Tribute
by Philip Harvey
Obituarists
sharpened their quills in 2014 when word had it the death of Clive James was
imminent. Since then we have witnessed a late flowering of poetry, reviews and
articles tinged with mortality that revealed to the last his Twainian flair for
journalistic self-promotion, albeit in the internet age. Now the quills are out
in earnest.
Les
Murray’s death this year was also anticipated in advance, though Les showed
himself much more accepting of his temporal departure. The deaths of these two poets draw attention
to their contrasts in style, outlook, and temperament. Clive James and Les
Murray demonstrated two very different modes of existence that modern
Australians readily recognise and appreciate. Both poets, ambitious for
success, kept a close eye and ear on Australia and how it talks. We are the
beneficiaries.
Clive
became the celebrated expatriate, Sydney a beacon in the mental map of a
Londoner. He was an Antipodean Augustan, the Boswell of the BBC, an Alexander
Pope of the caressing or crushing quatrain, the Rochester of bruising
rationalism. He reminded us of how much London has been an Australian city for
the past century. Les stayed at home, in fact stayed on the farm. He represents
that generation who remained on the land rather than leave for the Big Smoke. He
was the Buddha from Bunyah. While Kogarah was, for Clive, a childhood
reference, a postcode of his cosmopolitan performance, Bunyah was literal
paradise or purgatory for Les, depending on the day of the week.
Both
poets went to the University of Sydney, but that is not why they wrote poetry.
They went to the University of Sydney because they were already writing poetry.
Their self-confidence was big as Sydney. Clive can be described as the more
conventional in terms of form. Like others of his generation, Clive was
inspired and haunted by W.H. Auden, the great promoter of knowing every poetic
form. Clive’s profusion of satire was entrée to the society he made light of,
much as he did in his TV shows. But, as the poetry of memento mori since the
diagnosis shows, he was also fascinated by Elizabethan high style, copying it
to perfect effect. Les possessed a prodigious gift, a near-
miraculous
ability to conjoin the senses in words and make you feel it. His knowledge of
English poetry was widespread, while his acclimatisation to Australian poetry,
and Indigenous song form in particular, grew with time, delivering unforeseen
and immense productions, many of them unique in scope. Clive went to Cambridge,
Les stayed around out the back of Bulahdelah.
In
a TV interview with Les, Clive muttered under his breath after one Murray
expansive effusion, “I’m out of my depth” – a rare admission. When Clive asked
Les where poetry comes from, Les answered matter-of-factly, “poetry comes from
the wound.”
The Auden influence is everywhere in Clive’s
collected poetry: the desire to test many forms; the epistolary inclination
where he opens conversation with confreres, only to hold the lion’s share of
the talk; the perfect grasp of aphorism and end line; the sparkling knowledge
of the world and that which we owe to Caesar. Unlike Auden, he was less
concerned about what we owe to God, though I for one still doubt if he was altogether
an atheist. Clive was always going to leave the options open. His poems of
praise are rich with thanksgiving and in the last year he was talking of how we
understand Christianity, or rather how he understands it. Perhaps more of that
anon.
Les
left us some of the most remarkable poetic arguments about faith imaginable. In
a country where the last census offered the population the choice of a statistical
nonsense (No Religion) its leading poet dedicated all of his books ‘To the
Greater Glory of God’. Les grew up Presbyterian, then converted to Catholicism.
In both mind and body his work is solid with this move, when it isn’t fluid. When
Les visited the Carmelite Library (where I work) a few years ago he shared a
story about his father. Les was talking to a friend about how his father never
talked to him about his conversion or his religion, to which his friend
replied, that Les’s father talked to him about nothing else.
Clive’s
life work is not an argument for
watching more television, but reading more poetry. In a world where the screen
has bumped conversation into the corner, his millions of well-chosen words
testify to why real appreciation of our daily graphic overload deepens with
knowledge of how language operates. Delivery is only the final finesse of all
that work making words click. Les directs us into the beauty and wonder of
English, a language free of academic restraint, the sort of freedom inherited
from the aforementioned 18th century Augustans, Samuel Johnson
supreme amongst them, giving English license to say what it likes and borrow as
it sees fit for everyone’s better understanding and enjoyment. Both poets’ work
will survive the criticism.
An edited version of this tribute was published at Eureka Street on the 29th of November: http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/clive-james--poetry-of-memento-mori?fbclid=IwAR1VrGc-hTmSkUUg5BKjSXS__yY5QQCxsywp8dglVnUsSfMqXPVz3cgicNE
An edited version of this tribute was published at Eureka Street on the 29th of November: http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/clive-james--poetry-of-memento-mori?fbclid=IwAR1VrGc-hTmSkUUg5BKjSXS__yY5QQCxsywp8dglVnUsSfMqXPVz3cgicNE
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