Belief And Transcendence

Amongst Australian writers the one who is the best known outside his own country is unquestionably Patrick White.1 White's works are characterized by his distinguished personality and distinct Australian features. The popularity of Patrick White' works shows that he has a worldwide effect upon the literature, personally, culturally, and reasonably. In 1973, Patrick White was awarded Nobel Literature Prize "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature" by Swedish Academy. William Walsh, a famous British critic, observes that the award of the Nobel Prize to Patrick White this year "signaled a new phase in the development of contemporary literature in. English."2 When Patrick White died in 1990 he left a legacy of twelve novels, two volumes of short stories, five plays, an autobiography, and a film script. His works have been translated into French, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese Japanese, and a few other languages. Patrick White's works display a c skillful combination of European traditional culture and Australian reality, and White's own personality, which make White's works full of distinguished attractiveness.The rich sensibility, unusual literal style different from Australiantraditional taste in creation, and profound meaning contained in the novels make Patrick White has been a controversial novelist in Australian literature. So far, there's no a certain standard about how to value Patrick White and his works among the critics in the world. Then there have wide differences over the interpretation of some of his works. The author in this paper thinks that besides the consistent study on White's language and style, we might as well explore White's concern with life and the world, that is, trace back his cultural consciousness hidden behind in White's creation. T.S. Eliot writes in his book Christianity and Culture, " I think that religious view is the basic point of view on which people base their thinking, no matter these religious doctrines are true or false. In addition, nobody could absolutely avoid religious views (After all, people have to choose either to believe in or reject religion). Therefore, none of us could be totally alienated from or neglect religious faith like ideal social scientists." 1Paul Tillich, a famous German theologist, observes that religion is the ultimate concern for human beings. Different from any other creatures, human beings have a variety of concerns and pursuits for the spiritual of man, which transcend nature and man's ego. Human beings possess not only the ability of self-awareness, but also the desire for exploring the significance of life, the ultimate existence or the origin of universe(though the understandings are not identical). The eagerness to explore the meaning of existence and to be harmonious with truth become human beings' ultimate aspiration. So, if we would like to be aware of man, in the first place, we should study his outlook of life, his ultimate concerns as well as his spiritual aspiration. All this is pertinent to religion in reflecting the relationship between religion and the world.1Therefore, the world is the world of human beings. To understand human being is the basis of understanding the world.While we are reading Patrick White's novels, it's not difficult for us to sense Patrick White's beating religious impulse running through all of his novels, which is a continuity of the theme in his novels: the persistent perception of God.Take The Tree of Man, Voss and The Eye of the Storm for examples. Through the analysis of Patrick White's three novels, the author in this paper aims to explore White's unusual religious faith and its extended unique outlook towards life and the world, his faithful aesthetic and artistic principles as well as his distinguished literary style.Christianity is not only a driving force and a creative resource of Western culture, but also the spiritual solid-rock of western society. Over two thousand years, Christianity has deeply taken a great e...