Criticising Jacob Epstein's latest piece of sculpture, Eric Gill, the sculptor, says: "If I had discovered this monstrous piece of sculpture on a desert island, I should have said it was a jolly fine piece of work . . . But what is it for? Where is it going?" Sir Charles Allom calls it "filthy modern stuff, equalled only by the work of a few savages in distant times."
I often wonder when I view
Some work of art described as "new"
If there is not some limit set
Beyond which mortals may not get.
In all man's arts in all his aims,
Beside a gate a warning flames
Set close upon perfection's verge
That stays his frantic onward urge.
But the world goes round and round and round
And nought survives above the ground
Unless it takes the onward way
Or else drifts backward to decay.
The high gods hate
The static state
And Nature will not tolerate
Stagnation. There is nothing new;
So, when there's nothing left to do.
Back to the jungle, boy, for you.
Surrealism's rampant paint,
A negroid image crudely quaint
Free-verse and jazz, discordant tunes,
And that unhappy thing that croons--
All, all seem signs we're turning back
Along an old, familiar track
From things achieved to things to come
As swings the cosmic pendulum.
And, as stars swing across the sky,
The rhythm throbs, now low, now high;
And all our arts, in peace, in war,
Are old; man did it all before,
For who can say,
Strive as we may,
That from some lost Atlanta's day,
All we have thought or ever wrought
May not be echoes vaguely caught? ...
It's not a very cheerful thought.
First published in The Herald, 27 October 1937;
and later in
The Queenslander, 17 November 1937.
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
