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physical environment, the strange and harsh beauty of an ancient land’. The themes of
‘nostalgia, loss and lovelessness’ are typically Australian and reflect this paradox which is
most strongly felt by white Australian writers who can no longer feel very comfortable with
their European cultural origins. The ‘scientifically sanctioned rationalistic interpretation of
nature’ has led over the last centuries to a ‘sense of deep spiritual deprivation’, and a
‘severance of the sacred correspondence between the human spirit and the created universe’
(Zwicky, 34). Old sources of strength can no longer be relied on to nourish the spirit of
mankind, though the roots it manages to send down will tap into whatever resources can be
found. Tacey believes the Aboriginal world will be a major cradle of a new Australian spirit.
Many, like d’Alpuget and Koch, ‘have turned to the East in their search for antidotes to the
modernisation and material acquisitiveness of their own cultures’ (Zwicky, 34). They have
turned East to recall and reconstruct the misplaced meaning and symbols of what they call
‘home’.
John McLaren makes a similar call for cultural renewal by tapping ancient
understandings of man’s place in the cosmos, and finds what he sees as the ‘productive myth
for Australia and the Pacific’ in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The magician, Prospero,
represents Australia’s cultural links both with Europe, through his despotic rule of the island,
and with America, through his scientific control of nature which associates him with the
culmination of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and yet he wisely rejects both.
sIn breaking his staff, freeing his subjects, and entrusting the future to the
feminine spirit of Miranda, the one who marvels, rather than to the masculine
lords of misrule whose nominal authority is restored, Prospero foretells the
abdication of power that alone can make real the promises of knowledge.
(McLaren, 46)
Sadly, McLaren writes, Australia ‘has rarely listened to the many voices his magic can reveal
in nature’, preferring ‘to follow the example given at the opening of the play, when Prospero
uses his powers to subdue nature. The consequence is that nature ‘has taken its revenge,
turning settlements into dust and salt, and alienating people from the land’ (McLaren, 46-47).
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