Commonplace Book

The myth of colonial isolation and inferiority seems to be connected broadly to the theological concept of the Fall of Man - the immigration of our ancestors was, as it were, a second Fall, a departure from a Garden of Eden situated somewhere in Victorian England. Like other myths of inferiority (as in the reaction of a Jew to anti-Semitism, for example) the loss of self-confidence is insidious: no labour of intellect or will can ever really bridge the predetermined gap. Many New Zealanders who go to Britain (to go 'back Home' is the code word for it) may be unconsciously making a trip to a land that does not exist: the land of their great-grandmother's exiled fantasy, with the Old Lady sill drinking tea and whisky at Windsor, the village cricket team still playing in the twilight, and Oscar Wilde riding off to jail in a hansom cab. But not all of us are bound by the myth. Personally I prefer the dark country I was born in, with its man-eating pigs and politicians imported from Australia, where, if you break wind at the Bluff, you can be heard in Auckland.
- James K. Baxter, Aspects of Poetry in New Zealand, (The Caxton Press: Christchurch), 1967. (Originally presented as a lecture at Victoria University of Wellington.)