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Dorothy Hewett's launch of
Eleanor Dark's Prelude to Christopher
This haunting, completely original, maverick novel was first published in 1934 but it was seven years before I actually discovered it. I was eighteen years old, sitting cross-legged on the second floor of the WA University Library trying to educate myself.
Books like Prelude to Christopher seemed to me then to exactly reflect the modern world I saw all around me: the expressionist style, the broken narrative line, the fractured point of view, the introspection -- all this was the language of modernism. I had already discovered it in some English and American writing, but this was Australia, still in bondage to realism. There was hardly a hint of change. Only Prelude to Christopher and three other Australian novels I read at the same time proved to me that modernism could actually exist in Australian writing. The others were Christina Stead's Seven Poor Men of Sydney, Eve Langley's The Pea Pickers and Kenneth Seaforth Mackenzie's The Young Desire It. I was an isolated WA writer, an eighteen year old trying to find her own voice. Poetic, introspective, even anarchic, these books changed my life.
But why was Prelude to Christopher such a trail blazer? What was it about this book that set my imagination on fire? First of all it was the style, it was the economical time frame -- four days of violent confrontation, of the sinister leaking of the past into the present. It is of course the brief time span that dictates the style, a brilliant elliptical stream of consciousness illuminated by key scenes like a camera shutter. Within this time frame we follow four completely different points of view: from Nigel, the middle-aged, disillusioned doctor; from his mother, fiercely maternal but conventional; from Kay, the young nurse who loves him; and from Linda his wife. But it is Linda, haunted by madness, desperate, brave and doomed (a witch to be burned at the stake) who is the novel. It is she who ties together the web of correspondences between the dramatic past and the conventional present. Not even Nigel, the dreamer, can stand against this triumphant characterisation.
The plot line too was pretty extraordinary for the times. It tackles head-on pacifism and the theory of eugenics, a key subject of debate in that period. Nigel's Utopian dream is of the perfect, self-sufficient society based on sharing, a beautiful isolated island, a society of the physically and mentally perfect who have turned their backs on the rest of the world and its problems. It is Linda, imperfect, always on the outside looking in, who holds up the bright light of scepticism to this theory and exposes its essential inhumanity. Only with the wisdom of hindsight can we see its murderous ending in the Nazi death camps. It is this courage to tackle big themes and to do it in an innovative and exciting way that gives Prelude to Christopher its extraordinary modernity -- even in 2000.
Eleanor Dark never did it again, not quite like this. Return to Coolami, her third published novel, had certain similar stylistic methods, some of the later novels use a compressed time-frame and contrasting points of view, but never again did she write a novel so passionately original. I have my own theories as to why this happened. Prelude to Christopher was published in Australia by P.R. (Inky) Stephensen. An enthusiast for the new literature, he had started The Fanfrolico Press in England with Jack Lindsay, publishing work by D.H. Lawrence amongst others. In Australia he had published Xavier Herbert's Capricornia. Eleanor Dark's decision to publish in Australia was a deliberate one -- it was a patriotic gesture against the advice of her agent. The booksellers and her agent were nervous of Prelude to Christopher but it won the Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal. Miles Franklin called it 'a terribly beautiful book', and Nettie Palmer's review was full of praise for its originality, but when Inky went bankrupt more than half the copies of Prelude to Christopher were seized. In 1961, twenty-five years later, Rigby's in Adelaide republished it but it had bad sales. Twenty-five years later again Virago Press was about to publish it but decided to cancel their Australian series. No wonder Eleanor Dark said Prelude to Christopher had a 'hoodoo' on it.
Her publishers in England and America did all they could to deflect her into more populous channels, and with her prodigious talents she was able to tailor her novels to their demands, while still keeping part of her original voice alive. With a historical novel, The Storm of Time, she even managed a best seller, but I believe she knew what had happened to her. That was why Prelude to Christopher was her favourite novel.
How wonderful then it is in 2000 to be able to thank Halstead Press for having the insight and courage to republish a book that should have been a milestone in Australian literature. With its stylish art deco cover, it is a beautiful edition and the illuminating notes by Barbara Brooks, Eleanor Dark's biographer, add to its value.
I first read Prelude to Christopher fifty-eight years ago and it changed my own writing life. During that same year I wrote my first novel. It was called Daylight and from memory it incorporated much of what I had learned from Prelude to Christopher. I say 'from memory' because when I joined the Australian Communist Party four years later, I burnt my only copy because I believed it was ideologically unsound. It took me twenty-three years to find my own voice again. How easily the young are deflected from their path. And how hard it is to fight against the tide of publishers, critics and ideologies. Maybe it is this that makes me feel such sympathy and identification with the young and brilliant writer of Prelude to Christopher.
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