Tamara

by Geoffrey Dutton

Angus James finds himself at the 800th anniversary of Georgian epic poet Shota Rustaveli. There he meets Tamara, an ebony haired Russian poetess, who he madly falls for. A deeply romantic story.

174 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Born into a prestigious pastoralist family in South Australia, Dutton served in WWII and studied at Oxford, before becaming a leading light of 20th century Australian writing. His own fiction and poetry received awards in his lifetime, but his legacy has been in his non-fiction writing. His works included extensive texts on the history of Australian literature, art, politics, culture, biography, and travel. Known to all of the great minds of his generation, including his long-time best friend Patrick White, Dutton's influence helped to shape post-war Australian literature, and he received the Order of Australia in 1976. His output was featured in at least 200 books, including 40 solo works, by the time of his death.

Dutton worked behind the scenes as well, as an editor for Penguin and co-founder of Sun Books, and was crucial in founding the Adelaide Festival of the Arts.

Dutton married Ninette (Trott) in 1944, and she played a vital role in his writing and research during their 40-year marriage. After their divorce, Dutton married the writer Robin Lucas. Although he had lived most of his adult life in South Australia, the elder Dutton spent time in Mudgee, New South Wales researching in the late 1980s before moving south again.

In the 1990s, Dutton gave his influence to the Australian Republican Movement, then taking shape during debate over the best direction for the country in the 21st century. Dutton died in 1998, living long enough to see the founding of National Sorry Day, a key component in reconciliation with Aboriginal Australians, but not quite long enough to take part in the referendum on Australia's future, where the cause for republicanism was defeated 45.13% to the monarchy's 54.87%

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings, the biannual Clubs are a great way to rediscover treasures in your TBR.  The rules are simple: we just read a book from the designated year.  I've participated in 11 of these Club Reads so far and this time round the year is 1970. The week runs from October 14th-20th but I'm a day early because October 14th is the anniversary of the birth of Katherine Mansfield and I'm keeping that date for her.

1970 was a terrific year in Oz Lit.  I was too impecunious to buy books in 1970 but I made up for it afterwards.  Among my favourites are

The Bay of Noon, by Shirley Hazzard
A Horse of Air, by Dal Stivens and winner of the Miles Franklin Award
The Vivisector by Nobel Prize winner Patrick White.  A Review from the Archives is already in draft form for eventual publication.

And now, also Tamara. It is, admittedly, a rather obscure title by historian, poet, novelist, and author of non-fiction Geoffrey Dutton (1922-1998).  In his day he was a prominent figure in the Australian literary scene but maybe not so well-known outside it, and maybe also now forgotten here.  He doesn't get a mention in the 2009 edition of Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature , and though he rated considerable column inches in the 1985 edition of the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Tamara is mentioned only as a love story set in Russia.  Which wouldn't have made me want to read it.

Yet this is a book that is maybe more fascinating now, than when it was first published, and since Dutton's fiction doesn't have much of a presence online, this is a longer review than usual...



Tucked into my copy of Dutton's third novel Tamara was a printout of a rather churlish contemporary newspaper review by an academic who shall remain nameless.  The caustic framing of the title and the dismissive tone of the review may well have discouraged potential readers if they (a) understood what the critic was on about and (b) took any notice of it.  It begins like this:

Sartre has explained the Stalinist repression of non-ideological literature (Babel for example) as an attack on the symptoms of that 'new class' that Djilas foresees of the professional elite.

In 1970 without the benefit of Wikipedia, did anybody know who Djilas was? More importantly, did they know anything about the USSR apart from Cold War propaganda? Dutton did.  The dust jacket on my edition tells me that he'd been there himself, in 1966, to attend a festival to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of Shota Rustavelli, the Georgian epic poet, and he'd managed to wrangle some time away from official scrutiny in Georgia and around the Black Sea. His impressions from this trip inspired Tamara.

This is the blurb from the dustjacket:

Angus James, friend of poets, lover of wine, poetry, and the other serious pleasures of living and, incidentally, distinguished Australian agronomist, is in Moscow for a world conference of soil scientists. By a happy accident he finds himself co-opted as Australian delegate at the festival to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of the Georgian epic poet, Shota Rustavelli.  His total ignorance of the latter's works in no way inhibits enjoyment or curbs his oratory. And then through the mists of rhetoric and strawberry-tasting wine, he catches his first glimpse of Tamara; black-haired, beautiful, and Russia's greatest poetess.  They meet, they love... and the pressures of politicians and ideologues come ponderously to bear upon their idyll.

It is obvious that the Soviets who co-opt Angus know as little about Australia as Australians did about the USSR.  It is inconceivable to his Soviet hosts that Angus might not be as devoted to his country's poetry as they are to theirs.  (When I was in Russia in 2012, even the shop girls wanted to show off their knowledge of great literature, not just Puskhin and Tolstoy but also the canon of Western greats such as Dickens and Austen.)

'Here, Angus,' said Tamara, 'let us see what these people have on their bookshelves, it will be of interest to your friends in Australia.'  Angus could not help finding it touching that even the most sophisticated Russians were proud of the passion for reading amongst their people. [...] She took him past the piano under its white embroidered cover to the glassed-in bookcase, and pointed out Pushkin, Chekhov, a detective story, translations of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki, Dickens, Steinbeck, Richard Aldington, anthologies of Avkhasian, Georgian and Russian poetry, piles of a fat magazine called Foreign Literature, one volume of which was the whole of Graham Greene's The Comedians, and a volume of Novy Mir entirely taken up by Kinglsey Amis's Lucky Jim. (p.53)

There are allusions all over the place in that paragraph, some of them having different meanings with the passage of time. 

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/10/13/t...