (Cowherd). He has an increasing reputation as such lesser breeds as Jews, Asians and Africans. Modernist art and a critic and editor. the Great War were but the most recent manifestations of these Poor Norman is caught up in ouija boards and morbid spiritualism. unending attacks upon the creative elite. Grasping after moolah is Aloft and solitary in his Blue Mountain retreat at Faulconbridge, bad (Norman is very well paid as a Bulletin cartoonist, but never Daddy is vulnerable and weak. The death of his young brother Reg at mind that). Life should be lusty and free, and the wowsers and the Somme crippled him, for his posters helped recruit many young churchmen can take a running jump. The True Artist might achieve men to the war. Norman never fully recovered from this blow, and is a place or state of immortality that Norman calls Hyperboria. plagued with illness and the demands of his second family. Get the idea? Jack is beginning to question some of Daddy’s doctrine. He is Vision promoted discussion of sexuality, debate about aesthetics, finding his own voice, his own perspective. He can no longer be a and writing about the inner life. There was nothing like it in shadow of his father. Australian publishing. Jack and Kenneth sometimes wrote under Jack’s current companions are a diverse lot. Bohemians and poets, pseudonyms. A large part of Vision’s content was theirs. The elder they had originally been chosen because they inspire him or Lindsay contributed essays and drawings of satyrs and fauns. support his Great Cause. With time, he has grown more fond of After initial success over several issues, the project has stalled. them than he care admit. Vision declared war on modern art and literature, yet nobody really Though life is good, Jack’s world is stretching into crisis, and noticed. something will have to give. Jack In her breast’s fall and rise I felt the Nietzsche in his own way had forced me mighty ocean of desire into the open, into the need to keep on Swell to the calling Moon. grasping at history, analysing it. By his Her impulsive thighs attack on Christianity he gave guts and Pressed tighter to my side like petals that immediacy to the Hegelian schema on the close moral and cultural levels, however many About a trapped bee venturing too far. his incidental aberrations. He restored to —’Rivals’ European culture the concept of a single (Published in a university magazine: stream of development, broken after the the issue was censored) Renaissance and unrestored by Spinozistic pantheisms or Newtonian theisms, by positivist abstractions or fideist reactions against positivism. Dear Daddy, How can I express the absolute joy with which I found your letter.