Interview with Harold Stewart

This edited interview is taken from a long discussion recorded in December 1986, when Richard Kelly Tipping was returning from several years in Europe, via Japan. He has provided the following note:

In Europe, I had continued the film series WRITERS TALKING with documentary portraits of David Malouf (Italy), Peter Porter (London), Randolph Stow (East Anglia), Jack Lindsay (Cambridge) and Sumner Locke Elliott (New York). These were production-funded by the Literature Board and Archival Film Program of the Australia Council, but I had to rely upon sales to broadcast television to raise the finance for full postproduction. In the event, this became a far harder slog than I'd imagined possible, a typical filmmaker's "baptism of drought". My plans for filming Shirley Hazzard and Glenda Adams in New York, Alan Seymour in London, and Harold Stewart in Kyoto as a TV series titled THE TOUCHSTONE OR DISTANCE fell apart with the Australian dollar's dramatic slide in 1985/86 and ABC Television's unapolegetic disinterest in encouraging programs on the arts.

When my family and I were offered hospitality in Tokyo by Chris McAllum and Anna Cater, it became possible to return to Sydney via Japan, and to audio record an interview with Harold Stewart thanks to funding from the Literature Board covering the costs of travel from Tokyo to Kyoto.

When I first spoke with Harold Stewart, on the phone from Oxford in November 1986, he was cheerful and wry, explaining that he had suffered a second heart attack and was "hanging on a red thread" for his seventieth birthday in December, mustering all of his energy daily to "finish another book before I pop off". He asked me to give him "a tinkle" when I arrived in Tokyo, when he would decide whether he was feeling well enough to be interviewed.

Having flown across the Arctic Circle, watching the hairline cracks in glaciers from 10,000 metres up, arriving in Tokyo's manic neon bustle was a headspinning culture shock. Harold Stewart announced when I called that he was feeling much better and would be happy to take me for a tour of places I'd encountered in his epic scroll By the Old Walls of Kyoto. We met two days later, and I became by quick steps a convert to the stimulating contradictions of old and new Japan, to the resonances of wood and stone, to tranquillity among seeming chaos. Harold Stewart is delightful company and an inspired guide. On the first meeting we walked for about seven hours, with stops in secluded teahouse gardens usually a few yards from the street, while he explained the treasure we passed. That night I slept early and deeply! When we met again, he took me to his "Golden Garret in the Ivory Slum" on the outskirts of the city, a modest flat which he has made memorable with Buddhist antiques of great beauty (all of which were picked up for a song, he explained).

The interview lasted for nearly three hours, until both parties were exhausted. My own interests in the "literary gang warfare" on the 1940's, and Harold Stewart's part in the Ern Malley hoax, were put aside after his strong objections to the subject, in the interests of keeping faith with his own sense of his work. I did not feel that it was my right to challenge his strictly held beliefs about poetic craft in the context of his agreement to be interviewed purely for archival purposes. Further, his perceptions about Japanese culture are of immense contemporary relevance, and finally of greater importance as a subject. The future for Australia in Asia and the Pacific will be decided not by debates about poetic method and style, but by the extent to which we understand and address fundamental differences in cultural value systems and social structure between and among our societies. Harold Stewart is an important touchstone of our distances.

RKT: Can you give me some personal details? Where were you born?

HS: I was born in Sydney, at Drummoyne, at home not in a hospital, and my father was the local health inspector, building inspector, food inspector, the most highly qualified in his profession, who had spent his early years up to the age of about 32 in India. So we always had early connections with the Far East, and he spoke Hindustani almost as fluently as he did English. We were always going back on a holiday to India, but never did. My early schooling was at Drummoyne Public School, that was during Primary grades, and after that I graduated to Fort Street Boys High School. My mother was a housewife and looked after us very ably.

At Fort Street I made a number of important life-long friendships, principal among which would be that with James McAuley, the poet, and we were life-long friends until his early death a few years ago. I spent a number of years there and then went on to Sydney University where I stayed only a very short time. By this time the war had broken out and I was called up for Military service. My war years were spent in Melbourne. Because I had a number of very serious illnesses, I was sent to the Victoria Barracks, where I fought the inglorious battle of St Kilda Road for the rest of the war. At that stage I joined the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. The Head of this was an old friend who had originally been Student Senator at Sydney University. Alfred Conlon held the rank of Colonel, attached to the personal staff of General Sir Thomas Blamey, the Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Forces.

Colonel Conlon had formed this Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs as a sort of brains-trust to inform the High Command of the Australian Army on all sorts of factual matters. These covered tropical agriculture and medicine, anthropology, law, economics, languages, geography and politics. Dr Conlon really saved my life and the life of James McAuley and the life of a lot of later notables whose dead bones would otherwise now be lying in the jungles of New Guinea or in the sands of the Middle East. Dr Conlon saw that what Australia would need after the war would be not more dead soldiers, but some live brains. And this inspired his idea of a brains trust. It was not only to supply the civil government and the military government with useful information which would help the war effort, but also after the war to preserve some of Australia's intellectuals who could help with the reconstruction. In the Directorate, McAuley and I were, so to speak, his court poets.

RKT: Well, it's interesting because this is the scenario into which The Angry Penguins came.

HS: That's right. It was one afternoon when James McAuley and I were bored; we were on duty but there was absolutely nothing to do. If I remember rightly it was one Saturday afternoon, and so we amused ourselves by creating this imaginary poet and his works, which got us into terrible trouble of course, with everybody. But, let's not go into that. It's a subject which I'm heartily tired of. I've had it, day and night, for the last 40 years. All my serious work is completely ignored or neglected whilst everyone harps on this one string, I've given interviews about it and recordings have been made of it so I think we could skip that aspect, it's been covered already too well.

RKT: Let's stay, as you say, on your life. What was the next step?

HS: The next step was how to support myself after the war. First of all, I earned a very precarious living freelancing by writing broadcasts for the ABC. I had a regular monthly session called 'Literary Review' and joined in discussion groups and radio plays. I used to write educational broadcasts on English and Australian literature. And I also worked with the Council of Adult Education in Victoria, where I delivered lectures, and functioned part-time as their librarian. But this way of life was too precarious and became untenable, because I had no money in the bank and a cheque would be promised from the ABC or the CAE, but it would be late in arriving and then I had to bank it and wait for a week before I could draw any money out. Finally I decided that I would have to take at least a part-time job so that I could spend part of my time working, to keep body and soul together, and part of my time writing. So, I took a job with a friend who had a bookshop in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, the Norman Robb Bookshop. This was to have been a gentlemanly job where one had discussions about literature and Oriental philosophy with one's friends who dropped in, and it started off like that. But, any business that isn't expanding is contracting, and so the business expanded, and I expanded the oriental book section and the prints and oriental scrolls and paintings and it grew and prospered until soon there was no time to read the books that I was buying with all my spare cash. They all went on to the shelves and remained largely unread, because what a bookshop does for you is to build up your muscles not your intellect. But because I could buy all my books at wholesale prices, it did give me a splendid library of books on the Orient, which I was later able to read. For many years during the late fifties and early sixties, I ran a discussion group on Friday nights, in the bookshop. Customers who had bought books on the Orient and who were interested in kindred subjects used to come along on Friday nights and we'd sit around while someone would read a paper, or a translation that they had made, or there would be discussions about certain aspects of Oriental religion, philosophy, art and culture generally. A small group, no more than about a dozen people, grew up around that. Unfortunately, that too, dissipated because members travelled abroad, and finally, I myself went overseas. It had been a possibility that I might have come to Japan with the Occupation Forces, but I was demobbed instead, so that fell through. Then, later on, through the kindly machinations of friends of mine, notably Dr Conlon, I was awarded the Prince Saionji Memorial Scholarship, which provides for two years in Japan, but I couldn't take that up because my health was bad. So that fell through and so I did not come to Japan until 1961. In that year I came with a friend who very kindly paid my fare, because I had no money at all. We spent six weeks in Japan and dashed all over the country and saw everything, so much so quickly that we both suffered from cultural indigestion. When I returned to Australia I had no idea of what I'd seen, where or when or why, or what it was all about, so I decided that I needed to do some homework because my previous interests had always been in India and China, the two main Oriental civilisations, whilst about Japan I knew almost nothing. The first thing to do was for me to acquire a little of the language, so I studied Japanese for a couple of years. When I came back to Japan in 1963, I stayed for about six months, and supported myself, as so many foreigners do here, by teaching English, and I made various Japanese friends. By this stage I had become very interested in the Jodo-shu and Jodo-shin-shu, the Pure Land Schools of Japanese Buddhism and I returned with the express purpose of studying those two schools whose acquaintance I'd made on the second trip. That was in 1966 when I was 49 years of age, and I have been studying and writing here ever since.

I was able to meet an eminent Jodo-shin priest, Bando Shojun who was also a professor at the Otani Buddhist University of Kyoto. I studied Jodo and Shin Buddhism with him for a number of years and also collaborated with him in translations. It was at the Otani Daigaku which is a Shin-shu Buddhist University that Dr D.T. Suzuki, the great Zen scholar, taught for many years. When he came back to Japan after 20 years in America and could not find employment the Otani Shin-shu University offered him a professorship and enabled him to lecture on Zen there, even though it is a Shin University, and to start The Eastern Buddhist magazine. This magazine still flourishes and has published notable scholarly articles, mostly on Zen, but also on Shin. Among these a translation of the Tannisho, which was made by Professor Bando and myself. More recently, it printed a long review article of my book By the Old Walls of Kyoto which was written by Dorothy Green, one of Australia's leading literary critics.

Before coming to Japan, I published my first book of haiku translations, A Net of Fireflies (Chas. E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo and Vermont, 1960). Since living in Japan, I have translated and published a second volume of haiku A Chime of Windbells (Chas. E. Tuttle Co. Tokyo and Vermont, 1969) and have written a third volume Over the Vermilion Bridge, which is awaiting publication. All three books contain prose essays on the translation and art of haiku. Also while living here, I completed my magnum opus after some twelve years of work. This is entitled By the Old Walls of Kyoto and was published by John Weatherhill Inc., Tokyo and New York in 1981, with the assistance of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, The Australia-Japan Foundation, and private donors. It consists of a cycle of thirteen poems, which together form a continuous narrative of about 4,350 lines, 135 pages, accompanied by thirteen prose commentaries providing the historical, cultural, religious, literary, artistic, and other backgrounds, enabling the Western reader to understand the poems more readily. It is illustrated with 24 colour reproductions of woodblock prints by famous artists of the Meiji Period, depicting typical scenes of Kyoto. In all, a book of some 500 pages.

Since then I have collected my earlier poems, completely revised or rewritten them, and added notes for a book called: New Phoenix Wings, for which I have so far not been able to find a publisher. I am now at work on an ambitious epic-length poem, set in T'ang Dynasty China, of which I have already composed about 2,500 lines; but if I am spared to complete it, the whole work as planned should reach double that length. It is a continuous narrative, entitled "Autumn Landscape-Roll", with passages of dialogue, description, and commentary, but although highly dramatic is intended for reading not the stage.

RKT: What interests you in Buddhism? What brought you closer to Buddhism?

HS: Well I was never brought up a Christian, but I was seeking some sort of spiritual path. Since I was never attracted by Christianity, and have strong objections to various tenets and beliefs that it holds, I began studying other traditions, especially Oriental. At first I was most interested in Taoism, and in my twenties I was also studying Chinese.

Later on I became interested in Zen Buddhism which is a fusion of the "dark learning" or esoteric teachings of Taoism, with Buddhism. I read the works of D.T. Suzuki in a remaindered edition, which I found in a second-hand bookshop in Sydney, in the late thirties, whereas the great "Zen craze" did not start in the West until the 'fifties. But, by the time I had come to Japan, I had realised that Zen was not for me: I was too old, for one thing, I was already forty-five. Zen is very ascetic and monastic, and requires many years of severe practice.

So I had to find some method which was much simpler and more within my capacity. Most Westerners, of course, always want to adopt the most difficult methods. They wish to practise Zen or Tibetan Buddhism, which are quite beyond the spiritual capacity of most Westeners, so they try these for a while and, finding them impossible, they soon give it up.

There's a saying in the East that the disciple doesn't choose the way, the way chooses the disciple, and that was true in my case. The only form of Buddhism in which I was not interested was the Pure Land School and that is true of most Westerners. Pure Land Buddhism is just dismissed as "too much like Christianity" and nobody really studies it to find out that this is, in fact, the chief form of Buddhism in Japan, and in China one of the only two surviving forms: one was the Chan or Zen sect and the other was the Pure Land sect whose roots go right back to the lifetime of the Buddha himself. For the past 1,000 years, it has had more followers than any other form of Buddhism in Japan and in China. So here was a form of Buddhism which I had not studied and was not interested in, until one day I was coming down from Higashiyama, the Eastern Mountains in Kyoto and I heard this invocation Namu Amida Butsu being chanted in the Chion-in, one of the main temples of the Jodo-Shu, or Pure Land sect, founded by the great mediaeval saint, Honen Shonin.

It stuck in my mind, though I didn't know what it meant or anything about it; but it started to repeat itself in my mind and, on the way home in the ship, it kept on coming back. So when I arrived in Australia, I thought I had better find out something about this, and so I acquired and read the Life of Honen, by Shunjo. I decided that a second trip to Japan was needed to investigate it more fully and this was when I began studying the subject seriously with Professor Bando. I soon discovered that, contrary to Western ignorance and prejudice that it was not only authentically Buddhist, but extremely profound, a doctrine of the purest non-duality but it had been mistakenly dismissed by Westerners as not worthy of study. This was what really prompted me to begin writing a book, which would tell not just what I'd read in books about it theoretically, but would express my own personal experience of it in poetry. I then followed the traditional Buddhist practice, which is to write your main thesis in verse, and then to add your own self-commentary in prose. Verse makes the theme more readily memorable, whilst the prose commentary expounds in more detail what was meant. Sometimes the reverse procedure is found: a lengthy Buddhist scripture is written in prose and then a verse summary of it helps memorisation.

At first the publisher accepted the book and then said, "But unfortunately, we have no money to publish it". I hadn't realised the publisher was almost bankrupt. So, suddenly, the author had to find, $25,000 with which to pay for the publication, when I didn't have 25,000 yen, let alone $25,000. But, miraculously, money appeared from private donors, friends of mine rich and poor, who heard that I needed money for publication and then, the Literature Board and other institutions gave money. The book itself is beautifully produced, illustrated, and bound in silk, and the only way I could thank all those who had donated money towards producing it was to dedicate one of the poems or one of the prose essays in the book to each of them. Hence all those dedications in the acknowledgements pages.

RKT: As you say, this has the complete story in detail of your spiritual journey?

HS: It narrates my spiritual autobiography and is my magnum opus to date.

RKT: I've asked you what your hobbies are?

HS: Well, my hobbies are, first of all, listening to classical music Western classical music, which I love, but also Indian classical music, and Japanese, Chinese traditional music. My other hobby is showing friends around Kyoto. For twenty years I was Australia's unofficial, unappointed, and unpaid cultural attache in Kyoto. Only recently have they put me on the payroll as a Senior Emeritus Fellow so that's why I'm enabled to go on living here, thanks to the Australian Literature Board. I have shown literally hundreds of visitors from Australia, from England, from Europe and America around a few of the sights of Kyoto, because culture is very thick on the ground here, Kyoto having been the capital for almost 1,200 years. There is an enormous number of things to see: temples, shrines, gardens, sculptures, paintings, works of arts and crafts. And so, I have discovered about 35 walks through old Kyoto.

Unfortunate friends who fall into my clutches are taken on relentless walking tours through these sights, until their legs wear down to little stumps at the hips and they must be carried home on stretchers dying of exhaustion. But it's also a case of 'quick before it melts', because not only weekly, but daily, beautiful old houses, shops and inns are being pulled down, gardens are being bulldozed into the ground to make room for carparks and bowling alleys and other concrete horrors – modern improvements, all for the worse. So, anyone coming must come quickly, because it disappears weekly, daily. Now because there are some 17 or 18 million Japanese tourists a year, there is a movement to restore some of the old places, or if new places are to be built, they must be in the old style. Even though it may have a steel framework, nevertheless the outside of the new building must be in wood and plaster and stone, and in traditional Japanese style. They have also restored old festivals, which have been in abeyance sometimes for centuries, and they have been able to erect beautiful new museums with modern conditions of temperature pressure, and humidity, lighting, and beautiful display so that artworks can be seen in better advantage now than ever before. This is attracting an enormous number of Japanese visitors, some 18 million a year to Kyoto alone, but not so many foreigners these days, foreign tourists only stay three days in Japan: half a day in Tokyo, half a day in Kyoto, and half a day in Nara, and they leave, having seen it all.

RKT: I feel an uneasiness, even a dislike in you for what could loosely be called modernism in poetry, but to be specific, do you think that metre and rhyme are at the heart of English poetry?

HS: I think they're absolutely essential to all poetry, particularly English poetry, and I, personally, can't write without them. They're an enormous help. They're an enormous difficulty, or course, but enormous help. As I have said in the Introduction to By the Old Walls of Kyoto: "The reasons why metre in poetry is of the essence are profound. In one of his learned and insightful essays, A.K. Coomaraswamy recounts a myth from the Rg Veda, the primordial source of poetry for the Indo-European languages. This myth tells of the contest between Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures, and Mrtyu (the Latin Mors) or Death. Prajapati has just completed his task of creation, but by that tremendous effort has exhausted his productive powers and so delivered himself into the hands of his mortal enemy. Mrtyu is now free to do his worst, dismembering Prajapati and dispersing his body through all the separate creatures and things in the universe. But at once a miracle occurs, for Prajapati proceeds to "put himself together again by means of the metres"! For it is precisely metre (from the Greek metron, a measure) that enables the poet to reintegrate the scattered fragments of his experience into a re-membered whole. And then, as another quotation from the Vedas cited by Coomaraswamy puts it: "The kavi (or poet) makes of the metres the wings of his ascent." It is again metre that lends wings to the poet's imagination so that he can soar to the heights of the heavenly spheres. But if his verse lacks wing-beats, then, like Icarus, his poetic flight will fall to earth. The musical discipline of rhyme, an additional formative principle invented since the independent development of prose also proves to be a creative aid to the poet who wishes to concentrate his meaning and clarify its expression. It has been wisely said that "The rhyme knows better than the poet", and this is because behind it lies the whole ancestral genius of the language".

I think one of the acid tests of a poet is his craftsmanship. I mean, how well can he handle metre and rhyme and assonance and alliteration, rhythmic onomatopoeia, and the stanza forms. Can he plan a large work so that it's beautifully proportioned, so that he does not do too much on this and too little on that. I may rewrite a passage ten times or fifty times, but I go on rehearsing it over and over again, like a concert pianist, until I get exactly what I want. The initial prevision comes almost instantaneously, vanishing in a moment. And then the craft work begins, which may take hours, days, weeks, months, years, until I've arrived at a verbal statement which expresses my original vision or as close as it is verbally possible to get to it. Naturally, it is never possible to realise it perfectly. Everything human is an approximation, but it should be the best one can do. I have rewritten all my earlier work and even since that revision in my forties, I've further revised some lines and passages. At last I hope the final and definitive text is ready for publication. Living in Japan, where perfection or craftsmanship is demanded and where craftsmanship is of such a high standard, one could only describe it as transcendent; it becomes something that's inspired, you know, that is no longer craftwork but it's fine art. The Japanese motto that only perfection is good enough has now become mine, and going to the Japanese exhibitions and seeing craftsmanship of such perfection that no machine could ever equal it is inspirational. Coming from a culture which prides

itself on 'bush-whackerism' - you know, it's near enough, mate, it'll do Japan presents a totally different ideal. Many Australians may find Japanese formality, etiquette and perfectionism rather alien. I find them very much to my temperament and taste, and they have influenced my work profoundly.

Do you think the West has yet come to terms with Japanese culture? Is there much dialogue?

HS: Well, it has happened very recently and largely, I think, through Japanese motor cars, and binoculars and transistor radios and all the rest of its export products and, recently, Japanese food, which has made a belated conquest. But it's all fairly superficial at the moment, because what's required is for people to come and live here and really get under the skin of the culture and study it in depth, which is what I've tried to do. But you need to live here for a long time, and also you must remember that you can never become a Japanese, you can never be accepted into Japanese society, because the Japanese are one great big family and you're never going to be a member of that, because you're not of the Japanese race. You will always be treated with great kindness and hospitality and generosity. In any case, most Australians would not want to become a member of Japanese society. It's far too rigid and difficult, too regimented and restrictive to Australians, who are all anarchists at heart. So the expatriate lives in a kind of social vacuum, which worries many Westerners who want to belong, who feel they must be integrated with society. But it suits me fine, I like to float free. I'm no more a member of Japanese society than I am of Australian society. I'm an onlooker from the sidelines, but "the observer sees most of the game".

RKT: You have written and translated a great many Haiku.

HS: Haiku-writing I found, was marvellous training in conciseness: the poet must boil down what he has to say, and boil down the boilings-down, until he arrives at a clear, concise and simple statement, which sets the time and the place, the image and the theme, all in the space of 17 syllables. It is minimal poetry. But, at the same time, it must have a point. Some of the Haiku are just exquisite little pieces of observation and some are verbally witty. Some hint at profound insights into various aspects of Buddhism. Haiku fall into many types. What is so interesting is that they started off as a mere word game and ended up as a profound artform using implication rather than statement. And I have translated more than 1,000 of them. When I move into the larger forms, I tend to combine a large number of these petits sensations, these little observations, but with the architectonic principle of Western poetry, to organize them into larger wholes, so that you'll find a longer poem, for example in By the Old walls of Kyoto, composed of a large number of these little touches, which, like a pointillist painting all finally produce a unified impression.

RKT: Like a poet's novels, perhaps.

HS: Well, a poets' prose is not necessarily good prose, it is often over written. I think that poetry is golden and prose is silver, but that poetic prose and free verse are iron pyrites, or fool's gold. And I rather favour the old idea of there being definite forms for specific purposes, so that both poet and reader recognise and observe the boundaries of these forms, for each is appropriate to a certain type of poetry. I mean, writing an epic poem is a totally different experience both for the poet and the reader from writing a Haiku. Poetry and prose require two different sorts of minds. I think that so few poets are good novelists and so few novelists are good poets precisely because there are different kinds of talent involved. Narrative is extensive. A novelist must be able to write at great length and so must the epic poet. But, on the other hand, the lyric poet often is very brief, and this is intensive rather than extensive writing. It clarifies, it concentrates, it simplifies in order to make its impact. The rigid form forces the poet to revise and boil down and to concentrate and simplify.

The last thing that the poet arrives at is to achieve a Homeric simplicity, which is the most difficult thing of all to achieve. In certain of my earlier poems, like "The Ascension of Feng Huang" I used extremely rich, complex langauge. But as I have gone on, I've simplified, clarified and concentrated my poetic diction until after 50 years I now have my technique sufficiently at my fingertips so that I can put it down often in final form, at once. This has taken only fifty years that's all. But, consider the training of the Japanese potter. He starts off as a boy apprentice and he is given a lump of clay and shown how to throw it, so he throws that pot over and over again, until he can do it in his sleep, until he can produce an absolutely perfect pot of any given size and shape. He may spend thirty or forty years doing this, until his technique is absolutely at his fingertips and he no longer has to think about it. Then, true spontaneity can appear. Tao throws the pot, not the potter. We think of spontaneity as the first fine careless rupture right at the beginning, and we just put that down and leave it at that. Japanese think of it at the end product. And this is what most of our artists are too impatient to do. They're not prepared to serve an apprenticeship of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, if necessary. It is easier to prefer laziness and incompetence, for without traditional standards, no one can any longer tell the difference. So artists never attain perfection effortlessly and selflessly.

RKT: Are you pleased to have lived in the 20th century?

HS: Yes. Because, for one thing, if I'd lived in any other century I couldn't have travelled to Japan and lived here.

— R.K. Tipping, ‘Interview with Harold Stewart’, Westerly, 32 (1987), p. 26

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