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JAMES K. BAXTER'S OTAGO WORLDS Lawrence Jones
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Page 39
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| The images of the City, then, from Dunedin, complement
those from Brighton and the coast to form a fuller symbolic world, although
the dominant image among them, that of the Leith, clearly relates to his
other nature symbolism associated with Brighton. But there is also
Baxter's third world: 'Alongside the human City, indifferent or even hostile,
remains the Wilderness, whose time is still that of the sixth day of creation
and whose works belong to the Power that created her'. In Baxter's
Otago poems the images of the Wilderness come primarily from Central Otago.
These images are related to those of the sea, for if the sea can
be 'the void white thundering wilderness - which symbolises the negative
side of god's mercy', similarly 'the huge ice torrent' that is Fox
Glacier represents 'some other kind of love' which could descend on us,
'yearning over our roofs / Black pinnacles and fangs of toppling ice'.
For Baxter, consistently the Wilderness symbolizes this 'negative side'
or 'other love', the fearful power of God that is beyond human understanding.
From the first in his poetry,
Still the great symbols stand: The mountains and the sky Commune beyond our day; And breaks on shores of pain The unimagined sea. |
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