Romulus My Father

Romulus, My Father

by Raimond Gaita

Teaching notes prepared for VATE members by Bev Rangott

CONTENTS

|1. |Introduction |Page | 1 |
|2. |Ways into the text |Page | 3 |
|3. |Summary of the text |Page | 5 |
|4. |A perspective on the text |Page | 9 |
|5. |Character, style and setting |Page |11 |
|6. |A guided approach to selected passages |Page |18 |
|7. |Activities for exploring the text |Page |20 |
|8. |References |Page |23 |
| |Appendix 1: Chronology of events
|Page |24 |

Page numbers in these notes refer to Gaita, Raimond, Romulus, My Father, Text, 1998.
Section 1.
An introduction to Romulus, My Father

Romulus, My Father is a memoir and a tribute by the author, Raimond Gaita, to his father. As is explained in the Acknowledgements section of the book, it began with the eulogy delivered by Gaita at his father’s funeral. This was subsequently published in Quadrant magazine and finally became this book, after a positive response to the journal publication.

The title suggests the affection, admiration and gratitude Gaita feels for his father and what he learnt from him of the values and integrity by which Romulus Gaita lived. The text briefly describes Romulus Gaita’s early life in Europe, and his arrival in Australia as an assisted immigrant with his wife and young son (Raimond), and then follows their subsequent lives, mostly in central Victoria. Although other family members and friends make brief or occasionally extended appearances in the text, Romulus is at its centre.

Raimond Gaita has explained[1] that he tried to keep himself out of the book as much as possible. Of course he was ‘present’ throughout the text. However, this is his father’s story. He is grateful to many people who were instrumental and influential in his life, but he has left them out of this account because it was not his (Raimond’s) story. Readers can easily see the consciously narrow range of focus in this book. Raimond Gaita’s primary purpose is to describe his father’s life, as well as the ways in which his father’s life and example had such a profound impact on the development of his own philosophy and understanding of ‘a common humanity’. This phrase, ‘common humanity’, occurs in the final paragraph of Raimond Gaita’s eulogy for his father and became the title of one of his subsequent books on philosophy.

The story encompasses Romulus’s relationships with Christine (his wife), his son (Raimond), his friend (Hora), Hora 's brother and Christine 's lover
(Mitru), his second wife (Milka) and peripherallly with others: both 'old '
Australians who were neighbours or friends or with whom he worked, and members of the Romanian community in Europe and Australia.

The book also confronts and describes madness and depression.
It does so in such a way as to allow the reader to begin to understand the horror of the experience and the devastation these afflictions wrought on the sufferers and their loved ones, without reducing the people concerned to mere victims. We do not just see Romulus, Christine and Vacek, condescendingly, as pitiable people –although of course, they are to be pitied. They do not have control of their destinies. Their fates are the stuff of Greek tragedy in a domestic setting. This is because Greek tragedy speaks truthfully to us about the complexities of the human condition, and the elements of Greek tragedy are present in the contradictory and often fraught lives of the people depicted in this
memoir.

The text also explores love in many forms. It reveals the power of sexual, emotional and obsessive love in the doomed relationships of Christine and Romulus, Christine and Mitru, and Romulus and Lydia, but it also reveals the companionship and affection that is possible in a marriage focused on common work and mutual respect, as with Romulus and Milka. The book demonstrates the unconditional love of a parent for a child. Readers might wonder how the writer, Raimond Gaita, coped with a childhood that many would regard as deprived in material terms, and shadowed by the madness of both his parents, their damaging relationship and his mother’s and Mitru’s suicide. A major part of the answer must be that he was always very certain that he was loved as a child by the important adults in his life. The calm pity of the narrative carries no tone of resentment or bitterness.

Friendship and loyalty are also key themes, explored particularly in the relationship of Romulus and Hora. Their selfless and enduring friendship owed much to the values they held in common: truthfulness, integrity, respect for good workmanship, commitment and the importance of keeping one’s word. They also shared a morality that was absolute, in the sense that it was necessary to live well not because it was convenient or might be of benefit, but because it was right. Gaita writes, ‘I have never known anyone who lived so passionately, as did these two friends, the belief that nothing matters so much in life as to live it decently’ (101).

Another major dimension to this text is the way in which it illustrates the effect of environment and landscape on human experience and sensibility. One of the most moving passages in the text is where Raimond first sees the land around Baringhup through new eyes. His father doesn’t love this landscape and never will. He is still regretting European vistas and vegetation. But Raimond sees it as beautiful and it is a revelation to him –and also to the reader. The glimpses given of Romulus, confident and at home in this landscape, despite his lack of appreciation for it, Christine clearly miserable and alienated in the bush, and then Romulus out of place and diminished in the psychiatric hospital show how crucial is the physical context in the way in which people understand themselves and are understood by others.

This is an extraordinarily moving account, gaining much of its emotional impact from the spare, undemonstrative style. Its sense of conviction and authenticity also owes a great deal to the compassion and humanity of the writer, and the way in which the reflective passages arise naturally from the descriptions of the lives lived through these pages.

Section 2. Ways into the text

A number of the following suggestions will relate to possible Writing and Oral SAC tasks. Several of these activities could also be undertaken during class study of the text rather than beforehand.

|Writing about family members |

Students could choose a close family member who has had considerable influence over them, especially in relation to the values they now hold, such as a parent, grandparent or older sibling. Ask students to list five or six qualities/aspects of that person’s character which they think have affected them in positive ways. Ask them to try to be very precise and give specific examples in each case. (e.g. Don’t just write ‘fair’: write ‘She always hears both sides of the story when my sister and I are fighting, before she says anything. I remember when...’)

|Influential friends |

Is there someone outside the immediate family, such as a family friend, godparent, neighbour, minister or teacher, who has also been an influence on a student’s life, perhaps even acting as a substitute parent? Ask the student to describe that person’s relationship to him or her, how s/he thinks and feels about the person and the ways in which that person has helped and supported the student. Students could make relevant notes and then discuss their recollections in small groups.

Emigration Life and Death

Ask students if any members of their families or others they know well have experienced the dislocation of moving from their birth country to live in Australia. Find some volunteers who would be prepared to conduct an informal interview with such a person and report to the class. (This activity could be developed into a text-related Oral SAC.) It would be a good idea to develop some questions beforehand. In addition to factual details about the how, when, where and why of emigration, students might ask the following questions:

• What did you most miss about the village/town/city that you left; what special events could you therefore no longer enjoy? • What common cultural understandings did you miss? • Have you tried, in Australia, to retain a connection to the past, such as living in an area populated by other émigrés from the same country or region, and membership of organisations with cultural links to your birth country? • What material and physical difficulties did you face in coming to Australia? • What attitudes did you encounter from Australians from other ethnic groups or those whose families have been here for several generations? Did you experience actual discrimination? Were you aware of a more subtle, patronising approach?

Rural beginnings Life and Death

A similar interview process could be set up for students with parents or grandparents growing up in the country. Raimond Gaita’s childhood in Baringhup was very simple by today’s standards, with no electricity or running water. Some students may have parents or grandparents who lived in a similar situation. Did they see themselves as deprived? The class could devise some specific questions beforehand, such as:

• Did you think you were poor, or were you envious of others? • What were the physical difficulties of a life in the country or on the land? • What was joyful, beautiful or fulfilling about living in ‘the bush’? • Do you think you may have missed out on important things in life with such a simple upbringing?

Research Life and Death

• Research what life would have been like at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre. From 1947 to 1971, Bonegilla was the first home for over 320,000 migrants from more than 30 countries.

See Albury Regional Museum web site: http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/museum/bonegilla/information.htm

Biography

• Discuss with the class other examples of Australian biography. Students may have studied contemporary or historic biographies to which reference could be made. Discuss the potential difficulties in writing biographies, particularly those in which the writer is in fact a character.

­ How possible is it to depict characters fairly? ­ Is it possible to write an ‘objective’ biography? ­ To what extent can fiction or embellishment be tolerated in biographical writing? ­ In what ways does biographical writing need to be read differently to fiction?
Section 3. Summary of the text

The following summary provides details of events and developments throughout the text. Teachers could make use of this summary in the classroom in the following ways:

• Distribute the summary to the students and ask them to highlight the sections which: ­ contribute to Raimond’s understanding of his parents’ struggles ­ chronicle Romulus’s volatile relationships ­ track Romulus’s personal disintegration.

• Photocopy the summary and cut up all of the paragraphs being careful to cut away the Chapter headings. Distribute the cut sections to groups of students (such that each group has a complete version of the summary in fragments) and ask students to put the sections in the correct order. This is not a conceptually difficult task, but is a way for students to test their own knowledge of the text.

Summary

Chapter One

This chapter gives a history of Romulus’s life before he arrives in Australia. He lived mostly with his grandparents in a Romanian-speaking part of Yugoslavia. It was a life of poverty but he loved reading and learning, although he could not go to secondary school. At the age of thirteen, he took up a blacksmith apprenticeship.

Romulus then moved to Germany seeking work, was trapped there by the war and conscripted to work in munitions factories. In 1944, he met sixteen year-old Christine Dörr, a beautiful and educated young woman. (They met secretly because of Nazi racial policies and had an intense relationship.) They married and had a child (Raimond) but Christine, already showing signs of her later illness, was unable to care for him. Christine’s sister and parents took care of Raimond, while Romulus worked to put food on the table in the harsh aftermath of the war. Christine’s severe asthma was the spur for the family to emigrate to Australia in hope of a cure in a warmer climate. They sailed on an assisted passage to Victoria in 1950.

Chapter Two

Early days in Australia are described here. Christine and Raimond live at Bonegilla migrant camp in north-east Victoria, while Romulus is sent to work at Baringhup in central Victoria to build the Cairn Curran dam. Romulus misses the gentler landscape of Europe, but finds deep friendship with Romanian brothers Pantelimon (known as Hora) and Mitru Hora. As with most of the foreign workers, Romulus’s skills are ignored and he does manual work.

News of his wife’s infidelities and her lack of care for Raimond result in Romulus bringing his son to stay at the Baringhup camp and he and Hora share care of the child. Romulus then rents a farmhouse nearby so the family can be together.

Chapter Three

Life at Frogmore, the derelict farmhouse, is very basic. Christine hates it there, and begins an affair with Mitru. When work on the reservoir is suspended, she follows Mitru to St Kilda where he has found work.

In 1951, Raimond goes to live with his mother for eighteen months, becomes attached to Mitru and roams the streets. Returning to Frogmore, he remains there for the next ten years. Romulus works at a tool factory in Maryborough and as a farm labourer at weekends. Romulus earns the scorn of neighbours when he sets fire to hay to drive out a snake, but their admiration when he saves the life of a local farmer.

Because of his father’s work, Raimond is often alone in the house and afraid. His mother seldom visits there and is obviously depressed. There is no support or sustenance for her and she attempts suicide with an overdose of sleeping tablets. She returns to Melbourne to live with Mitru.

Chapter Four

We are given more detail on life at Frogmore. The exploits of Jack the cockatoo, Marta the cat, Orloff the dog and Rusha the cow are described with great humour and affection. Romulus starts a poultry farm, and after he is seriously hurt in a motorbike accident, Raimond is temporarily looked after by his mother and Mitru, and then, by Hora until Romulus recovers.

An incident over a mis-used razor shows the stubbornness of both Romulus and Raimond. They continue to manage at Frogmore, although the house is deteriorating. Romulus begins making fine iron furniture using Tom Lillie’s blacksmith shop, to whose family we are introduced.

Chapter Five

Raimond is awakened to the possibilities of sex and rock’n’roll and tries, unsuccessfully, to defend his appreciation of Elvis to his father. Raimond sees the beauty of the local countryside for the first time, through his own eyes, and not through his father’s. Raimond’s primary school teacher encourages his reading. There are visits from Romulus’s friend, Vacek, who is both crazy and gentle. Romulus’s close relationship with Hora is sensitively explored.

Chapter Six

In 1954, Raimond spends part of his holidays with his mother and Mitru in Melbourne. His mother’s asthma and hallucinations force his return to Frogmore, carrying a letter to Romulus from Mitru. In the letter, Mitru acknowledges openly for the first time his relationship with Christine, asks Romulus to divorce her and announces her pregnancy. He also thanks Romulus for sending them money.

Romulus does not agree to a divorce. Later, Christine stays at Frogmore, frightening Raimond with her ‘voices’. After the birth of Susan, Christine and Mitru rent a room in Maryborough, but Christine neglects Susan as she has Raimond. Mitru and Christine quarrel and Mitru attempts suicide. Hora is unsuccessful in trying to raise his brother’s spirits. Mitru and Christine’s relationship deteriorates and he plunges to his death from a memorial tower. Christine is three months pregnant at the time. Romulus, Raimond and Hora reflect on the reasons for Mitru’s tragic life and its ending.

Chapter Seven

Romulus has a serious motorbike accident but recovers and puts his heart into his blacksmithing. Raimond admires the skill, thoroughness and integrity of his father’s work. Romulus’s reputation spreads and his work is exhibited. Raimond comments on his father’s and Hora’s love of freedom in Australia, their longing for like company and their respect for strength of character. He also discusses the ways in which the somewhat puritanical values of the time limited possibilities for women, especially intelligent, sensuous women, such as his mother. Romulus begins writing to a woman in Yugoslavia, Lydia, with whom he falls in love and plans to marry.

Chapter Eight

In 1958, Raimond boards at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat. Meanwhile, his half-sisters Susan and Barbara are placed in children’s homes in Melbourne, and made wards of the state when Christine cannot keep up the contributory payments. Later, she moves to Ballarat, has more psychiatric treatment, visits Raimond at school and tells him she wants to return to his father. Romulus tells Christine this is impossible, and shortly after she kills herself. Raimond reflects that he, his father and Hora did not fully understand the nature of his mother’s illness, and that it takes many years for their conflicting emotions about her to be resolved. It isn’t until 1981 that Romulus and Raimond, together, make a headstone for her grave in Maryborough cemetery.

Chapter Nine

Although Hora, Romulus, and Christine’s sisters in Germany are willing to adopt Susan and Barbara, the authorities give the children for adoption to others. Meanwhile, Romulus is ‘falling into insanity’ (117). Urged by an acquaintance of Lydia to find out the truth about her, Romulus writes to her. Eventually Lydia responds to his anguished letters with the news she has recently married. Unable to comprehend or cope with such betrayal, Romulus’s personal and moral world disintegrates and in 1960 he admits himself to the Ballarat psychiatric hospital. Raimond is shocked to see the changes in his father.

Home for the holidays, Raimond tries to cope with his father’s paranoia. Romulus commits himself to hospital again after he threatens his son. Obeying a promise to his father, Raimond, only fourteen, enlists a school friend to help him deliver his father’s ironwork to the stores before Christmas. After a minor traffic incident, Raimond’s illegal driving is brought to an end.

Romulus returns home, although still not fully well. With Vacek he visits Raimond at his school. In May 1961, he takes Raimond to Sydney as he wants to shoot Lydia’s husband, the couple having recently arrived in Australia. Raimond writes that he understood and was not shocked by his father’s intention, even though he could not justify it. However, Lydia’s beauty and her husband’s courtesy disarm Romulus, and there is no violence.

Chapter 10

During his illness, Romulus has quarrelled with his friends and employees, including Vacek and Hora. He has also signed a letter of consent for adoption of Susan and Barbara, without consulting Hora, their uncle. The adopting parents do not allow Hora to see the girls, and no-one sees them again until thirty years later when Raimond tracks them down. The friendship of Romulus and Hora is repaired and Raimond persuades his father to buy a house in Maryborough, knowing the house Romulus intended to build for Lydia will never be completed.

Romulus has paid for Lydia’s mother and brother to come to Australia because he once promised to do so and will not go back on his word. Lydia’s mother lives with them, hoping for a proposal from Romulus, although he shows no interest. In spite of an incident between Lydia and a friend of Romulus, the Gaitas and Lydia’s mother part on good terms when she goes to live in Sydney.

After some disciplinary issues at his school, Raimond wants to attend Melbourne High for his last year, and secretly sits and passes the entrance exam. His father is angry but eventually supports him, and Raimond’s friendship with Hora, now living in Melbourne, also survives, despite their political differences.

Chapter 11

Romulus is introduced to a Yugoslav divorcee, Milka, and she comes to Maryborough for a trial period. Romulus is still not well and their relationship is volatile, but they marry six months later. Together they build a workshop for Romulus. Milka’s stability, hard work and affection are major factors in Romulus’s recovery. We also learn about his continuing generosity to friends and relations, his suspicions of institutional religion, his deep spirituality, his gregarious nature and his yearning for European hospitality. He retains a strong sense of morality and the need to live simply. He becomes a familiar figure in Maryborough and his work is highly respected, but he scorns status. Raimond has explosive conflicts with his father but realises their lives cannot be separated.

Chapter 12

This covers the last years of Romulus’s life. He has retired from iron working and spends most of his time in the vegetable garden or looking after their animals. After Raimond meets his aunt and cousins in Germany, a renewed sense of family is awakened, and he finds Susan and Barbara in the mid-eighties, both now married. Romulus does not cope well with ‘retirement’ and he becomes depressed. Sometimes his stern morality intimidates visitors. He develops heart disease and has a triple bypass, suffering strokes during and after the operation. During Raimond’s absence in England, his wife is a devoted carer of Romulus.

Chapter 13

In May 1996, Romulus experiences severe stomach pains and is admitted to hospital. With his whole system disintegrating, he lives for only a few hours. Raimond is with him when he dies. He reads the eulogy at Romulus’s funeral, and his father is buried in Maryborough cemetery, near Christine.
Section 4. A perspective on the text

It is easy enough to identify significant issues in this book, such as ‘The Immigrant Experience’ or ‘Growing Up’ or ‘Country Life’ or ‘People Who Have Influenced Me’. While such threads in the narrative suggest certain activities as a way of orienting students to the text, it would be a serious mistake to reduce this book to a collection of expositions on a range of themes. The combination of unique experiences with spare prose, careful structure, honest, sometimes detached recollection and occasional reflection has created a moving memoir which must be appreciated as a whole.

Raimond Gaita has said that he refuses to generalise from his family’s story to those of immigrants in general, although there are clearly common threads[2]. His account is specific and it would be presumptuous to assume it represents the experiences of others. His comment is not an expression of exclusivity. It is an assertion of the validity and uniqueness of the actual experiences of particular individuals and a caution against anyone claiming too much ‘expertise’ in any sphere, as a result of generalising from their own experiences.

The authority underlying Raimond Gaita’s story comes mainly from our conviction that it is true, and that the events and characters he describes are represented as honestly as possible, given the inevitable limitations of any observer or biographer, however scrupulous, especially one involved in the story. We have become accustomed, unfortunately, to revelations about writers not being what they seem, Helen ‘Demidenko’ and Norma Khouri being just two of the most recent instances. Does it matter whether or not we can tell the difference between fact and fiction if it is a good story? In most cases it does.

In an article from The Age on the Norma Khouri affair, Jane Sullivan comments, ‘Readers buy non-fiction because they want the assurance and the frisson that comes with knowing that a wonderful or shocking book is true. If authors…break that trust…all non-fiction is thrown into question…The bond of trust with readers is broken’[3]. Raimond Gaita says he is not too disturbed by criticism that he must have over-estimated the number of chickens they kept at Frogmore. This does not affect the substance of what he wrote. However, he regards as crucial to the integrity of the memoir, the fact that he deliberately refrained from using direct quotes except for when he remembered them, or when other people had remembered them. He refused to put words into people’s mouths[4].

The reader’s sense of the truthfulness of this account is part of the explanation of why we are moved by it. Another important factor is the delicate structural balance between the overall chronological framework and the development of particular narratives within this. Chapter Eight, for instance, which focuses on Christine Gaita, ends up many years after it began, but needed to be written as a whole to provide some sense of how Romulus and Raimond Gaita were affected by Christine’s life and death. (Chapter Eight is discussed in more detail in the section on ‘Character, Style and Setting.’)

The exploration of universal human nature and experience and the reader’s ability to recognise and make connections with what is described are also powerful factors in the impact of this memoir. Although few student readers will have had a life similar to this one, many will understand the significance of experiences such as: early family relationships, marital and parental roles and complications, tragic illness, friendships on all levels, family friends as mentors, family dislocation (even if of a different kind from that depicted), attachment to particular places, connection to a special place in a country, love of pets and animals, adults unable to cope, or children sometimes having to fend for themselves. The unemotional but sympathetic way in which such situations are shown is honest, engaging and accessible to students.

However the ‘world view’ depicted in this memoir may be less easily understood. Students constantly urged to think ahead and make plans, perhaps believing what they read in popular magazines, and in the optimism of youth, may be confident that they are in control of their lives. All advertising and most of our media point this way. Romulus, My Father suggests the opposite. Not much is certain in life. In the text, Raimond Gaita says his father saw character as inherited and this explains why his father was sometimes so tough on him, because he believed Raimond may have inherited characteristics from his mother (48-9). Raimond Gaita has also said that ‘tragedy, with its calm pity for the affliction it depicts, was the genre that first attracted my passionate allegiance’ (124). It will be a challenge to teachers to try to convey to students the sense of life’s tragic dimension, depicted in this book, without squashing their inherent optimism about the future and its possibilities.

My final accolade for this book is that Romulus remains a slightly mysterious figure, showing us that all human beings are ultimately unique and unknowable. Despite all we understand about his past, character and experiences, he remains someone whom it is impossible to ‘sum up’. We must, finally, take on trust, the complexities and contradictions of his character and believe them to be true.

Section 5. Character, style and setting

Characterisation

Romulus
Raimond Gaita has said, with reference to Romulus and Hora, ‘I hoped that in the telling of the story I could show rather than state the kind of men they were and that the authority of their example would illuminate the dramatic events of the narrative – show rather than state what I had learned from them’[5]. No summary can thus do justice to Romulus’s character. Readers need to understand him in the context of the events of his life. However some key points and significant passages are outlined below.

Romulus was a man of great physical stamina, perseverance and commitment, with an enormous capacity for hard work, as evidenced by the difficult times of his youthful apprenticeship and the early years in Victoria. His son describes him as a ‘man of practical genius’ (4) who was able to make baskets and brooms and repair revolvers to keep himself during his apprenticeship; and in the years at Frogmore he turned his hand to making clothes and shoes, doing wood turning and spinning and completing myriad repairs, including fixing the motorbikes. His ingenuity is demonstrated on many occasions, such as in the construction of the egg-washing machine and the ventures with animals in Maryborough.

The ironwork he made throughout his life was completed to exacting standards at high speed. ‘His work both expressed and formed much of his character [and he could]… cut steel by sight to within a millimetre, yet everything was perfectly made’ (98). He took enormous pride in his work and greatly valued the reputation it gained him. And yet, says Raimond Gaita, although his father ‘had made many beautiful objects’, he did not have a strong aesthetic appreciation (175). He saw concern for beauty as a desire in people for superior status, something he and Hora abhorred. They were ‘contemptuous…of the external signs of status and prestige’ (101). Similarly, although Romulus loved reading, he saw his wife Christine’s love of theatre, opera and Shakespeare as evidence of ‘snobbishness’ (6). He did not fully understand Raimond’s ‘commitment to the life of the mind’ and was more impressed when his son made a doll’s house for his children (196).

He was an intense and passionate man for most of his life. This can be seen in his volatile relationship with Christine (apart from her illness), his later marriage to Milka, which was not always calm, his obsession with Lydia and devastation at her deceit, his quick flaring temper and conflicts with his son. Conflicts with others often occurred because Romulus was uncompromising about moral issues ‘such as honesty and concern for one’s neighbour’ and had a ‘belief in the connection between goodness and simplicity’ (171). Early conflicts with Raimond came from his conviction his son was lying and fear that his character was in danger. The insanity that followed Lydia’s betrayal is explained by Raimond Gaita as arising from a kind of innocence which had not allowed his father to believe that anyone could be so deliberately deceitful. Whereas Romulus saw his wife and Mitru as victims, Lydia’s mendacity was hard for him to comprehend, and ‘his personal disintegration followed not far behind the disintegration of his moral world’ (121). He was bewildered by the experience, and Raimond Gaita says, ‘Only someone with an extraordinary sense of the reality of the ethical could be so shaken by a sense of evil’ (122).

Generally though, Romulus’s ‘puritanism’ was anything but ‘small-minded or mean spirited’ (171). His generous spirit is apparent in his compassion for his wife and Mitru, (to the extent of paying their debts) despite the hurt they caused him, his paying for Lydia’s mother and brother and other compatriots to come to Australia, and the thousands of dollars he spent on relatives and friends in Australia and abroad, often receiving little thanks.

That capacity for giving, and for accepting people as they are, is nowhere better shown than in Romulus’s attitude to Vacek. Raimond Gaita has said that Vacek had not seemed strange to him as a child because ‘my father and Hora behaved towards Vacek without condescension…[they] enabled me to see him…as living yet another form of human life’[6]. This attitude has deeply influenced the development of Raimond Gaita’s own philosophy. Romulus’s generosity, lack of judgemental attitudes, his religious instincts and spirituality are well described in Chapter Eleven, where we also see the unbreakable relationship between father and son, despite their differences.

There is no doubt however, that Romulus relinquished a great deal in moving to Australia, even though he sincerely appreciated its democratic character and opportunities. Raimond Gaita writes that although he had good neighbours, ‘he had almost no one with whom he could enjoy the generous and open forms of conviviality that characterised European hospitality as he knew it’ (170). He also comments on a bitterness and depression that his father felt in his last years, arising from a number of factors, not least a sense of disillusionment over the ‘shabby and often ruthless business practices…[of] the eighties’ (184). However, our final impression is of an impressive and admirable man of great integrity, whose courage and perseverance in the face of much tragedy and suffering makes this a very moving account of his life.

• What do Romulus Gaita’s relationships with friends and neighbours reveal about him, and how did his madness affect these relationships? • In what ways did Romulus’s lack of formal education limit his appreciation of some aspects of life and his understanding of his son? • How did Romulus’s experiences as a child and young adult help to shape his values? • Despite being a very traditional man, Romulus had many domestic skills and did not see women as inferior. What passages in the text show this? • What specific examples can you find in the text of Romulus’s unselfishness and generous spirit?

Raimond Gaita
Raimond is perceived as a less coherent and ‘complete’ character than other major characters in the text. Of course this is largely due to the text’s deliberate focus on Romulus and Raimond Gaita’s decision, mentioned previously, to omit certain characters and events which pertained more to his story than that of his father. In addition, the bulk of the text focuses on the fifties and sixties when Raimond was a child and adolescent, so it is the younger Raimond with whom we are most acquainted. Raimond Gaita wrote the memoir as a Philosophy professor in his early fifties, reflecting on his father and their common experiences. So, in a sense, we are dealing with two characters.

Like many young children Raimond loved the free, open-air life of a country upbringing. We also see characteristics he shared with his father, such as determination, a strong streak of independence and sometimes a quick temper which led to clashes on occasion. Despite some rebelliousness, his love and respect for his father, concern over his disapproval and the sense of security he received from Romulus are apparent. He also inherited his father’s respect for the integrity of fine work –even though his own work later was in the very different field of academia– as well as a strong sense of loyalty. (This can be seen in his accompanying his father on the futile expeditions to catch a lion and shoot Lydia’s husband.)

Raimond’s aesthetic and intellectual abilities are apparent in his love of his father’s work, his response to the environment, his enjoyment of Hora’s stories and of reading. Compassion for others, especially those afflicted in some way, and a belief in a ‘common humanity’ are hallmarks of the adult Raimond’s philosophy and epitomised in the style and substance of the memoir.

Hora
Pantelimon Hora was Romulus Gaita’s close friend all his life. Their friendship was based strongly on common values –a belief in good character, truthfulness and honesty. Hora’s unselfish commitment to that friendship is epitomised by his role as surrogate parent to Raimond, in which role he supplied a gentler, perhaps more reflective adult influence on Raimond’s life. He gave up his job to care for Raimond after Romulus’s accident, taught Raimond to swim, gave him the example of great men from the past and sometimes interceded when Romulus lost his temper with Raimond.

This is not Hora’s story, so we only have glimpses of his later life, but he is portrayed as a loyal, well-read, warm-hearted and generous man whose mentoring of Raimond gave him much comfort and support. Romulus’s madness and his treatment of Hora strained their relationship, but although never quite as close, they remained ‘friends, but friends apart’ (146) because of old ties and steadfast common values.

• What was the basis of the deep friendship between Romulus and Hora? How did various events and decisions influence this friendship? • What role did Hora play in being a surrogate parent to Raimond?

Christine
Christine is a tragic and contradictory figure. The focus of the text, her illness and her intermittent presence in Raimond Gaita’s childhood mean that readers do not fully understand her. We do know some things about her however, and our sympathy for her is invoked in various ways.

She was a passionate, sensuous, clever and intense person, like Romulus, but with a formal education and love of artistic culture which he didn’t share. Transplanted to country Victoria in the early ‘50s, she found neither support nor a congenial environment, and most of the locals distrusted her. In a discussion about the importance of character –a value shared by Romulus, Hora and their Baringhup neighbours– Raimond Gaita explores with sensitivity and perception (101-4) the way in which the ‘division of the human spirit in that part of the world at that time’ limited the opportunities and potential of all women, and in particular a woman such as his mother.

Gaita says, ‘When I wrote Romulus, I deliberately avoided anything that looked like theoretical descriptions and concepts, even to the point of refusing to give a name to my mother’s illness. I did this because I wanted to convey, in ways not softened or obscured by theory, the full terribleness and the full terror of madness, while not diminishing the dignity of those who suffer it’[7]. The terribleness of her illness, manic-depression or bi-polar disorder, is shown in many instances: her promiscuity (she had other lovers than Mitru); her inability to care for her children; her tormenting of Mitru; and her selfish behaviour at Frogmore.

The danger of Gaita not naming the illness is that readers may be more inclined to condemn her behaviour. However our uncertainty reflects that of Romulus, Hora and Mitru about the severity and complexity of her illness. Our sympathy for Christine is also engaged by the moving chronicle of her decline in Chapter Eight (see below). Other images of her are similarly haunting, such as at Frogmore after her first suicide attempt (33) and again at Frogmore in 1955 when she frightens Raimond with her voices (83-4).

The sense of a tormented life cut short imbues the picture of Christine with a great sense of sadness.

• To what extent do you think Romulus understood both Christine’s temperament and her illness?

Mitru
Raimond Gaita describes him as someone who was ‘gentle, quick to laughter and with a wit that showed the sharpness and delicacy of his intelligence’ (26). He was ‘softer and also weaker’ than Hora (82-3). He was also obviously an honourable man who admired Romulus and felt shame for the wrong he had done him. His sensitivity, inability to live with or without Christine and perhaps fear of his own emotions led to his suicide. His character is explored in the discussion after his death (92-3).

Milka
With the focus of the memoir on the first half of Romulus Gaita’s life, the reader does not get to know her well. However, a picture emerges of a strong, independent, hard-working woman, who could hold her own with Romulus in their ‘stoushes’. Her stability, vivacity and patience made her an ideal partner for him, especially when he was still recovering from his illness, and her affection, warmth, generosity and hospitality endeared her to Raimond (see 178-9).

Vacek
Vacek is a gentle, crazy soul who lived among the boulders near Baringhup. He is described beautifully on pages 65-7 and, although he was eventually estranged from Romulus, it is clear their friendship was based on mutual acceptance, love of animals and a generosity of spirit towards the less fortunate in life.

• A number of other minor characters are introduced whose interesting eccentricities are affectionately evoked, who give flavour to the place and time being described and who provide further insight into the nature and character of Romulus Gaita. Students could explore the roles of Tom and Mrs Lillee, Miss Collard, Neil Mikkelson, Ronald Mottek, Mr and Mrs Foschia the ‘saloon’ owners and Jack, the cockatoo.

Style

Raimond Gaita’s prose style is spare, with little use of metaphor. Although the more reflective and philosophical passages are sometimes conceptually difficult, the language is generally simple and straightforward. The combination of this simplicity with the formal, nuanced sentence structure, the development of information and images within each chapter, the control of tone and the almost biblical cadences on occasion makes the writing extremely effective.

Raimond Gaita has said, ‘Writing about things that affected me profoundly, my mother’s suicide and my father’s madness for example, I had to resist as much as possible, all dispositions to pathos or sentimentality. That’s not a merely personal remark. Anyone in similar circumstances should do the same. But in resisting these, I was not trying to get feeling out of the writing. I was trying to make the feeling true. I don’t mean that I wanted it to be sincere. Sentimentality is sincere more often than not. In resisting sentimentality I wasn’t so much trying to feel right, but trying to see things right, to understand things right. When the effort to rid oneself of sentimentality, or inclination to pathos, for example, is an effort to understand, then it is an effort to see things as they are’[8].

Students subsisting on a diet of Oprah and other forms of confessional television may need to learn that neither rhetorical excess nor melodramatic breast-beating necessarily reflects genuine emotion and that less is often more. It will be valuable for students to hear as much as possible of the text read aloud.

We can see how Gaita’s style works by looking closely at a particular chapter. Chapter Eight is the story of the lead-up to Christine’s suicide, the event, and all that came after. It is written in a matter-of- fact tone, and may even seem emotionally detached. However it is one of the most moving sections of the text.

There is no false melodrama here. The simplicity and transparency of what happened, what people thought and how they responded, is described so clearly that the unadorned narrative evokes a profound emotional response. The sense of doom which has hung over Christine’s life from the moment we were first introduced to her also plays a part (8-9).

At the start of this chapter, Raimond Gaita describes the birth of his half-sister Barbara, soon after the suicide of Mitru, her father. Barbara joins her sister Susan as a child ‘in care’, in a religious ‘home’, and Christine loses the right to have control over her children because the authorities see her as ‘a hopeless case’ (108). Christine re-admits herself to a psychiatric clinic in 1958, and then is described as embarrassing Raimond when she takes him out to town for lunch after visiting him at boarding school (109). The impression gained from these pages (107-10) is of a woman rapidly losing control of her life.

She is angered by a chain around Raimond’s neck which she rightly suspects has been given to him by a woman (Lydia) who could be a ‘threat to me and my father’s affection for her’ (110) and says she wants to return to his father. Soon after, she hears from the head of the boarding school that her son doesn’t wish to see her. She then phones Romulus. ‘She pleaded with him and he agreed to meet her, but the meeting they arranged never came to pass. She killed herself only days after their conversation.’ This bald announcement, at the bottom of page 110, is not totally unexpected, but is shocking, nevertheless.

The following discussion about Christine Gaita’s illness and state of mind is calm but not unfeeling. Gaita’s reflection that, ‘My father, Hora and, I think, Mitru, did not appreciate the degree to which my mother’s life and behaviour were affected by her psychological illness’ (p. 112) has the effect of sharpening the reader’s compassion for her and emphasising the tragedy of her death.

The last section of this chapter, where Romulus and Raimond make a headstone for Christine’s grave, leaps ahead to 1981. However it is a necessary chronological departure which demonstrates the impact of her illness, even many years after her death, the bond between father and son, the love and pity of Romulus and Raimond for a wife and mother, and a final sense of resolution.

• A useful exercise for students, working in groups, might be to similarly deconstruct other chapters of the text. • Which passages in the text do you think are most moving and emotionally powerful? Explain why.

• Choose one section of the text where a description of an event and/or person is followed by a philosophical reflection. Show how these connect.

• Choose a section of the text to show how the use of descriptive detail engages the reader’s interest and response.

Setting

The settings in this text not only create a strong sense of time and place, often affectionately and sensually described and thus providing the necessary context for events, but are also crucial in the reader’s understanding of the characters and the way in which the characters understand themselves and their relationships. Raimond Gaita wrote this memoir while staying at a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ in Maldon, just down the road from Baringhup. This suggests he needed the physical closeness to the country which informed and shaped his childhood and adolescence in order to fully evoke the experiences and meaning of those years.

The lucid descriptions enable the reader to easily picture Frogmore, with its snakes, rats and sloping floors, the boating adventures on Cairn Curran, the loneliness of the country at night, the yellow grasslands in summer, the picture theatre in Maldon, the desperate images of the diseased hens and the Lillies’ welcoming kitchen. (Frogmore is a particularly ironic name for the disintegrating farmhouse. The original ‘Frogmore’ is a dower house in the grounds of Windsor Castle now housing the mausoleums of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. One can only speculate about what the original owner and namer intended by it.)

More significant are the scenes which tell us about the people who inhabit them. It is from seeing Christine lost in the landscape that we fully understand her alienation. ‘In that vast landscape with only crude wire fences and a rough track to mark a human impression on it, she appeared forsaken’ (32). We see Romulus ‘at home’ around Frogmore and in his workshop (52-3), but forlorn and out of place in hospital. The description of his appearance there communicates to us how much he has suffered and is diminished by his madness, and the lack of confidence and autonomy that has resulted from his hospitalisation, as well as how the sight of him changes the way his son understands the world.

‘The hospital represented a foreign world to me, one whose beliefs were shaped by ideas I instinctively felt to be in conflict with those that had enabled me to understand the events of my childhood’ (123). ‘That is why my heart broke when I saw my father in the ward…shrunken and bewildered…I left the hospital changed. I had absorbed past sorrows against the sure confidence of my father’s strength. I knew that, whatever was to come, I could never do so again’ (125). In contrast and most tellingly, Raimond Gaita recalls the time, before Romulus’s own madness, when his father spoke to him about Vacek and the terror of mental illness, while they were riding on their motorbike. “There is no sickness worse than mental sickness.” I remember his words clearly. Most of all I remember his strong, bare, sun-darkened arms on either side of me as I sat on the petrol tank…The sight of his muscular arms protected me against their terrible meaning’ (140).

The meaning, effect and influence of places are clearly central to our understanding of the text and characters. It would be useful for students to look in detail at other settings in the text and their significance.

• Which locations described in the text can you picture most clearly? Why?

• Analyse a specific scene to show how the reader gains greater understanding of a character by seeing him or her in a particular physical and/or social context.

Section 6.
A guided approach to selected passages

The following sections of the text have been chosen mostly because they focus on quite conceptually difficult passages which are, nevertheless, significant reflections arising from Gaita’s observations of people and events, and which also convey the philosophy which informs this book. However, it may not be possible for students to tackle these analyses without help, as apart from the density of thought they contain, they can also only be understood if students know key terms and ideas.

‘Hora often told me…’ (71) to ‘…their friendship’ (74).

• Why do you think Hora chooses to tell Raimond about ‘the deeds of great men’? In what ways does he see such people as models? • What effect do the stories have on Raimond? • How can Hora be, at the same time, ‘ferociously anticlerical’ but have ‘respect and affection for Christianity’s ethical vision’? Why are these stances not contradictory? • What does Raimond Gaita learn from conversations between his father and Hora? What does he mean by ‘the connection between conversation and Otherness’? • How does Hora’s response to Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago, show his ‘openness to the voices of others’? • Why is the final paragraph in this chapter so effective?

‘Character…’ (101) to ‘…Baringhup and its surrounds’ (104).

• Gaita says that the people around Baringhup in the fifties respected ‘character’ but were suspicious of ‘personality’. In your own words, explain the difference between these two concepts as Raimond Gaita describes them and as his father, Hora and most neighbours understood them? • What is the difference between ‘character’ and a person ‘being a character’? • Why was Christine Gaita viewed with suspicion by many of the neighbours? • How does Gaita see women in the fifties being constrained in the ways they could express themselves in a socially accepted fashion? • What qualities does Gaita both admire and see as limiting in the men he knew around Baringhup in his childhood?

‘The hospital…’ (123) to “I’ll never do it again” (125).

This extract will be better understood if students re-read beforehand pages 32-3, pages 60-1 and pages 105-6, all of which similarly show us characters in particular physical contexts. In this passage, Raimond Gaita describes the visit to his father in the Ballarat psychiatric hospital and why the visit is so disturbing.

• The country is described by Gaita as changing throughout the day, and evening, each stage representing a particular mood and perspective on life. What are these stages? • Page 124, paragraph 2, lines 1-6. What does this mean? (You need to understand what is meant by ‘metaphysics’.) • Why and how did the life, light and landscape around Frogmore suggest to Raimond Gaita ‘the uncompromising authority of morality’? • Why did Raimond say his ‘heart broke’ when he saw his father in hospital? Why did this mean that he ‘left the hospital changed’?

‘During…’ (171) to ‘…he professed’ (175).

• What does this extract tell us about the ways in which Romulus Gaita was changed by his illness? • What does the author mean by, ‘His affliction gave authority to much of what my father said’? (172) • How did Romulus Gaita combine a stern morality and compassion in his approach to people? • How and why did Maryborough people respond to Romulus Gaita in different ways?

‘No. He’s the philosopher…’ (181) to ‘…mercifully, no one came’ (190).

• What is shown in this section about changing attitudes to immigrants from ‘old’ Australians? • What leads to Romulus’s disillusionment with business? • What are Romulus’s attitudes to animals? What do his relationships with animals tell us about him?

Section 7. Activities for exploring the text

|Writing about our environment |

Ask students to think of a natural environment in which they have experienced great joy, delight or revelation. Ask them to describe the place and experience in a short piece of writing. Re-read with students the extract from Romulus (60-1) where Raimond sees the area around his home with new eyes for the first time. What does he mean by ‘transcendent’? How do the quality and significance of this particular experience differ from any other time when he describes his enjoyment of nature?

Class discussions

Some useful topics for ‘quickie’ debates could include: • Character matters more than personality. • Living a decent life does not depend upon material prosperity. • Life cannot be planned

Research

• Students might investigate the treatment available to people receiving care and medication for mental illness in the fifties, sixties and early seventies, as well as the attitudes to mental illness during these decades.

• Students could research the assisted passage migration scheme: its purpose, range, operation and processes, people targeted, obligations of immigrants, and conditions in the Bonegilla Migrant Camp.

• Read the transcript of the interview between Raimond Gaita and Ian Henschke: http://abcasiapacific.com/nexus/stories/s1108493.htm. Do Gaita’s comments on his life raise any new perspectives on the text? If so, list these points.

• Read the opening words of Robert Manne’s speech at the book launch of Romulus, My Father: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/pastissues.html. Manne refers to his friendship with Gaita over the years. List the qualities that he admires in Gaita.

Creative writing

• Imagine that Romulus had time to talk to his friend Hora before his death. Script a five minute conversation between these two, reflecting on their past lives.

• Imagine that Romulus had time to talk to his wife Milka before his death. Script a five minute conversation between husband and wife.

• Imagine that any one of Romulus’s past friends or acquaintances, (such as Vacek, Tom Lillie, Neil Mikkelsen, Mitru) could contribute to the eulogy at his funeral. What they might say?

Animals in the text

• Students could look at the various animals appearing in the memoir and the role they play. How are they described by the author? What is shown about the main characters from their attitudes to animals?

Dramatic representation

• Students could role play: ­ The arguments between Romulus and the adolescent Raimond, as he tries to establish his independence from his father. ­ A conversation between Raimond and any of his family members or close friends of the family. What questions may Raimond still have about their actions? What feelings may Raimond express towards them?

• There are many minor characters in the text who would have a view on events that occurred. Dramatise the viewpoints of the following characters: ­ Tom Lillee ­ Ronald Motteck, the teacher ­ Mr and Mrs Foschia, the ‘saloon’ owners ­ Jack, the cockatoo ­ Miss Collard ­ Lydia ­ Lydia’s mother ­ Jack Matthey, the policeman ­ John Dunstan, Raimond’s school friend

Writing

The style of Gaita’s memoir is extremely moving and powerful. However, many students will not appreciate this style immediately. It is important to establish the fact that purple prose and florid, wordy descriptions are not the epitome of effective writing. Don Watson’s book Death Sentence and Carmel Bird’s book Dear Writer may furnish some useful examples for teachers to discuss elements of good writing.

• In particular, discuss the advantages and power of directness and simplicity in conveying highly emotional situations. • Use extracts from this text in conjunction with other material to contribute to the ‘Writing’ component of the course.

Topics for writing and discussion

Some of the following questions would be suitable for class or group discussion, rather as exam questions. Other questions are deliberately detailed, give clues as to how a student might address the topic and may be most useful as early practice essays.

1. Raimond Gaita writes in this memoir, ‘I know what friendship is; I know because I remember these things in the person of my father, in the person of his friend Hora, and in the example of their friendship’. How does the text show this to be true?

2. Romulus and Raimond Gaita lived a very simple life at Frogmore, in a decaying house and with few possessions. However, the author says, ‘I never felt that we were poor’. Why does he feel this? In what ways were their lives rich?

3. Raimond Gaita has said that he does not present this story as a ‘typical’ migrant story, but the text nevertheless makes clear how much Romulus and Christine Gaita lost when they left Europe for Australia, and the ways in which immigrants in the 1950s were patronised and seen as ‘different.’ How does the book show this?

4. The tone of this memoir is low-key and restrained. It is never melodramatic yet it is profoundly moving for the reader. How does the author achieve this?

5. Another writer once commented that Greek tragedies can be played out in ordinary, everyday lives. What are the tragic dimensions in this account of Romulus Gaita’s life?

6. The text shows us clearly the horror of madness, but also argues for our compassion and our obligation to see such people as fully human. Discuss.

7. A commentator has described this book as ‘a story with the simplicity of myth and the force of tragedy.’ Do you agree?

8. ‘Romulus, My Father shows the importance of integrity and loyalty’. Do you agree?

9. What does this memoir show us about selflessness and unconditional love?

10. ‘Romulus Gaita was an unusual, even an extraordinary man’. Do you agree?

11. ‘This memoir is an ode to friendship’. Discuss.

12. ‘The relationships between people and animals in this book tell us a great deal about the people concerned’. Discuss.

13. What did Raimond Gaita learn from his father and Hora?

14. ‘The text does not enable us to fully understand or sympathise with Christine Gaita’. Do you agree?

15. ‘The text presents a sombre, even pessimistic view of life. There is not much joy in it’. Discuss.
Section 8. References

A transcript of an interview of Raimond Gaita by Ian Henschke can be found at: http://abcasiapacific.com/nexus/stories/s1108493.htm The opening words of Robert Manne’s speech given at the launch of Romulus, My Father is at: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/pastissues.html Search for the February/March 1998 issue

Appendix 1: Chronology of events

|1922 |Romulus is born |
|1935 |Romulus leaves home to become an apprentice blacksmith |
|1939 |He goes to Germany to find work |
|1944 |He meets and marries Christine Dörr in Dortmund |
|1946 |Raimond is born |
|1950 (April) |The family arrives at Port Melbourne |
|1951 |Raimond goes to live with his mother in St Kilda for 18 months |
|1954 (Winter) |Romulus has a motorbike accident. Hora looks after Raimond |
|1954 |Raimond spends part of Christmas holidays with Christine and Mitru |
|1955 (May) |Christine stays at Frogmore for a month |
|1955 (July) |Raimond’s half-sister Susan is born |
|1955 (Nov) |Mitru attempts suicide |
|1956 |Mitru commits suicide |
|1956 (July) |Barbara is born. The girls are placed in a home |
|1957 |Romulus begins writing to Lydia |
|1957 |Susan and Barbara are made wards of the state |
|1958 |Christine becomes a day patient at Ballarat Psychiatric Hospital |
|1958 (Feb) |Raimond goes to St Patrick’s in Ballarat as a boarder |
|1958 (Sep/Oct) |Christine commits suicide |
|1960 (Autumn) |Romulus learns the truth about Lydia and begins to go insane |
|1960 (Sep) |Romulus becomes a patient at Ballarat Psychiatric Hospital |
|1960 (late) |Romulus agrees to the adoption of Susan and Barbara |
|1960 (Dec) |Raimond and his school friend deliver Romulus’s ironwork |
|1961 (May) |Romulus goes to Sydney intending to shoot Lydia’s husband |
|1962 |Romulus buys a house in Maryborough |
|1962 |Romulus pays for Lydia’s mother and brother to come to Australia |
|1963 |Raimond goes to Melbourne High School |
|1963 (Sep) |Milka comes to live at Maryborough |
|1964 (March) |Romulus and Milka are married |
|1960s, 1970s |Romulus recovers from illness and becomes well known in the district |
|1981 |Romulus and Raimond make a headstone for Christine’s grave |
|1981 |Romulus visits Yugoslavia but returns disillusioned |
|Mid 1980s |Romulus retires from ironworking and looks after his animals |
|Mid 1980s |Raimond locates Susan and Barbara |
|Late 1980s? |Romulus has his first operation |
|1996 (May) |Romulus is admitted to hospital and dies two days later |

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[1] Gaita, Raimond (2004) ‘Was he really like that? Truth and biography’, transcript of address given at the VATE State Conference, La Trobe University, 23-4 July.
[2] ibid.
[3] Sullivan, Jane, ‘When truth becomes fiction’, The Age, 29/7/2004
[4] Gaita, op. cit. (3)

[5] ibid. (11)
[6] ibid. (10)
[7] ibid. (8)
[8] ibid. (5)