The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

Detail. An Awfully Beautiful Place: The Antarctic Art Of Stephen Eastaugh. The Carnegie Gallery, Argyle Street. June 2012.

One review for you today, An Imaginary Life by David Malouf imagines the story of the Roman poet Ovid, during his exile in Tomis (in modern day Romania).

This one reminds me very much of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. Like Coetzee, Molouf has a post-colonialist sensibility. The central tension in An Imaginary Life is found in the relationship between the civilised cosmopolitan Ovid, the barbaric local tribe, and a wild child who has grown in a state of nature. The clash between the ‘cultured’ and uncivilised really is at the heart of this dreamlike tale.

The narrative moves beautifully and seamlessly along, conjuring up a timeless, haunting mood that could as easily be two thousand years into the future as it is two thousand years ago. There are some big questions here what is the meaning of life? What is the distinction between instinct and conscious thought and purpose?

This is a very meditative, beautiful book. Highly recommended.

The full piece. An Awfully Beautiful Place: The Antarctic Art Of Stephen Eastaugh. The Carnegie Gallery, Argyle Street. June 2012.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

Gdje su ljudi?

13 September 2012 at 13:13

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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