Harold Stewart

Harold Frederick Stewart (14 December 1916 - 7 August 1995) was an Australian author and poet. He is notably remembered as the co-author of the Ern Malley poems, an infamous 20th-century Australian literary hoax and subsequent scandal.

Early life

Stewart was born in Drummoyne, Sydney. He came from a comfortable middle-class background and his father, who was a health inspector, had lived in India for many years. He attended Fort Street High School after a brief period studying music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and then went on to the University of Sydney in 1936. He began writing poetry at school and was editor of the school magazine. His early enthusiasms were for the French symbolist poets Mallarmé and Valéry, whom he translated, and for American modernists like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens.

Poetry

He dropped out of university after a couple of months and devoted himself to poetry and studying the art and philosophies of Asia. Carl Jung was an early 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.

WWII & the Ern Malley affair

During the Second World War, he worked in Army Intelligence (DORCA)at the St Kilda Road Barracks in Melbourne. It was at this time, in 1944, that he collaborated with James McAuley in perpetrating the famous 'Ern Malley Hoax' which aimed to expose the excesses of literary modernism. To lend credibility to the story Stewart invented Ethel Malley, Ern's sister. She sent several letters along with 16 poems to Max Harris and her personality, which comes through from the letters, has been compared with another great Australian suburban icon - Edna Everage. Stewart was partly inspired in the creation of an imaginary poet after attending some lectures given by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges in Melbourne in 1938. Stewart's work has been associated with McAuley and A. D. Hope, belonging to a neo-classical movement in poetry, but his content was quite different as he concentrated on writing long metaphysical narrative poems with rhyming couplets.

Japan

In 1966 he left Australia to live permanently in Japan. He devoted himself to studying the doctrines of Shin Buddhism to which he had converted. He became an expert on the history of Kyoto and was intimately acquainted with its temples, gardens, palaces and works of art. He became fascinated with Japanese poetry and published two translations of haiku: "A Net of Fireflies" (1960) and "A Chime of Windbells" (1969) which proved popular with the reading public.

His 1981 book "By the Old Walls of Kyoto" consists of twelve poems in rhyming couplets celebrating Kyoto's landmarks and antiquities, and Stewart's own spiritual pilgrimage into Buddhism. The poems are accompanied by a prose commentary.

He also devoted a great deal of time to collaborating with his teachers, Shojun Bando and Hisao Inagaki, in producing English versions of Japanese Buddhist classics such as the Three Pure Land Sutras and the Tannisho.

He died in Kyoto on 7 August 1995 after a short illness. A Shin Buddhist ceremony was conducted for him.

References

*"Damaged men: the precarious lives of James McAuley and Harold Stewart". by Michael Ackland. Allen & Unwin, 2001.
*"Buddha in a Bookshop". by Peter Kelly, self published, 2007.

External links

* [http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms8973 Harold Stewart Papers - National Library of Australia]
* [http://www.nembutsu.info/keeping.htm Essay on Harold Stewart's Metaphysical Poems]
* [http://www.nembutsu.info/traditio.htm Harold Stewart's Writings on Shin Buddhism]

Persondata
NAME=Stewart, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Contemporary Fijian-Australian poet and academic
DATE OF BIRTH=December 3, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH=Drummoyne, New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH=August 8, 1995
PLACE OF DEATH=Kyoto, Japan