‘South of My Day’s’ too explores these same ideas that relate to Australia’s old traditional style of history. The poem seeks an historical perspective on the early white-Australian experience through the childhood memories of an old man, Dan, and his tales. Although this typically Australian theme is explored through a slightly different tangent, the idea is still all the same. It also takes this idea a step further, however, and suggests that we, as Australians, are ignorant of, and uninterested in our past and the pioneers that ultimately shaped our country. “No one is listening”. No one cares about the stories of our past, like those of old Dan, when in actual fact we should draw upon these tales and memories and think about what it really means to be an Australian. This investigation of a specifically Australian past is all apart of Judith Wright’s ambition to make sense of her personal and national history, and to find and discover the true Australian identity.
Judith Wright’s use of various poetic techniques has also highlighted a number of similarities and differences between ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’. Wright’s strong use of imagery regarding the Australian landscape also seems to be one of her strong passions that she refers to countlessly. Both of the poems reflect the heritage and nature that is of Australia, highly glorifying it in the process.
In particular in ‘Remittance Man’, the strong conflicting nature of England and Australia, has emphasised Wright’s obvious favouritism of the Australian landscape over that of the English countryside. England has been sharply contrasted with the new, metropolitan civilisation, and is seen as pale, vague and washed out, it’s life defined by clichés of “pheasant shooting”, “the aunts in the close, “the county ball” and the “rainy elms seen through the nursery window”. It also shows the ironic twist that, historically, Australia was where the convicts from England were deported to as a form of punishment, however in the Remittance Man’s mind, this was his escape to paradise. The rugged beauty of the Australian environment, “that harsh biblical country of the scapegoat”, is where the Remittance Man finally lays to rest, “closed in its magnificence”.
Judith Wright’s love of the Australian landscape is again made obvious in ‘South Of My Days’ where the poem attempts to recapture old Dan’s childhood experiences in reminiscence and aims to convey meaning in the harshness and beauty of the Australian landscape and life. Although Wright has not used the means of contrast and comparison to achieve this like in ‘Remittance Man’, this experience has been recaptured through the accurate descriptions of the “high delicate outline” of the tableland, the “bony slopes wincing under the winter”, the “outcropping granite” and the “low trees blue-leaved and olive”. She has created this picture in our minds of this “clean, lean, hungry country”, unprotected and suffering from the fierce winter winds.
Judith Wright maintains a large collection of language techniques that she employs effectively in both ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’. When you first read her poems, it is the extraordinary control of sound devices that initially stand out. Although sound imagery in the diction itself is very effective, like “the slung kettle hisses a leak on the fire”, Wright has manipulated rhyme and metre to further add to the effect. We can see how Wright has applied this in the first line of the second stanza in ‘South of My Days’, “O cold the black-frost night”. The long, rounded ‘O’ sounds lengthen out the line and give the reader the effect of the howling winter winds. The use of this technique is also evident in ‘Remittance Man’. The long, drawling sentences such as “red blowing dust of roads where the teams go slow” emphasise the Remittance Man’s sense of carelessness and freedom.
Wright’s use of alliteration in the two poems has also added to the depiction of the landscape. “Blue blowing smoke of twigs from the noon fire” and the “sparse swinging shadows of trees” in ‘Remittance Man’, paint this picture of a landscape, unique and rich in beauty, but at the same time, harsh and ruthless. ‘South of My Days’ too includes the use of alliteration when Wright describes the “wave of rambler roses” that sweep across the Australian landscape in the summer, and how the “back-log breaks” as “the frost on the roof cracks like a whip”. These sound devices, in addition to her use of imagery, have helped to reflect this idea about the heritage and the rugged, beauty of nature that is of Australia.
Wright’s description of the landscape has been intensified even further through the use of personification. In ‘South of My Days’, we are presented with this image of a “clean, lean, hungry country”, “wincing under the winter”, its “bony slopes” unprotected from the savage winter winds. It is like a living, suffering creature. Even the cottage is personified as it “lurches in for shelter” from the harshness of winter, its “walls draw(ing) in to the warmth” as “the old roof cracks its joints”. Everything described here is alive and suffering. This use of personification is, again, evident in ‘Remittance Man’ when he is finally laid to rest, “closed in (the landscape’s) magnificence”. The use of this technique has helped Wright to recapture this image of the harshness and beauty of the New England landscape and life associated with it.
A number of similarities can also be seen when comparing the tones of ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’. In both of Wright’s poems, the reader is left with an uncertainty of happiness or pity for the poems’ subjects. At the end of ‘Remittance Man’, the reader is left in a neutral state of mind where there is an unsureness of happiness, or rather the question as to whether he was a failure and never amounted to anything. Although he escaped the restrictive formal ties of England, we ask ourselves, did he really find peace in the new land until his death?
‘South of My Days’ also leaves the reader in this ambivalent state of mind. Although we are presented with these fond, childhood memories of Dan the rhythms of colloquial speech, capturing the random nature of memory, we are left with this idea of suffering and death presented through the descriptions of the landscape. Wright leaves us with this idea which suggests that we are ignorant of, and uninterested in our past and the pioneers who shaped and moulded our country. In turn, the reader is, again, left in this neutral state of mind where there is an unsureness between that of happiness and sense of celebration for our land, and this feeling of guilt that has been bestowed upon us for not valuing our country’s history and unique characteristics.
There are a number of similarities and differences evident when comparing two of Judith Wright’s poems, ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’. There is a clear presence of Wright’s love for the Australian landscape in each of the poems, which she has emphasised through the use of a number of language techniques, such as imagery, personification, and sound devices, including alliteration, rhyme and metre. Her use of comparison in ‘Remittance Man’ between that of Australia and the restrictive formal ties of England, also help to intensify her obvious favouritism for the Australian landscape and its people. Parallels can also be drawn between that of the two similar tones of the poems, as they both leave the reader in a neutral and ambivalent state of mind, due to these contrasting emotions of happiness and guilt or pity, which are evoked in both ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’. There are a number of likenesses and contrasts between the two poems, and these can be clearly identified through the content, tone and techniques that Wright has adopted in ‘Remittance Man’ and ‘South of My Days’.
‘Remittance Man’ & ‘South of My Days’ Mrs Wyse