| Larry Schwartz |
| ALMOST 50 years after hoax works were written by the fictional poet “Ern Malley”, Australia’s greatest literary controversy has taken a new turn. Mr Harold Stewart, now 76 and the surviving co-author of the poems _later revealed to be a mischievous concoction aimed at satirising the avant-garde _ spoke out this week to condemn a new collection of Ern Malley’s works. Mr Stewart and the late James McAuley created the poems haphazardly in an afternoon, drawing on works including Shakespeare’s plays, a rhyming dictionary, and an American report on the drainage of swamps where mosquitoes bred. Contacted at his home in Kyoto, Japan, Mr Stewart said all editions of the Malley poems published over the years, including a new collection from Angus and Robertson this month, were not authorised by him. Mr Stewart, who left Australia for Japan in the 1960s, has not been back in 27 years and does not plan to return. He regards himself as a literary exile unlikely to be published here. He said that though they had never sought to prevent publication, the copyright remained with himself and, since co-author James McAuley’s death in 1976, McAuley’s widow. They had given permission only once, to Melbourne author, Michael Heyward, whose book, `The Ern Malley Affair’, will be released by Faber and Faber in England and University of Queensland Press in September. Mr Stewart said he believed the Angus and Robertson paperback was an attempt to “scuttle and sink” the Heyward account. The hoax began with an October 1943 letter to the Australian literary publication `Angry Penguins’, co-edited by Adelaide writer Max Harris. Purported to be written by an Ethel Malley, it included two poems she said had been written by brother Ern, a recently deceased mechanic and insurance salesman. “Ethel Malley” subsequently sent her brother’s life-work, published in the autumn 1944 edition of the journal as `Darkening Ecliptic’. Harris and arts patron John Reed at the time hailed Malley as “one of the most outstanding poets that we have produced here”. McAuley and Stewart revealed their hoax in the Sydney `Sun’ that June. The aim? “To satirise a particular fashion in poetry of that period,” Harold Stewart said this week, “the pseudo poetry of that period. It received international coverage, provoking strong argument over the merits of the verse. The authors dismissed it as “consciously and deliberately concocted nonsense”. Others, notably Sir Herbert Read, thought they had inadvertently created compelling, if erratic, poetry. The debate would soon be overshadowed when the South Australian police prosecuted Max Harris for the publication of “indecent advertisements” in some Malley poems. After a lengthy trial, Harris was fined 5. Asked if he had encountered subsequent resentment here, Harold Stewart said: “Oh yes. Very, very strong. What happened was that Jim McAuley and I delayed the modernist establishment from coming to power by about 10 years. Mr Stewart said A & R had sent him a copy of the new collection, which features not only the poems but articles by Max Harris, painter Albert Tucker and British author Colin Wilson. He said the publisher had invited him to review the book. He had not replied. He sees the book as an attempt to legitimise the view that the hoax backfired on the perpetrators. “What absolutely amazes me is that they are still trying to excuse themselves 50 years after the event,” he said. “The sort of poetic kitsch that we were satirising in the mid-1940s is really old hat now. Just as out of date as it could possibly be. He has not changed his view of the style he and McAuley set out to mock. “It’s supposed to be a regurgitation from the unconscious. Well, under those circumstances there could never be any artistry. Never any craftsmanship. Never any planning. You couldn’t write a long poem or an episodic poem. All you could do is these little rhapsodic pieces. I have an idea that language is a means of communication. In his introduction to the A & R book, Albert Tucker recalls that John Reed organised a meeting for him with the co-authors at the Latin Restaurant in Melbourne’s Bourke Street. Over minestrone, he writes, he had broached the role of the subconscious and the likelihood that they had in effect hoaxed themselves. “That was as far as I got. McAuley exploded into a tantrum, leapt to his feet spluttering breadcrumbs and rushed out of the restaurant, followed by a startled and bewildered Stewart … Asked of the incident, Harold Stewart said: “The extraordinary thing is that I’m notorious for my elephantine memory. I have an almost total recall, even at 76. I haven’t the faintest recollection and it seems extremely unlikely that either Jim or myself would have suddenly stormed out leaving him to pay the bill …. It was “absurd nonsense … the idea that Jim and I were two innocent rather naive soldiers who were suddenly possessed by some … entity as though we were holding a seance and it came through … Absolutely ridiculous. Mr Stewart remembers being concerned at police action against Harris. He said he and and McAuley were infuriated. He said that they allowed publication over the years because they felt sorry for Harris. “James and I thought: `We have nothing against Max Harris personally’. “We felt that he’d been badly hurt by this. Which wasn’t our intention. But we said: `All right let him have the royalties’. We never told this but we just let him have the royalties over the years. He said that Max Harris had wrongly assumed that the letter from the imaginary poet’s sister, `Ethel Malley’, gave him copyright. Max Harris, 72, said this week he was approached by Angus and Robertson and had no role in compiling the book. Mr Harris, now seriously ill, agreed that that copyright for initial publication by himself, John and Sunday Reed and artist Sidney Nolan, was based on permission in correspondence with Malley’s sister. They had subsequently written to her. She had not replied. Neither McAuley nor Stewart had written to withdraw permission or question the legal validity of the work. They had acted meanly in perpetrating a hoax at the time. It would have shown “decency” to have written to him on the matter. No signficant money had come to him from the Malley poems, Mr Harris said, and he would be willing to recompense McAuley’s widow or Harold Stewart in lieu of royalties, if appropriate. Mr Angelo Loukakis, recently appointed as literary editor at Angus & Robertson, said he was not familiar with the issue and would seek further details. THE SUNDAY AGE, 20-Jun-1993 |
Larry Schwartz Writer 