南通大学 - UQ Library

中图分类号：
I106
学 校 代 号：
10304
南通大学
硕 士 学 位 论 文
旅行与归属：雪莉·哈泽德《大火》
中的离散性
院（系、所）：
外国语学院
申 请 学 位 ：
文学硕士学位
学 科 专 业 ：
英语语言文学（文学）
研究生姓名：
蒋黎
指 导 教 师 ：
朱晓映教授
学号：09070005
联合指导教师：
论文完成日期： 二〇一二年四月二十一日
Travelling and Belonging:
Expatriation in Shirley Hazzard’s
The Great Fire
By
Jiang Li
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the
Degree of Master of Arts
In the Subject of
English Language and Literature
Supervised by
Prof. Zhu Xiaoying
School of Foreign Studies
Nantong University
April 2012
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is hard for me to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Zhu
Xiaoying, whose illuminating instructions, invaluable suggestions and constant
encouragement have been with me throughout my graduate study. If it were not for the
influence of her rigorous scholarship, I would not have had the courage to undertake the
research detailed in this thesis. What is more, her attentiveness to my progress has made
me more confident and inspired me for the better.
I would also like to thank Dr. Bronwen Levy from The University of Queensland
for her support. I thank her for taking the time and trouble to help me with my research
and project on Shirley Hazzard.
Special thanks also go to Dr. Graham Farebrother from The University of
Queensland who always supported and encouraged me.
In addition, I owe my thanks to all my teachers, who gave me much help for my
study.
My son Xuan participated and witnessed my Master‘s study process: as an
unborn infant, he attended most of the lectures with me from scorching heat to bitter
cold. And it is Xuan who deepened my understanding of love and responsibility.
Deepest thanks must go to my parents who give me all their love and support.
During the last three years, they helped me to look after my son, enabling me to
concentrate on my research.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................. i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................... ii
摘 要 ............................................................. iii
Abstract ............................................................. iv
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...................................... 6
CHAPER TWO: HAZZARD’S EXPATRIATE THEMES .................... 10
2.1 Australian Expatriate Writing ................................... 10
2.2 Hazzard’s Expatriate Ideas ..................................... 13
CHAPTER THREE: TRAVELLING IN THE GREAT FIRE .................. 18
3.1 Dreaming of Travelling .......................................... 18
3.2 Meditating for Self-improvement ................................. 20
3.3 Grasping the Light of Humanism .................................. 22
CHAPTER FOUR: BELONGING IN THE GREAT FIRE.................... 24
4.1 Hopes of Belonging .............................................. 25
4.2 “Still Call Australia Home” ................................... 26
4.3 “At Home in More than One Place” .............................. 28
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION ....................................... 32
REFERENCES ...................................................... 33
攻读学位期间本人主持或参与的研究课题 ................................ 36
攻读学位期间本人出版或公开发表的论述、论文 .......................... 38
ii
摘
要
澳大利亚文学自发端以来，在国际文学舞台上越来越受瞩目，其现象和原因
都值得探讨。在其文学发展史上，有一个群体值得关注，那就是澳裔流散作家的
写作。在澳大利亚民族性和独立文化形成的过程中，这些作家的写作发出了和澳
大利亚国内的文学主流或不同或相似的声音。他们的写作以及在澳大利亚评论界
的接受认可过程对于从一个侧面阐释澳大利亚文学的发展轨迹起到了独特的作
用。
雪莉·哈泽德是澳裔流散作家的代表人物之一。在多年的旅行中，她对文学，
政治，民族，历史，文化及人性产生了独特的见解。她的思想的一大特色就是基
于人类文明基础上的人文主义，以及对人性，历史和公平正义的尊重。与许多流
散作家不同的是，她的作品中并未显示出对流散身份的困惑，更多的是对民族性
和国际化自由独立的思考。
她的作品题材广泛，不仅有着身为澳大利亚人对澳大利亚文化和发展的密切
关注，更有着作为国际化的知识分子对整个世界的关注。她的视野超越了国界的
范围，从整个人类文明和历史的高度进行思考和写作。
她的写作，和许多同时代的作家一起，见证了澳大利亚文化和文学批评由封
闭走向开放，由过于强调民族性转向国际化的过程。其代表作《大火》以二战后
的日本和中国香港为背景，以一个爱情故事为主线，讲述了由于战争而来到东方
国家的欧洲人和澳大利亚人在旅行中对世界和自我认识的成长。该作品集中体现
了哈泽德的文化认识和创作思想。
本论文从文化研究角度出发，分析了澳大利亚裔美国作家雪莉·哈泽德的代
表作《大火》，通过研究她对离散的两大主题——旅行和归属——的理解来介绍并
研究她独特的流散思想和世界主义的人文思想，及其产生的渊源。结合哈泽德的
小说文本和她本人的经历，本文得出结论，文学带给哈泽德的想象使她产生了对
iii
旅行的渴望，在旅行中她得到了成长并且产生了独特的离散者的归属感，即世界
主义。此外，本文还联系澳大利亚历史和文学发展史，揭示哈泽德在澳大利亚文
学史由封闭走向开放的国际化道路上的重要地位。
关键词：雪莉·哈泽德，大火，离散，旅行，归属
Abstract
Australian literature is increasingly visible on the international cultural stage.
This phenomenon and its underlying reasons deserve deep investigation. One group of
people, in Australian literature history, are particularly worthy of consideration. They
are Australian expatriate writers. During the process of building Australian nationality
and independent culture, they had opinions, sometimes different, sometimes similar, to
those emanating from the cultural mainstream in Australia. Their writing and the
process of acceptance of their work by Australian literary critics is worthy of study to
further understand Australian literature development.
Shirley Hazzard is a prominent representative of Australian expatriate writers. In
her long-term travelling, she formed a specific view of literature, nations, history,
culture and humanity. A main characteristic of her thinking is universal humanism
based on her broad understanding of human civilization, and her respect for humanity,
history, fairness and justice. In contrast to many expatriate writers, she did not show as
much confusion toward her identity and was more free-thinking towards concepts of
nationality and cosmopolitanism. As an Australian, she has a strong link to Australian
culture and development, but also, as a globalized intellectual, she has broader
influences.
Together with many other contemporaneous writers, Hazzard records important
stages in the process of Australian literature development as Australia moved from
being closed to embracing openness; from its emphasis on nationality to globalization.
Her representative work The Great Fire takes place after WWII with Japan and Hong
Kong as its backdrop; it has a love story as its main thread. The novel discusses
understanding and growth of both the world and of self in relation to those European
and Australian people who travelled to the Far East because of war. It collectively
embodies Hazzard‘s reflections on culture, civilization and humanity.
This thesis examines, from a cultural studies perspective, Hazzard‘s The Great
Fire and introduces her expatriate ideas and cosmopolitan thinking by studying two
themes of expatriation: travelling and belonging. It also combines Australian history
and literature development to reveal Hazzard‘s important identification of the turning
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point in Australian culture to that of compatible globalization. It is shown that
Hazzard‘s personal experiences and the imagination planted by literature in her mind
gave her the aspiration for travelling. It is in travelling that she, as an expatriate, grew
and matured and formed a special sense of belonging; a form of cosmopolitanism.
Keywords: Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire, expatriation, travelling, belonging
v
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Shirley Hazzard, born on January 30, 1931 in Sydney, Australia, is now an
Australian author of international fame. She left Australia at the age of fifteen, then
travelled and lived in Asia, Europe and the U.S.A. Because of the globalised themes of
her writing and her cosmopolitan humanist thinking, Hazzard is widely considered as
one of the most important Australian expatriate writers. Her writing covers a wide range
of literary genres including novels, novellas, short stories, biographies, political
commentaries, book reviews and essays.
Shirley Hazzard showed a special interest in and talent for poetry that began
when she was very young, at around the age of four or five. When she was 15, her
father obtained a position with the British government in Hong Kong and her family
relocated there with a two months stop in Japan on the way. Her experiences in Japan
and Hong Kong greatly affected her future life. The year after she arrived in Hong
Kong, she obtained employment with British Intelligence that entailed her monitoring
the civil war in China. She also fell in love with a British man who was about 16 years
her senior. This romantic affair was opposed by her parents. One year later, after her
father obtained a position in New Zealand, the family relocated. Her first love, that
ended in vain, formed the main story in her novel The Great Fire.
In contrast to Hong Kong, life in Wellington did not leave Hazzard with very fond
memories. After living in Wellington for about two years, she travelled to Europe and
later worked for the United Nations in Naples, Italy at which time she wrote The
Ancient Shore. Her passionate love for Italy has been enduring. In 1963, Hazzard met
Francis Steegmuller (1906-1994), a literary translator and biographer, at a friend‘s party
in New York. Their 31 year marriage was associated with happiness, passion and a
mutual love of literature. They lived in Italy, Britain and the United States. After Francis
Steegmuller died, Hazzard lived in New York but she visits her Italian house frequently.
Hazzard‘s personal experiences are intertwined with her writing. The prizes she
was awarded indicate that she is an internationalized writer, while her different writing
subjects cross national borders and have many globalised features. Most of her works
were written and published in the United States and Europe. Academic study of Shirley
Hazzard has shown a tendency to spread from North America and Europe to Australia
and also to some other countries. Hazzard has won awards mostly from Europe, the
United States and Australia. Her short story A Long Story Short (1976) won an O.
Henry Award in 1977 in the United States and her third novel The Transit of Venus
(1980) received a 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award, also in the United States.
Her fourth novel, The Great Fire (2003) published twenty three years after The Transit
6
of Venus, won the American 2003 National Book Award, the 2004 Miles Franklin Award
in Australia, and the 2005 William Dean Howells Medal in the United States. It was
also short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction (Britain), short-listed for the 2004 Man
Booker Prize (Britain) and the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
(Ireland) and was named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist (Britain).
Shirley Hazzard started to publish short stories in the New Yorker in 1960.
However, she was not widely noticed within academic circles until her novel The
Transit of Venus received the National Book Critics' Circle Award. Since the 1980s,
there have been several academic papers and theses written on Hazzard‘s work,
published mostly relating to her novel The Transit of Venus. The majority of these
papers discussed the romance, artifice and humanism in her writing. Rainwater and
Scheick in their paper ―Some Godlike Grammar: An Introduction to the Writing of
Hazzard, Ozick, and Redmon‖ (Rainwater and Scheick), claimed that ―Hazzard‘s novel
raises ultimate questions about order and meaning in the lives of people who can gain
only such limited, aoristic perspectives upon their own experiences‖ (181). In 1995, one
of the most important literature journals in Australia published Russell McDougall‘s
―Beyond Humanism? The Black Drop of Shirley Hazzard‘s The Transit of Venus‖ which
is ―…a reading of The Transit of Venus as an allegory of the death of humanism. In a
sense this is to argue that the tragedy of the novel, its ironic subject, is silence, because
in the modern world humanism is inexpressible‖ (120). Bronwen Levy from the
University of Queensland analyzed this novel‘s reception from a feminist point of view
in ―Constructing the Woman Writer: The Reviewing Reception of Hazzard‘s The Transit
of Venus‖.
In 1984, Hazzard was invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to give a
series of lectures (the Boyer Lectures), which she later published as a book entitled
Coming of Age in Australia (1985). It is considered to be the most important book about
her thinking associated with Australian culture and universal humanism.
In 1996, Karen Ruth Brooks, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wollongong,
published her dissertation: ―Odysseus Unbound and Penelope Unstable: Contemporary
Australian Expatriate Women Writers‖. This thesis examined three expatriate Australian
female writers: Shirley Hazzard, Charmian Clift, and Glenda Adams. Brooks analyzed
their expatriate experience generally, and advanced a particular pattern of representation
common to these writers. Brooks explored the psychological and physical dilemmas
expatriation entails, with consideration to the writers‘ different spatial and
psychological relations to their country of birth.
The Great Fire was the first novel published in the twenty-three years since the
release of Hazzard‘s best-selling novel The Transit of Venus. The protagonist Aldred
Leith was English. His father Olive Leith was a writer, well known for his romantic
love stories that had their backdrops set in different global locations. Aldred Leith,
travelling much like his father, was a veteran of the Second World War (WWII). Aldred
had many narrow escapes during the war and was decorated for his military merits.
After WWII, having spent many years in China, and sponsored by a French General,
7
Aldred wrote a book on ancient China. The Great Fire starts with his journey to
Hiroshima, a Japanese city severely damaged by an atomic bomb at the end of the war.
In Japan, Aldred met a family from Australia, the Driscolls. The daughter Helen
Driscoll and son Benedict Driscoll were very charming and intelligent and both of them
loved literature very much. Their parents, Barry Driscoll and Melba Driscoll were
arrogant, overbearing, selfish and ambitious. Their main purpose in life was to seek
promotion, by fair means or foul. They enjoyed the status of being victors in the war
and had no compassion at all. They also used their sixteen year old daughter Helen to
look after their seriously ill son.
Helen and her brother Benedict (Ben) became Aldred‘s friends at their first
meeting. The siblings admired and trusted him, while the 32 year old hero fell in love
with the intelligent and pure girl. However, their love was not supported by her parents.
Soon after, Ben was sent to America to receive further treatment while Helen was taken
to New Zealand where her parents had obtained new positions. During her stay in New
Zealand, Helen felt that she had been trapped and that her only chance to escape from
that ―far end of earth‖ (Hazzard, 2004:254) was through Aldred Leith. Aldred had
returned to England because of the death of his father. However, time and distance did
not stop their love, and eventually they became a couple.
The Great Fire is a novel about love and hatred, war and peace, ideology and
reality, humanity and civilization, travelling and belonging. The multiple themes of this
novel make it deep and profound. Having won the 2003 National Book Award and the
2004 Miles Franklin Award, an increasing number of Australian academics have begun
to study Hazzard‘s collection of works and her thinking. Most of this research is from a
cultural study‘s perspective. Robert Diction, a professor at the University of Sydney,
one of the most important Australian culture studies experts, reads The Great Fire
against the background of the Cold War in his paper ―‗Turning a Place into a Field‘:
Shirley Hazzard‘s The Great Fire and Cold War Area Studies‖. He took her novel as an
historical text and studied it utilizing Colonialism and Orientalism.
Brigitta Olubas, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, is maybe
the most important critic of Shirley Hazzard‘s work in Australia. Her readings of
Hazzard are also from a cultural perspective. Olubas‘ 2006 paper ―Rewriting the Past:
Exploration and Discovery in The Transit of Venus‖ ―[e]xamines the disruptiveness in
Hazzard‘s novel, ‗The Transit of Venus.‘ Subtext of dissent and disruption in treatment
of history; Examination of key episodes in the founding of Australia; Stereotypic
opposition between male and female worlds‖ (155). Olubas‘ subsequent two papers on
Shirley Hazzard analyse aspects of cultural globalization within her work.
From the body of research on Shirley Hazzard, detailed in this review, it is
evident that the study of her works originated in the United States. It was only after she
received a certain level of fame within the international literary field that Australian
academics began to study her works. The study emphasis of Hazzard moves from her
romantic flavour to her cultural and historical thinking, a path which we can also see
Australian literary criticism following.
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The subject of travelling and expatriation is increasingly studied in Australia. In
2003, a report on Australian Expatriation ―Australia's Diaspora: Its Size Nature and
Policy Implications‖ (Hugo, Rudd and Harris) was published by the Committee for
Economic Development of Australia. This report ―aims to update recent trends in
emigration from Australia, present findings of a survey of a sub-group of Australians
residing overseas, and to discuss a number of policy implications relating to emigration
from Australia‖ (10)
In 2005, the Legal and Constitutional References Committee of the Australian
Government released a report on Australian expatriates: ―They still call Australia home:
Inquiry into Australia Expatriates‖. This report analysed, amongst other things, the
Australian expatriation phenomenon, the extent of their community, the government‘s
role, and legal concerns of overseas Australians. The report acknowledged the
importance of Australian expatriates to the country:
Expatriate Australians represent an underutilized resource: not only are
they an asset in terms of promoting Australia and its social, economic and
cultural interests; they are also ambassadors for our nation, which is
otherwise disadvantaged by our geographic remoteness and small population
(5).
Many Australians work overseas, accordingly there are many books published on
administration, economy and law relating to Australian expatriates.
The scholar David Calderón Prada published ―Australian Expatriates: Who Are
They?‖ in Coolabah, the official journal of the Australian Studies Center at the
Universitat de Barcelona. In this paper, Prada studied Australian statistics relating to the
reasons why some expatriates leave Australia, and the Australianness of Australians.
There are a number of Australian scholars who study travelling and expatriate
writing, such as Robert Clarke. He published several papers on Australian‘s travelling,
including: ―An Ordinary Place: Aboriginality and 'Ordinary' Australia in Travel Writing
of the 1990s‖, ―Intimate Strangers: Contemporary Australian Travel Writing, the
Semiotics of Empathy‖, and ―Travel Writing and Globalization‖. In ―Travel and
Celebrity Culture: an introduction‖, Clark put forward that
Modern Western travel culture, like celebrity, it could be said, has
played a dubious role in the development of capitalist democratic cultures, as
a force and symbol of enfranchisement and liberation, on the one hand, and
equally of containment and exploitation, on the other (145).
Expatriate women‘s writing is becoming an increasingly popular subject both
within and outside Australia. ―Female Expatriates: The Model Global Manager?‖
(TUNG Rosalie L), ―Towards an Understanding of the Female Expatriate Experience in
Europe‖ (Linehana and Scullionb) and ―Why Are Women Left at Home: Are They
Unwilling To Go On International Assignments?‖ (Stroh, Varma and Valy-Durbin) are
three papers that discuss women‘s travelling and expatriation.
There are no academic works on Shirley Hazzard that have been published in
China so far.
9
The first chapter of this thesis introduced the study purpose and rationale. Shirley
Hazzard‘s life experience, writing and her novel The Great Fire were introduced. The
review of research of Hazzard and The Great Fire formed its core. Chapter two defines
expatriation and details Australian expatriate writing and Shirley Hazzard‘s expatriate
ideas. Chapter three, combining the travel experience of Hazzard and her protagonists,
puts forward the idea that it is in travelling that personal growth can be achieved, and it
is in travelling that Hazzard formed her humanistic thinking. Chapter four discusses
belonging, especially Hazzard‘s sense of belonging, and her ideas of nationality. It
points out that Hazzard‘s sense of belonging lies in cosmopolitanism which has a
respect for different cultures as its basis. The fifth chapter concludes the thesis.
CHAPER TWO: HAZZARD’S EXPATRIATE THEMES
2.1 Australian Expatriate Writing
According to the Longman dictionary, an expatriate is ―someone who lives in a
foreign country‖ (478). The Oxford Dictionary‘s definition is ―a person who lives
10
outside their native country‖ (Oxford Dictionaries Online). An Australian official report
published in 2005 regards an expatriate as ―any Australian citizen or other person with
an historic physical link to Australia who is residing overseas‖ (Legal and
Constitutional References Committee of Australia 5). In The Great Expatriate Writers,
―an expatriate in the pure sense is someone who has left his country behind and does
not long to go back to reform it but wants to establish a new life elsewhere with other
loyalties‖ (Martin 2).
But what is ―his country‖ and where should ―loyalties‖ be? The definition of
expatriate also relies on the definition of nation and nationality. What are nation and
nationality? Nation represents a culmination of historical events that have led to a
territory and societal system that encompasses a distinct culture that is applicable to a
group of people. Nationality implies sharing an ―inheritance‖ of values and characters.
―The idea of heritage – (whereby certain natural or built sites are declared to be of
national historical significance) – functions similarly to produce a national past‖ (Carter,
2006:11). Nation is not merely sovereignty – centering on stability, it is a collection of
heritages which consists of territory, blood relationship, history or shared memory,
language, economy unity, belief, values and customs. Long-term stability of a group
breeds an ―imagination‖ and understanding of nation as a whole from which an
individual may find a sense of belonging and identity. This can upgrade the cognition of
―I am a member of this nation‖ to ―this is my nation‖ thus transforming citizens‘
reliance upon nation to a loyalty and responsibility for their nation. In this sense, the
notion of nation, to its citizens, is more abstract, immaterial, subjective, psychological
and subconscious. National identity is paramount for some groups of people because
the history of their nation has germinated a collective consciousness. More importantly
is the summation of personal activities that is constantly writing a new history of a
nation which integrates past, present and future, creating a whole, from which a mutual
influence between individual and nation can be identified. In contrast, if individuals
have limited shared experiences with their peer groups, stable and shared heritage is
stifled and the formulation of, or imagination of, a national image can not be initiated
regardless of a strong sense of belonging.
This effect may be more visible in some immigration countries. The hardship of a
new worlds‘ life can intensify people‘s sentimental attachment to their native land
which, at least to some people, could never be replaced even though they may have left
many years previously and for good reasons. The image of hometown in a person‘s
memory gradually intertwines with an imagined ideal dreamland. Early European
colonists who went to America, Australia or Africa, African people who were sold into
slavery in America, Chinese people who streamed into America and Australia during
gold rushes, etc., all faced similar problems; the conflict between the reality of
subsisting in their new word and building a new sense of identity and attachment while
still possessing a sense of belonging to their motherland. National images, institutions
and histories combine to tell us ―who we really are‖ (Carter, 2006: 15). When people
were uprooted, they felt puzzled and contemplated such issues as ―who were we‖, ―who
11
are we‖ and ―who will we be‖.
With the growth of globalization, however, the term ―expatriate‖ is now more
commonly used to refer to people who work in other countries. In modern times, this
term is increasingly absorbed in an economic context while the expatriates‘ identities
are not much changed because ―identities are the names we give to the different ways
we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past‖ (Hall
225).
As a member of the Commonwealth, Australia still has a close relationship with
Britain. Despite these strong links, that can influence travel choices, ―whether they
[Australians] leave because of cultural, historical, geographical or economic reasons,
they are known and unified as one within Australia: Expatriates‖ (44). The premise of
becoming an expatriate is to admit that originally they were Australians. National
identity and collective consciousness is a history of Australian expatriates that can not
be erased regardless of where they go. ―No matter how far I roam, I still call Australia
home‖ (Allen). As Shirley said in an interview: ―Australia was the first fifteen years of
my life and you are already Australian for life by doing that‖ (ABC TV). ―It‘s quite
right to conclude that although the logical assumption of expatriation is distance,
expatriates are mentally, and often emotionally, linked to Australia and, therefore, the
understanding of their situation is more positive than negative‖ (Prada 39). Researching
Australian expatriates is helpful in studying the relationship between Australian
nationality, cultural independence and cultural openness.
Australia is a new country. But ―new‖ does not always mean ―good‖ or
―advantaged‖, ―For ‗newness‘ could also mean rawness and vulgarity, a society only
concerned with material things, lacking ancient traditions, and without the civilized
means of acquiring taste or proper standards‖ (Carter, 2006: 241). After WWII,
Australia became more independent from Britain and the emphasis on Australian
nationality was raised to an unprecedented level. ―The new nationalism of the 1970s
inspired further development of Australian literary studies involving the consolidation
of cultural nationalism at home and its projection abroad‖ (Dixon, 2007:18). Cultural
nationalism‘s dominance in Australia started to give way to internationalism. The
boundaries of nations in literature became increasingly vague. Dixon asserts that
Australian literary studies must respond to the wider intellectual
political and social agendas of the present … Many of our major
writers…were very cosmopolitan people and fluent in more than one
language. There are things we need to know about beyond Australia—even
beyond Anglophone culture—to understand them fully (20).
Under these circumstances, expatriate writing has become increasingly more
important in Australia.
Some Australian cultural nationalists gestured that Australian literature was so
unique that there was no necessity to merge into the global mainstream, and especially
with European and American culture. This was evidenced by the active suppression of
Australian modernism. However, it did not stop Australia‘s integration into the global
12
mainstream. In Coming of Age in Australia, Hazzard defined mainstream as a pattern:
[w]here people have done and are doing the civilizing things that
Australians are glad to find happening in their own land—the achievements
for which they claim the world‘s attention, and rightly expect the world‘s
interest. … One would hope that Australia is in the process of joining and
perpetuating that pattern—that mainstream—rather than of seceding from it
(29-30).
Expatriation is thus a door between nation and overseas. Expatriates, in a sense,
are like Roman Janus: they face and connect two worlds—past and future, known and
unknown. The expatriate writers, holding the discourse power, examine and deliver
different cultures. They can build national image and introduce it to the rest of the
world, and vice versa. In this process of two-way construction, it is worthy to
investigate where expatriate writers, as the subject of this construction, ‗put their feet‘.
Expatriate literature, is ―a literature which itself expresses a further ambivalence
towards the forms that already exist‖ (Brooks 10). The expatriate writers ―express both
a lack (insufficiency—an awareness of split subjectivity) and desire (the potential for
wholeness—for a complete self and acceptance into a new Symbolic Order)‖ (46).
Hazzard once said: ―I‘m not even sure which country I‘d be an expatriate of.‖ (cited in
Olubas, 2010:9). In another interview, she said: ―Australia was the first fifteen years of
my life and you are already Australian for life by doing that‖ (ABC TV). Her
self-contradiction exposes her dilemma: to be an expatriate, you have to cut off a certain
relationship with the motherland; as an expatriate, where you are from is a part of self
which can not be changed.
Many Australian writers who have expatriate or international travel experiences
are well-known in the world, including some Miles Franklin Award winners, such as
Tim Winton who lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece; Alex Miller who was born
in London and moved to Australia at the age of 16; Murray Bail who lived in India,
England and Europe; and Australia‘s first Nobel Prize winner Patrick White who
travelled extensively. Along with these writers, Hazzard, a widely-recognised expatriate
writer, helped to introduce broader English literature to Australia as well as introduce
Australian literature to the rest of the world. One of the important aspects of Australian
literary internationalization is that the interest in these ―inter-national‖ writers spills
over to study interest of Australian non-expatriate writing.
2.2 Hazzard‘s Expatriate Ideas
Hazzard wrote four novels, two short story collections and five non-fiction article
collections that included essays and book reviews, almost all of them have international
backgrounds or topics and some have strong links with Australia. The main story in The
Bay of Noon was set in Naples in Italy. The stories in Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories
took place in many locations in England, the United States and Switzerland. People in
13
Glass Houses: Portraits from Organization Life, Countenance of Truth: the United
Nations and the Waldheim Case, Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the
Self-Destruction of the United Nations, all condemned the bureaucracy of the United
Nations where Hazzard worked for ten years (1952-1962). The Transit of Venus traced
the experiences of sisters Grace and Caro Bell who were born in Australia. Typical of a
Hazzard novel, both of them desired to leave Australia and finally they fulfilled their
dreams of travelling. From her collection of published works, it is obvious that Hazzard
is not just a romantic novelist, but also a serious Australian humanist writer with
responsibilities toward the development of humanity.
In an interview, Hazzard said: ―although there is an Australian element in it (The
Great Fire), it‘s not much rooted in Australia, not much of the action takes place in
Australia‖ (ABC TV). Actually, most of her works, to most Australians, have an exotic
and high-cultural European flavour; while to readers from other countries, they have an
affinity with Australia. Her knowledge and admiration of Europe and European culture
is obvious: quotations of European writers and poets, and depictions of Italy can be
found in most of her novels. When she was young, reading stimulated her curiosity and
imagination of Europe. Later, her travel experiences widened her worship of European
culture to encompass an affinity for the complete heritage of humanity. In The Great
Fire, her depiction of a beautiful and tranquil Japanese temple, her sympathy for
common Japanese civilians, her near-photographical descriptions of Chinese poverty,
contrasted to its lost culture, were all beyond the experience of most Australians.
It is not rare for some expatriate writers to be criticized for having no eligibility
to write about the country that they have left for years.
Viewed as an expatriate writer, then, Hazzard is herself consigned to a
recent past of departure, with the spatial move of expatriatism reconfigured
as a temporality, or more precisely as an anachronism, a redundant
displacement, a journey Australians no longer need to make after the birth or
arrival of a distinctive national culture in the second half of the twentieth
century (Olubas, 2010b:2).
However, from some of Hazzard‘s works, such as Letter from Australia, Coming
of Age in Australia, it is not difficult to discover that Hazzard‘s perspective of Australia
is far from deficient. Her broad global knowledge helped her to understand Australia
more profoundly and see more than those who had never departed Australia‘s shores. A
concept reinforced by Rutherford‘s observations,
I realize that some people would argue that by leaving Australia I had
surrendered my birthright to comment on it…I would reject that notion. I
argue that instead of being in a disadvantaged position I am in a very
privileged one by virtue of being born into one culture, knowing it intimately
and then moving on to experience another. This I believe should put me in
the position to say something relevant about Australian society with the
possibility of seeing Australian values in relation to the values of another
society and culture (Rutherford 16).
14
According to an Australian government report, any Australian citizen or other
person with ―an historic physical link to Australia who is residing overseas‖ can be
classified as an Australian expatriate (Legal and Constitutional References Committee
of Australia 5). Hazzard, though did not accept the designation of expatriate. Despite
this rejection, she continued to display an Australian character in many of her works.
Australian culture and history was the topic of some of her works and Letter from
Australia was a published article on Australian issues. Subsequent to this, the most
important work by Hazzard is Coming of Age in Australia.
Coming of Age in Australia, published in 1984, is the collection of Shirley
Hazzard‘s Boyer lectures mostly written around Australian themes. In these lectures,
Hazzard expressed her ideas about nationality and humanism; she also showed her
responsibility to the nation as an Australian.
A belief that Australia‘s manifold advantages can contribute inimitably
to a world in need of stimulus and conciliation. In that sense these talks are
an appeal to Australia to consider and value the entire context of civilised
human endeavour, so that their own rich patrimony may take its place there,
and ripen, and fulfil its destiny‖ (Hazzard, 1985:7).
The Great Fire‘s backgrounds are in post-war Japan, Hong Kong, England,
Australia and New Zealand. Parallels to Shirley Hazzard‘s personal experiences can be
found in this book. It is a love story, but also an historical story. Hazzard‘s realistic
portrait of the filthy post-war streets in Guangdong, of colonized Hong Kong, defeated
Japan, boring life in Australia and New Zealand, and the ruins of London, are all
accusations of the inhumanity of war. Accusations reinforced by the details of a
Japanese young man who committed suicide, by Aldred‘s friends who died in the war,
and by the women who lost husbands and sons.
The Great Fire also depicts political horrors and their impacts upon humanity
(such as the dropping of nuclear bomb on Hiroshima), and political disruption such as
the unraveling of the colonial system. The Great Fire is a centralized embodiment of
Hazzard‘s globalized and Australian writing characteristics. As an internationalized
Australian writer, her deep concern of Australian culture and world civilization can be
found in this novel. Since her writing covers the turning point in Australian literature
from realism to modernism and from nationalism to internationalism, this study of her
works can reveal aspects of the tendency of changes in Australia and Australian
literature that have occurred since the 1960s.
In the relationship between nation and self, individual identity and national identity
are interwoven and inseparable. Thus nation and self are interdependent. Many
expatriate writers have a sense of perplexity and anxiety which comes from the culture
conflict in their expatriation. For example, ancient exile literature was always about the
sense of wandering, rootlessness, and desolation, such as that found in ancient Hebrew
literature. The modern diaspora literature and expatriate writing is not separable from
the pursuit of identity associated with colonialism and post-colonialism.
In Australian literary history, there were many writers who left Australia and
15
looked for richer cultural soil in Europe. Karen Ruth Brooks analyses this phenomenon
in her book Odysseus Unbound and Penelope Unstable: Contemporary Australian
Expatriate Women Writers:
The gradual exodus of Australian writers to English and other shores
emerges, particularly from the early part of the twentieth century onwards, as
a distinct cultural phenomenon. The mindless materialism of postwar
Australia and the conformity of the suburbs made many writers feel excluded,
or exiled, at ‗home‘. There was a sense of not belonging any where, and so
expatriation seemed a desirable option. In relocating, perhaps a
spiritual/cultural ‗home‘ could be discovered. To some, expatriation was
simply an affordable and practical means of seeing the world (Brooks 4).
When expatriates leave their countries, the relationship with their motherland can
be broken and they become ―the others‖ of their nations: they become ―outsiders‖
instead of ―insiders‖. As a result, a sense of isolation from their hometown develops, to
which the most obvious manifestation is a need to belong. The associated sense of
perplexity and anxiety can be experienced during or after travelling.
In ―‗At Home in More than One Place‘ Cosmopolitanism in the Work of Shirley
Hazzard‖, Olubas asserts that
[i]nternationally, she is one of the great writers of movement, passage,
transposition and transit, … Throughout her career, Hazzard has crafted a
consistently cosmopolitan perspective, arguing that ‗it‘s a privilege—to be at
home in more than one place‘, and refuting the designation ‗expatriate‘: ‗I‘m
not even sure which country I‘d be an expatriate of‘ (9).
Shirley Hazzard, who called herself an Australian, travelled, wrote and published
her works mostly outside Australia. In the context of internationalisation of Australian
literature, it is not surprising that a thinking of cosmopolitanism grew from her
expatriate experiences. As Robert Dixon said ―Australian writers and Australian
literature have never been confined to the boundaries of the nation‖ (Dixon, 2007:20).
In ―Shirley Hazzard‘s Australia: Belated Reading and Cultural Mobility‖, a process
is described ―with the figures of expatriate writer and national icon discovering each
other, unexpectedly, through a cosmopolitan act of cultural return‖ (Olubas 10).
However, Shirley Hazzard‘s is different in the following four aspects.
First, to Shirley Hazzard, travelling was not the reason which caused the sense of
perplexity. Her culture conflict had been experienced since she was a teenager, before
she left Australia and before she developed an enhanced global knowledge. This sense
of conflict was a result of collisions between geographical fetters in reality and her
imaginary travelling. Many expatriates look for identity and orientation in travelling
because they think they have no identity, while Hazzard travelled to shatter her old
identity and to seek a new one. Her travelling was full of surprises and delight.
Second, in expatriation, Hazzard developed a more comprehensive knowledge of
her mother land and the rest of the world. Before she left Australia at the age of 15, she
felt that Australia was culturally deficient; she had an ongoing hope of leaving.
16
However, after years of expatriation, her understanding of Australia was more objective
and she maintained a strong unbreakable link with it. It is expatriation that has made a
deeper and more mature Shirley Hazzard.
Third, Hazzard oriented herself as a pilgrim for cultures rather than a nostalgic
exile. The main reason lies in the different drivers of her expatriation. To Hazzard, it is
important to pursue knowledge and humanism, rather than concentrate on either her
identity or a national identity. This makes her writing more cosmopolitan.
Fourth, Shirley Hazzard‘s concept of ―imaginary homeland‖ (Rushdie) is to build a
new, cosmopolitan humanist world, which, of course, includes her motherland Australia.
Hazzard is not perplexed about the future. Many expatriates hold an image of an ideal
homeland, and many of them dream of ending their travelling in order to belong to their
idealised homeland. In contrast, Hazzard‘s ―imaginary homeland‖ is not geographical,
nor religious, or political, but cultural, humanist, universal and cosmopolitan. The
destination of travelling is not returning to a homeland in memory, but to a new and
better place in the future.
In summary, Hazzard always knows where she is, what she wants to do, who she is,
and where her destination is. Though her expatriation embodies the conflicts between
cultures, the theme of pursuing identity and the longing for spiritual homeland, the
ground where she stands is not a geographical or political country, nor the culture of a
particular country. As an expatriate writer, Hazzard was not adversely affected by
conflicts and alienation associated with her travelling, but tried to realize an interactive
dialogue between civilizations, bridge the gap between them, and reconstruct a new
cultural viewpoint which is more universal, more inclusive and more cosmopolitan.
17
CHAPTER THREE: TRAVELLING IN THE GREAT FIRE
3.1 Dreaming of Travelling
Because of a certain ―desire‖, expatriates leave their countries, so travelling is an
important part of expatriation. ―I travel to define and assert my existential identity. I
travel therefore I am‖ (Mewshaw 3). Travelling can satisfy people‘s imagination, their
desire to leave the ―familiar‖, and fulfill a dream to live ―elsewhere‖. Many intellectuals
take travelling as a pilgrimage, by which they can find the beauty, the truth, the self, and
the epiphany. ―Modern Western travel culture, … has played a dubious role …, as a
force and symbol of enfranchisement and liberation, on the one hand, and equally of
containment and exploitation, on the other ‖ (Clarke, 2009b:145).
Australia in Shirley Hazzard‘s memory was very boring, philistine, ignorant and
arrogant, which could only make her feel ―helpless‖ (Hazzard, 1985:10) and want to
escape. This feeling was expressed several times in some of her works. To Hazzard,
there was in books another world, a totally different world—a world which was more
profound and cultural. Culturally, Australia is widely considered closely linked with
British and European culture.
[T]here are dense networks of close attachment and inter-familial
connections between the imperial ‗core‘ (Britain) and an Australia that,
certainly in the 1940s, could still be characterized as an example of a
‗colonial fragment‘ society (Prada 41).
Hazzard (and I am sure there are many like her) was different to most Australians
of the 1940s: most Australians fought for a living on their new continent; art and culture
was of little importance in their lives. Knowledge was not widely appreciated. Hazzard
and her sister, because of their well-to-do family background, didn‘t have to worry
about livelihood and were able to develop their personal interests in literature. In an
interview, Hazzard talked about her literature education: because of the hostilities of
World War II, she could not go to university after moving to Hong Kong at the age of
sixteen. Instead, she was recruited to the Special Operations branch of British
Intelligence where there were many young literature enthusiasts and a rich literary
atmosphere prevailed. Hazzard was a fluent reader at four years of age and she became
18
fond of subjects such as English literature, history and geography. She started to read
Browning at eight and Dickens at ten, she read Gibbon, Byron, Clough, and it was in
Hong Kong that she began to read Chekhov, Turgene and Dostoyevsky (McClatchy).
However, she recognized that ―whoever in Australia cultivated knowledge would have
to accept a loneliness that was not simply the solitude that learning requires and desires,
but a daunting and beleaguered isolation‖ (Hazzard , 1985:13). Because of ―a stroke of
great good fortune‖ (13), Hazzard could fulfill her dream of traveling which caused a
great change to her life and of her world outlook.
The desire for travelling is also a main theme in The Great Fire. Aldred Leith‘s
friend Peter Exley was an art fancier, born to an Australian legal family. His parents
expected him to follow his father‘s footsteps and study law. His love of art isolated him
in Australia where it was expected by all that he should become a lawyer. When he
managed to finally achieve his chosen artistic pilgrimage in Italy, he painfully realized
that he could never become an artist and he subsequently served in the army where he
met Aldred Leith. After the war, Peter obtained a position investigating war criminals in
Hong Kong where he was infected with poliomyelitis after he tried to save a sick
Chinese girl. His life was in a state of despair and he tried to commit suicide but was
saved. Finally he could not escape from the fate of returning to Australia.
Peter Exley‘s infatuation for art was considered to have no future and to be
unhealthy in Australia. He read ―Homer, Hardy, and Tolstoy.‖ (Hazzard, 2004:116). But
―loneliness grew on him with his relegation to the statelessness of art. There was
Europe, remote as Paradise and more convincing‖ (116). It seemed that all the people
around him tried to hinder his development in art and ―[h]is dread now was to be
trapped at the Antipodes‖ (117). In Peter‘s eyes, life in Australia was monotonous and
tedious. People there tended to advocate stability and certainty, but resist and reject
mobility and uncertainty. Success based on material or social status became a standard
for measuring everything in life. Pragmatism to the extreme moved towards egoism.
Peter said:
I‘d come from the land of the single hope attained. One thing didn‘t
lead to another, but was the sole consummation. … The evidence achieved,
you could die happily. … The effort of my exotic interest, of getting myself
abroad and discovering ten thousand paintings, learning a language—all that
my fellow students took for granted as preliminary, that was the immense
feat on which I‘d expended my energies (120).
To travelers, destination was not the mere purpose of departure. The most tempting
was the understanding and sublimation brought with variety, mobility and experience of
travelling. From Australia, Peter passed through many historical cities—―all the sacred
places of pilgrimage, the stations of the Australian cross‖ (118). After setting foot in
Italy, ―he reached Florence three weeks later, having passed through whole stages of
growth. … That spring, in Tuscany, was my first in a deciduous land. The first spring in
the world, as far as I was concerned‖ (118).
Peter dreamed of making a living through art, and to be an expatriate, living in an
19
exotic environment. However,
[w]hen I got to Europe, I wasn‘t even at the beginning, among those
younger than I who‘d spent their lives in full awareness. Isolation had made
me arrogant, too. I wasn‘t prepared for the quality of thought in others. …
Most painful of all was to recognise, once in a while, a passion greater than
my own. The excuse of war enabled me to withdraw (120).
Peter had to give up his pursuit of art, not because of losing interest, but because
his limited growth determined that his artistic attainment could not reach a higher level.
Coming back from the battlefield, Peter had a job related to law, but he still found a
satisfaction from it: not because he started to like this job, but ―in a previous life, he had
acted: he had boarded a ship and sailed. Had landed in what was, with all difficulties, a
chosen life. He might still choose‖ (137). Peter would leave Australia even opening a
law firm in Britain. Escaping from Australia—a country lacking choices—was Peter
and many Australian young people‘s only hope to obtain freedom.
Compared to Peter, Helen was lucky and finally became one of the few expatriates
in The Great Fire (Peter didn‘t, after all, escape; his fate was to go back to Australia
because of his illness). Born to a middle class but as utilitarian a family as Peter‘s,
Helen had a very keen and sensitive imagination in literature. She looked fragile, but
had to accept much responsibility, as imposed by her parents. She was firm and
forbearing inside, which was a good embodiment of Australian spirit. Helen lived
through her imagination, which was the only way that she could forget the cruel reality
of life. When she was exiled by her parents to New Zealand, she wrote in her letter to
Leith: ―These places that neither you nor I have seen, names of the far end of earth;
whereas you, at the heart of the world, walk on streets that I recognise‖ (254). The
centre of the whole world, in Helen‘s eyes, was in Europe with its ‗high culture‘, while
she was ―a girl transported to the last curve of the globe‖ (262). The complacency and
stupor in those people who had decided to settle down permanently in Australia and
New Zealand made her feel frightened. ―She wished there were somewhere else to go
instead of home‖ (272). ―‗When shall I sail?‘—and in her mind sketched the map of the
world‖ (271). Besides escaping from the same environment to which Peter had had the
same impulse, she also wanted to flee from the destiny of most Australian women.
When Helen and her friend Barbara stood in her kitchen, ―as far as the world was
concerned, they might stand thus forever, in this or any similar kitchen. Of that menace,
both were morally aware‖ (290). The affair with Leith was her only opportunity to flee
and be independent from her parents‘ control. She grasped it—she leapt into the sea
from the ship on which the family had boarded for her brother Ben‘s funeral in the
United States, and swam back to shore—and thus she achieved her dream of escape as
well as fulfilling her love for Leith.
3.2 Meditating for Self-improvement
20
Travelling is the dream of young Hazzard and many protagonists in The Great
Fire. The reason lies in the desire for knowledge, experience, growth, or we can say,
self-improvement. ―Travel for education has a long and laudable traditions‖ (Mewshaw
9). The loneliness, hardship and meditation of the journey are the best way to achieve
transcendence. Life in Australia in the 1940s, to teenage Hazzard, was tedious,
monotonous, indelicate and ignorant of cultivated taste. This submerged her into
high-minded solitude and desperate despair. ―It is the feeling of not belonging to the
place in which one lives and, therefore, it may lead to alienation‖ (Prada 41). Hazzard‘s
only escape was to immerse herself in the fragrance of art. Imagination was the young
lady‘s only means of transport to the remote starry civilizations—Europe, the Orient,
the north.
My childhood had been spent in Australia—a remote, philistine country
in those years, and very much a male country, dominated by a defiant
masculinity that repudiated the arts. Even in a large, busy city like Sydney,
there was little music, there were few museums. There was natural beauty,
but almost no visual culture, and even a wide antipathy to painting and
painters. What we did have was literature, which came through our British
forebears. It was in reading that one could truly live: in one‘s mind, in books,
in the world. A form of pilgrimage (Hazzard, 2008:13).
Aspiration to discover the unknown and seek greatness and elegance tempted her
to escape from the blind alley of Australia. It brought her great excitement when she
had the chance to travel to Japan, Hong Kong and Britain, which she called ―a
pilgrimage or a stroke of great good fortune‖ (13). The romantic depictions in literature
would be resolved by her own eyes; the spiritual and imagined Utopia would be reached
by her own feet step by step. The girl aged fifteen, a new blossom, being out of tune
with her surroundings, dreamed of departure and arrival, touching the skin of history
and listening to the whisper of art, while in a neglected remote corner of the world. In
the lengthy journey through cultures, flashes of a sacred epiphany, of profound
understanding of solitude and greatness, as well as the grasp of identity and eternal
humanism were revealed.
The coast of my native land supplied, in my case, a first glimpse of the
unknown: in the lights—seen from a deck on the first night of sailing to the
Orient—of Australian towns that lay beyond the range of my landlocked
childhood excursions. Those clustered lights gave the first sensation of
passing a barrier…I had read Conrad‘s ―Youth‖, and lived, in the moment,
the closing fragment of that story—waking to the East ―so old, so mysterious,
resplendent and somber, living and changed, full of danger and promise‖
(21).
In The Great Fire, Leith‘s travelling is also a journey of meditation, growth and
epiphany. Leith‘s arrival in Japan begins the narrative of the book. On a train to
Hiroshima, his life stories were revealed to readers: Leith‘s father, Olive Leith, a
well-known best-selling writer, ―had himself flourished the trick of mobility, fretting
21
himself into receptively and fresh impression‖ (Hazzard, 2004:5). Olive‘s career was
writing novels—telling people romantic travelling stories in words. Leith had travelled
a lot with his father since he was young, ―In the thoughtful child, as in the imaginative
and travelled schoolboy, the desire had been for growth: to be up and away‖ (5). In
travelling, life is filled with curiosity and it brings unpredictable variables. Leith‘s
future is full of unlimited dreams, like young Hazzard overlooking the boundless ocean
from the coast in Sydney. Leaving enables a new arrival. In Aldred Leith‘s life, for
years ―arrival had kept its interest. Excitement dwindling, curiosity had increased.
Occasion revived an illusion of discovery, as if one woke in a strange room to wonder
afresh not only where but who one was; to shed assumptions, even certainties‖ (6).
Hazzard here opens up the traveler‘s dilemma: the point of travelling is to find new
discoveries, and to satisfy the imagination and curiosity for exoticism, even to explore
identities. Pursuit of mobility is to break away from certainty, but it may, in the long run,
make uncertain the value of that mobility. In the solitude of travelling, Leith found:
There had been the singular, transcendent encounters. He had no wish
to explicate or control. The collective scramble of soldiering had confirmed a
need of solitude—a measure of which could be created at will, even among
others. From events of war he had wrested the lonely elements of maturity.
He wanted, now, discoveries to which he sensed himself accessible: that
would alter him, as one is altered, involuntarily, by a great work of art or an
effusion of silent knowledge (33-34).
―I travel therefore I am‖ (Mewshaw 9). The solitude in travelling helps people
eschew the clamor of the world, listen to the voice from their deep soul, self-examine in
the world of chaos, finally achieve transcendence and come home to themselves. After
the flames of war that spread over the entire world, people could experience ―the
illusory quiet of the world. Small flaring hubbub of humanity, and the encompassing
night‖ (142). The quietness and order of the world and the harmony between spirit and
form, require tranquil meditation, which, is more likely to be achieved in solitary
travelling. Leith‘s book on China is ―in its way a meditation‖ (154). Hazzard‘s The
Great Fire is also a meditation, in which both Leith and Hazzard are seeking the most
valuable attributes of the world. For travellers, ―the experience was in some measure
spiritual, touching inmost things, precipitating humility, knowledge, and change‖
(Hazzard, 2008:17).
3.3 Grasping the Light of Humanism
Humanism is considered one of the major themes and features in Shirley
Hazzard‘s writing. ―Central to Said‘s and Hazzard‘s ethical stance, as Apter and Olubas
see it, is a capacity to identify beyond the self, beyond the ideologies of nationalism and
colonialism, that drives from what Apter calls an ‗emancipatory humanism‘‖ (Dixon,
2010b:272).
Hazzard‘s
humanism
is
considered
a
universal,
22
national-boundary-transcending ideology. In many of her works, including The Great
Fire, Hazzard tried to develop an ideology of tolerance to different cultures and ideas,
or, to difference. This tolerance indicates that individuals and nations should be allowed
to act on its own way on the basis of universal humanism. This mutual respect and
tolerance came from individuals‘ and nations‘ fight against restraints. Different
countries‘ cultures should be considered as fruit of humanity and each nation‘s denial
and disrespect to it is immature. The Great Fire is a great embodiment of this idea.
Incompatible with the prevailing Australian cultural environment, Shirley
Hazzard held a dream of travelling and yearning for high European culture. Travelling
in places with deep cultural roots is like a pilgrimage to her. Of all the places she
travelled, Italy was her favourite, because of its art works, its cultural landscape, its
deep historical foundation and its human spirit.
Those of us who, when young, chose ―to live‖ in the Italy of the
postwar decades felt we were doing just that: living more completely among
the scenes and sentiments of a humanism the New World could not provide.
The Italian admixture of immediacy and continuity, of the long perspective
and the intensely personal, was then reasserting itself after years of eclipse. It
was a time not of affluence but of renewal, and Italy again offered to
travelers her antique genius for human relations—a tact, an expansiveness
never quite without form. One was drawn, too, by beauty that owed as much
to centuried endurance as to the luminosity of art and that seemed, then, to
create an equilibrium as lasting as nature‘s. Like the historian Jakob
Burckhardt, we felt all this was ours ―by right of admiration‖ (Hazzard,
2008:2).
In The Great Fire, Olive and Aldred Leith, Ted, the French general and others,
transcending the barriers between nations and races, ruminated and examined the value
of civilizations. ―Hazzard insists that her protagonists, Aldred and Peter Exley, are set
apart from the military and intelligence apparatus by their commitment to humanist
values and the ideals of European high culture‖ (Dixon, 2010b:266). They learned to
absorb and assimilate nutrients from different cultures which they take as common
human heritage rather than Driscolls, Rysom and other smug Western people, who
blockade themselves within high walls of nationalism, immersing themselves in the
blind superiority, willfully despising and trampling Eastern culture as the alien and ―the
others‖.
Aldred Leith was an ideal humanist in The Great Fire. He was an intellectual in
the army and he had received a good education. His understanding of culture is different
from most people involved in the war; this is mainly embodied in his attitude towards
China and Japan. He had walked across China during its civil war and was writing a
book on China when he arrived in Japan. Aldred and Olive Leith did not regard Eastern
culture as inferior to European culture although Asia after WWII was devastated and
suffering from extreme poverty. Furthermore, Aldred did not conceal the influence that
China exerted on him: ―The first renewal was coming East. China drives all else to a
23
periphery, for a time‖ (Hazzard, 2004:193). His affection for China began when he
lived in Shanghai as a child. ―Missing China is my habit of years. I was even homesick
of China while I was there, a paradox emblematic of that great and enigmatic land‖ (48).
He felt deeply sorry for Chinese ancient culture which was damaged by wars and he
―set himself to render consequences of war within an ancient and vanishing society‖
(34). He wrote a book on China because China was ―evaporating, transforming. The last
days of all their centuries should be witnessed and recounted by someone who was not
a spy, not a sociologist, beholden to no one‖ (56). Leith believed that it was necessary
to record Chinese culture, merely as human inheritance rather than military information
or as a research subject, to which he sensed a feeling of responsibility as a member of
the human race. Olive Leith, also a traveler himself, wrote in his last letter to his son:
I follow your own Eastern adventure keenly and look forward to its
fruits. You do right, I think, to brood on that astounding scene before its
recast—before it gathers planetary momentum and loses arcane fascination.
However, the consciousness of a last time, in the sighting of places or
persons, can be a somber business, which pierces even in youth, and
multiplies with age (165).
When Leith settled in Hiroshima, he started to learn Japanese, and he visited a
local Buddhist temple deep in a mountainous area. When his car whizzed past
impoverished Japanese people, a feeling of uneasiness entered his mind: ―The role of
conqueror remains alien and distasteful‖ (47). In many Western people‘s eyes, such as
the Driscoll couple, Japanese were alien marginal ―others‖. When Barry Driscoll
shouted hysterically at the noble Japanese young man, with whom Leith subsequently
made eye-to-eye contact, there was an exchange of mutual understanding, of dignity
grounded in human understanding which exceeded national categories.
The theme of his book on China ―of loss and disruption was pervasive now
throughout the world‖ (34). In The Great Fire, Hazzard‘s depiction of war highlighted
the trampling of human dignity rather than the rights and wrongs between countries. In
the air diffused in the camps of victors, ―there is something equivocal about having
prevailed so completely over one‘s fellow man—I don‘t speak of systems or regimes,
but of individuals‖ (47). As Hazzard exhorted in The Coming of Age in Australia,
common humanity should be above politics and bureaucracy. ―The prayers and hymns,
the same God –is –love‖ (228).
CHAPTER FOUR: BELONGING IN THE GREAT FIRE
24
4.1 Hopes of Belonging
Belonging seems to be an eternal topic of expatriate writing. As detailed in
Chapter Two, many expatriates hold an image of the ideal homeland, and some of them
dream of finishing travelling and gaining a belonging and homeland. When discussing
resident foreigners in Italy, Hazzard said ―a life without responsibility can pall, and
most such people will go home at last, having exhausted not Italy but their own capacity
for aimlessness‖ (Hazzard, 2008:4). She also believed that ―the colourful scene will not
compensate indefinitely for a sense of exclusion from the exchange of thought and wit‖
(Hazzard, 2008:4).
However, in The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard showed a special sense of
belonging. She seems to try to tell us that the sense of belonging is with love, and is a
centre from which departures are made.
Like many people drifting for many years afar from their hometown, Leith, who
walked through the smoke of gunpowder, also seemed to be looking forward to
establishing a home. ―Two years ago, as war was ending, he had intended to create for
himself a fixed point, some centre from which departures might be made‖ (Hazzard,
2004:6). Departures are setting out as well as leaving. The process of travelling itself is
a process of leaving and arriving. Before Leith left Japan for Hong Kong, he had a
strange feeling for a traveller: ―he had left so many places in recent years, but partings
had scarcely counted: he had forgotten that partings could create this involuntary
pathos‖ (99).
After developing a profound knowledge of ancient Chinese culture and
experiencing hard-hit Japan, Leith found a sense of belonging both in and out of his
country, in the ruined cities of England, in the places with his lover. ―Since the night of
Gardiner‘s death, the night of the twirling girls on Ita Jima, I rediscovered memories
distinct from war. Often of women, of my youthful lovers—Aurora, Gigliola‖ (48-49).
He wrote in his diary: ―My current images of women appear less like memories than a
means of restoring life to what has mattered and was passing eclipsed by war‖ (84).
There are so many injured souls in war. There are some indirect descriptions of gory
battle scenes in General Gardner‘s memories before his death and in Peter‘s
investigations for war crimes. Everyone in the war ―went to pieces‖ (128). And after
war, ―life was being improvised anew, if not afresh‖ (101). If departure is for satisfying
curiosity and getting rid of certainty, then ―what I came back for, to be loved like this‖
(151). In The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard attacked the devastation imposed on people
by the war. Everyone in this novel was hurt deeply, and where they could settle their
hearts was not a particular place geographically, but with love. Love should be the
eternal shelter for broken souls.
Home, to travellers, has a special meaning: they leave for opportunities, changes,
maybe a dream for knowledge, or self-discovery. When they feel tired, they miss home.
When Leith talked with Talbot about hometown, Leith said: ―My home, if I have one, is
near the North Sea. … He noticed how often he qualified the reference to home: If I
25
have one: I‘m mostly away‖ (23). Talking about hometown, to a long-term drifting
person, was like an overstepping, because their knowledge of their hometown stopped
when they left. They became ―outsiders‖ instead of ―insiders‖. However, hometown
―has its own beauty‖ (22). After Leith went back to England, ―return‖ became a new
theme. ―It‘s new to me to find a home—or to find myself attached to it, even while I
need my absences in London. Perhaps the same will be true for you, Helen, who‘ve also
led a wandering life. Not that we regret, how could we, our années de pèlerinage‖ (279).
In The Great Fire, Hazzard did not diminish the hope of living. Those who went out to
war were more mature, and knew more of the world and themselves. Love could still be
found in the ruins left by war. Love was the last and a permanent place for injured
spirits. ―Many had died. But not she, not he; not yet‖ (314).
4.2 ―Still Call Australia Home‖
After leaving Australia when she was 15, Hazzard did not return to Australia until
the 1960s. Despite this lengthy absence, her admiration of different civilizations and her
cosmopolitan thinking did not affect her identity as an Australian. In many of her
fictions, she wrote about Australian‘s stories in different countries, and the concerns of
Australian society and culture are an important part of many of her works.
When Hazard was invited to give the Boyer lecture for the ABC in 1984,
Australia was no longer the same place as that in her memory when she left. Australia
from her teenage memory was not very pleasent, but after twenty years or so living in
Europe and America, Hazzard had a new perception of the country. ―It seems to me that
Australia has long since come of age. Experience is there, and humanity, character, and
conscience. Only the realisation is awaited, and the inspired acceptance‖ (Hazzard,
1985:7). One reason is Australia itself changed a lot in almost every aspect; another is
that many years travelling in different countries and cultures helped her forge a more
profound, more comprehensive and more objective understanding of Australian society,
culture, history and tradition. ―… [A]broad for over twenty years in Europe and
America…there are some aspects on which I can look both with my native Australian
eye, and with the gaze of an outsider …‖ (24).
Coming of Age in Australia is a centralized reflection of Shirley Hazzard‘s
cultural and national viewpoint, in which she explored Australian nationality,
nation-wide pursuit of knowledge and the relationship between them. Universal
humanism is valued higher than nationality in her book. When she published this book,
Australia had achieved tremendous economic successes, but, according to Hazzard, in
order to rise up in culture, join the mainstream and erase ―cultural cringe‖, Australian
intellectuals and masses needed to learn how to think independently, and learn to look
inward as well as outward to achieve maturity: ―The issue is larger than mere identity: it
is maturity‖ (32). In her opinion, there are an increasing number of Australians growing
and maturing:
Some Australians will look inward, and ask harder questions than have
26
yet been raised in this country; they will look outward, also, to other thinking
people—for opinions, rather than just for praise. I think Australians will
rediscover the world, and find much there, even now, that they had dismissed
before (32).
―Australia has patterned herself, without widespread objection, on the
contemporary ideals of other societies‖ (27). In other words, Hazzard thinks Australians
are already on the way to open-minded, maturity, spiritual growth and self-awareness.
Australian scholar Robert Dixon has a similar opinion on Australian culture and
literature:
In the last twenties years, the field of Australian literature has achieved
a certain maturity or density that allows it to be more or less self-sustaining
as a ‗national literature‘ in relations to the flows of globalisation. But clearly,
since the 1990s at least, it is no longer confined, if in fact it ever was, to the
boundaries of the nation: each of its constituent parts is also linked to the
wider movement of people, ideas and cultural forms that we associate with
globalisation (Dixon, 2010a:120).
In The Great Fire, Hazzard was far from economical with her criticisms of
Australian people. This has caused a certain level of dissatisfaction. When Peter stayed
in a dormitory with Rysom, a vulgar Australian officer, he was thinking:
If we two weren‘t Australians, this would be Russian literature: I
brooding over my books, Rysom by the window singing Lensky‘s aria. But
literary Russia was no place for Australians. Reverie by the open window in
the sweet futility of a mild evening was yet to strike the Australian male as a
requirement. … Life with Rysom had nurtured lassitude—dragging Peter
down to the bottom (137).
The excessive and blind manifestation of manliness pushed it to another extreme,
and it became a joke to Hazzard: Barry Driscoll‘s hysterical shouting at the Japanese
young man; Rysom‘s nervous laughing and bravado; the mockery from Talbot‘s friends;
and Ben‘s comment ―The Australian male is not good at self-doubt. Someone else must
always be to blame. Otherwise, Aldred, a nation on its knees‖ (167). Many Australians
try to remove all European influences, a symptom of an independent national culture
that developed during last century. In the meantime, Hazzard‘s description of Australian
males‘ manliness makes it a satire to contemporaneous tough guys‘ stories which
dominated Australian literature for decades. From an outsider‘s perspectives, Australian
manliness can become a ridiculous arrogance or even a form of ignorance. Though
being much criticized, by lifting the veil of nationalism, Hazzard created vivid
portrayals of Australians.
In The Great Fire, besides Peter Exley, Helen and Ben, Hazzard created another
positive Australian young figure, the young soldier Brian Talbot. He served in Japan
after the war. He told the Briton, Leith: ―We weren‘t taught about trees. … We heard
more about British trees, from the songs and books. … Seemed more spectacular than
the gums and the Bush (in Australia)‖ (23). Talbot‘s confession indicated that Australian
27
culture was still closely linked with British values and was somewhat overwhelmed by
it. He knew no more of his home than of Britain where he had never been, and even
trees in Britain were regarded as being more spectacular than those in Australian. He
also dreamed of travelling and increasing his experience, even though he expected that
his future grandchildren would not want to listen to his stories.
However, a sense of belonging attached to Australia can be sensed from Talbot: to
settle-down after travelling was taken for granted, like the chaos after war that would
eventually become a new order. The place for settling-down was Australia, a decision
which wouldn‘t be changed by knowledge of Britain learned in school. Australia was,
and still would be, his home. His belonging, as well as being ―his tracks‖ (201).
Stationed in Japan as a victor, Talbot struggled with the dilemma: ―You despised Japs,
you ridiculed and killed them. They‘d behaved like animals. You didn‘t learn their lingo.
You didn‘t study any language, even your own‖ (25). And ―he could imagine the hoots
of his mates. Yet knew that, to them, he would defend the idea (of learning Japanese)‖
(26).
Staying with Leith in feeble Japan, the seeds of humanism in this Australian
young man‘s mind germinated. Even though he decided to go back to his hometown, his
travelling experience taught him self-examination, taught him how to observe and think
independently. He learned to evaluate and appreciate different civilizations with
universal humanism rather than narrow nationalism. To Shirley Hazzard, Australia‘s
achievement towards maturity and self-improvement needed more people like Talbot.
They went through the war; knew this world well; kept pace with the world; and had a
realistic plan for the future. As she said in Coming of Age in Australia:
Some Australians will look inward, and ask harder questions then have
yet been raised in this country; they will look outward, also, to other thinking
people-for opinions, rather than just for praise. I think Australians will
rediscover the world, and find much there, even now, that they had dismissed
before. The strong impulse for intellectual and spiritual growth here cannot
be shouted down with hoots of ―cultural cringe‖ … there can be an important
release of imaginative and cerebral energies in Australia that will ultimately
refresh the world‘s humanity (32-33).
4.3 ―At Home in More than One Place‖
In the last few decades, as an important component of expatriate writing,
cosmopolitanism is attracting increasingly greater attention from Australian literary
critics. One of the reasons is, as David Carter said ―[c]olonial experience can make
people appreciate and recognize that they are also ‗citizens of the world‘. There have
been a sizeable number of Australian intellectuals who have recognized this reality and
who have insisted that their role was to pursue universal values and to consider their
place and the place of Australia in the wider world‖ (Carter, 2006:160).
28
In Robert Dixon‘s ―Australian Literature and the Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization‖, he asserts that ―Australian literature is poised at a moment of change,
and a series of key issues has emerged that represent different ways of looking at its
future‖ (115). Then, he raises several questions about Australian literature:
[w]hat is its relation to the nation and to nationality? What is its relation
to other literatures in English, and to literatures other than English? In what
ways is Australian literature open to foreign influences and how is it received
abroad? How is Australian literature affected by globalization (115-16)?
In his questions, there is a sense that Australian literature should be studied in a
wider or, international context. According to his analysis, Australian literature studies
have passed through three phases during its history:
Cultural Nationalism (1920s-1960s)
The new nationalism and projecting Australia abroad (1970s-1980s)
Internationalizing Australian literature (1990s-present) (117).
During All these stages, various aspects and different schools of Australian
literature integrated and formed a unique literature canon with multiple dimensions. The
writers, who wrote in or about Australia, together with those who travelled overseas or
had alien flavors, should be considered as collaborators and complimentary pairs rather
than rivals. As Carter said: ―… literary culture in Australia must not be understood as
simply insular or belated. Australia has always been a point where a complex pattern of
cultural flows converged and then diverged throughout the structure of local
institutions‖ (Carter, 2010: 73).
Intellectuals have a great effect on the building of national identity: on one side,
intellectuals, through critical thinking, can understand more profoundly the
relationships between individuals and nation; on the other, their handling of discourse
power can abstract national characteristics, define nationality or even create a national
image for people. The generation of nationality is historical, but its generalization and
distillation relies to a great extent on intellectuals. ―In moving beyond her/his country of
birth, the expatriate is, in part, resisting the homogeneity of a national identity and the
reductive cultural subjectivity the national identity entails‖ (Brooks 10).
Hazzard did not totally reject her designation as an Australian writer but insists
her temperament is not national. As a representative of Australian expatriate and
cosmopolitan writers, Hazzard‘s ideas on nationality, arts and writing style are different
to Australian realism with a local flavor, which was typical among Australian writers in
the first half of twentieth century. To her, the appreciation for merits of art and humanity
should surpass the emphasis of nationality because real art and humanism are borderless.
In Coming of Age in Australia, Shirley Hazzard said:
I don‘t believe that the best of this country‘s (Australia) writers will
wish to rest on ‗identity‘: that is, to invite the risk that a work will be praised,
and even over-valued, for its Australian associations—however striking their
effects—rather than for its greater human truth. … These may come forth
29
here, and be recognised as creations that ultimately go beyond the issues of
nationality and contest, and of particular stages of social experience (28).
Eschewing nationalistic identifications, she does not consider herself as an
expatriate, and emphasized that ―it is a privilege - to be at home in more than one place‖
(cited in Olubas, 2010a:9). However, her novels are often about displaced people of
European descent in Hong Kong and Italy, or displaced Australians in London and New
York. Hazzard has knowledge of Australia and the rest of the world, which enables her
to observe Australia as an Australian as well as an international citizen. Hazzard‘s
comprehension of culture and humanism goes beyond the scope of nationalism; yet her
Australian-background imprint can still be easily traced between the lines of her writing.
As she said in Coming of Age in Australia: ―we should wish this earth as much genius
and joy as possible, rather than insisting that Australia somehow had a monopoly‖ (30).
The term cosmopolitanism derives from Greek cosmos Κόσμος (the Universe)
and polis Πόλις (city). So a cosmopolite is a ―citizen of the world‖ and the ―knowledge
of man as a citizen of the world‖ (Cheah 487) is essential. ―Cosmopolitanism
presupposes a positive attitude towards difference, a desire to construct broad
allegiances and equal and peaceful global communities of citizens who should be able
to communicate across cultural and social boundaries forming a universalist solidarity‖
(Ribeiro 19). Actually, ―cosmopolitanism relates basically to human values, it is the
doctrine of universal human rights which constitutes its vital core‖ (Conversi 36).
The increasing trend of globalization and internationalization of the modern
world accelerates the appearance of more cosmopolites. And as Pheng Cheah stated,
―cosmopolitanism is not necessarily opposed to nationalism‖ (Cosmopolitanism 489). A
respect of diversity and humanity can act in parallel to patriotism and nationalism. A
positive national identity should be confident and inclusive. The universal humanity
that cosmopolitanism promotes is a supplement and expansion to patriotism, and in a
sense, cosmopolitanism can be a positive balance for nationalism. The national identity
and spirit can be expressed by how ones own culture and the cultures of other countries
are viewed and treated. Australia is a migrant country, and Australian literature is
increasingly open and inclusive. The development of Australian aboriginal literature
and the growing influence from other countries‘ literature are evidence of cultural
plurality and internationalism.
In The Great Fire, Hazzard expressed her close attention to the future of
humanism after WWII. People like the Driscolls were a concern to this world according
to Shirley Hazzard. The Driscolls were a symbol of new power after the war. At a
dinner in the military camp,
[a]t each end of the longish table, a Driscoll kept watch. As Gardiner
had said, the Driscolls were disquieting as a symptom of new power: that
Melba and Barry should be in the ascendant was not what one had hoped
from peace. It did not even seem a cessation of hostilities (29).
The world war did not inspire people like the Driscolls to think about humanity,
but offered them a stepping stone for more power. ―They had grasped, eagerly enough,
30
at a future as yet unrevealed to Leith and to what they would have called his kind‖ (29).
When Hazzard said:
There is something equivocal about having prevailed so completely
over one‘s fellow man—I don‘t speak of systems or regimes, but of
individuals. Quite different, to my mind, from the extempore impersonations
of victor and vanquished that successively fell to your lot and mine in the
war (47).
Hypocritical, utilitarian, narrow, self-important and arrogant describes Driscoll‘s
group in The Great Fire. Their ascendance and seizing of power was an evidence of
utilitarian victory in this world. To Shirley Hazzard, this utilitarianism is not only the
reason of the heartlessness among people, the disrespect for the knowledge and the
depreciation of kindness in human nature, but also a challenge of common values,
civilization and humanism. This utilitarianism contradicts her ideal mainstream of the
world:
[a]ll human fellowship, all reason and imagination, all sensibility and
sense of decency, all our shared and confessed knowledge of our very selves,
and our affinity with this earth, can be understood now as a mainstream
bearing the survival and well-being of our race and of life on this planet.
These together create the civilised current to which each of us can contribute,
even by our simple act of recognition; the current whose accumulated
benefits we accept unthinking at every moment of our lives (Hazzard,
1985:26).
In the road towards self-improvement, of individuals or nations, Hazzard sees
free thinking as being crucial: free here means ―moving freely in the thought and art of
all the world, and all the centuries‖ (30). Like Aldred Leith in The Great Fire, whose
thinking, judgment and writing was free of any restriction—geography, discrimination,
nationality, politics or religion—but only derived from the respect and appreciation of
truth and human nation. By doing this, Australia can shake off the shadow of ―culture
cringe‖ (Hazzard, 1985:30) and achieve maturity which is ―larger now than mere
identity‖ (32). The pursuit of knowledge and civilization ―flourished … to the ultimate
advantage of all‖ and culture ―gradually developed among a populace at large‖ (29).
Hazzard also believes that ―there can be an important release of imaginative and
cerebral energies in Australia that will ultimately refresh the world‘s humanity‖ (33).
Relocating Australia in a larger context, Hazzard expanded her vision and
understanding of one country to human civilisation as a whole, and successfully
accomplished the transition from being an expatriate to a cosmopolitan.
31
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
Shirley Hazzard said in an interview: ―it is a privilege—to be at home in more
than one place‖. Born in relatively isolated 1930s‘ Australia, Hazard, from her early
years, had a strong impulse to leave and make a pilgrimage to her cultural Meccas. This
is a major theme of her life.
Young Hazzard fulfilled her dream of travelling. She visited and lived in many
Asian and European countries. In travelling, reading and writing, she formed a special
outlook on nationality. Different from many people living abroad, she was not confused
with her identity. National association to Shirley Hazzard was established in her
formative years, ―fifteen years of my life and you are already Australian for life by
doing that‖ (ABC TV). As such, many of Hazzard‘s works demonstrated her
responsibility as an Australian.
It was through her family‘s free choice that she left Australia and became an
expatriate, and eventually came to call Italy and America home. Although her writing
has obvious Australian elements, she is widely considered to be a globalized person and
globalization is one of the most glaring features of her writing. Travelling broadened
32
her vision and enabled her to think about the meaning of life, Australian society and the
broader world. Her understanding of belonging is not confined to the boundary of
nations. From different civilizations, she found a home for her spirit. What is embodied
in her works is a transcending outlook of nationality and a universal humanism based
upon the respect for human heritage.
In short, it was the pursuit of knowledge that drove her desire for travelling, in
which, she subsequently learned how to respect different cultures and learned how to
think freely. She was liberated from the constraints within the fences of nationalism.
That is to say, travelling revealed a belonging for her—a cosmopolitanism.
Hazzard‘s writing witnessed the turning of Australian literature from cultural
nationalism to globalization, of which, the gradual awareness of her works within the
Australian literary world can be evidenced. The special insight of expatriation,
travelling, and belonging makes her a very representative expatriate writer in Australian
literature.
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