POP CULTURE REWIND: MODERNIST BOOM – GUN MANUALS TO METAPHORS

Martha Florence remembers how Australian Modernism got its groove back: in typical Aussie style, two army boys took fake-it-‘till-ya-make-it to a whole new level

Now we find, too lateThat these distractions were cluesTo a transposed versionOf our too rigid state.

— “Palinode” Ern Malley

It’s no secret Australia isn’t exactly up to speed with the rest of the world. We’re not the fashion capital or the literary publishing epicentre. We don’t have Hollywood and we’re seriously lagging on teeth-whitening, Ozempic-popping rituals. (Clearly, being a step behind sometimes has its uses.) We can’t say y’all and get away with it, and none of Ali Hazelwood’s FMCs attended our universities. 

So, we often have some catching up to do—and this has also been true for literary movements. 

The stampede of modernism was a result of anger and resentment, and sometimes I like to think of it as a contrary teen going through their “fuck you” stage. Modernism is me as a twelve-year-old: rolls her eyes a lot, knows Julia Gillard’s 2012 “I will NOT be lectured” speech by heart, and has an extensive shoe collection consisting of four different pairs of Dr Martens. 

Thank you for your patience, unfortunately Modernism will not tolerate conventionalist ideas at this time. Yes, she can and will tear you to shreds. She is currently having a tea party at the bottom of the ocean and is not interested in your chronological, well-structured storylines. Take your #wieiad and #adiml nonsense elsewhere. 

Modernism? It broke boundaries. It was fragmentary and nonsensical and existential to a fault. The works it produced weren’t there to be logical, they were there to disrupt things.   

The 20^th century kicked off with a rocky start. Factories boomed and coal turned cities black. Out with the old and in with the new, guillotined efficiently and brutally almost overnight. Wars raged and catastrophe took on new meaning. People grew used to wearing gas masks, and fields upon fields were filled with little white crosses. Soldiers came home and tossed their uniforms into the fire but the fighting went on and on, right there in their living rooms. 

To put it simply, realism (the preceding movement) didn’t fit anymore, as the world was a completely different place. All writers have ever done is try and make sense of it. Gregor wriggled his six, spindly legs in the air, lamenting the daily life of a salesman with opposable thumbs. Mrs Dalloway faffed about with her daisies and daffodils. Twenty-four hours stretched to languidly cover 208 pages. Some horrors couldn’t be recovered from. Prufrock put his coffee spoon collection to good use and bought peaches at a thirty-percent discount. Crabs scuttled on the seabed. All was not right with the world.

Now, back to Australia crawling while the rest of the world ran. Up until the 20^th century, we had published few widely known written works, and Australia’s literary corpus existed much more substantially as an oral tradition. When Kafka, Woolf, Eliot, Mansfield and all the other greats were pushing boundaries and redefining the literary canon, there was no concurrent movement in Australia. Then, in the 1940s, as modernism ground itself out overseas, the dregs washed up on our own shark-lined shores—and the very first Australian literary journal Angry Penguins, publishing experimental prose and art was founded by Max Harris. If Europe can do it, why not us? Alas: Angry Penguins was not a booming success. A few thin issues later and Harris was getting desperate, one more SEND IN YOUR SUBMISSIONS! (PRETTY PLEASE, THIS IS ME BEGGING) newspaper advertisement away from closing up shop.  

Enter one of the greatest literary hoaxes of all time. The saving grace of AusMod! (Sort of.)

Melbourne, 1943, army barracks: scornful of the time-twisting, jagged-edged works Angry Penguins was publishing, two young soldiers, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, decided to pull a prank. Modernism was not born of true poets, and they could prove it. Ta-da! Traditionalism 1: Dumb Boo You Whore Non-poetry 0. 

From how-to-assemble-a-gun manuals, malaria factsheets, a couple of Shakespeare plays and an Oxford dictionary, the boys cobbled together an impressive collection: The Darkening Ecliptic comprised sixteen poems plus a cool backstory. Meet “Ern Malley,” high school dropout and struggling mechanic who returned home from work every day with grease-stained poems tucked in with his spanners and bolts. He’s young! He’s dreamy! He’s lookin’ for love, l-u-r-v love. Then, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, tragedy strikes: our very own dungaree-wearing Mr Darcy contracts Graves’ disease! Stoic and unbending and so very poetic, he refuses treatment! The funeral is a quiet affair in which lamingtons are handed around on paper napkins and everyone is drunk by eleven am. Heartbroken, determined to preserve his lifelong passion, Ern’s sister “Ethel” packages up his poem scraps and sends them off to Angry Penguins. 

Down in the Angry Penguins’ five-by-three-foot office in a cobwebbed corner of the sixteenth floor, Max Harris is reconsidering his stance on religion. Miracles do exist, and he has been sent in a masterpiece. A MASTERPIECE!!!!!! The Darkening Ecliptic was published in the next Angry Penguin issue with the greatest pride: finally, Australia has produced modernist work worthy of modernism. Cue three rounds of A Home Among the Gum Trees. 

Back in the barracks, McAuley and Stewart are giggling behind their incorrectly assembled rifles. Well, well, well, who would’ve bloody thought. The hearts in Harris’ eyes were so large he oversaw the little clue McAuley and Stewert had given him: Graves’ disease is not actually lethal. But so what? Malley is a poet, untouched by the laws of nature, and died a poet’s death as was his divine right and legacy. 

His death compounded the genius of his poetry, and all will be spellbound by his words. I really wasn’t lying about Harris’ heart eyes. The above is almost a direct quote. 

Even after McAuley and Stewart came clean, Harris maintained the collection was “outstanding,” but to me it seems fitting that Australia’s first modernist poet is really two guys having a laugh and playing scrabble with mosquito manuals. This is the country where yeah nah nah yeah…nah has a recognised meaning, a cossie and thongs is acceptable attire to wear to the supermarket, and we are recognised universally for a staple that consists of white bread and colourful sugar. My opinion? Ern took ‘death of the author’ to whole new levels of existentialism, and that is pretty damn modernist. 

You can find Ern Malley’s books in the poetry section amid Plath, Neruda and Glück at most eclectic bookstores. If you’re looking for mosquito stats and facts, search the Science shelves; for more on Ern, The Conversation article “The Greatest Poet Who Never Lived” is an excellent place to start your deep dive. Or, if modernism and related antics aren’t your thing, now could be a good time to start your Julia Gillard obsession. I have it on good authority the “I Will NOT Be Lectured” remix is an absolute banger.