edinburgh university press scottish modernism and its contexts 1918-1959 literature national identity and cultural exchange may 2009

Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange Margery Palmer McCulloch Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 For Ian who is also a Scottish modernist Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange Margery Palmer McCulloch Edinburgh University Press © Margery Palmer McCulloch, 2009 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3474 3 (hardback) The right of Margery Palmer McCulloch to be identi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism 1 Part I Transforming Traditions 1 Towards a Scottish Modernism: C. M. Grieve, Little 11 Magazines and the Movement for Renewal 2 Hugh MacDiarmid and Modernist Poetry in Scots 29 3 Criticism and New Writing in English 53 4 Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern 68 World Part II Ideology and Literature 5 Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars 93 6 Neil M. Gunn: Re-imagining the Highlands 113 7 Modernism and Littérature Engagée: A Scots Quair and City 131 Fiction 8 Poetry and Politics 154 Part III World War Two and its Aftermath 9 Visionaries and Revisionaries: Late Muir and MacDiarmid 169 10 Continuities and New Voices 198 Bibliography of Works Cited 216 Index 223 Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to staff at Glasgow University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, and the Poetry Library, Edinburgh for their helpfulness, and to the several research colleagues who have willingly answered queries or offered addi- tional information. I am especially grateful to Dr Gerard Carruthers, Head of the Department of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, for continuing academic and conference support. Much encouragement for this Scottish modernist project has been provided by members of the recently established Scottish Network of Modernist Studies (SNOMS), and by the enthusiasm of international delegates at Modernist Magazines conferences in Leicester and Le Mans. My thanks are due also to the editorial staff at Edinburgh University Press and, as always, to Ian and Euan for practical help. Liberté j’écris ton nom Paul Eluard Don’t put ‘N. B.’ on your paper; put Scotland and be done with it [. . .] The name of my native land is not North Britain, whatever may be the name of yours. Robert Louis Stevenson Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism There cannot be a revival in the real sense of the word [. . .] unless these potentialities are in accord with the newest tendencies of human thought. C. M. Grieve, Scottish Chapbook (1923) In a review article in the Athenaeum in 1919 T. S. Eliot posed the question ‘Was there a Scottish literature?’, rapidly concluding that there was not, since Scotland had neither a single language nor a suf ciently unfragmented literary history to entitle it to claim what he called a distinctive ‘Scotch lit- erature’. 1 If Eliot were alive today, his question might well be ‘Was there a Scottish modernism?’; and many academic scholars and critics – Scottish as well as non-Scottish – would probably join him in doubting that there was any such thing. A perusal of critical studies of modernism in the past twenty to thirty years, including the most recent, will rarely reveal a listing of ‘Hugh MacDiarmid’ in their indexes, while the potential Scottish modernist territory as a whole remains unexplored. Similarly, studies of early twentieth-century writing in Scotland seldom have the word ‘modernism’ in their indexes. On the surface, then, it might appear that there was no manifestation of literary modernism worthy of discussion in that part of the United Kingdom which in the early twentieth century was still called North Britain. This study starts from the dual premise that there was and still is a varied and distinctive Scottish literature interacting with both traditional and inter- national in uences; and that there was in the post-1918 period a Scottish liter- ary modernism drawing on artistic in uences from European modernism and rooted in the desire to recover a self-determining identity for Scotland both culturally and politically. The book’s purpose is therefore a positive one which seeks to situate Scottish culture in the modernist context of the early twentieth century by expanding the existing limited and potentially inward-looking idea of an interwar ‘Scottish Renaissance’ movement to include its international signi cance as a Scottish manifestation of modernism. In addition, and in common with what is happening currently in other areas of modernist studies, the conventional boundaries of modernism will be extended in order to con- sider a late or transitional Scottish modernism, especially in poetry, in the 1940s and 1950s.While the primary aim of the study is therefore to further [...]...2 Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 awareness and understanding of Scottish culture, it is hoped that it will also assist in the ongoing international project of expanding perceptions of modernism more generally through its documentation of the Scottish experience and the ways in which artistic experimentation and a response to ‘the new’ can simultaneously interact with political and. .. McCulloch (ed.), Modernism and Nationalism, p xii 9 Grieve, Scottish Chapbook, August 1922, p 28, reprinted in McCulloch (ed.), Modernism and Nationalism, p 53 10 Smith, Scottish Literature: Character and Influence, pp 138–9 11 Grieve, Scottish Chapbook, September 1922, p 38 12 Dunfermline Press, 5 August 1922, p 6; 30 September 1922, p 7, reprinted in McCulloch (ed.), Modernism and Nationalism, pp... A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle to be the expression of a delayed Scottish Romantic nationalism, has 6 Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 encouraged a focus on what some critics have seen as a national essentialism in the movement, a looking backwards and inwards as opposed to the modernity and internationalism of the context in which these Scottish Renaissance writers considered themselves... was the absence in Scotland of a 24 Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 sufficiently large and adventurous audience interested in the promotion of new ideas, both Scottish and emanating from beyond Scotland In the mid1930s, The Modern Scot merged with another journal to become Outlook This merger produced a magazine which, although less culturally adventurous than its predecessor, achieved... Grieve and the exploration of a ‘Russo -Scottish Parallelism’ pointed to its continuing internationalism in addition to its Scottish objectives On the other hand, it may be that the format of the Chapbook was not sufficiently flexible for the wider cultural and national agenda Grieve had initially intended to pursue, especially when the editor’s Causeries on the topic of the Scots language dominated its. .. ballet and literature One notable peak of this ferment of creativity was reached in 1913 in the performance by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe of The Rite of Spring to the music of Stravinsky and designs by Picasso: a performance of primitive power which caused a public furore on its opening night This pre-1914 modernism was thus marked by its international nature, its culturally interactive nature, and by its. .. commitment to the regeneration of the life of the country, culturally, politically and economically In May 1925, Grieve 22 Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 was commissioned by the editor of the Scottish Educational Journal to write a series of assessments of Scottish literary figures, a project he had tentatively begun in the Scottish Chapbook This caused much controversy in the Journal’s... scenes and in print through articles and editorials, as were the writers F Marian McNeill and Helen Cruickshank Alexander Gray took up the international and the Scotslanguage challenge by translating German and Danish ballads into Scots, thus bringing to attention similarities between the European and Scottish ballad traditions Gray’s focus, on the other hand, was on accuracy of translation and on... Scotland: What Belgium did, Scotland can do Literary Scotland, like Belgium, is a country of mixed nationality Instead of two languages, Flemish and French, we have Braid Scots, Gaelic and English Let the exponents of these three sections in Scottish Literature to-day make common cause as the young Belgian writers [ .] did in La Jeune Belgique and elsewhere; and the next decade or two will see a Scottish. .. its principal activists in its own time Such a context will allow a wider, less fragmented and less insular view of Scottish cultural developments in the postwar period, including Scottish responses to modernity – to philosophical, ideological and technological as well as artistic change – alongside more specifically national questions This Scottish modernism, on the other hand, is not entirely synonymous . Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 For Ian who is also a Scottish modernist Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange Margery. Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange Margery Palmer McCulloch . further 2 Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959 awareness and understanding of Scottish culture, it is hoped that it will also assist in the ongoing international project of expanding perceptions