B : MANIFESTATIONS OF 'THE BEAST'
C: THE DRAMATIC CAVE
Baxter's poems illustrate the importance of the 'hole in a bank in a hill above the sea' ('Beginnings' 239) as the breeding ground for creativity. Two poems, 'The Cave' and 'The Hollow Place,' reflect the importance of this seminal image. The same technique is found in his plays, a notable example being ' The Sore-Footed Man' ( 1 967), which provides a very significant link between the imagery of the poems and the playscripts and confirms that Baxter's thematic concerns remain very similar in both genres. My aim in pursuing this link is to establish that Baxter's Oedipal predicament is fundamental to his view of society and in particular to his attitude towards conventional marriage.
The writing of 'The Sore-Footed Man' came about when Baxter went to Dunedin in 1 966 to take up the Robert Bums Fellowship and met Patric Carey. Carey and his wife had built a small theatre in their house in London Street which they named The Globe. ls Baxter was persuaded by Carey to write original scripts for this theatre and the two formed a close working relationship and became firm friends.
19
The first of Baxter's plays performed at The Globe was 'The Band18 David Carnegie notes that The Globe had 'an influence on Dunedin Theatre (sic) out of all proportion to the small numbers of people who went to see the plays' ( 1 5). In 1 958 Rosalie and Patric Carey started an alternative to the Dunedin Repertory Society by producing plays in churches, halls and gardens. One of these was a new translation of Aeschylus' 'Oresteia.' By 1 959 they were producing Beckett, Ionesco and Genet in the living room of their Victorian home. With the help of volunteer labour the Careys then built a theatre in their house ( 1 6). Carnegie notes the impressive list of playwrights whose work was produced at The Globe: 'Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Webster, Moliere, Turgenev, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, O'Casey, Lorca, Sartre, Beckett, Saroyan, Genet, Ionesco, Williams, Albee, Pinter, Wesker' ( 1 7). Baxter's 'The Band Rotunda' was the hundredth play to be staged at The Globe ( 1 8). This was followed by 'The Sore-Footed Man (1967), 'The Bureaucrat' ( 1967), 'The Devil and Mr Mulcahy' (1967), 'Mr O'Dwyer's Dancing Party' (1 968), 'The Day That Flanagan Died' ( 1 969) and 'The Temptations of Oedipus' ( 1 970). Two other plays that Baxter wrote during this time were put on at other venues, The of the (1 967) at Downstage directed by Richard Campion and 'The Starlight in Your Eyes' (1 967) at Otago University directed by John Casserley.
19 In one of his rare interviews, given in 1969, Baxter described The Globe as a venue that was 'just about ideal' for his plays and at the same time emphasized that the purpose of his playwriting was to educate his audience:
I couldn't be bothered just to write for entertainment because that means you are giving them back the frame of reality they already have with a little twist at the end just to cheer them up. I don't want to cheer them up. I want to make them less despairing. That, in a sense, would be the moral issue: when you make sense of life you despair less (Baysting 9).
Rotunda' (1 967), which is set in New Zealand.2o Baxter wanted to go on writing drama but expressed a concern to Carey that he needed structures, plots and themes to work with. His friend suggested that he solve the problem as T.S. Eliot had done by going back to the Greeks, and he lent Baxter some copies of Greek plays to help him do this (McKay, The Life 229). One of the results was 'The Sore-Footed Man,' which was produced at The Globe in the same year as 'The Band Rotunda. '
'The Sore-Footed Man' is Baxter's adaptation of 'Philoctetes' by Sophocles. Both texts focus on the hero of the title, who, according to Greek legend, was abandoned by Odysseus on the remote and uninhabited island of Lemnos after he had been bitten by a snake and the wound would not heal. Odysseus and the rest of the Greek army then sailed away to fight the Trojan War. Both the Sophocles play and Baxter's adaptation commence at the point where Odysseus has returned to Lemnos after an absence of ten years to rescue Philoctetes. He comes back because it has been prophesied that the Greeks can win the Trojan War only with the help ofPhiloctetes and his bow, which was given to him by Heracles.
There is evidence to suggest that from the play's inception both Carey and Baxter were thinking about the relevance of the classical Greek text to contemporary New Zealand. McKay records that Baxter and Carey would go into a coffee shop in Dunedin and spend hours there, discussing what New Zealand society had in common with the Athens of Sophocles Life 23 1 ). Like Mason, Baxter found that there were times when his subject matter did not readily lend itself to a New Zealand setting.21 Even when this was the case, however, Baxter was at pains to imbue his scripts with a distinctive 'kiwi' flavour.
20 Rosalie Carey records that Baxter's plays like Mason's produced an outraged reaction in traditional theatre-going audiences: 'Because of Baxter's colourful language and down-to-earth characters many of the older members were angered by The Band Rotunda, and indeed by all Baxter's plays that were to follow. ' She adds that some of The Globe's habitual audience even threatened to withdraw their support: 'One august matron vowed, "If you do any more of those nasty Baxter plays I shall cancel my membership !'" Patric Carey, however, was stalwart in his support of Baxter the playwright: he replied, 'I shall do all the plays Baxter likes to give me' (90). 2 1
There were times when Bruce Mason's subject matter necessitated an overseas setting. The Waters of Silence is a case in point. Another is the solo performance piece 'To Russia, With Love,' which is set in the U.S.S.R. and based on autobiographical experience. David Dowling records that M ason was sent as part of a 'three-man cultural delegation' to the U. S. S.R. where he met "'1gor," a dissident - the germ for To Russia, With Love' Bruce Mason 47) .
This produced a curiously hybrid text. The sailors in the Greek army led by Odysseus in 'The Sore-Footed Man,' for example, blend Greek costumes with the New Zealand vernacular,z2 One such Greek, speaking as an 'average kiwi joker,' comments that his comrade's mother 'runs a mollshop in Syracuse' (1 36),z3 The sailors also display the anti-establishment attitude associated with the New Zealand 'tall poppy syndrome': 'I don't like the nobs. They get more than their share of the wine - more than their share of the loot - and a bloody sight more than their share of the women!' (149),z4 The 'nobs' that are referred to here are the heroes of Sophocles. In Baxter these supermen are cut down to size and humanized; Odysseus has 'got too fat' ( 1 30) to climb up the steep cliff face to the cave of Philoctetes and the Trojan hero Hector is dismissed as 'a most crashing bore' ( 1 5 1 ).
'The Sore-Footed Man,' like 'The Homecoming,' is set at the time of the Trojan War, which Baxter then transports into a New Zealand context. One of the men in Odysseus' army, for example, describes the return of the Greeks to the Trojan plain in terms that suggest the fighting conditions of the First World War: 'Back to Troy [ . . . ]. Back in the trenches' (149). Twentieth century warfare is incongruously grafted onto a battleground of the Ancient World. Baxter likewise adapts the setting of ' Philoctetes' to suggest a New Zealand location. Sophocles' play takes place on the island of Lernnos, which in Baxter's version becomes 'faJn island coast' ( 1 29) making it feasible to interpret it as a New Zealand coastline.25 All this amounts to strong indications that Baxter has adapted the Greek myth to represent 'the margin' of New Zealand.
There is also a journal that Mason kept of this visit, which is housed in the J.C.Beaglehole Room at Victoria University of Wellington Library.
22 It could be argued, however, that to impose a contemporary vernacular on an historical play is a dramatic technique that is at least as old as Shakespeare.
23 Mason recognized the 'kiwi' element in the script. When he played Odysseus at the Victoria University of Wellington James K. Baxter Festival 1 973, he gave him a 'caricatured' New Zealand accent (Corballis, E-mail to the author).
24 In the New Zealand of the 1 960s the drinking of wine would ally the sailors more to the Greek
than to the New Zealand component of the hybrid.
25 Baxter's poetry also transposes the Ancient World on to the New Zealand landscape. 'Wild Bees,' for example, likens the New Zealand experience to events in Carthage, Rome and Troy Poems 82-83). Similarly, the poet R.A.K.Mason, born in 1 905, imposes the mythology of the Eurocentre onto the New Zealand situation. In 'On the Swag' he likens a swagman to Christ Poems 56) and in 'Vengeance of Venus' a woman is compared to the goddess of the
In other more important ways, too, Baxter transformed Sophocles' script to represent his view of society. I have already noted McKay's comments on the
autobiographical nature of Baxter's poetry Life 290). In O'Sullivan's
opinion the autobiographical influences extend even further. He writes, ' [t]here is no period of Baxter's life, and no important event,' which is not ' already there in published poems, plays and essays' (4-5). It is hardly surprising, then, that 'The Sore-Footed Man' can be interpreted as another expression of Baxter's Oedipal predicament.
In the original text, during the time of his exile Philoctetes has made his home in a cave, the characteristics of which bear a striking resemblance to the autobiographical cave of Baxter's poetry. The cave in 'Philoctetes' is situated up a steep cliff face facing the sea. In 'The Hollow Place,' the cave which inspired Baxter's poems is likewise 'above the plunging sea' Poems 25 1 ). Sophocles includes a very specific description of the home of Philoctetes in his script:
[ A] cave with two mouths. There are two niches to rest in, one in the sun when it is cold, the other in a tunnelled passage
through which the breezes blow in summertime (Grene 1 95).
This location is reproduced in Baxter's version: the home of Philoctetes becomes 'a cave with a double entrance' 1 30). Baxter's cave on the coastline of South Otago also had a double entrance and the similarity between this cave and the one described by Sophocles may well have been what first attracted him to this particular Greek play.
In both texts Philoctetes has been abandoned by his comrades because he has been bitten on the ankle with a snake wound which will not heal, but there are significant differences in the circumstances surrounding the two bites. In the Introduction to his version of the script, David Grene draws attention to the fact title and a parallel is drawn between the situation of the poet and 'Paphos of old' (89). This is an allusion to the myth that Aphrodite landed at Paphos in Cyprus after she was born from the sea (Harvey 1 29). Like Baxter, R.A.K. Mason combines New Zealand colloquial expression with allusion to produce a hybrid text.
that the misfortune of Philoctetes' wound would have been 'an accident' brought about because ' [h]e had unconsciously stumbled into the precincts or shrine of a God' which 'was probably an unmarked and unfenced place' ( 1 9 1 ).
In marked contrast, Baxter's version has Philoctetes say that because he has 'always been a religious man' (Baxter himself was by this time a 'religious man') he deliberately 'paid a visit to the shrine of the goddess Chryse'
1 40). This shrine is in yet another cave on Baxter's island, which is clearly marked 'with the sign of the goddess above it [ . . . ] the round eye painted on the rock' ( 1 37). In Sophocles the snake bite does not even happen on Lemnos. Philoctetes says in the original script: 'I was already bitten when we put in here/on my way from sea-encircled Chryse' (Grene 206). In Baxter's version, however, Philoctetes confirms that the incident happened on 'this island'
1 40). So the 'sea-encircled' island of Chryse in Sophocles is changed into the goddess Chryse whose shrine is a cave on 'fa}n island coast' in Baxter.
In Baxter's adaptation the circumstances of the snake bite are obsessively returned to by three different characters: firstly by Odysseus ( 1 29), next by the Third Sailor ( 1 37) and thirdly by Philoctetes himself (1 40). In each account the associations of the wound with the female are insisted on and expanded upon. The most detailed account of the event is by one of the sailors, who accompanied Philoctetes when he first arrived on the island. This sailor remembers that when Philoctetes came to the shrine and saw the mark of the goddess upon it his initial fear was overcome - he 'didn't run' - because of the presence of an attractive woman: ' [T]here was a woman standing at the door of the cave. She smiled at him with eyes like a snake. [. . .] He followed her into the shrine - and crack! The guardian of the shrine bit him on the ankle' (1 37).
Earlier in the conversation, another of the sailors says that when he first landed on Lemnos he was attracted to a girl who also 'had eyes like a snake' (not the same girl as the priestess who stood 'at the door of the cave') and this sailor then interprets the girl's thoughts of him to his mates: 'Fresh blood! You come into my burrow, sailorman, and I'll wrap myself around you and suck the juice right out of your liver' ( 1 36- 1 3 7). Later in the conversation the sailor once again
speculates on the nature of this girl with 'eyes like a snake' : ' [M]aybe she has a goddess -a snake goddess, a small one -sitting just behind her navel' ( 1 3 8).
The protagonist in 'Philoctetes' has been marooned on an uninhabited island: [T]his Lemnos and its beach
down to the sea that quite surrounds it; desolate, no one sets foot on it; there are no houses (Grene 1 95)
so there are no females in the Sophoc1es play. Baxter's island, on the contrary, is inhabited by females of all kinds, who, by their association with the imagery of the snake, are all linked to the blood-sucking reptile who inflicts the grievous wound. Thus the goddess, her priestess and all women who are sexually attractive become interchangeable. Furthermore, it is important to note that the 'snake goddess,' according to the sailor, is housed in the womb 'just behind [ . . . ] [the] navel' of the female: yet another representation of the 'cave/womb' that assumes such resonance in Baxter's poetry?6
In 'The Sore-Footed Man' Odysseus sums up the nature of Philoctetes' affliction in terms that can be interpreted as an expression of Oedipal anxiety: 'An ordinary wound would have healed up - or else he'd have died of it - but this one neither healed up nor did it finish him off - it just kept him in a state of agony' (1 29).27 The Macmillan Browns were Calvinists and Baxter associates this religion with his mother. It could be argued that Baxter's version of 'Philoctetes' is overlain with connotations of The Fall. If this line of argument is taken further, then the 'wound' that will not heal becomes the metaphorical expression of the Oedipal predicament, which is in turn connected with images of the loss of innocence in
26
Kai Jensen emphasizes the influence of Jung in Baxter's writing and quotes from Jung's Dreams
in support of his argument:
A man's unconscious is . . . feminine and is personified by the anima. The anima also stands for the 'inferior' function and for that reason frequently has a shady character; in fact she sometimes stands for evil itself . . . She is the dark and dreaded maternal womb, which is of an essentially ambivalent nature (2 14).
This idea does seem to be reflected in the connotations surrounding the female womb in Baxter's writing.
27 'The Sore-Footed Man' was preceded by a mime entitled 'The Woman' when it was first
performed at The Globe in 1 967. In it 'The Woman' of the title is represented by a tailor's dummy. When a man, the only actor in the mime, 'kneels in front of it' and 'makes movements of religious supplication' 'encircling' the dummy 'with his arms and kissing it,' in response the
the Garden of Eden, caused by Eve working in conjunction with the serpent. The goddess Chryse and all the women who mirror her then in turn become reflections of the first woman, Eve. When Baxter, in the persona of the Greek hero, comes to worship at her shrine, she, in return for his devotion, inflicts him with the 'wound' of his Oedipal attachment.28
The fundamental changes which Baxter makes to the Sophocles play, therefore, all serve to make his script another expression of his Oedipal anxiety. Philoctetes becomes a dramatic mask for Baxter the playwright, just as another Greek hero in
'The Homecoming' becomes a dramatic mask for Baxter the poet. Both masks express the same personal problem.
The priestess of the goddess, Eunoe, almost immediately becomes a substitute mother. Like the mother in 'The Homecoming' she is, according to Philoctetes, a nurturer: '[S]he looked after me. She fed me and bathed my wound' ( 140). As long as Philoctetes remained in the world of men he was able to function as a superior human being. When Eunoe first meets him she thinks, 'Ah, how handsome he looks! What a hero! ' (1 34). But the 'wound' of the Oedipal condition has an emasculating effect. Philoctetes feels obliged to marry the nurturer of his 'wound' and so Eunoe is able, by its means, to transform herself into the dominant partner. By the time the play opens Eunoe has come to despise her husband for his fixated emotional state which she herself is perpetuating: ' 1
didn't think I'd b e saddled with a sort of adult child' (1 34) she exclaims not long after the play opens.
As Eunoe metamorphoses from nurturer to castrator she becomes the replica of the mother-wife in 'The Homecoming,' but she achieves what the latter can only desire, which is to keep the male 'folded within her' Poems 1 2 1 ), in a