AustLit

'Let me use two quotations to frame my argument. The first is from Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, an attack on commonsense, what is generally seen as "the 'true' world, which he dismissed as an "idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating - an idea which has become useless and superfluous - consequently, a refined idea: let us abolish it!"' The second is Adomo's claim that transcendence, properly understood and pursued, enables thought to "converge upon something that would differ from the unspeakable world that is."2 A strain that is at once utopian and dystopian runs through Australian culture, as it does through most colonial cultures, and these two quotations speak to the tension between the two apparent in the work of Patrick White and also to the way he negotiates it.'  (Introduction)