Sunday, October 20, 1957 THE Mi 41GAN DAILY MAGAZINE
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'voss,
To Conquer a Continent
VOSS. By Patrick White. New precision. He is, obviously, a stu- life for that most elusive and
York, 1957: Viking Press, dent of the human race, and not fragile of all human tributes-the
422 pp. $5. its savior. And the reader cannot thing called fame. Voss was fully
aware that, by conquering a conti-
By ROY AKERS leave a While book aithout experi- nent, he could conquer himself.
IN HIS fourth and very beautiful encing the feeling that, behind the And, to an explorer, when he has
novel The Tree of Man, published pen, there remains a writer who coped with a continent and won,
just two years ago, the Australian has that rarest kind of love for he has also, in a very real sense.
his fellow creatures-the magnifi- made his conquest of the world
writer Patrick White gave us the cence of compassion devoid of the and its people,
saga of a man who tamed and sloppy condecension of pity.
learned to live with a wilderness. There is, in the book called Voss, BUT WHAT Voss and La ur a
The recent publication of Yess, one of the strangest love affairs sensed most in each other was
Mr. White's fifth and equally solid since James Jones's From here To their mutual respect for the land.
literary work, plays upon the same Eternity. It is a love not consum- People, they knew, would come
theme, but with a major variation, mated a romance but hardly from dust and return to clay. The
Th ldig los eteSa Patrick White explains LaurafrmdsanreuntclyTh
Parker of The Tree of Man, and Trevelyan in the following brief green earth, and only that, would
the egocentric Johann Ulrich Voss sentence: "She was the expert -for all time-remain. Both of
are personalities of a strikingly istress of trivialities." But, somethem believed enough in the dust
different emotional fiber. Stan where, beneath the quiet, exteriorn which they aked to stake
Parker's was the natural bent that beauty of this lonely Sydney girl,ow
learned to survive the lonely dan- the restless being of Johann Voss their chances for immortality on
gers of a wilderness envisnnment. sensed something it had never the land,
Johann Voss's temperament is of found before-the attraction that They shared a common con-
the fiery kind that had a need. but pulls an introverted mind out of tnempt for the urbanite ho looked
not the patience. to conquer a itself to communicate with another upon the earth not as a lovely and
continent. human being. This, in all of the spacious room in which to live but,
Always, in the known history of gropin, emotional blindness of his rather, as a mere commodity to be
the human creature, there have iserbe life as the closest that exploited in the market place. To
been men who cared enoueh to Voss e er came to the two itan- Johann Voss and Laura Trevelyan
look behind the trees and beyond' tibles most de oid of selfishness- God's great earth would have been
lookbetiiiidthe tres.Thisdn bwih and the ability to give and to receive. theirs, and not God's. But, they-
mysteries beyond the hinterlandis Laura Trevelyan had finally unlike most people-would have
n ftei beoissa thehtesan is hfund someone and something it used it for its original purpose.
oine of the necessary facets ini the shitch to bilieve'. She knew Voss asPehp te greatest taey o
make-rip of an explorer's inquisi- iht b !e h ke osa Perhaps the gets tragedy of
mae-sin ofyandexpi 'a inetis- Voss could never know himself. He all in the novel Voss is simply this:
tive mind. Beyond a d above tiis, was a man who didn't even care that Voss and Laura-unlike Adam
thdoith s theracr thauce vert enough about the human race and Eve-never even had their
said obvious factois that give sin either to love oi to hale it. Clearead.
explorer his incentive to seek outethro o rt he .Cer garden.
andlre hs nene tsek ot to her was the Quixotic disparity In many homes this winter
and map one mote fragment ofintevlsthtfr dte
the great earth's surface, in the values tat formed the people will be sitting by warm fires
man's relationship with other men. reading the novel called Voss. To
Some of them continue the search Johann Voss would never want or those who have never read Patrick
for money and others for land. It treasure people's respect simply se bo lies the pleasant xs
might be for the love of a woman. because -- to him -- it had no
Or it could be from the mundane value. Yet, at the same time, he perience of discovering an already
irritation of itchisg heels. But would willingly and gladly risk his g d wrte til on the
Johann tUlrich Toss did not yen-' wllsupytn. And, to both those who have
ure into the sandy desert of the and have not previously read his
outback of Australia for any of i Abet has appeared o/ern prose, there remains the experi-
these reasons. Voss was the classic a ence of becoming acquainted with
"loner," and the only desires he as a Dad )ealiierary rediewer anti a truly remarkable fictional char-
sought to satisfy were purely and i'iiatis/. A uidlt'y-reasl s/udent acter. Johann Ulrich Voss reached
quit e simply his own. of c ossenuseare li/cer/see, lie desperately for the heart and never
Shas )aeticular e e us/ht/as fe found love. He groped vainly for
R. WHITE'S novel is a playoff rf happiness without attaining the
on - though not a historical au/hor Whi/e, sihose "Tree of elusive thing canled peace. But he
account of - the misadventuies of fatn" he ren ies rd in these pages will be remembered in the reader's
aaseaar.n u t eiadtrso /mind long after the reading of the
a Prussian, Ludwig Leichhardt, who book he inhabits has been for-
became lost and presumably died gotten,
while trying to cross the Australian -_-_-
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desert in 1848. But, more than all
the so-called historical documents
of the Leichhardt legend, this fab-
ricated. fictional version may come
to remain as the truest and, cer-
tainly, the most interesting one of
the stories. Since most of the facts
are not known anyway, who is to
say that an artist of the stature of
Mr. White migit not re-create and
paint them with validity?
And, who but Mr. White could
explain the inner workings of a
man like Voss - Leichhardt's fic-
tional counterpart-in better
prose than that which follows:
"Have you walked upon the
bottom of the sea, Mr. Pringle?"
The German (Voss) asked.
"Eh?" Said Mr. Pringle. "No"
His eyes, however, had swum
into unaccustomed depths.
"I have not," said Voss. "Ex-
cept in dreams, of course. That
is why I am fascinated by the
prospect before me. Even if the
future of the great areas of sand
is a purely metaphysical one."
Then he threw up a little peb-
ble, which had been changing
colour in his hand, turning from
pale lavender to purple, and
caught it before it reached the
sun.
This, indeed, was, the great trag-
edy of Johann Ulrich Voss. He
always caught his pebbles before
they hit the sun. He was the
blindest of visionaries. Both sun-'
light and starlight dimmed his
perspective. And Mr. White's book
may become, in time, a classic
study of the truly introverted
mind.
IATRICK WHITE is a literary,
and not a Freudian, writer. His
is both the artistry and good sense
to paint the character in ink and
leave him as he is-with mud on
his shoes, frayed trousers, and a
shining light in his eyes. The pen
of Patrick White is a study in
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