SOURCE: James, Trevor. “‘Errors and Omissions Excepted’: Allen Curnow's Philosophical Scepticism.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 22, no. 1 (1987): 55-72.

In the following essay, James evaluates the tension between skepticism and hope in the spiritual themes of Curnow's An Incorrigible Music and You Will Know When You Get There.

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… the question of my country was, for me at that time, an intensely personal one. There is indeed a claptrap of the subject, we have heard enough of ‘national identity’, but this doesn't mean that it will go away.¹

This cryptic preface to Allen Curnow's recent selection of his œuvre reminds us of the ultimate seriousness of his work. Curnow the craftsman is serious enough, the honed elegance of his work is testimony enough to that, but there is also a pervasive sense of spiritual and philosophical concern. Few critics have directly engaged this. James Wieland has investigated Curnow's mythopoeia...