Monash’s career is hindered by other forces, notably the anti-Semitism of Colonel Dean Pitt, the 1893 ‘Crash’ after The Great Boom, and the later conspiracy of historian C E W Bean and Keith Murdoch against him. These themes continue on into Part 2, which is otherwise dominated by Monash’s response to the First World War and Gallipoli. The opening poem, ‘1910’, again employs a photograph as symbolic of the relationship of the central protagonists. Monash is photographed in London:
a stiff white dinner shirt rigid evening dress determines the black and white brightness of before […] the camera records a moment − the lines of his mouth the success he's aimed for
Victoria, on the other hand, ‘the line from forehead to throat / the lens on the tilt of her head, holds / a gaze quietened’. In a letter four years later, before sailing to Greece, Monash lets her know:
He wants this chance to be honoured − ambition can be instilled within what he was "best, happiest at" guiding men to a goal −
Photographs are referenced in ‘Monash Landed on Gallipoli’, ‘On Gallipoli’ and ‘Later’ to depict the war scenario, to contrast ‘the genius of Monash’s stare … to scan, horizons assailable to thought, / close-up’ with that of the soldiers:
… contained in an obliqueness to things as if deliberately not focusing − and officers standing at the edge of the barge […] the illusion is they steer themselves are in control
At the same time, Monash ‘has to look at and bear / not speak of what he had forewarned −/ the thousands dead’. This experience is linked to that of the ‘once engineering tyro’ and his response to the man killed during the construction of King’s Bridge.
The following poem, again at ‘Barangaroo reserve’, stands with the writer-researcher outside her work, encapsulating both the poet’s methodology and her title for the collection as a whole:
Sea swell and high shooting spray are the first things I notice, then the breeze and the ring around the tree I'm sitting under − all these rocks about it shelter feelings − yet the sea pulling beneath us earth's flowing cloth dragging its press of boats puts me in a long moment of riding what I've come upon − photos and writings of the past except that leaves of grass and trees are soft incendiaries on the slowness that dissipates the bruise of knowing
Perlstone then inserts several poems based on letters (‘Again Monash Writes to Vic’, ‘Monash at Gallipoli Writing to Vic’) underlining the conflict between Monash’s need to command and his horror at the loss of life, the wreckage that is war. These conflicting feelings culminate in ‘Messines Ridge 7 June 1917’ and ‘Passchendaele Disaster’:
Monash foresaw it all had seen it with Godley's rushed unplanned pushes on Gallipoli
The poem ‘Two more photos August 1918’ is elegiac in its juxtaposition of ‘The Australian soldiers faintly visible in small groups in sepia colour print’ with ‘the stillness in humps of clothes’:
we see them, fixed in their distance as soft gestures on paper yet now too as if, inadvertently, we're walking into a room that they've arranged themselves in for sleep − their deaths' immediacy lodged shades of who they were once deepening
The final section of the book depicts Monash as promoted to General in England, where he weighs up the fame for his efforts versus ‘the lost / luminousness − of lives annulled’. Back in Australia, the war ended, there’s no place for him, ‘no given rank / or position in a future to reward him / no post that a government might organise’. Yet ‘He knows he’s best at planning and creating −/ establishes The Victorian State Electricity Commission’. While Perlstone’s account doesn’t mention it, in 1929 The Institute of Engineers awarded Monash its highest honour, the Peter Nicol Russell Memorial Medal, and in June 1931, Melbourne University gave him the Kernot Memorial Award for distinguished achievement in Australian engineering. That is, he’s honoured for his contribution to engineering, but not as a General:
While Billy Hughes, Australia's Prime Minister could promote Monash to four-stars he fears Monash will be a rival at home; decides instead he will organize the soldiers returning − delay him until after elections − upsetting Charles Bean the war historian who sees this as ever more prestige for the Jewish Sir John Monash
The penultimate poem, ‘1931’, is Monash’s last Anzac Day. For him:
It was grief's ceremony still to strain − to reach out to the soldiers who were alive
The Afterword, ‘A Short Peace’, returns us to the poet’s world: ‘For the moment / the sea is slate blue; ferries smooth or even slow over it /…. where water laps away the city’s dryness’.
The Bruise of Knowing presents a fascinating account of the life and times of an important figure in our country’s history. Perlstone’s poetry is innovative in its own right, telling Monash’s story in ways that bring to light themes of power and bigotry, the after-effects of war and ambition, and the knowledge that one might sometimes have been wrong.
