The tape-recorded lecture “A Continent Turns, God Wakes,” by Eli Siegel was studied in one of the professional classes for Aesthetic Realism consultants and associates. The following report by Len Bernstein of this lecture was part of a Dramatic Presentation at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, a not-for-profit educational foundation, at 141 Greene St., NYC 10012, (212) 777-4490.

“A Continent Turns, God Wakes” was the title of a Goodbye Profit System lecture Eli Siegel gave on January 4, 1973.  In this lecture, which students of Aesthetic Realism heard on November 28, 1980, Eli Siegel talked of the history and poetry of Australia, to place one of the most important occurrences of contemporary history: Australia’s stand against the Vietnam war. 

Australia had just had an election in which the pro-American conservative coalition, which had governed for 23 years, was unseated.  The Labor Party, in one of its first acts, ended Australian involvement in Vietnam.  This was reported by the New York Times in an article titled, “U.S. Envoy Irked by Australian Actions.”  Clyde R. Cameron, a Minister in the new government, called Nixon’s bombing of North Vietnam “an act of virtual genocide.”  American policy in Vietnam, Cameron continued, seemed to be controlled by “maniacs.” 

Eli Siegel explained: “Our Killer (his name for Richard Nixon) was almost called that by representatives of a continent.  This rebuke is more important than his victory in the 1972 American election.  Let us salute Australia and thank it for taking some of the bad taste out of the November 7th election.”

Mr. Siegel read from the 1948 edition of the Encyclopedia of World History about Australia.  It had a long history of white domination.  Starting in 1955 and continuing to that very year, 1973, there were laws severely restricting Asian immigration.  And in World War II, Australia was terrified at the idea of being attacked by Japan.  That Australia could now stand up for Vietnam, an Asian country, meant, Eli Siegel explained, that it had shown “a certain kind of island integrity.”

Poetry, I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, is sanity – it is integrity become musical.  Eli Siegel explained that, “until now, unfortunately, in the field of poetry and generally in the field of what is called Belle Lettres, Australia has not done very much.  I have had to ask, will I ever find a poem that is of Australia, Australia?  No poem yet corresponds to its strange geography and to its whimsy in terms of animals.  Australia has the duck-billed platypus, the kangaroo, the emu and the dingo.”  Eli Siegel continued, “When I read that article from Sydney, I felt at last Australia has stopped pretending.  The shameful killing business which some persons calling themselves Americans have thought it well to participate in, may have brought conscience to a certain island continent.  Perhaps now the poems that can be expected from it will come forth.” 

He then read from Stedman’s A Victorian Anthology, several poems of Australia which, he said, while not true poems “have things which will add to the emotional possessions of anyone.”  The poem which affected me most was William Sharp’s “The Last Aboriginal.”  Sharp, who knew the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and wrote a biography of him, here, noted Eli Siegel, shows “a desire to get to the feelings of an Australian Aborigine.  Sharp should be praised for it.”  Here are some lines from the poem: 

I see him sit, wild-eyed, alone,
  Amidst gaunt, spectral, moonlit gums;
He waits for death: not once a moan
From out his rigid fixed lips comes;
His lank hair falls adown a face
Haggard as any wave-worn stone;
And in his eyes I dimly trace
The memory of a vanished race.

Anthropologist Dr. Arnold Perey, who knows Australia firsthand, added to the emotion of this class when he told later of how the early settlers of Australia literally hunted Aborigines for sport.  “That Australia could now speak out against genocide in Vietnam,” he commented, “shows the emergence of the larger self.”

“I once gave a talk,” said Eli Siegel, “at the Village Vanguard on Australia.  And I said then that it hadn’t done so well because it couldn’t decide whether it should have a good conscience or not.  Australia was settled by convicts sent from England and ever since then, Australians have not been able to forget that maybe their great-great-grandfather may have been a convict.  To have a country begin that way would affect the later people.” 

As a student of Asian history, I am excited by how Eli Siegel speaks of the relation of history and poetry.  The guilt of Australia over its convict beginnings and its brutal treatment of the Aborigines, he explained, had to do with its failure, so far, to reach true poetry.  This is a way of seeing history that I believe is unprecedented, and exact. 

The lecture concluded with a dramatic article headlined, “U.S. Hero of Vietnam War Now a Waiter in Australia.”  It began, “A retired United States Army Colonel, David H. Hackworth, the most decorated officer of the Vietnam War, said today that he was working as a waiter in a café in an Australian resort.”  Colonel Hackworth, who joined the army in 1944 at age 14, received 91 service medals, including 10 Silver Stars, who authored a primer for American soldiers on counter-insurgency warfare, was reported as saying that the American Army lied in its published reports on the war.  Said the Colonel, “I went to Australia to lead a more creative, truthful and worthwhile life than I have been living for the past 25 years.”  Said Eli Siegel, “This American military man makes me think of Tolstoy’s characters who repent.  This person definitely has his place in some novel to be, Russian or otherwise.  A person gets so many medals and then gets so humble – only a consultation trio could explain it.” 

I agree with Class Chairman Ellen Reiss who commented, “There’s a technique in this class, and it’s lovely.  When Eli Siegel was grateful he wanted to show it, and how does he show his gratitude to Australia for what it has done?  He shows what it is.” 

For me this class brought home the basic Aesthetic Realism idea that ethics is a force in reality.  In 1973 it found expression through a continent and through an individual, and through Eli Siegel honoring the value of both.