Volume 7 No. 2 — 1 October 1975
Baylebridge, Nietzsche, Shaw: Some Observations on the 'New Nationalism'
Noel Macainsh
It is proposed to restrict comment here to Baylebridge's 'Nationalism' as delineated principally in the sections, 'National Notes' and 'Political Verse', of This Vital Flesh, since it is here that the assumed influence of Nietzsche appears to be most virulent. Baylebridge writes: 'National Notes was an attempt to bring our youthtful idealism, not the less vague for being perhaps predestined, to solid ground. It went upon the assumption that doing precedes being.' For Baylebridge, it appears that the nation is 'a circumscribed and specialized form of life, and that it is 'a ground for experiment in the things of life'. Man is considered here not purely as an embodiment of life but 'as a national animal'. Baylebridge pleads that this distinction necessarily brings us to conclusions based on expediency and that we must to a great extent become mechanists; for the nation employing 'its social, economic, and religious machinery, is largely a materialistic conception'. It is possible, in his eyes, that 'a mechanist conception would be the more serviceable'. However, this should not obscure the fact that for Baylebridge the national regeneration he advocates is spiritually based.
The full text of this essay is available to ALS subscribers
Please sign in to access this article and the rest of our archive.
Published 1 October 1975 in Volume 7 No. 2. Subjects: Australian literary movements, Culture & cultural life, Literary & cultural exchanges, Literary influences, Nationalism, William Baylebridge.
Cite as: Macainsh, Noel. 'Baylebridge, Nietzsche, Shaw: Some Observations on the 'New Nationalism'.' Australian Literary Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 1975, doi: 10.20314/als.b9e869c5f8.
Related essays and reviews
Voss and His Communications: A Structural Contrast
In bringing Sydney and the Bush to function in a set of relations which are symbolic, [Patrick White's Voss] demonstrates that in place of…
Jennifer Strauss
Un-Australian Activities?: Mary Gilmore's Version from the Spanish
Somewhere around 1915-18, Mary Gilmore worked on assembling a collection of poems translated from, or based on, Spanish originals. The Mitchell Library hold two typescript…
Poetry into Life, Life into Poetry: Judith Wright and the Academy
Recently, one of Australia's leading poets, Judith Wright, com plained about the way poetry is taught in schools and universities. This was certainly not the…
Charles Harpur's 'Midsummer Noon': A Structuralist Approach
Macainsh offers a paradigmatic analysis of the poem to show a "clarity of structure" not detected by other critics. The "element of space" suggested by…