'Let the Fall begin': Thomas Kinsella's European dimension

摘要

This paper will explore the European dimension to Thomas Kinsella's work, in particular the Germanic influences: Goethe, Thomas Mann, Rilke, Mahler, and Carl Jung; as well as the influence of Franois Villon and Teilhard de Chardin. I will show how these influences inform Kinsella's attempt to forge an alternative to the 'classicist' aesthetic of his poetry of the 1950s. The essay has two purposes: firstly, to outline the under-acknowledged European aspect of Kinsella's development, and secondly to show briefly how Kinsella's aesthetic trajectory and the concerns underpinning his poetry have correspondences with the work of his European near-contemporary Czeslaw Milosz.