Celebrating a fellowship that affirms life, growth

IT was a chance invitation to attend the opening of the Auld Acquaintances: Celebrating the Robert Burns Fellowship exhibition, at the university library, on Friday last week, to mark the fellowship’s 60th anniversary, accepted in the hope of meeting previous fellows known to Civis, that led to hearing about the session the following afternoon at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, honouring the 17 fellows who have died.

Examples of those dead fellows’ work were read; some by family members or friends, some by other fellows. Civis had to leave early, and missed the last few readings, but those heard were reminders of the quality of their writing and the value of the fellowship.

Some were deeply moving.

Roger Hall read ‘‘one of the saddest passages’’ he knew — ‘‘Fishing on the Taieri’’, from Graham Billing’s novel The Slipway — bringing to life the selfdeception of alcoholism, and Cilla McQueen three poems by Ruth Dallas (Pioneer Woman with Ferrets, Photographs of Pioneer Women and Milking before Dawn), casting a realistic light on the variety of roles played by women in the pioneer period.

Janet Frame’s Between My Father and the King, read by her niece and literary executor Pamela Gordon, was new to Civis — it seems incredible that a soldier returning from World War 1, shrapnel in his spine, lungs rotted by gas, should find himself in debt to ‘‘the King’’ for the £50 worth of furnishings for his simple home; his eventual mental balancing of the books, by an imaginary billing of ‘‘the

King’’ for his wounds, only slight consolation.

Equally shattering was R.A.K. Mason’s 1950 Sonnet to MacArthur’s Eyes, responding to the remark by US general Douglas MacArthur (who wanted to extend the Korean War to China itself, and use nuclear weapons) on seeing four dead young Koreans: ‘‘That’s a good sight for my old eyes.’’

Which brings to mind the tirade from John Bolton, aimed at the International Criminal Court, in his first speech as National Security Adviser to the US. Mr Bolton, responding to an ICC prosecutor finding preliminary evidence that war crimes, including rape and torture, were committed by US troops in Afghanistan, and asking permission to open an inquiry, said that the US would ‘‘not sit quietly’’ if the ICC attempted to investigate the US, Israel, or other allies of the US.

He threatened to ban ICC staff investigating Americans from the US, prosecute them (though there’s no US law allowing that), impose financial sanctions and act against any companies or states aiding such investigations.

He had the nerve to claim that

‘‘the only deterrent to evil and atrocity is what Franklin Roosevelt once called ‘the righteous might’ of the US and its allies’’ (presumably exercised by others — he dodged the 1969 Vietnam draft by enlisting in the Maryland National Guard).

Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries might have reservations about that.

American opposition to the ICC isn’t new. The US didn’t ratify the Rome Statute which established it, and has enacted a law (commonly known as the ‘‘Hague Invasion Act’’) that allows the US military to rescue US citizens held by the court — ironic, in view of Mr Bolton’s assertion that action by the ICC would violate US sovereignty.

Someone convinced of the ‘‘righteous might’’ of the US could be expected to trust the virtue of its troops.

But perhaps Mr Bolton remembers George W. Bush and Donald Trump endorsing the use of torture.

The arrogance of American ‘‘exceptionalism’’ resonates with MacArthur, who ‘‘ . . . of his own choice/follows up the machines of death to take his stand/over the slain and in a quavering voice/declaim his joy at youth dead beneath his hand’’.

Mason recalled the feelings of other survivors, of earlier wars: ‘‘such eyes as I’ve known them old have always been/eager to see spring flowers and the youth who mean/mankind’s spring after war’s winter.’’

Like Mason, the Burns Fellowship affirms life and growth.