J.M. Barrie and Nietzsche?

[Erika]

Hello! My name is Erika. I'm an undergraduate at Ithaca College doing an independent study on Peter Pan, its mythos, and development as a folktale.  I'm wondering about the creation of name  "Never-never Land". I was reading Nietzsche's "On Truth and lies in the Non-moral Sense" and found a passage that mentions a "never-never land", though only in passing. I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about a connection between J.M. Barrie and Nietzsche - even just some text of his indicating that yes indeed he did read Nietzsche, or that it somehow was an inspiration. Anything on this would be helpful, even just on the etymology of "never-never land" as a place/metaphysical concept, etc...

[Xavier Pan]

As far as I know, the island where Peter Pan lives was named after a remote desert in central Australia, the Never Never Land. In fact, this region is mentioned in the film "Australia". I hope this will help.

[GOSH]

Like Xavier Pan, I would tend to agree that Barrie's inspiration was the name commonly used in Victorian and Edwardian times for the Australian Outback. There is no reference to Barrie having read Nietzsche (although of course it is quite possible), but Lisa Chaney does refer in her biography of JMB that a play called The Never Never Land about an Aboriginal area in the Northern Territory by the playwright Wilson Barrett came out in 1902. It would therefore seem more likely that Barrie got his inspiration from this play and contemporary stories about the Australian Outback which would then have seemed like a very exotic and faraway place, rather than Nietzche's writings. Lisa Chaney also makes the point that the Australian place name derives from a people who called 'the repository of their understanding of themselves the name of the Dream Time' - so this would fit in with Barrie's description of what Neverland represents, particularly with all the references to dreams.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your study, it sounds really interesting!

[Elanor_Niphredil]

Hello,

If you are still interested, R.D.S Jack's book "The Road to the Neverland: A Reassessment of  J M Barrie's Dramatic Art" discusses at length the possibility of Barrie having engaged with Nietzche. For him, there seems to be no question - Barrie's writings prove beyond doubt that he read and enjoyed Nietzsche. At first I totally accepted this, but the more I read around the period the more I am beginning to have my doubts, as I suspect that most of what Jack thinks Barrie got from Nietzsche could just as easily have come from other, more solidly provable, sources, particularly Meredith, who could actually read German.  But Jack's book certainly deserves a read.