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Translations under the trees: Australian poets' integration of Buddhist ideas and images Greg McLaren Table of contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Abbreviations 3 Glossary of Buddhist terms 4 Introduction: Blueprints 9 Chapter one: These things can make a man less mean 22 Chapter two: Some presence inevitably shows through: Harold Stewart, Robert Gray and haiku translation 51 Chapter three: Golden days: Harold Stewart's poetics of self, aversion and attachment 90 Chapter four: "He showed them empty hands": Robert Gray's struggle with aversion and non-attachment 132 Chapter five: "But you do not try to turn your face away": care, family and the imbalance in Gray's sensibility 148 Chapter six: After imagism: revisionism, ideology and Gray's drift from things 170 Chapter seven: Sacred yet common: manifestations of Buddhism in Judith Beveridge's poetry 219 Chapter eight: When I watch myself watching: Narrating the Buddha 257 Conclusion: Composting culture 301 Bibliography 315 Greg McLaren 1 Abstract My aim in writing this thesis is to investigate the ways in which several Australian poets have made attempts to integrate their interest in Buddhist ideas, images and practices into their work. In doing this I provide a critical re-appraisal of the work of Harold Stewart, a re-examination of Robert Gray's work, and a substantial study of the poetry 0 f Judith Beveridge. I interrogate the work of these three poets primarily through a ftlter of key Buddhist concepts, and apply these ideas to the formal, conceptual and rhetorical planks of these poets' work. I am interested in how these poets' engagements with Buddhism affect their deployment of form, image and perceptual matters, and how much of the Buddhism in their work is implicit, at the level of sensibility, aesthetic and ethics, rather than directly discussed. I am particularly interested in demonstrating a correspondence between the writers' various engagements with Buddhism and their handling of formal considerations, an area that otherwise seems to have lillie to do with ''Buddhist'' ideas. It is my argument that while Buddhist terminology and ideas clearly denote an "interest" in those ideas, far more useful conclusions can be drawn from examining a poet's integration of those ideas at the level of form and image, where they cannot be used so overtly. I am concerned with how these Buddhist interests become literary engagements, rather than simply fill poems with subject matter. The use of key Buddhist notions like no-self, interdependence, emptiness and impermanence, coupled with a cultivation of non-attachment in tone and perspective, is evidence of a genuinely integrated sensibility, where the religious interests and practices clearly feed into the practice of writing. It is this integration of aesthetic practice and religious practice that is the fundamental concern of this thesis. If Gray and Beveridge both embody Buddhist ideas in their choice and deployment of imagery, only Beveridge seems to consistently use these Buddhist doctrinal notions as formal, structuring devices. In fact her writing at times seems an extension rather than a reflection of a Buddhist practice. Greg McLaren 2 Acknowledgements My greatest thanks go to Dr Noel Rowe, who has taught me so much, and encouraged my initial interest in pursuillg this topic. I am very grateful for his calmness, his sharp eye, constant good humour and his friendship. Noel has been a most remarkable and inspiring supervisor. I want to thank some of my other teachers at the University of Sydney for their ongoing encouragement and support: Dr Beverly Sherry, Professor Elizabeth Webby, Dr David Brooks, Dr Simon Petch, Associate Professor Tony Miller, Dr Bernadette Brennan and Dr Michael Brennan. I must acknowledge my friends for their love, support and constant encouragement, and for being sounding boards: Liz Allen, David Donn, Erin Gough, Michelle Weisz, Ben Webster, Mark Reid, Julieanne Lamond, Uli Krahn and Rebecca Meston for giving me somewhere to stay in Canberra to research the Harold Stewart material. This thesis would not appear in this form without my proof-readers who gave up their weekends and sanity: Uli Krahn, Julieanne Lamond, Michelle Weisz. Thanks are due also to the staff in the manuscript room of the National Library of Australia for their assistance in my research of Harold Stewart's manuscripts and papers. My gratitude also to the staff of Fisher Library at the University of Sydney. This thesis is dedicated to Andrea Dansie for her love, constant encouragement and her refined sense of irony. 3 Greg McLaren Abbreviations for texts used: Judith Beveridge: The Domesticity of Giraffes: DG Accidental Grace: A G Wolf Notes: WN Max Dunn: Leaves ofJade: Poems from the Dragon Land: LJ No Asterisks: NA Random Elements: RE Time of Arrivaf. TA Robert Gray: Introspect, Retrospect: IR Creekwater Journaf. CJ The Skylight: TS Piano: P Certain Things: CT Lineations: L Afterimages: A Selected Poems 1963-1983: SP Selected Poems: SP New and Selected Poems: NASP New Selected Poems: NSP Harold Stewart: A Chime ofWindbells: CW The Exiled Immortaf. EI A Net of Fireflies: NF Orpheus and Other Poems: OOP Phoenix Wings: PW By the Old Walls of Kyoto: BOWK "Autumn Landscape-Rail": ALR Greg McLaren 4 Glossary of Buddhist terms: Por this brief glossary I have relied largely on Charles S. Prebish's excellent work, Historical Dictionary of Buddhism'. Where I do use other definitions, it is because they add a nuance or variation on the term's use or meaning significant in the contexts I use, and that Prebish does not emphasise. Compassion/loving kindness/ (Metta): Christmas Humphreys defines metta as 3 "Love, active good will,,2, and is close to koruna, compassion • The metta bhavana is a meditation practice "in which the force oflove is radiated to all beings"'. Conditionality/Dependent co-origination/ (Pratitya-samutpada): Prebish argues that conditionality "establishes that nothing in the world happens by accident, as it were, but rather that all occurrences are causally conditioned,,5. lie argues that this doctrine "undermines the potential substantial nature of any compounded identity',6 and that it "underscores precisely what it means by the notion of emptiness (sUnyata), that no composite entity can have any ontological status of its own, that all entities lack own- being (svabhava)"'. In his translation of the Vimalikirti Nirdesa, Robert Thurman provides this defmition: "that nothing exists independent of relation with something else; therefore there is no absolute, permanent, independent self-substantial thing - only things that exist conditionally, dependent on their verbal and intellectual designations''''. , Charles S. Prebish. Historical Dictionary of Buddhism, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen (New Jersey), 1993 2 Christmas Humphreys, A Popular Dictionary of Buddhism, NTC Publishing, Chicago, 1984, p.127 3 Humphreys, p.127 4 Humphreys, p.127 5 Prebish, p.217 6 Prebish, p.217 'Prebish, p.217 8 Robert A. F. Thurman, trans!., The HolY Teaching ofVimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1991, p.163 Greg McLaren 5 This is a very useful expansion on Prebish's explication in that it shows clearly the close relation - in fact, inter-relation - between conditionality, siinyata, and no-self and impermanence. These notions all relate to the same phenomenon of existence that Buddhism observes, merely from different perspectives.