Voss by Patrick White

In the mid 1840s a Prussian explorer led an expedition  to cross the  Australian Outback and was never heard from again. Australian author White used him as inspiration for this tale of the German Voss, his secret romance with an intellectual but naive young woman, his hubris, and his doomed journey. This is not so much an account of hardships endured on a physical journey as it is an examination of the journey of self discovery of the exploring participants and of the one waiting at home.

 In its totality, this is a very powerful book, but in its particulars, it can sometimes become very tedious. Voss's every thought and emotion are examined in relation to everything and everybody.  The prose is often extravagant and beautiful and filled with metaphor but sometimes is carried to excess, so that one thinks, "What a pretentious pile of meaningless garbage." It is extremely slow to read because the sentences often don't follow the expected conventions of structure and syntax and must be reread for understanding.

Still, it is clearly a work of genius. Rarely have I read a book which provided so much sense of place. The symbolism of  the path to divinity is just subtle enough, yet understandable enough. The drifts into dreamtime are mesmerizing and reflective of the mystical nature of the native culture.

Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, and this is considered his masterpiece. I recommend it to those willing to devote to it a considerable chunk of contemplative reading time.