Letters | May 2004

Scholarship and stylishness

Dear Editor,

On the subject of my poem (ABR, March 2004) about William Dobell’s Cypriot, Judith Pugh is no doubt correct about the scholarly facts (ABR, April 2004). At the moment, I am searching the poem for a single fact I got right. The only possible benefit of my blunder is that it might help draw even more attention to one of the greatest paintings in the Australian heritage – a painting which really did, after all, focus on the stylishness of a European male at a time when the stylishness of the Australian male was not yet even a concept. That was my subject: but I agree that scholarship should always set the limits before imagination gets to work.

Clive James, London, UK