Island Twenty-Eight: Isle of the Lotus-Eater Infestation

(Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination)

Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all rights reserved. All short extracts from the texts discussed are acknowledged and used under fair usage related to review and theoretical critique contained in international copyright law. Cover image: Odysseus Saving his Men from the Lotus Eaters, 18th century engraving, artist unknown. This image is in the public domain. Image 2, 3, 4 & 5 : Bendigo TAFE (Historic building - site of the Old School of Mines), Alfred Deakin, The Shamrock Hotel and the 5c Alfred Deakin (stamp) are in the public domain. Publisher: Mercurius Press, Australia, 2013. NB: This piece is published at Scribd as part of a series drawn from the soon to be print published non-fiction book on experiential poetics entitled: Muse of the Long Haul: Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination.

Island Twenty-Eight The Isle of Neo-Liberal Literature

In the middle of March 1898 Bendigos famous Shamrock Hotel hosted an important congress by the Australian Natives Association (ANA). Delegates came from far and wide to debate the issue of Federation that is the unification of the Australian colonies into one nation with enhanced independence from Great Britain. The crucial turning point in the Victorian campaign for Federationand consequently for the entire continent wide campaigncame on the evening of the 15th of March. Toucher, the Victorian president, addressed the congregation early in the evening, firing up those assembled with visions of a new nation. As the night wore on and the delegates became drunk on alcohol and patriotic zeal, a historic declaration began to take form regarding the political future of the continent.1 The former mayor of Bendigo, T.J. Connelly, an ardent Federalist in his day, was warmly remembered. Likewise, one of Bendigos celebrated poets, William Gay, who had died three months earlier. Late in the evening, with the lavish Second Empire architecture of the Shamrock framing proceedings, one of the giants of 19th century Victorian politicsand as it turned out postfederation Australian politicstook to the podium. His remarkable speech, rousing and articulate, has been heralded by historians as a defining moment in the founding of Australia. For the past twelve or so years Ive worked 300 meters or so down the road from the Shamrock Hotel at the Bendigo TAFEa major birth site of public tertiary education in Central Victoria. Bendigo people are understandably proud of their public higher educational institutions (i.e. Bendigo TAFE and La Trobe University (Bendigo)) since in one form or another they have provided opportunity for regional Victorians for well over a century. They have also been profound bulwarks against regional disadvantage. Late in 2010, as the early State election results showed support eroding for John Brumbys Labor government, I found myself in the weirdest of places. For the first time in my life I was actively hoping for the defeat of a sitting local Labor member. That member was Jacinta Allen, former minister responsible for VET education and a rising star in the party (touted even now as a future leader). Premier Brumby, ironically also a former Bendigo federal member for Labor, had poured what looked like hundreds of thousands of dollars into glossy, full page ads in local newspapers as well as expensive television ads in order to shore up Allens support in the increasingly marginal seat of Bendigo East. It represented, as it turned out, a squandering of scarce financial resources that could have been better spent in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As news came through over the next day or two that the Brumby government had been defeated I remember having mixed feelings about the fact that Allen had somehow survived in Bendigo East. In speaking with friends as well as local progressives involved in the higher education
1

See Frank Cusacks description, pp 201-204 in Bendigo: A History.

sector we all felt the same sense of puzzlement concerning how Allen as the Minister of Vocational Education and Training (VET) prior to 2010, had come to engineer education policies specifically designed to disempower large numbers of mature adults seeking retraining. In the heady days after the defeat of the arrogant and profoundly authoritarian Kennett Liberal government in the early 2000s I remember celebrating her election as the local member. After all she seemed eminently progressive and had studied politics, sociology and womens studies (among other social science subjects) at La Trobe University (Bendigo) in the mid-1990s. How did a young person full of passion and progressive ideals sell out so thoroughly to the free market neoliberal ideology that has worked consistently to entrench class divisions in nations all around the world? Fees for some students went up twenty fold in one year as government support for study in many TAFE level courses was withdrawn. On the ground, teachers, coordinators and admin staff had to break the bad news to often vulnerable people desperate for retraining (also for opportunity). These peoplemany with aging, useless qualifications or qualifications irrelevant to their vocational futurewere forced to: a) take on large debts (or pay large up-front fees); or b) seek out profit maximising private providers, many with a history of cutting corners to maximise shareholder profits; or c) forsake retraining altogether due to cost or lack of real opportunity. Token eligibility exemptions did little to soften the overall consequences for vulnerable minorities of this new approach to VET education. The general privatisation agenda (taken even further by the newly elected State Liberal government) was used by managers in both TAFES and private providers to slash face to face teaching hours (even as fees for many students climbed to American free market levels) and cut back on a range of student support services. At the same time compliance burdens on the increasingly casualised teaching workforce increased markedly. From the perspective of creative arts education such trends amounted to a deliberate process of creativity extermination, since it is well known internationally that arts education does not thrive when economic considerations are primary. So it has proved to be for the creative arts and Humanities in Central Victoria, with many young people now leaving the region to pursue these courses elsewhere. Many of my fellow teachers have lost their jobs over the past couple of years (and not only in creative arts courses) and for me personally being a teacher and coordinator has been a profoundly stressful experience. We are increasingly expected to put money making, cost cutting and compliance above knowledge transmission to students in need of opportunity. For me the biggest symbol of the world-view of the new approach to public education occurred when Bendigo TAFE got rid of its bookshop in 2012. A major educational institution without a bookshop, think about that. Victoria under the Brumby and Baillieu/Napthine governments has become an experiment in systematised ignorance. Early one morning in mid-January 2011in the middle of a difficult enrolment period due to large student fee increasesI woke puzzled after a strange dream. I discussed the dream with Sue and then quickly scrawled a summary in my diary: Dream 19th January Sue, Caleb [my seven year old son] and I enter a garage-rumpus room connected to

what looks like a large but ad hoc private library. We are met in the rumpus-room by a young family in their thirties who though looking a little wary allow us to enter the library to look around. Thousands of books belonging to a dead Australian Prime Minister or senior bureaucrat perhaps judge? - line the walls. He seems to be a conservative progressive fellow who was around at the time of Federation and continued in public life perhaps up to 1920. His library contains books to do with: the occult, anthropology, geography (travel books/maps etc), poetry, literary fiction, philosophy, psychology etc. The library informed all he was, all he became. It was the background to his life in the public sphere (I sense in the dream that he is a cultured, rounded, Renaissance man). The library, however, seems to end abruptly in the 20s or 30s. The knowledge it proclaims seems frozen in time it is as though the man is showing me the limitations of knowledge associated with a particular moment in time. Is it also an apology of sorts? If so, to whom? I had no idea who this person was, however, given the dream had profound after resonance, I decided to try and find out. Given Id never been much interested in this period of Australian history, due largely to the fact that a key catch-cry of the time, used by both conservatives and leftists to push the various states into a Federation, was that the states should unite for a White Australia. I knew about the consequences of the White Australia policies on Aboriginal people but I possessed only a skeletal knowledge of early twentieth century Australian politics. The names Sir Edmund Barton (Australias first Prime Minister), Chris Watson (the first Labor PM) and Andrew Fisher (another Labor PM) came to mind, though a quick search in the history books also brought Alfred Deakin into view. The abridged version of Manning Clarkes History of Australia, as well as several other general history books, left me none the wiser as to whose library Id been shown in my dream. Perhaps the persons interests had been carefully deleted from the public recordespecially his more occult interests. Over breakfast I discovered the names of several other key figures associated with Federation era politics, mostly Governor Generals and senior bureaucrats. The search was starting to look complex. Given the sparseness of books related to that particular period in our library I decided to visit the La Trobe University library the following day. In my mind I recalled a book one of my history lecturers, Al Gabay, had written back in 1992 concerning19th century Victorian mystics, fortune tellers and spiritualists. Al had also written about Australian state politicians so given the occult aspect to the persons library I figured it might be useful to get hold of Als book (which Id never read) as well as any other books I could find on the intellectual interests of the various early prime ministers on my list. As it turned out Id misremembered the theme of the book Al had written back in 1992 it was not a generalist book on colonial mystics it was a book on Alfred Deakin, Australias second Prime Minister.2 As I walked in the door that night Sue greeted me with a solution to the puzzle that Id already worked out via Als book, Hey given Im a
2

Al Gabay, The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin, 1992.

graduate now of Deakin university it figures that Deakin must have had something to do with learning! I showed her Als book and read a number of key passages that seemed related to my dream. On Gabays reading, Deakin was a fully-fledged mystic/spiritualist who loved literature, philosophy, theology, indeed all things intellectual indeed by his own account he only became a professional politician because he couldnt make a living out of his artistic/literary talents. In a short passage found in The Crisis in Victorian Politics 1879-1881 describing the vocational struggles of his youth, Deakin lists all the careers hed been forced to relinquishi.e. journalist, actor, playwright, poet, fiction writer and unsectarian minister/priestbefore concluding: So it was at length I became a politician.3 I read Gabays book cover to cover, noting that Deakin wrote diaries in which his political activities were often guided by spirits of dead poets and writers, such as Wordsworth and Bunyin, as well as by spiritual figures such as Mohammed and Swedenborg. Similarly, I noted that Deakin had confessed to a range of mystic experiences during his life and at crucial moments had consulted astrologers, spiritualists and the like for guidance. His diaries also attest to several important prophesies that heralded his remarkable ascendance to political power in the latter part of the 19th century. He was also widely read in literature and other disciplines and was thus a true student of the humanities. Although he was also an architect of the much maligned White Australia policy (though unlike other politicians of the time he seems to have avoided racist language) his conservative characteristics weremuch as my dream had intimatedcounterbalanced by his work on a range of socially progressive legislation e.g. arbitration legislation, the aged pension, suffrage for women, the foundation of the High Court, etc. He is thus one of Australias great progressive politiciansthough this is understandably cold comfort to Australias indigenous population, the community most disenfranchised and traumatised by post-Federation Australian politics. Interestingly, Deakin wrote a self-styled gospel analysing in depth (and admiring) Mohammeds divine revelations (as documented verbatim, according to Islamic tradition, in the Koran). Moreover, in 1897 Deakins interest in Mohammed and Islam culminated in a 150 page treatise entitled Islam. This was precisely the period that he was most in need of spiritual guidance (and strength) as he sought to push on against British and state government opposition to his dream of a federated Australia. Interestingly, the Islam inspired gospel was completed only months before the historic ANA Victorian congress held in Bendigo in March 1898. Deakin and many others, of course, succeeded in their quest and the nation of Australia was eventually founded. However, we should remember that the influence of literary spiritual guides on Deakin leading up to Federation was, as Gabay points out, considerable, and thus we might ponder their role in defining and even creating Australia. From my perspective as a contemporary progressive Deakin represents something of a mixed bagand thus Im fascinated by the melancholy, almost apologetic, mood I came across whilst browsing his library in the dream described earlier. Overall I was astounded at what Id uncovered. In reading Gabays book it became more and more likely that the dream was perhaps drawing on unconscious material. Another strange possibility, suggested to me by a friend, was that a transpersonal agency was deliberately drawing my attention to previously unknown material for some purpose (recall Id never actually read anything about Alfred Deakin and the dream and subsequent research have completely
3

As quoted in Gabay, pg 94, The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin.

changed my perspective on the man). After waking from the dream I had the weird sense that a lesson of some kind was being conveyedbut what lesson was it exactly? A possible answer to that question didnt hit me until Australia Day morning when I was almost run over at traffic lights by a thirty something tradesman in a white ute playing Advance Australia Fair at full volume through huge speakers. Large Australian flags hung from the souped up farm vehicles passenger and driver windows. It had a sticker on the rear window that said Help the Environment: Bulldoze a Greenie!, as well as another large, though faded sticker that read Shooters Vote Too! I imagined, perhaps wrongly, that the guy also hated all artists and poets and saw no use whatsoever for us in contemporary Australia. He was the working class equivalent of the state government bureaucrats Id been fighting since the mid 2000sproud of his ignorance of all things intellectual and artistic, bookless if you like, and happy to allow his ignorance to define his patriotism. As I wandered across to the corner shop to collect my Australia Day Melbourne Age, I pondered what his patriotism said about the country Deakin had helped found. After a moment or two it hit me. The Australia this guy was proclaiming by resort to simplistic, jingoistic patriotism had been created by a mind (i.e. Deakins) powerfully informed by a life-long commitment to reading, i.e. to intellectual encounters with the great creative thinkers of the era and of times past. Australia was created as much by literature, philosophy, history, the occult as it was by economics, military invasions and fear of foreigners. Somehow a key impetus behind the vision of one of our most famous early Prime Ministers, the veritable architect of Federation, had been left out of the national code the national script/story etc. The sensitivity and complexity, the learnedness and non-conformist spirituality of Alfred Deakin had been edited out of our history to be replaced by what? The poem on Deakin that closes this chapter explores both the complexity of his character and the way in which the literary and spiritual dimensions to his character have been deleted from the narrative of Federation. Deakin would not approve of literature/writing/media, arts and critical thinking courses being forced to serve the God of economic rationalism alone, nor would he have approved of making the arts and intellectual discourse subservient to the bureaucracy speak cherished by administrators the world over. For all his policy faults, and some were marked from a modern perspective, Deakin held to a place for the arts and intellectual discourse in Australian society that contrasts sharply with the glib, uninformed, materialistic patriotism spouted by both of our major parties today. Deakins Australia did not place facile consumerism, sport and militarism above learning, literature, spirituality and deep thinking. When Deakin rose to speak to the large crowd assembled in the Shamrock Hotel, Bendigo, on that warm March evening back in 1898 there was a kind of electricity in the air. Witnesses stated later that Deakins eloquenceproduct of a long commitment to knowledge as an adjunct to personal development moved the crowd to scenes of emotional rapture. From an occult perspectiverecall spiritualism had been Deakins abiding interest in his youthwe might suggest that this famous speech was the moment his

long subservience to the crafts presided over by Thoth-Hermes, i.e. god of language and communication, paid dividends in a display of brilliant oratory. It was also the moment that his vision for the establishment of the nation of Australia left the realm of ideas and imaginings, lodged instead in the world at large. Onwards to Ithaca: Home of the Souls Long Journeying In many journey or quest stories, e.g. Imram Mael Duin (The Voyage of Muldoon) and The Odyssey, the travellers occasionally lose track of their journeys original purpose. This most often happens when the adventurers are initially welcomed, fed and nurtured. In Muldoons case, as already discussed in an earlier chapter, it is the companionship of a faery woman that detains him and makes him lose remembrance of the original purpose of his travels. Given the economic hardship Muldoon and his men encounter during their travels (they are frequently starving when the ship docks at an Island to replenish supplies) a welcoming island offering food, drink, safety and friendship was bound to lead to the near abandonment of their mission. Odysseus is also diverted from his goali.e. returning home to Ithaca where his wife, Penelope, awaits him. As with Muldoon, seductive womenrather the Goddesses Calypso and, later, Circecharm him as a means to delay his journey. In both cases Hermes breaks the spell and Odysseus continues on his way. In terms of the subject matter of this chapter, Im more interested in the Isle of the Lotuseaters that Odysseus and his men visit. In that section the men come ashore seeking fresh water. The Lotus-eaters are encountered and they feed a number of Odysseuss men the honeyed fruit of the lotus plant. Paralysis of will and forgetfulness ensue and Odysseus has to forcefully remove his men from the islandall they wished for was to stay where they were with the Lotus-eaters, to browse on the lotus, and to forget that they had a home to return to. (From Book IX of The Odyssey, Penguin, 1946). The lesson here for creative artists might be as follows: economic and other creature comforts (excessive success?) can lead to sloth, lack of inspiration and paralysis of will. We stagnate and begin to feel trapped. We may be unable to escape and unable to remember the original purpose of our creative journey. Metaphorically we may be unable to set sail for open waters. We may even begin to doubt ourselves and thus may settle for something less than what we are truly capable ofcognitive errors and excuses abound! When I have outlived my stay on an Island the island itself sometimes reminds me that it is time to move on. Sometimes, however, I linger before being unceremoniously dumped in the ocean! Either way, Ive managed to continue my creative journey (i.e. usually after key lessons have been learnt). Something similar happened to Muldoons men when they came across the Isle of the Fortress and Bridge of Glass. When they came ashore a fairy woman greeted them, fed them from a hamper of cheese and buttermilk and then played sweet music that lulled them into a restful sleep. This happened for a number of days until Muldoon, wishing it permanent, asked to sleep with the woman. She promised to answer him in the morning, and did, in a way. Muldoon and his men woke the following morning with their boat tied to a rock in the middle of the oceanthe island, the woman, the fortress, the glass bridge were nowhere to be seen. The Isle on which I have taught creative writing, literature and psychology to adults for almost fifteen years is increasingly infested with bureaucracy and exploitative business models. During my time as a TAFE teacher I have learnt many things and have changed a great deal as a person.

Likewise, the work has provided my family and I with reasonable creature comforts (due to consistent income). It has also provided shelter from the economic hardships that plagued my young adult years. Nevertheless, though teaching reduced to systems of compliance and demands that we build the business pays well for the faithful such a teaching paradigm does not sit well with me. I still remember my original creative purpose and thus I must politely refuse the sleep inducing fruit on offer from the Lotus-eaters. Where Have You Buried the Poets? Where have you buried the poets? their fine, slim cadavers stacked neatly in the moonlight. I saw them as we entered but now theyve vanished and with them the risk of rebel words of revelry, and serious hauntings Where have you buried the poets? Was it deep in the gold mine, in coffins made of lead or other deadly metals? Did you bury them in concrete flooded by waters, pumped there to drown their posthumous words that tendency to sing like Orpheus long after the fact of each bureaucratic execution. Where have you buried the poets? Homer and Sappho, Shakespeare and Chaucer, Blake and Goethe, Eliot and Riding so many bodies in the mine shaft rotting Mallarme, Neruda, Zukofsky - silenced now by men and women with cardboard for brains and hearts that never miss a beat. Where did you bury them? those wizards, those witches of the bleeding heart, made momentarily visible (in all its aching dignity) against the stark backdrop universe where ?

The 5 Cent Alfred Deakin (Australia Day Dreaming, January 2011) The Deakin stamp in the album of Federation shows him no-nonsense Victorian steadfast archetype of the patriarchal leader, nation founder with mandatory beard He probably wrote a dull autobiography I muse. They celebrate his achievement every Australia Day but Id prefer to turn the page, close the cover on White Australia on Aboriginal dispossession. But the pale, green Deakin (small, numerous, boring) slips from the album a sign perhaps? Deakin believed in signs and a transpersonal unconscious. And his stamp begins to animate I pick it up. Occult stamp! it has become the man. Deakin nods and bows. I rub my eyes find myself in the Deakin library. The books are strangely organic they talk, they even sing. And hes there, channeling Mohammed, Wordsworth, Swedenborg, Bunyan We talk on the train to Bendigo its March 1898 hes writing the speech the one that helped found the nation. Later, hell fight for womens suffrage, arbitration and the old age pension. He asks about the state of the Federation I say: You wouldnt recognise it but then again

Politics is like journalism and sport he says (a hint of regret?) each is enslaved to the imperfect present, to realism and compromise, they acknowledge the social as a zone of conflict He pauses as the carriage is invaded (patriots with Aussie flags and loud voices) When he resumes I can barely hear him Trapped in the telescopic hour, we entertain vague notions of the greater good Someone hands him a flag He risesprepares to address the multitude. He does not meet my gaze.

Author Bio (as at June 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia) and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005. He is the author of three books and co-editor of three journals and currently teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.