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Harold Frederick Stewart (14 December 19167 August 1995) was an Australian poet and oriental scholar. He is chiefly remembered as the enigmatic other half of Ern Malley. Stewart's work has been associated with James McAuley and A. D. Hope, belonging to a neo-classical or Augustian movement in poetry, but his choice of subject matter is different in that he concentrates on writing long metaphysical narrative poems, combining Eastern subject matter with his own metaphysical journey to shape the narrative. He is usually described by critics as a traditionalist and conservative but described himself as a conservative anarchist. A witty and engaging letter writer, many examples have been retained by the National Library in Canberra. Leonie Kramer in ''The Oxford History of Australian Literature'', p. 371, grades the literary quality of Ethel's letters as equal to those of Patrick White, Peter Porter and Barry Humphries.〔Ethel Malley in a letter to 'The Editors,' 28 October 1943, Ern Malley Collected Poems, p.1. Stewart included the small incidental detail which provided enough background information so that Harris could imagine Ethel's social circumstances. She writes: "When I was going through my brother's things after his death, I found some poetry he had written. I am no judge of it myself, but a friend who I showed it to thinks it is very good and told me it should be published." Leonie Kramer in The Oxford History of Australian Literature, p. 371, grades the literary quality of Ethel's letters as equal to those of Patrick White, Peter Porter and Barry Humphries.〕 == Early life In Sydney == Stewart was raised in Drummoyne, in the western suburbs of Sydney. He came from a comfortable lower-middle-class background, and his father, employed as a health inspector, had a keen interest in Asia. Stewart displayed early promise as a poet after enrolling at Fort Street High School at the age of fifteen in 1932. Before attending Fort Street he studied the trumpet at the Sydney Conservatorium High School. A subtitle honouring Claude Debussy in 'Prelude: On the Quay,' written in the last year of high school, demonstrates that music was a formative poetic influence and one that provided a sense of organisation for his later poetry, which is most apparent in the fugue-like thematic structure of his spiritual autobiography ''By the Old Walls of Kyoto''. The reference to Debussy also points to the significant influence the French Symbolists had on shaping the affective Gothic mood of his early poetry. Fort Street was established in 1850 as an academically selective public high school reserved for intellectually gifted students. He got to know James McAuley at Fort Street and the budding poets shared a common interest in literature which provided the foundation for the exchange of ideas and the opportunity to develop a friendship. McAuley won the school Poetry Prize in 1933, while Stewart achieved the same honour in the two years that followed. In a letter to Michael Heyward, he writes: "Jim and I were not good friends at Fort Street, but rather rivals". He had an early interest in French symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry and provided translations of their work in his first volume of poetry. He also favoured American modernists like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens. Other major influences include the Romantics poets, especially William Wordsworth and John Keats. Carl Jung was an early metaphysical influence and it was by way of Jung's commentaries on oriental texts that he discovered the 'Traditionalist' school of writers. He also immersed himself in Chinese art and poetry, and this determined the subject matter of his first published collection, ''Phoenix Wings: Poems 1940-46'' (1948). A later volume, ''Orpheus and Other Poems'' (1956), was strongly influenced by Jungian ideas. At Fort Street High School his poetry ranges from scarcely veiled confessional pieces, to poems such as 'Tanka' in which he attempts to create maximum distance between himself and his subject matter by importing a foreign posture or manner. The most confessional poems are addressed to a mysterious R.M, whose gender is confirmed by the dedication of 'Water Images': R.M. (if he will have it).' The identity of R.M., if there is one, has never been established. When he dedicates 'Estranged' and 'Wither Away – ?' to R.M. in 1933 he does not question his secret lover's romantic intentions, but by 1934 his outlook changes dramatically. The opening line of 'Water Images' informs the reader of the dark journey of separation the subject has travelled: "I have been out and away in the night". A similar mood, though one which grows persistently darker as time passes, is common to 'Pansies,' 'Tanka' and 'Water Images,' and is characteristic of his high school poetry, especially in his penultimate year. In the opening verse he writes: when the night air pierces to the heart and when the prelude of foreboding silence menaces, and turns the soul to stone. The coldness of the night air pierces "to the heart" and as his tender hope fades for the arrival of his friend a menacing silence turns the soul to stone. This two-way flow of communication injects his poetry with a spiritual aspect and also demonstrates the structural importance that the philosophical concept of duality has in the inception and construction of his poetic voice. The frosty autumnal atmosphere of 'Water Images' reflects the poet's state of mind as he realises R.M. would not attend their secret meeting. Overcome with disappointment he borrows lines from the earlier poem 'Tanka' and obscures the fact that he has lost his first chance of securing love by creating ambivalence about the gender of his friend which is stated in 'Tanka,' though in 'Water Images' the "he" is replaced with the impersonal pronoun "you." Concealment occurs after R.M.'s indifference wounds any chance of their nascent relationship maturing to a more secure footing. Sharp water from the fountains hyphenate the blue and crystal air Showered figures there forever joyful or forever sad frozen in agony or mirth or stone wet with drippings like the autumn mountain when I waited and you never came when I was sad with an old age that was my passing youth, my childhood gone with the poignant disappointment of the rain wistful with resignation warm with tears wild with the wind and the rain in my hair In 'Tanka,' the poet writes about the mountain meeting in the present tense, but in 'Water Images' he uses the past tense, haughtily assigning R.M. to the remote cobwebbed corners of memory. With little to affirm, the poet laments his "passing youth" as the elemental forces of wind and rain lash the cathedral of trees and, in a similarly overarching mood, he reminisces about the lost spirit of his innocence. His "poignant disappointment" is an admission that the desire for union did not come to fruition. 'Tanka' is credited to Skald, one of the poet's pseudonyms and a persona he deploys as a mask for identity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harold Stewart」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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