I ’ve used two Greek terms when giving talks, which I think they’re both accurate:
apelagos or a thalasos. I know thalata is ... is it thalasos or thalassa? ... But the
sea, anyhow? I think of it as an ocean ... let me just look it up. I ’ve got a
dictionary right here, won’t be a moment ... I think pelagos is the word for ... yeah,
from the pelagos meaning sea. Thalargic is an English adjective palagos meaning
the sea ... and I ’ll just look up, I think thalasos is the ocean.
(d) Colleen McCullough’s Responses:
I n contrast to David Malouf but like that of Thomas Keneally, Colleen
McCullough’s response was quite lengthy and detailed, approximately 12,380 words.
She tape-recorded her answers from Norfolk I sland, which I have edited, and she
included comment that may not have been a direct response to the actual question
but that elaborates feelings or ideas. She began:
Q1. I can’t NOT write [ sic]. Ms. McCullough said that she could write anything,
including poetry ... everything except autobiography. She praised the writing style
of Mary Renault, ... beautiful writer. She continued by explaining her belief that
after one passes the age of about 25 one ceases to have the kind of dreams, if you
want to call them fantasies, that one has when one is in one’s teens and early 20’s.
She also mused on the evolution of the writer and of how poetry was an important
stage; she had never had any of her own published although twenty years ago she
considered it better, by comparison, with the then leading Canadian poet, whom
she did not name.
She said that she didn’t think of poets like T.S. Eliot as poets – that they
were ... wordsmiths and that ... their language is fabulous, gorgeous, wonderful,
interesting, imaginative but it doesn’t speak from the soul or the heart. McCullough
said that Tim was her bash at the love story, that Thorn Birds was her bash at the
Gothic family saga, An Indecent Obsession her, A Creed for the Third Millennium,
which she regards as her masterpiece, as her futuristic-come-intellectual novel and
Ladies of Missalongie as a spoof on the laced Victorian novel.
McCullough then made the statement, ... science fiction ... I ’ve written science
fiction, never tried to have it published.
McCullough responded that ... place is something that ties you down ... place has
never been important to me perhaps because I think my place is inside my mind ...
by that I don’t necessarily mean imagination just intellect.