Janet Frame in east–west encounters: A Buddhist exploration

Abstract

Through a close scrutiny of Janet Frame's life and work, it is my intention in this essay to suggest that Buddhism proved an irresistible magnet for the author's inquisitive spirit and that it played an important part in the shaping of her poetics. In effect, we shall see under what circumstances Frame's encounter with the east took place and the extent to which notions such as the empirical mind or knowledge, the Great Death of the ego and the non-duality of the world permeate her oeuvre. The underlying concern in the second part of the essay will be to buttress the claim that Frame constantly seeks ways through which the infinite and the Other can be approached, but not corrupted, by the perceiving self, and that she found in the Buddhist epistemology a pathway towards such alterity. Thus, against the grain of mainstream criticism which maintains that one cannot explore “beyond”, a Buddhist navigation of Frame's texts leads one to the surprising notion that the unharnessed world (or the infinite) which human beings are unable to embrace is, so to speak, right under their nose, so that, between “this” world of limited perceptions and “that” world of the beyond, the boundary is as thick or as thin as the walls of a self-made conceptual prison.

Keywords:

• Janet Frame
• Buddhism
• Thomas Merton
• Ruth Dallas
• C.G. Jung
• Heidegger
• cross-cultural encounter

Notes

1. See Pamela Gordon's “Janet Frame and Buddhism”.

2. Frame and Christeller did meet and, as King says, “Frame had Grete Christeller to thank for her new awareness of the German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke” (98).

3. Any reader familiar with New Zealand literature at large may wonder at this juncture whether C.K. Stead's depiction of Cecilia Skyways (aka Janet Frame) in his pastiche autobiography, All Visitors Ashore (1984), was meant as an acknowledgement of Frame's interest in Buddhism. Frame and the Steads met at Frank Sargeson's place around 1955 (King 126) and entertained a close relationship for about six months, which he mentions at length in All Visitors Ashore. However, in a radio interview where, at the back of his mind, is our personal correspondence on the question of Frame's Buddhism, Stead makes it clear that this aspect of Janet Frame's reconstruction is his invention:Of course it is true that, to some extent, I drew on Janet Frame for Cecilia Skyways and I drew on Frank Sargeson for Melior Fabro but they became fictional characters and went their own way in the novel. [ … ] I, very recently, had an email [ … ] asking about Janet Frame's interest in Zen Buddhism. Well as far as I knew, Janet Frame had no more than passing interest in Zen Buddhism. I was the one who has always had that interest and had it particularly at the time I wrote All Visitors Ashore. So these Zen Buddhist letters that Janet … that Cecilia Skyways write are entirely inventions out of my head (Radio New Zealand, 16 May 2010. 04'40 to 6'20. (http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sun/sun-20100516-1005-C_K_Stead.ogg).

4. See Cronin and Drichel.

5. For instance, Patrick Evans says: “Exposed to the truth of life and the overwhelming fullness of experience, one yearns for blindness as a respite” (104).

6. For an in-depth exploration of the Buddhist echoes in A State of Siege, see my article “Nothing, Not a Scrap of Identity” (forthcoming in ARIEL), where I argue that The Tibetan Book of the Dead forms the theoretical backdrop of the novel.