Can poetry help our politics? There was a time in Australia when it did
Idea
John Curtin spent the Easter weekend of 1945 at The Lodge. He had only three months left to live. His health has declined sharply since his heart attack last November. When he died on July 5, aged just 60, his death would be attributed to wartime leadership tensions.
Most Australians would go to church that Easter Sunday morning. Curtin’s colleagues in the Labor Party were mostly Catholics and Sunday Mass was a religious obligation for them; Protestant Australia was no less religious.
The Prime Minister did not. Curtin had stopped practicing his Catholic faith as a young man. But he kept the Sabbath in his own special way. It was his tradition to spend Sunday mornings reading poetry. For Curtin, a deeply spiritual man, this was the secular equivalent of going to church. Although we can’t be sure, it’s possible that this is how he spent his last Easter Sunday on earth.
Although recognized by some biographers, the depth of Curtin’s commitment to poetry was not appreciated until 2021, when Toby Davidson, a scholar of Australian literature, not a political historian, published his book. Good for the Soul: John Curtin’s Life in Poetry. Dr Davidson explains to us Curtin’s library; It contained many volumes of poetry, including poems by Australian Mary Gilmore, CJ Dennis, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Walter Murdoch, Bernard O’Dowd and Vance Palmer, as well as American and English poets such as Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Matthew Arnold, Byron, Shelley, Milton and Tennyson. It also included a translation of Dante. Divine ComedyHeavily annotated in Curtin’s handwriting.
His collection also included a book of poetry by West Australian friends. Paul HasluckIn 1949 he would be elected to the House of Representatives seat named in Curtin’s honour, becoming one of the most intellectually distinguished members of any Australian cabinet. As a young man, Hasluck published several volumes of poetry, revealing himself to be a lover of nature and a tormented soul.
Curtin’s political rival Robert Menzies was also devoted to poetry; There is a remarkable similarity between their collections. Like Curtin, reading poetry was one of Menzies’ primary relaxations. His daughter Heather recalls that it was his habit to read poetry in the evenings before an important speech; to run the rhythms through your mind, to find the right rhythm better the next day.
Menzies’ speeches frequently contain poetic references; for example, his famous “Forgotten People” speech draws on Robbie Burns’ poetry to evoke “spiritual homes.” Remarkably, part of his 1947 budget response speech was in verse form, quoting several stanzas from AP Herbert’s poetry. What Was It Once?satirizes the planned economy.
The young Menzies also wrote a good deal of poetry, but unlike Hasluck his was not seeking deep literary seriousness. It is mostly lighthearted banter, although there are some touching poems commemorating friends lost in the Great War. Last year it was published for the first time by the Robert Menzies Institute in a collection titled. Fantasies I Don’t Dare Talk About.
Although Curtin, Menzies and Hasluck were undoubtedly civilized men of cultivated tastes, the commitment to poetry of an earlier generation of political leaders was even deeper. Sir Henry Parkes, the noted father of the Federation, published at least six volumes of poetry during his long life. Stolen MomentsIt was published in 1842, when he was only 27 years old. Sonnets and Other VersesIt appeared in 1895, a year before his death.
Alfred Deakin, our second prime minister and the forefather of Australian liberalism, wrote the first half of a monumental treatise entitled, When he was just 21 years old, History, Philosophy and Principles of Poetry. He embarked on this enterprise shortly after his admission to the bar; This was a more creative use of time than most young lawyers waiting for briefs to arrive. Deakin’s friend Walter Murdoch, himself an important poet and essayist, described the unfinished treatise as “an extraordinary performance; had he died before the age of twenty-two, he would have left behind in this manuscript convincing evidence of his extraordinary powers… [F]there were indeed masterpieces of poetry with which he was unfamiliar.”
The most daring poetic achievement of any colonial-era politician was undoubtedly that of Sir Samuel Griffith, the principal draftsman of the Constitution, leading colonial liberal and two-time premier of Queensland. He was a man of extraordinary knowledge and translated the works of Dante. Divine Comedy Italian from the 14th century. This was largely done after Griffith, whose political days were behind him, became Australia’s first chief justice. In those days, the Supreme Court traveled between state capitals; It was said to have been translated by a witty person (probably a Sydney lawyer). Hell in brisbane, Purgatory in Melbourne and Heaven In Sydney.
Unfortunately, Griffith’s Dante, published by Oxford University Press, was not appreciated by most critics. Someone, apparently a lawyer, is aware that Griffith was also Queensland’s painter. Guilty Code And Supreme Court Rules – It was claimed that he detected a stylistic similarity between them. “Sir Samuel has succeeded in translating Dante’s poetry into the language of parliamentary law,” he said haughtily. At least he tried. It was not Griffith’s translation of Dante that graced Curtin’s bookshelves.
Shelley famously wrote: “Poets are the unrecognized legislators of the world.” There was a time in Australia when legislators were also poets.
George Brandis is the former high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney general. He is currently a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
George Brandis is the former high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney general. He is currently a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
