young masters” (1975:201) the young soldiers like pubescent schoolboys “ ... in the
toilets reading ... something as innocent as pornography” (1975:35). Like children,
these soldiers obediently enact the orders of their surrogate superiors. The childlike
allusion also gives them a vulnerable innocence, a quality of being not responsible
for their actions. Here again, Keneally reflects on the theological importance of
words, and thus, when Groener says to Erzberger, “ ... these words mean nothing
any more. The world’s vocabulary is changing” (Keneally, 1975:199), he is echoing
not only a major theme of this work but also his concern that the immorality
exemplified in the Armistice document wording may represent and indicate a
universal moral degeneracy.
The third work in the collection of Keneally’s European literature, Season in
Purgatory (1976) is essentially a dramatized account of “ ...real events that occurred
off the Dalmatian coast in 1943 and 1944” (Keneally, 1976:6). I n another sense, it
is also the odyssey of one man’s ascension through a Dantean milieux of I nferno,
Purgatorio and Paradiso. The small band of Yugoslav partisans represents that
small, ritualised community, common in the Keneally corpus. I t is a logical literary
and historical extension of the social and political circumstances inherited from the
milieu of Gossip from the Forest and it reiterates the theology of revelation inherent
in A Victim of the Aurora. I t is also the precursor of the final work of the European
literature, the ultimate horror, the exegesis of imperialism, mindlessness and
destruction that is to be revealed by Schindler’s Ark.
What is not clear in Season in Purgatory is whether Cleary has undergone
some sort of metamorphosis and a spiritual purgation, or whether the “ ... barbaric
singing” (Keneally, 1976:197) of the tribe of partisans which “ ... seemed to have
Cleary half addled” (Keneally, 1976:198) has, perhaps, temporarily enchanted him.
Certainly after he is wounded and shipped back to Ireland, he was “ ... back milking
cows again in Clare, under the tyranny of his womenfolk” (Keneally, 1976:206). I n
any case his experiences have transfigured him.
Again we see Keneally’s use of symbolism in the description of David being
amazed by Moja’s unexplained hatred of flowers (Keneally, 1976:73). The flower is
a universal symbol of the self, of purity, of the Virgin Mary. The flower, especially
the golden flower and the blue flower represent, according to the medieval
alchemists, the hermaphrodite (Jung, CW 11, par. 748). Thus, Moja’s rejection of
flowers may be indicate her inability to experience, psychologically, a unification of
the opposites in her personality, again allowing Keneally to introduce the sexual
ron
(Ron)
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