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a highly ambivalent attitude to his country, and to art, and to his own role as animaginative artist, and so he soon succumbed, developing an enthusiasm for his newrole which was to endure for the rest of his life. Fifteen years later, after the FirstWorld War had interrupted his plans, partly by sending many of his fellow writersback to Europe in uniform, Esson returned to the scene of his inspiration for moredetailed practical advice on how. actually to establish the company. He then wentback to Melbourne and, with his· friends, established one.The Pioneer Players was not a success and Esson's own writing slowed and allbut stopped, perhaps in response. Yeats died in the dead of the winter, which wasof course summer over here, with all his glory on him, but Esson died, nearly fiveyears later, in the dead of an Australian summer, a sad and disillusioned man whohad failed, as his lifelong friend Vance Palmer put it, ever to express himself fullyin his work. It was Esson's devotion to the charismatic leadership of Yeats and tothe dramatic model of Synge and the theatrical model of the Abbey Theatre which,more than any other single factor, caused this failure. Even in 1905 Yeats and Syngewere fighting their own battles, and their particular brand of spiritUal nationalismwas soon to provoke strong negative reactions from their audiences and their fellowtheatre-workers, and, in Yeats' case, from his beloved. They little realised, as theygave their advice to their young visitor from the colonies, how spectacularlyinappropriate it was for Australia. No more, for that matter, did Esson, or at least,if he did, he suppressed the realisation.There were disguised internationalist and 'universalist' motives underlyingAustralian literary nationalism in the early years of this century. Nationalism wasthen an international phenomenon. In drama and theatre the contemporaryexamples of America and Russia were important, as were the historical examplesof Ancient Greece, Elizabethan England, and, in the conversations between Yeatsand Esson, 18th century Venice and Robbie Burns' Scotland. Nationalist art, forEsson and for many of his fellow writers, was seen partly as a way to internationalrecognition, and the key which might gain Australia admission to the great templeof Apollo - universal art.This was the basic problem in Esson's career. He was a writer and critic withsophisticated taste and an interest in the advanced modernist literature of his time,who, under the influence of his Irish mentors, turned his energies towards theestablishment of a simple folk theatre. He was a nationalist who drew his inspirationfor a distinctively Australian literature from a bewildering array of models fromoverseas.There were other conflicts which Esson never managed to resolve as Yeats resolvedhis. Esson was obsessively interested in the theatre at a time when there were notheatres in Australia performing Australian material. He was a romantic who feltcompelled to turn away from romance and occupy himself with the everyday realitiesof his characters' lives. He displayed early a talent for the witty mannered comedywhich was in his time popular on the commercial stage but he turned angrily againstthat style and devoted himself to forging a style of simple folk realism. As VancePalmer wrote, what inner contradictions he had to resolve before he wrote a linePLike Yeats Esson had to resolve contradictions on a personal level also. He wasa lonely, initially timid man who craved the gregarious life of the theatre. He lovedthe conversation and companionship of a literary circle, and longed for the sort ofartistic community he observed in London and Paris, but he felt obliged continuallyto hide himself away in the bush, seeking inspiration for his folk theatre. He wasa sceptic, a bohemian, a Wildean socialist with spiritUal yearnings which, unlikeYeats, he never satisfied. His spiritUality was suppressed and diverted into a lovefor the picturesque and the exotic and in an almost holy reverence for what he hopedwould become the great Australia Felix. This was itself suppressed and controlledby his ruthless search for folk realism in his writing. Frank Dalby Davison called34 WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989