OK. Let's turn to the offices of Archipelago magazine,. The Tasmanian Ministry of the Arts has generously provided the publication with an extra $15,000 for a special issue dedicated to the life of the famous Hobart poet, Gwen Harwood. The issue is due at the printers in a couple of weeks time and your sense is that the articles lack a little sparkle.
Sorting through the morning's mail, you notice a curious package. The postmark is local but it lacks a sender's address. Inside is a manuscript on recycled paper titled The Grit in the Oyster. There is no author listed, nor is there an accompanying letter.
There's a subtitle: The Secret Life of Francis Geyer `Francis Geyer'?. The name rings a bell. Wasn't that one of Gwen's many pen-names, along with Walter Lehman, Timothy Klein and Miriam Stone? Hadn't she used the name Francis Geyer very early in her career, some say, to test whether it was easier to get published as a male poet, though others say it just helped her publish more poems. Perhaps it was just sheer devilishness-whatever.
The biographical subject elected for presentation is arguably the most complex of characters. A love-sick poet, cast into the vortex of desire in language, finds escape only by shedding what he holds most dear: his name. Francis Geyer-a reality turned fiction.
To Rodney: Francis Geyer really existed!? Are you curious?
The Preface may shed more light:
There is a group of people in the world suffering from a complaint that by its very nature must remain hidden. These are the pathologically modest - those whose intrinsic timidity makes them fearful of ever seeing their name in print. Most can survive reasonably well by avoiding entries in telephone directories and losing their name tags in conferences. But there are some who by force of their own talents find their names reproduced in the public realm. The self-help group Anonymous Anonymous was established to deal with such traumas and it was there I met the `undistinguished' poet Francis Geyer. It was in working through his complex life story that I resolved to posthumously reclaim his reputation once the main protagonists had retired from life's stage. The story that follows is Francis Geyer's, though its teller must for obvious reasons remain anonymous.
To Rodney: Are you convinced?
Let's
catch up on the secret life of Francis Geyer. Since leaving Budapest in 1945, Francis
Geyer had wandered the world seeking obscurity. In 1958 he arrived in Hobart as a private
piano teacher. One of his pupils was Gwen Harwood, then at the very early stages of her
poetic career. Geyer was more than a little attracted to his winsome pupil and sent her a
series of anonymous poems.
Do you still walk every day to meet your children
Coming from school along the road that led,
Once, past my house? Still spin the rattling ash-seeds?
Knit coloured socks, play Mozart, bake sweet bread?
And the seasons, have they scored some disenchantment:
On throat and hair and brow and choir-boy face?
Tempered intemperate sidelong looks, and gestures?
The body that was mine so brief a space?
The house, the door, the room: how I remember
That samurai whose servant held a sword,
blood wood at your bedside,
Ah, once I had no need to beg a word.
Gwen guessed their origin, but also recognised the literary merit. She decided to diffuse Geyer's ardour by treating his poems professionally and posted them to a number of literary magazines. The one we just heard was published as `The Supplicant' in the Bulletin 14th December 1960.
Opening the Bulletin to find his own name printed under the poem was a life-shattering experience for Francis Geyer. He was suicidal and dramatically appeared on Gwen Harwood's front door with a knife to his throat. This was a sensitive time with the Sydney Orr case in full swing and she dare not risk another scandal. She asked Geyer if he was filling to forgo his name forever. Of course, nothing would please him more. So she offered to take up his name as one of her own pen-names. The solution appeased Francis Geyer, though trauma had caused irreversible damage to his health and he died within a year.
Thus, by some freak of fate, began Gwen Harwood's illustrious career of a poet. To cover Geyer's tracks she published more poems under his name-the poems about the eccentric Hungarian music teacher she named Kröte. And just in case anyone thought this aberration was exceptional, she invented other poets. Francis Geyer was in a sense, the grit in the oyster: the irritant of fate that stimulated Gwen Harwood's poetic talents to form the entrancing body of work we inherit today.
Here's the conclusion:
Is not poetic justice now due for Francis Geyer? Now the traumatic events have passed, is it not possible to give proper credit to the original author? Let the shadows speak.
Well, doesn't that set the cat among the pigeons!
To Rodney: Would you publish any of this biography, author unseen?
+ It would certainly spice up the issue
To Margaret: Rodney calls you up to seek your advice. What do you say?