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The Forum > Article Comments > The Anzac bards > Comments

The Anzac bards : Comments

By Sasha Uzunov, published 11/8/2009

The Anzac legend has become a literary goldmine for Australian writers and journalists in the past few decades.

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'The questions now remain will Paul Daley replace Les Carlyon as the new Zeus? Will Tom Hyland become Hermes, the messenger of the gods? Should all correspondence intended for these three be addressed to Mount Olympus?'

One more question ... When will this ridiculous national obsession with a beach in Turkey ever stop?

A couple of years ago, Paul Keating made a similar comment. Only he used the word 'nonsense' instead of obsession. The Australian ran a poll on the day they published the story and by the end of the poll period, 68% of respondents agreed with him. Considering The OZ could hardly be called an anti-war rag (what newspaper is?), this result is pretty revealing.

In the decade after Federation, Australia was molding and forging one of the most socially progressive nations on earth at that time - with the only exception being its attitude to Indigenous Australians. A hundred years later, we have wrecked that proud early history by substituting it with a boys own tale of an invasion of a country with whom we had no quarrel, in a war we should never have entered.
Posted by SJF, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 10:44:58 AM
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WTF?

It was pointed out to me a number of years ago that any battle lost by ANZAC, Canadian or other former English colonies was reported as a defeat of the soldiers from that country.

Any battle won by those troops was reported as a British victory.

Regardless of whether or not that is true is does remind me that far too many Australians have been slaughtered fighting someone else’s war.

ANZAC day is one of the saddest days of the year. It reminds me of all the ANZACS (family members included) who died to satisfy the ego of that warmonger Churchill
Posted by WTF?, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 12:03:34 PM
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It is not only books about Anzac that are being published, there is a huge and growing industry of books on war being published all over the world.

It is almost as though there is a collective nostalgia for the "good old days" when everyone was supposedly united in a common purpose--war as a potent vehicle for collective meaning.

Or perhaps we are seeing/imagining a dress rehearsal for even bigger and more horrendous things to come?

Of course the "good old days" were horrific for those who were unfortunate enough to be there.

Some of the books and work being done is proffering different "revisionist" interpretations of the wars altogether. Their origins and consequences and the relation of the war mystique to our culture altogether.

There is of course an entirely predictable and consequent "conservative" counter-attack to this project of examining and questioning this war mystique.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 12:22:40 PM
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WTF?
I agree with your comments, I've even heard Churchill described as a 'warmonger' by English people. We don't need any more allies like the British,the Americans might be more reliable,but I doubt it.
Anzac day is a national tragedy.
Posted by mac, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 2:20:54 PM
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Les Carlyon is successful both because he writes so well, and because he seems to meet the needs of both two distinct bodies of interest in Gallipoli – as an historic event in the course of WWI, and as a national myth though which we continue to explore the nature of Australian identity.

As a military event Gallipoli was not particularly significant – it was a defeat of little consequence to the course of the war, and even the scale and senselessness of the slaughter were later eclipsed by the Western Front.

As a national myth, however, the Gallipoli story continues to provide a rich seam of images to explore and express the Australian identity. It is about abstracts as much as events – courage, mateship, ingenuity, endurance, sacrifice, suffering, a subversive critique of the abuse of power by imperial or military leadership, naïveté and loss of innocence …

Like any good myth, this one is elusive, mutable and paradoxical (even contradictory). Its interpretation has changed over time – compare, for example Peter Weir’s anti-war, anti-establishment movie with Banjo Paterson’s bloodthirsty nationalism (link below). It has been enlisted to support militarism and pacifism, patriotism and subversion, and both affirmation and rejection of Australia’s willingness to engage in war for the sake of its allies.

http://www.anzacday.org.au/anzacservices/poetry/allaussies.htm

Carlyon’s skill lies in drawing vivid, human pictures from historical sources, which serves both the historical and mythic interest in Gallipoli, and keeps the two in touch with one another.
Posted by Rhian, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 3:33:36 PM
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It is grand all these writers recall the senselessness of war and the courage and sacrifice of many young people but ... Carlyon and all those who try to perpretrate Gallipoli as Australia's 'foundation myth' are quite out of order.

Sure Gallipoli is an Australian myth just as is Kokoda. Both are significant and important to most Australians but Australias founding myths are to be found prior to Federation, among the words and ideas emanating from the writers, poets and publishers of the 1880's and 90's.

It was the poets and prose writers who first expressed and defined national identity ... not soldiers or war reporters. Our young people at war lived up to the already enunciated national traditions and attributes of our poets and writers. The war reporters simply reported the participants stories as they saw them, through their already unique Australian eyes.

It would have been more correct to have held: together they perpretrated the already existing great Australian myths.
Posted by keith, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 8:01:43 PM
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