Harold Stewart
Harold Stewart was an Australian poet born on December 14, 1916, in Drummoyne, Australia. His upbringing in Sydney was influenced by his father, a health inspector with a deep interest in Asian cultures, which later sparked Stewart’s own exploration of Eastern philosophies. Despite facing social ostracism due to his sexuality and dropping out of school, he committed himself to poetry, famously attempting to create his own version of John Milton's *Paradise Lost*. During World War II, Stewart served in the military, where he engaged in a notable literary hoax with fellow soldier James McAuley that exposed the pretensions of a prominent avant-garde editor.
Stewart’s literary journey was marked by a deep engagement with Eastern thought, particularly after immersing himself in the works of Carl Jung in the 1930s. His exploration of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism led him to Japan, where he ultimately settled and continued to write and translate significant Buddhist texts. Stewart's contributions to poetry included three books of haiku, and he found personal fulfillment with his partner, Ueshima Masaaki. He passed away on August 7, 1995, in Kyoto, Japan, leaving behind a legacy that reflects his unique blend of Australian roots and Eastern philosophical influences.
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Subject Terms
Harold Stewart
- Born: December 14, 1916
- Birthplace: Drummoyne, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Died: August 7, 1995
- Place of death: Kyoto, Japan
Biography
Harold Stewart was born December 14, 1916, in Drummoyne, Australia, to health inspector Herbert Howard Vernon Stewart and mother Amy Muriel Morris Stewart. Stewart’s father had a history of thirty years in India, which made the elder Stewart bilingual and gave him an interest in Asian culture, which he passed on to Harold. Stewart would come to rebel against the Australian nature of his Sydney childhood.
Stewart was a music student at the Sydney Conservatorium High School, and attended Fort Street Boys’ High School. At seventeen, the boy began to fail subjects and finally dropped out altogether. He was homosexual and was confronted with social ostracism in school. He had also chosen his life’s work: poetry. He began by failing the exit exam, which would have granted him a leaving certificate if he had passed. He then announced his decision to write, biographer Michael Ackland reports, “his own version of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” When World War II broke out, Stewart entered military service when he was enlisted in 1942. One can only imagine the further isolation and alienation he would encounter during this period.
The poet had experienced camaraderie before the war, in the late 1930’s, with a group of homosexual artists in Sydney’s Kings Cross District. He enjoyed a playful but somewhat sadistic part in a one-time collaboration with fellow army conscript James McAuley, writing pseudo-surrealist poetry that they submitted as if from an “allegedly deceased motor mechanic and insurance salesman”—the fictional Ern Malley—to expose Max Harris (an “opinionated” avant-garde poet and editor) as a fraud. It worked. The great Harris published the work as “a work of genius,” was exposed by the hoaxers and completely ostracized for demonstrating, as the two would write in the expose in the June 25, 1944, edition of the Sunday Sun, the editor was “insensible of absurdity and incapable of ordinary discrimination.”
Stewart left the military in 1946. In the 1930’s, he had immersed himself in the works of Carl Jung, which, Ackland notes, Stewart had used as a bridge between himself and his studies of Eastern ways. By the 1940’s, he was ensconced in the major Eastern faiths—Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. By the late 1950’s, he was making his intellectual and creative way to Japanese theory and culture, writing three books of haiku, for instance. By the next decade or so, Stewart was reported to have even fled to Japan for good to write and do translations of key Buddhist texts. He first traveled there in 1961, 1963, and 1966, meeting on his 1963 visit, “the love of his life,” Ueshima Masaaki.
Stewart established himself as a continuing student of Pure Land Buddhism, and moved away from all things Australian. With epic works, astute translations, and increasingly well-received poetic creations, Stewart died as he might have wished, on August 7, 1995, in Kyoto, Japan.