Something New

  We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

  “THE ORIGINS OF AN EXPERIMENTAL SOCIETY – New Zealand, 1769-1860” by Erik Olssen (Auckland University Press, $NZ 65:00)

            First, two judgments.

First The Origins of an Experimental Society is an outstanding book. Many good historians have written histories of New Zealand, usually giving some pages to the indigenous Maori people before moving on to politics, controversies, wars, immigration etc. Many historians have written about the impact on the Maori people when Pakeha arrived, and how Maori and Pakeha adjusted [or didn’t adjust] to one another. While Erik Olssen does deal with these things, his focus is on how European [mainly English] thinkers wanted to apply humanitarian and “enlightenment” ways of introducing themselves to the Maori people and, as they saw it, humanely helping the Maori people to become aware of the modern world beyond them. This is what the “experimental society” of the title is all about. Olssen’s book is erudite, thoroughly researched, filled with information and – for this reader – very enlightening. I say this as an historian.

Second, with the deepest regret, I fear that apart from academics, reviewers and real students, very few people will read this book. Why? Because it is very long, very detailed [as any worthwhile work of history should be] and does not simplify. Olssen’s focus is often on the theories and ideas when late-18^thcentury and mid-19^thcentury intellectuals attempted to grapple humanely with the Maori people. Olssen explains in detail what these theories were and quotes them copiously.  I did not struggle with reading it because – especially in the first two chapters -  every page told me something new or something that other historians had not dealt with. But most readers would probably seek for something shorter and simpler. A pity. Be it noted (as Olssen says in his Introduction) that The Origins of an Experimental Society is only the first of three books which will take us through to the late nineteenth century. The second and third books will be published later. Olssen had been working on this project for over 25 years.

Having made my judgment, what more can I do but tell you how The Origins of an Experimental Society is organised?

In his Introduction , Olssen says the creators of the Enlightenment [essentially French and English philosophes and theorists of the 18^th century] are central to his thesis.  Humanitarianism and Evangelicalism grew out of this, leading to the idea that the [Maori] people of New Zealand could be uplifted, brought into the modern world, and not exploited. This was a radical idea inasmuch as previous European colonisation (England taking over much of North America, Spain cruelly exploiting South and Central America, Australia used as a dumping-ground for convicts) had regarded indigenous peoples as their inferiors. Olssen notes that recently there has been a generation shift so that at the 250^th anniversary of  Captain Cook, many pundits and activists claimed that Cook was merely a racist and all Europeans who came to New Zealand were merely land-grabbers. This perspective he challenges in detail.

Chapter One – Meeting, 1769-1814 examines how Europe found the Pacific… and how Cook was engaged in the ideas of the Enlightenment. His first voyage to New Zealand brought with him Banks, Solander and other savants who, in scientific ways, gathered much about botany, ornithology, astronomy, navigation and currents; and learning much about the Maori people and their language. Cook was impressed by the Maori people, their courage and warrior skills and especially on the east side of the North Island where he saw Maori settlements diligently planting and raising crops. At this point, thanks in part to the likes of  Rousseau, there was the idea of the Noble Savage. The French navigator Bougainville had “discovered”  Tahiti which seemed to be Paradise on Earth because the people were peaceful, not belligerent, and [to the delight of lecherous sailors] their ideas of sexuality were different from those of Europe. [Neatly ignoring that Tahitians regularly committed infanticide]. Cook at first thought that the Maori people were similarly peaceful and in their own way “civilised”. But he gradually learnt that while the Maori language was understood by all Maori [allowing for dialects], there were many different cultures… and he was appalled to discover, on his later voyage, that some Maori tribes practised cannibalism. While he still admired the Maori people, he was more sceptical about the Noble Savage. Even so, before his death, he was worried about the type of Europeans who might enter into New Zealand without humanitarian purposes.  As well as examining Cook’s views, Olssen considers many people who contributed to the humanitarian idea and to science with regard to New Zealand. Along with this, there is the impact of Forster and others who considered ethnology, ethnography and anthropology. This deals with the first real interest that Europeans had in New Zealand.

            Chapter Two – Entangling 1814 – 1830 moves into the era when Europeans began to engage with Maori and enter New Zealand. Once again, these newcomers took some time to understand that although there was more-or-less one Maori language, there were also many different cultures in different parts of New Zealand. Sealers, whalers and in some cases convicts had some influence in intruding into the land. But at the same time there were the London Missionary Society  and the [Anglican] Church Missionary Society beginning to spread the Bible. They introduced potatoes, grain, metal, axes, hatchets and tomahawks, all of which were welcomed, especially in the Northern part of the North Island where Pakeha most often landed. Maori were also interested in books… especially when a written version of the Maori language was devised by English scholars. Many Maori also adopted as garb the European blanket in place of traditional Maori clothing. Maori adopted new foods and became more attuned to Pakeha customs. Pakeha gradually understood the fluidity of Maori social relationships where rank, title, power, authority and prestige were associated. But Pakeha never quite understood how iwi acted as a community. Remember, of course, that this transformation was happening mainly in the very north of the North Island.

            Olssen always reminds us of the largely humanitarian aims [most] Protestant evangelists had. They worked on the assumption that teaching Maori crafts, the value of work, industry, and honesty would lead to a knowledge of God. To coordinate this endeavour, Samuel Marsden arrived with some “mechanics”, and on Christmas Day 1814 he performed a showy service before Maori Rangatira and other worthies. But, as Olssen says, the English men [and English women] did not always work well together and evangelists often quarrelled so that by the 1820s the whole mission seemed to have failed. Worse came what are generally called “the musket wars” [although Olssen does not like the term]. Unscrupulous gun-runners sold muskets to Maori. Hongi Hika proceeded to slaughter other iwi in much of the Te Ika-a-Maui [North Island]… and later Te Rauparaha did likewise. It is estimated that about 20,000 Maori were killed in these inter-tribal wars – more than the casualties that New Zealand suffered in the First and Second World Wars. Long gone was the idea that Maori were largely a naturally peaceful people. Olssen speaks of the “fissiparous nature of Maori tribalism” for the impact of the tribal wars changed completely where iwi were now located, and how many smaller iwi were absorbed into more dominant iwi. And [like it or not] many victorious iwi enslaved defeated iwi – in some cases eating the dead corpses of the vanquished.

            This whole era of tribal wars burnt itself out by the late 1820s. Maori turned toward peace and this meant that many, exhausted by destructive wars, turned more towards Christianity. Not only had literacy spread, but far more Maori chose to be baptised. Maori women in particular led the way. Having noted all this, Olssen  reminds us that the Maori cultures of the South Island were not the same as the cultures of the North Island, and notes that it was in the distant Te Waipounamu [ the South Island] that in the South, more Maori women were likely to marry Pakeha.

            Chapter Three -Amalgamating, 1830-1840. Essentially this long chapter deals with the way England gradually accepted the idea that New Zealand could become part of the British Empire, leading up to the Treaty of Waitangi. There was British fear that New Zealand could be taken over by the French; but the French government was more interested in taking over Tahiti, New Caledonia and other islands in the Northern part of the Pacific. Still,  there were alarms when the eccentric de Thierry proclaimed himself King of New Zealand and took over a small patch of the North Island; and a community of French were settling in Akaroa in the South Island. Some [Protestant] missionaries were upset by the fact that the French Catholic Bishop Pompallier had arrived, and he was gathering many Maori into the Catholic faith. Much later the French navigator d’Urville examined New Zealand’s coasts in detail as part of his exploration of the Pacific [Olssen rates him one of the greatest scientific explorers of the era].

By this stage, many iwi were becoming entrepreneurs, trading and understanding commerce as Pakeha did. Concerned at the corruption of the Maori people by visiting sailors and whalers, especially at Kororareka [later known as Russell], missionaries requested a “resident” to represent British law. Enter James Busby. He did consult with rangatira, drew up a charter of Maori independence and devised a flag for the Rangatira –Maori understood that a flag represented a nation as shown by the flags of the British, French, American etc. . But Busby did not have any real legal power over British settlers.

            So we move on to the circumstances that led to the Treaty of Waitangi with all its ambiguity. British humanitarians feared that private companies – such as the [Wakefield] New Zealand Company – would exploit Maori while colonising and taking over lands. Real government was needed, Hobson was sent to work out a way of including Maori and Pakeha under British law. [ Of course Olssen gives far, far more detail than I am giving here – including that fact that the English-language version of the treaty was drafted and drafted many times but only one Maori-language version was penned… and most Maori leaders understood that the spoken discussion was the important part of the treaty.] When Maori leaders had signed the Treaty, Hobson said “we are now one people” and assured Maori that they would still own their lands and would be treated under the law in the same way as the Pakeha. Maori saw this as a guarantee that the King of England would protect them. At this time, [probably] about 100,000 Maori lived on the North Island and only about 1,200 on the South Island.

            In all this, Olssen frequently uses the term “the evangelistic-humanitarian ethos”. He sees the treaty as part of this ethos. But what followed was not always enlightening or humanitarian.       

Chapter Four – Planning and Dreaming. More humane plans were made for the settlement of British people in New Zealand. Olssen sees Wakefield, for all his flaws, as trying to create a positive way of colonising, wherein the Maori people would be involved. For example Wakefield and others considered the idea of “concentration”  in which settlers would create towns land farm, and in such communities there would be room for Maori. In England, there were many theorists aware that not all settlers would be positive about the Maori. Therefore, the theory suggested, it was necessary to have a strong administration that could check tension between Maori and Pakeha.

            In this era, as Olssen makes clear, there were many radical ideas being adopted by some groups and challenged by others in Britain – the Chartists seeking full suffrage for all men of any class. Working-class people wanting to escape to a more open society away from the unsanitary conditions of British cities. Socialists at a time when Marx and Engels were becoming influential. The idea of New Zealand as a possible “Better Britain” was much discussed. As settlers began to enter New Zealand, many acclimatised European flowers and vegetables, new to Maori. Unlike England, there was to be no “established” church. [For different reasons, Australia, Canada, and other British possessions also accepted the idea of having no established church.] Olssen notes that the New Zealand Company had good intentions when, in building towns,  they endorsed “Pepper Potting” as a means of settling Maori in towns where they would gradually adopt British habits.. But this was not to the taste of Maori. “Pepper Potting” was still used right up to the mid-20^th century, the idea being that no ghettos would be formed. The good intentions were not fulfilled.

            Once again, Olssen reminds us that for all its many flaws, the initial colonialisation of New Zealand was far more humane and caring for the indigenous people than the initial colonialisation of Australia, Canada or South Africa.

Chapter Five – Settling, 1840-1853. The Treaty of Waitangi had been signed, but this was only the beginning of many controversies. Did the Maori people interpret the treaty differently from the way the British interpreted it? In Britain some cabinet ministers and other political leaders suggested that the treaty was illegal.  Those who had [in England] invested in the New Zealand Company had different views from the missionaries and other humane writers. At this time, utilitarian and other radicals had agreed that in New Zealand there should be equality of Christian denominations – in other words, there would be no “established” church.  Olssen comes back to this issue a number of times, once again connecting it with the Enlightenment.

Considering how Wellington fared at this time, there was awareness that the British government believed many of the deals made by the [Wakefield] New Zealand Company had not been fully understood by the Maori who had “sold” their land.  Hence such deals were judged void. Some settlers saw themselves as self-governing and it took some years before they understood that they were now under the Crown and its laws. Wellington was the largest settlement in the 1840s, but – even while settlers also moved into the Hutt Valley – Wellington was geographically too hemmed in, making it difficult to raise crops and feed the small city. Most often, it was Maori outside Wellington who provided potatoes and other foodstuffs to Wellingtonians.  Moving on to the main  [Wakefield] New Zealand Company settlements, Olssen looks in detail at New Plymouth and Nelson. New Plymouth was quickly set up after six ships disembarked 920 immigrants. Different Christian denominations made up this community. In contrast, Nelson was very much dominated by Anglicans. In both these colonies, settlers often depended on Maori to feed them and showing these new arrivals what plants were edible, the right seasons for planting etc.  There were already disputes over which land was legitimately bought by the newcomers.

At this point, Olssen considers how employees arriving in New Zealand expected to be paid fair wages by their employers. This was inspired by the Chartists and the Radicals of England, leading towards an assumption of egalitarianism in New Zealand. For this reason, every so often there were small riots when wages were too meagre.

Many incomers did not understand that while the Crown set down the law, many Maori understood that – according to the Treaty of Waitangi – they could continue to hold by their own traditional laws and lands… which naturally lead to misunderstanding and finally conflicts. Thus there followed the so-called Wairau River Valley “affray”, in which iwi insisted that their land, north of Nelson, had not been sold. Deaths followed. Many Pakeha ignored Maori conventions and insisted that only English law was valid. In the same decade there was the “Northern War” [a term that Olssen does not use] where Nga Puhi and other northern iwi found themselves losing trade and other benefits when the capital moved from Russell to Auckland. Olssen gives a very detailed account of this war, jolting Pakeha into understanding that Maori could be a match for the British army. As FitzRoy ceased to be governor [Olssen notes his good points more generously than some recent historians have], so George Grey came in. Once again, Olssen gives a very balanced account of this man. While dealing with problems in the Hutt Valley, he also had to tame Te Rauparaha and really bring to an end the  [first phase] of major warfare in New Zealand. He also nullified many of deals that Anglican missionaries had made to set up their own farming estates. Grey and others encouraged having free hospitals for Maori and [to the annoyance of some settlers] allowing both Maori and Pakeha pupils to be taught in the same schools. In all this, it should be remembered that at this time Maori made up ten-to-one of the population of New Zealand. Pakeha were very much in a minority.

Although Grey has in recent years been heavily criticised by some historians, Olssen notes many positive things about him. This includes Grey’s real understanding of ethnography. It is true that Grey’s Polynesian Mythology was very simplified and bowdlerised [when it came to sexual matters] but nevertheless it encouraged Pakeha readers to understand that Maori myths and legends were as sophisticated as the Greek myths and legends and the Norse sagas.

Once again, Olssen reminds us that religious pluralism meant social co-operation and that Enlightened ideas were still very important in shaping the nature of New Zealand.

Chapter Six – Expanding, 1848-1860  Many British who came to New Zealand in the 1840s and 1850s brought with them negative ideas of Maori; while Maori saw many such  newcomers as disrespectful of their traditions. Also new diseases were introduced. Olssen quotes some writers of the age, who were now less humane and more likely to encourage the idea of taking over land. The different settlements brought with them different cultures and at this time shipping was most important when travelling from one settlement to another. The [Wakefield] New Zealand Company settlements were very different from the growing cities of Auckland and Wellington. Wellingtonians often saw Aucklanders as uncouth because many Australians had migrated to Auckland, as had many Irish. Many Wellingtonians also saw Aucklanders as obsessed with making money – but at the same time Auckland had far more connections with Maori than Wellington had. Auckland quickly became the largest city in New Zealand.

            Turning to Dunedin and Canterbury, there were two very different settlements. Dunedin was built by Scottish Free Church Presbyterians, diligent, hard-working and to some extent influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, leading to the a culture of literacy, study and building a university and schools. But, as Olssen notes, the Free Church Presbyterians focussed on their own people and did not evangelise the Maori in the same way that the Wesleyans did in Otago. Canterbury was an Anglican settlement with many of its clergy aspiring to become land-owners and members of the gentry. The city [Christchurch] was built around the upper-middle class.  But very soon the settlement needed workers who demanded real wages. It took some time before pastoralism [basically raising sheep] became essential to Canterbury. Meanwhile, it was in the North Island that varieties of sheep had first been acclimatised – mainly in Wairarapa.

            Up to this point, New Zealand was a Crown Colony, governed by Britain… but gradually among Pakeha there were calls to make New Zealand self-governing. With much detail, Olssen discusses how the different regions and settlements reacted before a New Zealand government could be set in place in 1852. When it came to voting, most voters were more interested in local or regional issues than national ones. Maori were allowed to vote… so long as they personally owned farms or personally held lands. [Unlike those Maori who held things communally under a Rangatira.] Parliament was in Auckland… where there was much pluralism. The House of Representatives met in Auckland on May 1854. In real terms, the Premier [Prime Minister] was now more powerful that the Governor.

            It was only by 1859 that British and other Europeans became more populous than Maori in New Zealand – there were about 59,000 Pakeha and about 56,000 Maori. Bishop Selwyn was diligent in encouraging Maori to become Anglican clergy to further spread Christianity to Maori. At the same time, Maori population was in decline with less fertility and more infant mortality. Iwi became more reluctant to sell their land. They now preserved carefully their whakapapa in writing. If there was an English king for New Zealand, they reckoned, then there should also be a Maori king. Kingitanga became a major movement [though Olssen makes it clear that not all Maori joined the movement.]  Especially in Taranaki, new settlers wanted to be able to buy land from individual owners, ignoring Maori traditional communal ownership. All this led to the Taranaki war…. at which point ends the first part of Olssen’s planned three books. We have, in effect, reached the point where the original idealistic hope for a land that would be led by humane and enlightened people was wilting into the pragmatism of  personal opportunism.

            Olssen is very precise in discussing – with references to what was written by savants and academics of the 19^th century -  how there began to be a better understanding of how all “races” were the same one homo sapiens family, with many hypothesis about the connection of the people of Asia, Europe and the eastern side of the Pacific.

 *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

 

             When I read my way diligently through The Origins of an Experimental Society, 1 noted many passages that were worth quoting. I intended to insert into this review many of the telling things that Erik Olssen had written. But I soon realised that if I did that, this review would be tediously long. Suffice it to say that, as well as being a scholarly historian, Olssen also has a sharp eye on those who make glib comments about the past – the historian [from quite a few years ago] who said that missionaries teaching Christianity was like simply shooting bullets at Maori and destroying their culture; the journalist who said that Wakefield’s plans were only to keep poor people down. Yes, some missionaries were very flawed and, yes, Wakefield’s personal life was very questionable and some of his ideas simply did not work – but this ignored what both missionaries and Wakefield did achieve. Olssen is also alert to the fact that recent ideas have belittled Cook and others who achieved much. There is also a steadiness in the way Olssen is able to bring us back to his thesis that the Enlightenment and Humanitarian-ism made a path to the best of what New Zealand was being made.

            It is a sad fact that all history books will eventually become dated and will be seen by future readers from a very different perspective. Many historians have written the history of New Zealand. Ignoring New Zealand history written in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, there was in 1959 Keith Sinclair’s A History of New Zealand, and in 1960 W.H. Oliver’s The Story of New Zealand. Both, although they were well read at the time, now seem thin and very limited. More recently, nearly 30 years ago, there was James Belich’s formidable double-decker Making Peoples and Paradise Reforged, very detailed, very readable and widely admired. Close behind came in, 2003, Michael King’s more populist The Penguin History of New Zealand, again widely read. Most recently was published in 2024 Michael Belgrave’s Becoming Aotearoa, more influenced by a Maori perspective than earlier attempts to cover the whole history of New Zealand. Over the years I have read all these books, as well as many books by historians who have dealt with specific parts of New Zealand history [the impact upon Maori of the first arrival of Pakeha, the New Zealand Wars of the 19^th Century, immigration, the status of women, political parties etc. etc. etc.]. But there is something unique about Erik Olssen’s The Origins of an Experimental Society. He reminds us that New Zealand was colonised in a very different way from the way other countries were colonised in the same era. And he shows how many ideas that first shaped New Zealand are still the ideas that are the backbone of New Zealand society.

            I look forward to Olssen’s next two volumes.

Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.    

“MEMOIRS” by CLARA MALRAUX  (published in the original French in 1963 and 1966; published in English in 1967)

            In the last few postings I have been working my way through some of the literary works of Andre Malraux. Now I turn to what other people have said or written about him, beginning with his first wife’s views.

            In 1967, the reminiscences of Clara Malraux (nee Goldschmidt), formerly the wife of Andre Malraux, were published by the Bodley Head under the name Memoirs, translated from the original French by Patrick O’Brien.  Although presented as a single work, Memoirs was in fact two books which had been published separately in France. The first was called “Apprendre a vivre”, translated into English as “Learning to Live”, concerning Clara’s childhood, adolescence and finally first meeting with Andre Malraux; and the second was called “Nos vingt ans” translated into English as “When We Were Twenty”, concerning Andre and Clara’s life together in the years just after the First World War and in the early 1920s. By chance, when I was in Paris some years back, I bought in a flea market a battered copy of “Nos vingt ans”, and attempted to read it. But I quickly found that Clara’s work was often very confusing, presented in contorted prose very much like the work of her husband. So I abandoned the book and only re-connected with Clara’s memoirs when I got to Patrick O’Brien’s translations. By the way, Clara’s two books turned out to be only the beginning of her autobiographies. She wrote, in all, six books about her life (as well as writing a number of novels) – but I was not curious enough to batter my way through all of them.

 

                                            The young Clara Goldschmidt

            The first book “Apprendre a vivre”/ “Learning to Live”, is in many way a charming chronicle but also a sad and confused one. Clara Goldschmidt was born in 1897 into a German-Jewish family who had settled in Magdeburg-an-Elbe. The family were agnostic about religion and accepted equally Catholic, Protestant and Jewish outlooks. Clara’s first formal education was at a Catholic school run by nuns with whom she got on very well. She knew the catechism thoroughly, while at home the family honoured the traditional Jewish festivals though they never went to a synagogue.  But the family, who grew up polylingual, tended to prefer French culture rather than German culture, so they decamped to Paris and settled there, though they still kept in touch with their Jewish cousins and friends in Germany. In Paris, they happened to live next door to the eminent French socialist political figure Jean Jaures. As a teenager, Clara believed that Jaures could have stopped the First World War by negotiation if he had not been assassinated.  Occasionally Clara’s brothers were harassed by boys in Paris who didn’t like Jews (and remember this was not long after the Dreyfus affair). But Clara’s brothers were very good at fighting back. During the First World War, the family came under suspicion of sympathising with Germany and they were almost deported – but they were able to find an excellent lawyer who proved their real loyalty to France. One of her brothers, Maurice, the one she loved most, joined the army.  Trench warfare battered him and he was able to transfer to France’s air-force with honour. But by war’s end he was thoroughly disillusioned with the war itself… as was the mood with many young people by 1918. As the years had passed, Clara’s family, basically respectable bourgeois, tended to favour socialism.

            These are the external, political things that were going on in Clara’s young life, but much more of  “Apprendre a vivre”/ “Learning to Live” is concerned with her mental and psychological development as a child, adolescent and young adult. As a very little girl she had seen men publicly misbehaving (one episode, which caused a little scandal when the book was published, was a childhood memory of playing in the Bois de Boulogne and seeing exhibitionists exposing their penises). Something that shaped her attitude towards her fellow women, however, was the fact that her beloved father died when she was only 13. He was apparently a gentle and thoughtful man, but after he died Clara’s mother became cold and uncaring about her children. Partly because of this, as a teenager Clara became aware that women could be as aggressive and destructive as men in their own way. She was firmly a feminist, when she was young she understood that she was a woman and proud to be so, but she had no delusions about her own sex. Aged 14, she had to do dancing lessons, but surprisingly she became fond of the awkward boys who were also learning the steps.  Gradually she became part of a “gang” – nothing criminal, but hanging out with other adolescents in bistros and on the streets. She began kissing boys and sometimes flirting with girls. She was trying things out. She fondled a girlfriend intimately, but decided she was heterosexual. The fact was, she was always excited by sex and she admits that as a teenager she frequently masturbated. [Yes, another thing that seemed scandalous to this book’s first readers.] She began reading adult books. Like many teenagers she wrote grandiose plays and essays. But her spelling was atrocious – and this is what held her back when, aged 18, she made her attempt at the necessary baccalaureate. It was the dizzy years after the armistice, when young people began to adopt a more casual attitude towards sex. Nearing twenty, she got engaged to a doctor… but then she quickly broke it off. She went through the same scenario with a young man who had just come home from the war. Why? Because, she says, they would not take the initiative to make love with her.  For all her talk of women’s strength, she still believed that men should always be the ones to decide when they would have sex. Women were not to take the initiative.

            By this stage, she was becoming more and more alienated from her life with her family. Helped by her family she set off on her own to Italy, and for the first time saw the glories of the Italian Renaissance, especially the works of the great painters… and it was at this point that she also became interested in the avant-garde and started to frequent literary and artistic intellectual circles. She travelled to Germany (where there were cousins) and to Alsace (which had just been grabbed back from Germany) where she met for the first time this very interesting young man.

            Enter Andre Malraux. One obvious point has to be noted. Clara Goldschmidt was born in 1897.  Andre Malraux was born in 1901. She was nearly four years older than him. So she was 23 when they met and he was just touching 19, still very callow and yet enthusiastic, filled with ideas and already writing. He excited her. He took her to rough, rowdy nightclubs after he had read poetry to an audience. Once, when they were coming out of a sleazy club, he protected her from being harassed by some hooligans. The thugs shot at him, damaging one of his hands. He calmly took out of his pocket a revolver and shot back. Then they ran like hell. At least, that is what Clara tells us. It is clear that Clara was besotted with Malraux and he with her. Two crazy kids. Clara looks to what happened years later and writes:  “As our years turned out, he became… a wonderful soldier of fortune and a great writer, at the same time remaining an amateur of genius. Obsessed by Nietzsche of course and that even before we knew each other. And dividing people into the “amusing” and un-amusing as early as that too, and accusing the surrealists of taking themselves  seriously. What innumerable other things we said to each other, sitting side by side, looking in shop windows, strolling along the quays, drinking in bars.” (p.159) Note the Nietzsche bit, mes amis – you know, the German philosopher who believed in power and the superman and who glorified manly adventure. Plenty of cocky teenaged kids think that way, and here was adventuring Malraux.

So much for the first half of this hybrid narrative and we come to the second half “Nos vingt ans” / “When We Were Twenty”, which I find by far the more readable part of the tome. She again visits Italy but this time, without telling her mother, she goes with Andre. There is almost a scandal when the two of them are found to be travelling together in a sleeping-car without chaperone (remember Andre is still regarded generally as a kid). They go to Florence. Clara remarks: “His multifarious knowledge and its complexity never ceased to astonish me, and that also applies to the wild imagination and the biting wit that alternated in what he said, the originality of his comparisons, and the speed with which he reduced his thoughts to their essence. His romanticism had two faces, that of feeling, of the pathetic, and that of dandyism; it was mostly the second that I saw in this Florence marked by Savonarola and Michelangelo.” (p. 181) They consider getting married, but Clara says  “We cannot limit ourselves to each other, whether we are married or not. Of course in six months’ time we shall divorce. To stay together? It seems likely to me; but mustn’t  we first agrees upon out mutual freedom?” Malraux replies “You really think it necessary to settle all that?”  (p. 186) As many over-heated youngsters do, he asked her whether she would do the same if he committed suicide. She remarks “Yet what did I know? That he handles ideas remarkably well, that he was well read in many fields, that he had an unusual ease in discussion, and that he was not exempt from a certain degree of snobbery and social awkwardness. I knew what a refuge art was to him, and what writing and painting meant to him as a means of grasping the world; I respected that he was possessed by the desire to stake everything to feel the thrill of the moment more intensely; and I knew the shape of his fear of death.” (p. 192) For a while they dabbled in the occult. And they did get married. They were, in short, kids at heart, though very intelligent ones.

They went on travelling to Prague – where she wanted to see the Jewish cemetery – and Greece and especially Austria where they noted how impoverished it had become since the war as the Austrians had lost their empire. While they were there she began to notice his disdain for the Germans and his very patriotic sentiments about France.  They saw themselves as being an important part of the avant-garde, the cutting edge of what was modern in literature, music and sometimes these new things called cinema. They claimed to be washing away all the beliefs they had grown up with. Says Clara: “We were a generation without dogmatism, one that sought more than it found and that refrained from any kind of systemisation, in spite of the real liking of it – a liking that made it the temptation of Thomism and, later on, Marxism.” (p.208) Their moods were such that they often fell apart from each other. They went to Tunisia to cool things down… and they had their first moments of attraction to Marxism.

Young Clara and Andre Malraux when they were still youngsters looking for fame.
 

Now, dear reader, you may be wondering how this young couple was able to easily travel hither and yon when neither of them was working (apart from Andre’s writing, which brought in little money). The answer was that he, clever fellow, had set up a betting system on the stock-exchange which, for a couple of years, brought in to them quite a pile of cash. But suddenly the system he used crashed and they were ruined. How could they get out of this hole? Andre had for some years taken an interest in Asian sculpture as seen in European museums; and he dreamed up a hair-brained scheme which eventually brought him to unwanted notoriety. With the backing of dodgy entrepreneurs, he planned to go to Cambodia (part of what was then called French Indo-China) and to literally saw off statues hidden in the deep jungle and then sell them to American millionaires. So, fitted out with the right jungle clothes and with the implements which they thought would be able to cut through stone, they set off by sea, had a brief stop at Saigon (the centre of French colonial administration) and then they tramped thought the jungle. It was mad and they had to put up with the heat, the wild animals, the uncertain directions given by porters and the diseases. At one point, Clara came down with dengue fever. It was almost heroic (oh my goodness how Clara writes in an heroic tone!) and we have to remember that Andre was all of 21. But it was a complete failure. Not only did the implements fail to cut stone, but the French colonial authorities got wind of what Malraux was doing, dragged him in and prosecuted him for attempting to mutilate ancient works of art. He was found guilty in Saigon and condemned to three years in jail. Clara faked suicide to get out of jail, but was sent to a hospital. She wrote to France with letters for help and was finally allowed to return to France.

It has to be said that she gives very questionable apologia for their attempting to steal the statues. She writes: “Now more than ever I was convinced of our right to put works of art that were being threatened by the jungle back into circulation; there was a risk of their remaining abandoned for many a long year still, so great were the numbers of the monuments that the Ecole Francaise ought to have protected. We already loved the temples and the heads that floated in our imagination. We should have to part with some of them, that was true enough; but more and more clearly we thought of other expeditions, here or elsewhere, that should be for our own delight alone.” (p.264) And later, when having to reveal to the authorities what they had taken, she writes: “I was not going to let my mind be perturbed just because they had looked into our chest and found fragments from an almost ruined temple which had been so little cared for for years that it might well have collapsed entirely, its stones forced apart by the roots of the banyan trees or destroyed by the peasants tools.” (p.307) In all this, of course, she is neatly ignoring the fact that their real purpose was to make big money by selling art-works to millionaires.

At this point, it is clear that her relationship with Andre was often very shaky. On the ship that took her back to France, she had an affair with another man. But she also consulted a lawyer on the ship who gave her some ideas on how Andre could be brought back to France. The press had said very negative things about Malraux, but Clara set to work getting up a petition among writers and other intellectuals calling for this promising young writer to be pardoned and returned home. And it worked. A long list of eminent French writers signed the petition, ranging from the Catholic novelist Francois Mauriac to the fiercely dogmatic boss of the surrealists Andre Breton. There was a big campaign in the press, and finally Malraux came home, pardoned. It is interesting that most of Clara’s family were ashamed of her for having been partner to an opportunist who had served time, and they urged her to divorce Andre. But Andre’s family stood by him, and Clara’s step-father gave her much helpful advice.

And here nearly ends this volume of her narrative. But she does make some comments about how she and Andre’s views had changed over these few years. They were now more aware of the negative side of colonialism. She writes: “How much more we knew about the colonial world than when we left Europe! Almost in spite of ourselves we had discovered Asia in her humiliation.” (p.293) Yet she almost clings to the Nietzschean idea that you can achieve anything only by power and force. She writes: “If you do not want to submit, you must either be very strong or very shrewd, and we had been neither the one nor the other. Raskolnikov, Nietzsche, Julien Sorel, the other Sorel, and Rastignac danced through my head.” (p. 300) And there is something interesting about this essentially youthful statement: “We were the ones to whom teachers had lied and to whom parents had lied, we were the ones who knew that the philosophers contradict one another, that Spinoza did not carry on Descartes’ work – nor Kant, Spinoza’s. We were living in a world of uncertainty, a world in which everything was challenged and in which everything was changing. This being so, how could we have faith in anything other than ourselves…” (p.307) Let me note that later, for a while, they almost fell for the faith of Communism, though they grew past that. As for their marriage, it did eventually fall apart, but I have not read the books in which she told readers about it.

Now this is where my review could stop, but I have to say something about the difficult prose which I mentioned briefly at the beginning of what you have been reading. Frequently, as I read this book, I couldn’t help thinking that much of her prose is cluttered with suggestions and ideas that do not add up to clarity. Her prose is often very tangled and hazy. For no real reason, she spends much time writing about herself in the second person (“elle” – “she”). In one section, she gives us a number of pages she wrote as an adolescent which she called “Le livre de comptes”  (i.e. “The Account Book”), wherein she tries to understand what men are like. It is the kind of teenage rambling that would be better left in the bottom drawer. So much of her work is taken up with her analysing her relationship with Andre; and in doing so she over-thinks things. The general impression we are left with is of two big egos clashing with each other, not helped by their rivalry when it comes to writing. Yes, they were at first besotted with each other, but the marriage was flawed from the start. It is interesting, by the way, that Clara hardly ever refers  to her husband as Andre, but as “my companion”. If you have frequently read this blog, you will be aware that I greatly admire French literature (Good heavens! Didn’t I spend ages shoving down your throat the works of Honore de Balzac?). But I am also aware that French writers often dance around ideas in a vague way without getting clearly to whatever point they really mean to make. On a final note, I’m aware that much of Clara’s autobiography is self-praise and a sort of mythology based on half-recalled memories… but that is true of most autobiographies, isn’t it? It’s certainly true of her ex-husband’s Anti-Memoirs.

Something Thoughful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.                                                     

                                        THE WRITER ALONE AND FRUITLESS

The writer is alone at home. The writer has a deadline to meet. Today the writer is not inspired. What the writer has written so far seems filled with cliches. The writer is annoyed with himself. The writer deletes what he has written.  

The writer is irritable. The writer paces around his study, looks out the window. It’s raining. The writer swears.

The writer goes downstairs. The writer has already had breakfast. The writer makes himself an un-needed toasted cheese sandwich. The writer knows he shouldn’t, but he eats it and paces around downstairs. The writer empties the coffee pot, cold since this morning, and fills his mug with strong black coffee. The writer puts the mug in the microwave, sets it, waits for the “ding”, pulls it out and begins to slurp it down.

The writer is now very dyspeptic. The writer knows too much strong black coffee makes him queasy and even more irritable. It’s almost headache territory. Still no inspiration.

The writer goes back upstairs. It’s raining. The writer looks at some things on You Tube. The writer realises that he’s just wasted about an hour-and-a-half. The writer curses himself. The writer asks himself where the day has gone. The writer wishes his wife would soon come home from her work so that she could persuade him back to his writing.

The rain has eased off a bit. The writer goes for his last resort. He takes his umbrella, puts on his raincoat, opens the front door, locks it behind him and goes on what should have been his morning walk – half-an-hour walking past much of the suburb and through a nice grove of trees. As usual, there are some people walking their dogs through the grove.

The writer is revived by the fresh air as the rain stops. The writer is now in a better mood. The writer walks back home quick-step.

The writer unlocks the door, marches in, puts the umbrella somewhere where it can dry, hangs up the raincoat in the laundry, grits his teeth and, though he hates it, he gets on with it.

There’s a deadline to meet.

            My life.

Something New

   We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.

“The Anatomy of Sand” by Mikaela Nyman (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $NZ25); “The Companion to Volcanology” by Brent Kininmont (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $NZ25); “The Midnight Plane – Selected and new poems” by Fiona Kidman (Otago University Press, $NZ40); “High Wire” by Michael Fitzsimons ( The Cuba Press, $NZ25)

There is an interesting fact that I have come to understand over quite a few years of reviewing poetry. Many poets divide their collections into different sections. This baffled me, as each section seemed simply to continue with the same sort of poetry throughout the book.  So I asked the late Vincent O’Sullivan why this should be so, and he said that it was simply to allow the reader to take a break and have a breather. Fair enough I suppose. But when I read Mikaela Nyman’s The Anatomy of Sand, I discover that the three sections which make up this book are there for a purpose. Each section deals with separate perspectives. It is worth knowing that Mikaela Nyman was born and raised in Finland. She had previously written and published poetry in the Swedish language. She moved to New Zealand and now lives in Taranaki. The Anatomy of Sand is her first collection of poetry written in English. And it is great.

The first section is labelled “Sifting”, made up of 21 poems. The opening poem “Lonely Sailors” sets us at once on the coast of Taranaki: “There’s a huddle of windblown seafarers here, at the edge / of the universe – a black beach of volcanic / sand full of adrift sailors. No one knows where we came from, why / without hesitation we packed our possessions, hoisted / out half-moon sails only to end up on / Back Beach in Taranaki. / A fleet of thousands, free floating, lonely, / man o’ war purple but not as lethal, innocent yet beached on these shores.” This suggests that both human beings and sea creatures are wanderers on the seas… and it implies that all species are part of Earth. The next poem is “Cilia”, in part about how frogs hatch. In “The Hybinette Process” she acknowledges the fact that her great-grandfather was a pioneer in extractive metallurgy – and she goes on to say that such knowledge led to the toxic destruction of many forests, as in New Caledonia where nickel is mined. There are poems about the waste of seeds in Bamiyam in warfare. She is consistently concerned about climate change, but unlike many who write poems about it, she knows in detail scientific facts and is able to make poetry out of them. The only other New Zealand poet I know who can really do this is Helen Heath. Read Mikaela Nyman’s “Devon 1” and you find her unafraid to make use of words that would be alien to many, thus “Mind your step on Seaview Road, where walks carry / a risk of sinking 280 feet through tuffs and layers / of sandstone, silt and baked mudstone until / you arrive at a grey porphyritic sill at 2,861 metres. / Here zeolite sails as fibrous tuffs in pools / of leonhardite lit by a faint glow of clinopyroxene…” Yes, she goes deeply into the underground of Earth, with the many types that make up what is under our feet.

On its own stands “Dunes of methane” in which scientists have suggested that there might on the planet Pluto be sand made of ice and methane, which fires alluring images, but also gives a scientific explanation… “For dunes this size to form / requires generous supply of dry particles, a mechanism / (like wind) to lift and carry matter, an atmosphere / dense enough for wind transport to occur…” She does, however, takes time to recall where she came from in “Whakapapa in a whalebone church” where in the shadow of Mount Taranaki she asserts “… Orrdasklint is / my mountain / the Baltic my sea / (for lack of river) / my waka / a tar-smelling fishing boat. / My ancestors / a comb ceramic / culture / of an obscure ‘ Finno-Ugric / tribe”. And of course there are some poems directly addressing the denegation of land and some natural catastophies. “The Republic New Plymouth – 4” is basically a history of drilling for oil and its consequences. “Date with Sisyphus” is about .about whales beaching. “Iron throne, submerged” is the poem that comes nearest to the title of this collection The Anatomy of Sand.  It is in part a protest against the idea of mining sand .

The second section labelled “Liquefaction”, made of  22 poems, is very different in tone, often ironical and even funny. The poem “Black swan diaries (discont.)” puzzles me. Is Mikaela Nyman making fun of attempts to curb covid in 2020? Or is she genuinely try to reconstruct what it was like in NZ in that year? The poem that is most accessible, and that deserves to be anthologised, is “Purple cone meditation” where a pond becomes our destiny in the degradation of a pool.One poem that is almost despairing, “Suspended”, with “the ultimate deadline” being our destiny in life. Both “Cycle of cicadas” and “Pear lizard plumage” are also accessible, literally about what the titles say, but really also about our human foibles. The ‘found’ poem “How to safely dispose of milk” seems to explain a couple of techniques used by farmers, but seems to be really mocking this. Yet if this section has much irony and some gloom, it finishes with the delightful “Scent sounds” about the joy of breathing in the different odours

As for the third section, “The Markov Chain”, made of 18 poems, they move more into the style of  expressionism. “A pocket full of sand dollars” is inspired by experimental notes taken by the painter Michael Smither when he was surveying sand dunes.“Mudlarking” compares the way the Thames [in London] once had a completely polluted river which has now been cleaned-up… whereas there is a place in New Zealand that is now being polluted. A wonderful example of anthropomorphism is “Spinifex and Velella” where the coastal grass and the sea raft make love as living thing [which of course they are.]. And, in detail there is “Of wombs and eggs (a creation story)” based on the Kalevala, the Finnish saga, and bringing the poet’s distant forebears.

In writing this review I have touched on only some of the poems in this collection. In its variety it is absorbing. In its knowledge of the sea and living creatures it is well-informed. And in its irony while being serious it is original.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

            Brent Kininmont, born in New Zealand but now resident in Japan, is very much a poet attuned to the outdoors. His poetry often makes use of images of the sea, mountains and deserts. But he is not a romanticist and – in this collection at least - he only rarely writes about the New Zealand scene. He has travelled widely in many countries and refers to them often. He is also interested in how children are raised or grow up.

The title poem “The Companion to Volcanology” immediately shows his ability to turn land and earth into illusive metaphor. A child is being carried though a forest by a woman on the way to a mountain. There are “soft batons of harmless snakes” in the undergrowth and on the mountains are “crooked fingers of melting snow” On its own, this poem could be analysed in many ways. Is the child [if it is a child] part of a tramping tour? Is the woman maternal? It is interesting that here the woman is the porter… but then it is always women who are the first to carry children. So woman carrying child here is almost iconic. If this is all a little cryptic, the poem that follows, “Twelve Short Talks on Aspects of Origins”. manages to say in almost scientific precision what obsidian is and how it has influenced the Pacific… and sustains itself poetically.

And what of the poems that have to do with children, their raising and their growing up? The sequence “Leaf Boats” manages to move from an image of the sea to the classroom and the playground. In a sort of surrealistic style “Child Carrier” puts child together with imagery of sky-diving. There are four related poems called “Hong Kong 1997” where mother and child are apparently in peril on bouncy castle; a boy then a mother are swimming with strain; a boy and mother are at odds at table; and in the last section one mother not daring to take her child to go far into a pond – this section is called “One Child Policy” which may be a nod to a former Chinese policy.

Of his experience of travel there are examples of his interest in history, as in “Limbs Succumbing” about limbs lost from the Venus de Milo in Greece; or “The Impressionist” where, looking at the Pont du Gard, he considers other bridges of the Roman era and wonders what technology they use to held them together them together. “Near things” is set in the Levant in 1942 (during the Second World War). There are poems, mainly amusing or ironic about is parents and other members of family.

But the most gripping (and straight-forward) poem “New Year Ekiden” - referring to a marathon held in Japan – deals with one athlete “I see in the pained looks that his / lungs are no longer bellows. They are / Aqaba and Eilat, twin border towns / beside the Red Sea. I once sat on their shore / and watched a tea vendor, the slow drizzle / of stubs around his bare feet. While the towns / burned ever dimmer, dawn stretched out for / a moon uncommonly blanched of craters / and pedalled just out of reach.” In a way his most romantic and yet most despairing poem. Brilliant.  A very different poem “Imperial Units “ is also about athletics.

Some readers will discover that Kininmont’s poems often require much thought to understand what he is getting at, but the result is always worth it.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

            Now in her mid-80s, Dame Fiona Kidman is probably most known as a novelist. In her preface to The Midnight Plane she notes, after saying that she had spent most of her time writing novels,  “If all this suggests that the writing of poems has been secondary to my working life, I don’t believe so”. She has previously published six collections of poetry. A large book, The Midnight Plane is almost an anthology of her poetical writings up to now. Of the 140 poems that make up this book, only the last two are new poems.

            Reading most of my way through, I found myself enjoying poems that I had read in her earlier collections. I admired some of my favourites like (from the collection “Honey and Bitters” published in 1975) “The baked bean flutters” about getting comfort food after having a quarrel. Or (from “On the Tightrope” 1978) “Earthquake weather” with its real sense of fear in a New Zealand fault line. Or (from “Going to the Chathams” 1983) “The rooms” with its sense of anonymity in being alone in a hotel room where she sleeps; and from the same collection “Photograph” with its acute sense of ageing. Or (from “Wakeful Nights” 1991) the title poem Wakeful Nights, an evocation of hot summers at night in a rural area. Or (from “Where Your Left Hand Rests” 2010) the long sequence “Speaking of my grandmothers”, pedestrian in its words but interesting in what it says about her female ancestry and her strong feminist affiliation. Or (from “This Change in the Light” 2016) the poem “The town”, which appears to be a mildly ironic account of the town where Fiona Kidman grew up. In the same collection there is her ambitious “How I saw her: Ten sonnets for my mother”, a long sequence of genuine sonnets, tracing her mother’s Scots origin up to her death.                            In her preface Kidman says “I am a plain poet; some critics would describe my early work as ‘confessional’ others as ‘domestic’. Perhaps I was such a poet, and at heart still am, although I am not given much to labels.” Fair enough, though there’s nothing wrong with writing about domestic things or being confessional, so long as it’s done well – and she often did it very well. Note all those poems about forebears, about home, about where she lived etc. But of course just as important to her are her feminist interests. As for calling herself a “plain poet”, she always writes in a straight-forward language. There is nothing cryptic in her work, which is all to the better.

All of which at last brings us to the twenty “New poems” that conclude this very large collection. The title poem “The midnight plane” is in its way romantic and delightful – a literal account of the plane that passes over her head each night taking people to the airport in Whanganui, where she once saw a couple happily meeting again, concluding as she lies in bed “thinking that out there in the dark / some people will be coming home.”

It is easy [perhaps too easy] to categorise the types of poetry Fiona Kidman writes in the last twenty poems. There is her interest in nature and flora, such as “Red River Valley” with landscape; and both “The millefiori gardens” and “In the garden” revelling in the many and various flowers and plants. There are poems recalling her childhood. “Cream”, while describing the way cream is made, refers to childhood memories of the farm she grew up on. “Danny Ferry” recalls a man who worked a chain-ferry to cross over a river mouth. There are indeed domestic poems, as in “A Piece of Work”, also a recall of childhood, bringing in her mother and another woman’s skilfulness in picking fruit from a tree. “My daughter makes quilts” and  “The children’s toys” both dealing with things about the house; while “Vol-au-vents” is about regaining skill in the kitchen. The very witty “Pink washbasin” about the item in her bathroom that she most recalls. And perhaps it is right to also refer to the poem “Early morning” as domestic, as it deals with self-awareness where she considers all the different roles she has to take in her life. Of course there is a sort of feminist subtext in some of these poems. There are a very few poems you might call political, viz. “My husband’s war stories” about the 1981 Springbok Tour; and “Sitting bird”, connecting children dying in Gaza to a helpless little bird she sees in tree… but also relating it to maternal necessity. As for what is perhaps the outlier of this collection, there is “Sissinghurst”, a very sophisticated poem of visiting in England well-known country house where literary women lived and segueing into reflections of both death and the Englishness that used to reach New Zealand radio-waves.

I finished reading “The Midnight Plane” happy to connect with somebody who writes clearly, does not attempt to bedazzle readers with recherche and obscure words and tropes, and who says clearly what she means.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

Five years ago, in 2020, Michael Fitzsimons wrote his collection Michael, I Thought You Were Dead [reviewed in this blog] in which he told us that he had been diagnosed with cancer. He thought – and his friends and family thought – that he was soon going to die. But he is still with us, and in his latest collection High Wire he can even be jocular about his situation, seeing the best of life, even if he knows that death will eventually come.

The first section of High Wire is called All This and it takes up about 30 pages. In it Fitzsimons gives us his condition., writing “A dark spot on by hand / a heart twinge in the deep, / galloping blood pressure. / I stand in this majestic world / in my disappointing body, so many faint ripples./ A thrilling high-wire existence.” And “Five years after treatment for metastatic cancer / the doctors don’t want to see me anymore.  / They talk of a cure, as you might to a Lourdes pilgrim” Yet the natural things that surround him are still joyful, such as the dawn chorus of birds… even if he can be ironic about it, such as “Sparrows and silvereyes / announce the day / from their karaka kingdom. / … If I don’t listen to Morning Report / it’s going to be a good day, / full of bounce and soft foliage.” On his way, he questions the value of what he is doing, thus: “My poems seem to appeal / to people who don’t read poetry. / Am I breaking down barriers” / Am I building bridges? / Am I enlarging the world? / Am I cheating? / Am I a poet?” (And doesn’t every poet think this sometimes?). With a hint of his Catholic views, he writes happily  “We drink gold-medals wine from a bar at the back / of what used to be a chapel. The very spot where Brothers / once prayed the Divine office day and night with / great faithfulness. These days it’s used for weddings and / banquets and – latest market opportunity – wakes. / Will I have the reserve syrah or the cabernet blend called / Antoine, named after one of the pioneering French / Brothers? I’ll have both. / Good health and God speed to you all.”

There follow 44 poems, collectively called And More. They speak of the beach, of the sunset, of children growing up, of family, of home, of trees, friends and neighbours, of  travels, of singing, of drinking wine, of (apparently) recalling years in which he considered becoming a priest [in the poem “Dark Whistling” and elsewhere], of reading and finally of accepting his lot. I choose not to analyse all his poems. I enjoyed them. I found Fitzsimons’ style to be easy-going, ironical, happy and enjoyable. No need to say anything else.