The Unsettled Settler: Herakles the Colonist and the Labours of Marian Maguire

Abstract

Could we imagine a new set of adventures for that old adventurer, Herakles? What would he have gotten up to, for example, in colonial New Zealand? In Herakles Writes Home, a striking lithograph from Marian Maguire’s The Labours of Herakles, the black-figure hero scribbles away inside his wooden homestead. The distinctive, conical peak of Taranaki seen through a window locates the scene on the western cape of New Zealand’s North Island. Above his head, Maori carvings—pressed into new service as bookends—guard a small library which takes in Homer, the Bible, and accounts of life in the South Pacific. A Greek Maori dictionary hints at the practicalities, and problems, of cross-cultural translation; the ongoing effort of understanding, and the constant battle to be understood. Frederick Maning’s Old New Zealand would offer mediated insights of another kind. Written by one of the most famous Pakeha Maori,1 it is an account of Maori culture written for a European audience by a man at home in both worlds. Show more