Charles Brasch, in his early verse a good deal more subdued than these contemporaries, is comparable, though thoroughly individualistic. More cosmopolitan in habits and outlook, he was also more explicitly concerned with problems of civilisation and culture. An early title, The Land and the People (1939), and two later ones, Disputed Ground and The Estate (1948 and 1957) point to the nature of his preoccupations. The land and the people, at odds with each other, need to be wedded by habits and rituals which will ease the rawness of each; the country (so at one level; at another, the nature of man) is ground disputed over by the demands of its inhabitants and its own resistance to change. A man's estate is all he has to reckon with; a territory where inheritance and environment meet, conflict, and (it may be eventually) merge.
Warning
This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.
Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.
Charles Brasch
Co-creator
William Hosking Oliver, M.A.(N.Z.), D.PHIL.(OXON.), Professor of History, Massey University of Manawatu.