LAST HOURS

                                                    
from the ridges
echoes are distant strangers
in the harbour


not even poem bridges
fly midnight wings
of escape


my songs are shattered evenings
day-tattered emblems
and hope in ruins
smoking the hour


To the memory of Regis Stella, a worthy and learned colleague, novelist, critic and friend.

                                                                   

UNFOLDING LIKE PETALS

THE WAY WE SEE PAPUA NEW GUINEA LITERATURE

To our valuable viewers. The second poem that appeared herein, written after Robert Frost's THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, was deleted at the request of the author. This is because the late Dr. Regis Stella deserves a better tribute poem by way of sentiment. We are still looking for a suitable poem as a substitute. Any offers on this would help us a great deal.

                                                                            

Certain March nights

                                                  

The road was deep that the wind went down certain March nights and woke us unknown like the first time.

That sentence doesn’t quite make sense. It doesn’t seem to want to explain anything, let alone mention roads that are deep, the wind going down certain March nights and then waking us to some moment of unfamiliarity.

For a moment we let time stand still. We feel undecided somewhat about sentences like this one.

But good poetry often causes us to behave that way. Good poetry tugs at our senses, in an attempt to bring out so much goodness that lies deeply embedded in us. Good poetry seeks to find what is pleasantly familiar in us.

The Italian poet and the 1959 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Salvatore Quasimodo, to whom the opening sentence above can be attributed, takes poetry as such. To him poetry reveals those inner and personal sentiments that we as readers recognize as our own.

But, of course, we need only wait for such an explanation from the poet himself before we can be sure about the meanings of certain utterances like the one above.

Further, we get the feeling that with Quasimodo’s we are reading poetry of the deepest kind, even if the descriptions provided us are of the familiar and the simplest in form. There is so much exile in Quasimodo’s poetry, so much talk of rugged landscape, rocky terrain, steep climbs to a brightening hilltop and the wind that can be friendly and mysterious at once.

In Professor Michael Campo’s translation of one such poem of Quasimodo’s (Agrigentum Road) we get the same sort of feeling about the wind and familiar rustic albeit in our PNG terms rural landscape.

“There a wind endures that I remember/kindled in the manes of horses/racing aslant across the plains, a wind/that stains and scars the sandstone.../the sound that drifts toward the sea/where Hesperus trails at early morn/the jew’s harp’s melancholic twang/in the throat of the cart man/who slowly ascends the moon-cleansed hill...”

Even the rural landscape sounds nobler than we can imagine. Note the “twang” of the jew’s harp “in the throat of the cart man.” Ain’t that something to hear and behold of the village scene – aside from carts and horses which we do not as yet customarily have? Or the cart man’s solemn progression upwards, as is always the key practice in human endeavour, towards a “moon-cleansed hill”?

Now storyboard’s purpose in mentioning Quasimodo here is for us to relish once all over again the gentleness of voice found in poetry. And if there aren’t any Papua New Guineans who have heard of this poet before may we be forgiven, as the poet’s relevance to the muse in the making especially in our context can be desirable as much as pressing. How many times do we write poetry only to realize we could use a second opinion? To storyboard, then, Quasimodo’s the best advice there can be not only for poetry lovers but for those who would want to jot down a line or two.

A Quasimodo persona does not explain what goes on in his mind. He says things in a way that we understand what he’s getting at. Where, for example, we could say our piece in a tone of vehemence if fate had denied us a certain sentiment, Quasimodo’s persona would rather do so in the sound of the wind across the drape.

It is unknown to you, that country

where each day I go down deep

to nourish secret syllables...

and every love is a shield against sadness

a silent stair in the gloom

where you station me

to break my bread

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Quasimodo’s poetry is the challenge it offers in translation. This is where the relevance of his poetry to us becomes necessarily pressing. Indeed, reading Quasimodo’s entices us to revisit Allan Natachee’s musings of the 1940s up to the 1970s. There is so much leeway given for the enthusiast to dub in as much imagery as possible in order to come up with a comparative reflection on the works of these two poets, despite thematic variations.

Our own Allan Natachee’s poetry is full of chant, and with it comes colour, brightness of light and ingenuity in traditional choreography. Quasimodo’s appears rich in tapestry of vocab, even if the language is Italian. But the challenge in both poets is how we improvise their work in order to bring out the beauty of their poetry in our lives and in our own languages.

Na ala la omaia

La aveve la veavea?

Na alala omoaia

La aveto la veavea?

Aia nauna

Onino ma e atoapia!

Aia nauna

Vavato ma e atoapia!

(For a translation of this chant and lamentation by Natachee visit the UPNG bookshop today!) Of course, we do not need thick volumes of appropriate dictionaries to get into the mind of both poets. Modern tech allows easier access to Quasimodo’s work, but to Natachee’s a visit to UPNG’s bookshop and library or literature department would do nicely. Either way we are doing ourselves great service in creativity. Both these poets worked at about the same time in history so they are contemporaneous in that sense. For a PNG literature student this would help in comparative studies, to know what two poets of different cultural settings have thought and have written at a particular time in history.

There are no large scale wars noted in Natachee’s poetry, but the amount of warrior activity is enormous. With Quasimodo the presence of war is overbearing, even though we feel more of its inferred effects on the individual than its stark resemblances through description. Descriptions of war in Natachee are sometimes epic and Spartan whereas in Quasimodo these are eschewed as they probably remind one of too much human suffering.

But both poets strike us as fascinating, colorful and graciously honest in representing human experiences. We search the two, that we do, and we find their poetry, true as ever.

Aia!

He walks on the road!

Aia!

In war decoration!

Chants Natachee to which complements Quasimodo:

Return, serene Tindari

stir me, sweet friend

to raise myself to the sky from the rock

so that I might shape fear, for those who do not know

what deep wind has searched me

The opening citation for this article comes from the University of Queensland Press’s publication of Michael Dransfield’s poetry (1973). Allan Natachee’s poetry from Papua Pocket Poets (1968). Excerpted translations of Quasimodo’s Wind at Tindari from PoemHunter.com and Agrigentum Road tr Prof Michael Campo, Trinity College-Hartford CT.

When we first wrote it in English

                                                        

 Words of Paradise

ed. Ulli Beier

Unicorn Press Santa Barbara 1973

The ocean is peaceful

the silence makes me sad

The ocean is peaceful

the silence makes me sad

      You are hidden behind the mist

      go seek your happiness

      My name is dirt to you

      so let me follow the waves

When I step across the waters

I’ll play in the porpoise’s mouth

When I step across the waters

I’ll play in the tortoise’s teeth

    I haven’t made love charms yet

    in the back yard

    My name is dirt to you

    so let me seek my own happiness

    My name is dirt to you

    so let me follow the waves

                   Author: G. Beti

                                 (Rovana)

Son of Aia, I walk along the ridge

I go for love making

The good woman is swimming and calling

She walks away –

We go to the hiding place

Her eyes thinking, sparkling

she walks away

We go to the hiding place

I descend into the river

To seek the woman of the water!

I descend into the river

To gaze on the woman of the water!

                      Author: Allan Natachee

                                   (Mekeo)

                                                                     

A portrait of the artist

We couldn't get a book cover copy of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man due to copyright complications so we thought a portrait of the odd man out would do for this article at least.

A portrait of the artist as a young man? As a young dog? As a prematurely old man? As an old man? As a young girl? As words we can’t print here? As the odd man out?

The above are titles of work by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Ogden Nash, Joseph Heller, Grayson Perry, the punk rock band Dillinger Four (courtesy of Wikipedia) and storyboard; consecutively.

They all either show traces of influence from or parody James Joyce’s great novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Yet with or without the parodies and verbal caricatures of Dylan Thomas and others, James Joyce’s novel remains the most influential – as has been for generations – since its appearance in 1916.

We revisit the novel in our course Literary Criticism this semester not so much to remind us of its standing “as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20^th century” (Modern Library) as to review its particular influence on the making of the literary consciousness of PNG in the late sixties and early seventies. The novel’s “huge influence on novelists across the world” (Wikipedia) no doubt affected PNG of that period just as much.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man poses as the avant garde of a particular century of thought and style in imaginative literature. But that avant garde phenomenon, because of its intricate nature as a narrative, turns out to be a powerful medium of influence without meaning to. In fact, if we asked James Joyce why he wrote that novel the answer would be that he wrote what he felt, what he thought, as he himself would and not somebody else. Therein lies your expression of independence. And with that your grace of selfhood.

The novel talks about growth from infancy to adolescence and making sense of one’s surrounds upon the hour of adulthood or maturity. If you have spent all your formative years within the surrounds of a rigid Jesuit scholarship and a protective Catholic upbringing, it is doubtful if your relationship with the strident secular world would be comfortable. Hence, the thematic stance of this novel.

The novel also revolves around human senses and sensibilities. The protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, appears feeble, timid (his reading glasses fall and shatter out of nervousness at one stage), overtly sensitive, vulnerable to potential bullies posing as biblical do-gooders, and so on. But he does, even in such an environment, realize his gift to dream, to imagine, and to create.

And create he does, inasmuch as his alter ego, the author. What we get out of the novel is the art of telling the exact truth about ourselves with extreme directness and honesty – something not many of us would be willing to do. As the blogger (In a Nutshell) suggests, in his time (early 1900s) James Joyce was actually describing the artistic freedom of self-expression which we take so much for granted today. And had he been aware, when writing his novel from 1905 to 1915, that there were such things as mobile phones in the 21^st century then his protagonist wouldn’t have written those silly notes to that girl across the street and later squash up the paper out of embarrassment. An SMS or a missed call would have done the job perfectly.

But we come now to the point of what storyboard is really getting at here. The novel is certainly complex. But there are three important things to keep in mind when reading it. First, the necessity of intellectual and physical development of an individual. Second, the significance of one’s love for one’s art. And third, the essentialities of selfless sincerity and sharing of art with the rest of humanity.

Every society we look at today needs to be fully developed both physically and mentally through the individual members that constitute it. Of course, Joyce does not directly say that in the novel but the implications are there enough. What is a good society if all its citizenry is not sufficiently developed? A good society needs to be fully educated to reach that stage of full maturity and intellectual enlightenment. Indeed, without the latter a society is vulnerably open to decadence under the type of people who run it.

The love of one’s art is another matter. Art in this sense means being of oneself a cultured individual. The more you love your art the more you feel you have “insides”, meaning you have a soul. If we look at the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, closely, we note that everything about him is rebellion seen in an adolescent. But that rebellion is milder and subtly aristocratic rather than chaotic. Poetry and literature are discussed in that sense in the novel. And it all comes to us spontaneously for the sake of this art. What Dedalus wants is to exist as an artist unhindered by orthodox social forces and peer influences. It is that love for art that drives him, towards the end of the novel, to protest: “Non serviam – I will not serve that which I no longer believe...” While many critics see that remark as an act of outright rebellion on the part of Dedalus, it is rather an affirmative outburst in favour of the Catholic tradition that had produced that artist in the first place.

Then of course there is the necessity of properly defining this word “individual.” Everything about the novel is centred around individualism. But there is a distinction noted here. Being individualistic denotes selfishness. But being an individual, within the community of collective individualism, is yet another matter. And that, ultimately, is what our novelist is getting at here.

Earlier in this article we mentioned something about the novel’s influence on the consciousness of the PNG literary mind. How do we justify that? In 1970 storyboard wrote the widely publicised short story, “A Portrait of the Odd Man Out.” PNG lovers of the word grew up with that short story. Its intellectual influence on a modern day Papua New Guinea of the time held sway for three decades on end. There have been protests posted through the pages of Post Courier on account of the language used in the narrative, but what matter. All that came as part of our “growing up pains” on the eve of a new and independent nation.

Now the thing that shocked established church settings and literary minded individuals in the PNG of those days was storyboard’s choice of bringing art down to the level of informality and much intimacy. Author, character and reader became personally involved, so to speak. Being very personal about one’s art was “cool” then – thanks to James Joyce, of course. As the blogger (In a Nutshell-Shmoop Editorial Team) puts it appropriately: “Hallelujah! Re-Joyce and be glad.”

Their very present help

Sometime last year an academic at UPNG pointed out that aside from book reviews and literary criticism, storyboard could consider related topics surrounding the Bible and all the fellowship activity that goes with it.

And that storyboard found pleasantly challenging.

As seen innumerable times in our previous articles, and those of the window’s, the youth of any given community appears the more delicate – delicate because a strong concentration of it can be found at places like UPNG. It is this segment of our communities that needs concentrating on, because that is where much of the country’s potential leadership is. Those that take care of this particular segment of society have quite a task ahead of them. It is up to them to carry out the necessary grooming, pruning, shaping and moulding – whatever academic facade they are stationed at.

Of course our academic was not suggesting that some direct scriptural insertions should be observed in all programs offered for our youth within the academic communities, either at UPNG or elsewhere. That type of activity would be left to the talents and creativity of individual academics. But it would help a bit, and this we believe is our academic’s sincere suggestion, if some aspects of the wisdom from the Bible were included as ingredients of a good course offering, a good argument or thesis, even a whole scholarship program.

As storyboard writes this he feels somewhat amused by the thought that there are so many academics today who are shy about mentioning the Bible, even in a classroom environment. So much pressure placed on vigorous learning, extensive reading and research, and scrutinized debates during seminars and the like where one’s peers become the ultimate judge, can prove inhibiting to some. But we could, aside from being too vocal at times about our other social and personal preferences, be helping ourselves a bit if we said something about our spiritual selves, beings, egos, and so on. Moreover, if a lecturer similarly feels inhibited about his/her sense of spiritualism, then what of the student who is there to acquire knowledge and wisdom from his/her wise counsel and guidance? And what is an academic life if there is no spiritual sharing in it?

At home, within the family environment, there are women as mothers, grandmothers, aunts and relatives ever present and willing to give the necessary guidance for our youth. There, the advice and guidance given is usually Bible-based. Here, in a strictly academic environment the prospects of exercising one’s spiritual beliefs and habits can be a little isolated at times.

About a decade ago storyboard sat in his office and had a lengthy discussion on this very topic with a literature major who seemed to have been having problems of sorts herself. There were a few tears shed on the part of the student and storyboard felt it was his duty to cheer the young scholar up. One of the things storyboard remembers pointing out to the student then was that as academics and scholars there was “a tremendous absence of God in our lives.”

At which remark the student’s face lit up. Even to this day storyboard will never forget the bright smile accorded him.

It wasn’t till after the student had left that storyboard realized what all that meeting was about. The student was in fact praying for storyboard together with her other lecturers all those years that went by. When storyboard checked her records she had been gaining “C” grading and below and never once lodged an appeal which was her democratic right to do so.

Well-respected academics like Mrs Garua Peni, Coodinator of the Orientation Program, and her associates at the student counselling services might not entirely agree with our musings here. They will probably point out that for years all biblical fellowships, whether observed by staff or students of UPNG, were successfully observed one semester after another. Women members of the UPNG community will argue along the same lines. The spiritual lack in question, therefore, lies within an individual academic – and more precisely within a chosen lifestyle.

As we look around the campus grounds now, in preparation of the arrival of the 2012 student population, we see evidence of how much impact such fellowship gatherings have had not only on the campus itself but on the surrounding communities. At weekends these neighbouring communities come over to hire the university’s facilities such as its chapel, its lecture theatres and classrooms, for worship and fellowships. More and more from even as afar off as the Taurama campus and its surrounds are now requesting for space at the Waigani campus for similar activities.

This is a good sign. More so for the younger generation of children and youth who come and go. Not only do these come for fellowships but also visit other campus sites such as the Botanical Gardens for functions and recreation.  And then there is the clinic, a must for some of these children and youth who do so with joviality and much cheerfulness. Where rumours of malaria and other ailments abound these children and youth respond positively, getting malarial blood tests and supplies of tablets to take home with them.

When we see them thus, we know they are bracing to become part of the university community in the years to come. There is so much life, so much song of spiritualism in these little ones. The ear plugs that some of them wear to make them hum and sing and stroll about with cheerful smiles spell out what’s really written in their hearts.

And we hope Hillsong won't mind us quoting part of their ministry sharing here.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

There’s none I desire beside you

You have made me glad...

You are my shield

My strength

My portion

Deliverer

My shelter

Strong tower

My very present help in time of need

(Made Me Glad lyrics from Hillsong. Copyright © 2012 Apostle Studios.)