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6 Arts of Resistance: Part One major movements such as Romanticism or Modernism, though there are exceptions, sometimes important ones like Thomas Mann or William Blake or Sibelius, who don’t fit into the accepted ethos. The second is a coincidence of temperament, two or three or more people writing or painting or working in a similar way but in different places and not in contact with each other. Examples might be Willam McTaggart (1835–1910) and French Impressionism – McTaggart never was part of the Impressionist group but he came to very similar conclusions about what painting could do, without knowing anything about them. You could say something similar about John Quinton Pringle (1864–1925) with reference to the theory of Pointilism. A different kind of example of a very real affinity would be MacDiarmid and the composer F.G. Scott (1880–1958), where the piano settings and the lyric poems are absolutely attuned to each other in temperament and illuminate each other but belong to different artistic genres, the literary and the musical. The third is a conscious choice or rejection of a tradition. The most famous example might be T.S. Eliot, toppling Matthew Arnold and reinstating the metaphysical poets and the Jacobean dramatists to endorse his own position in a literary tradition. But MacDiarmid would be appropriate here too, rejecting the ‘phoney’ Scottishness of exaggeration and caricature and trying to re-establish a literary tradition that goes back well before Scott, before Burns, back to William Dunbar: an independent Scottish tradition. But MacDiarmid’s push here is not only to clear a way of seeing that tradition but also to make that tradition available for others. sandy: There are variations of course. Picasso rejects Post-Impressionism to clear a way for his next move into Cubism, but then after the First World War, he goes back to a type of neoclassicism. alan: Similarly with Stravinsky: you have the primal scream in The Rite of Spring, but then Stravinsky too returns to neoclassicism. sandy: You have followers who imitate Stravinsky and Picasso. And this, in turn, means that what was the avant-garde and the really revolutionary suddenly becomes an establishment of its own. If you don’t fit in, you’re anathema to their artistic authority, however unconventional that authority might have been a moment ago. So when Schoenberg, and then Boulez, became central authorities in musical culture, Shostakovich was out, irrelevant – let alone Richard Strauss or Sibelius or Benjamin Britten! alan: It’s very evident with Schoenberg: you had to follow his forms, write in the 12-tone scale. And in poetry, there’s a whole anthology of poets who read Ezra Pound, thought that’s how it’s done, and tried to imitate it. sandy: But with MacDiarmid this doesn’t happen. It’s rather that he’s opened the door, not only for himself but for others. alan: Poets who do try to imitate him sometimes, like Alan Bold in his punchy, belligerent moods, actually write their best work when they’re not in that imitative mode – I’m thinking of Bold’s elegy for his father, a very moving poem that has its own emotional intimacy. And the major poets who are writing alongside MacDiarmid, MacCaig, MacLean, Mackay Brown and so on – none of them imitate MacDiarmid but they all seem to write in a constellation that has been brought into vision after MacDiarmid’s work of the 1920s. sandy: MacDiarmid goes out with a scythe, clears the ground, and his own writing opens up all sorts of possibilities; whereas Pound, Eliot, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, all have a kind of righteousness about their own position and there’s a dictatorial aspect to their aesthetic positions. MacDiarmid wasn’t like that. George Davie used to insist that I should acknowledge this point: ‘MacDiarmid never
Hugh MacDiarmid and the Arts of Modern Scotland 7 had disciples,’ George repeatedly told me. ‘He never had disciples!’ alan: But in a sense, in the 1930s, George Davie, Sorley MacLean and the librarian Bill Aitken, W.R. Aitken, all visited MacDiarmid in the Shetlands and they were profoundly impressed not only by his poetry and his personal integrity and isolation, but also by the ideas he believed in. Were they not disciples, in a way? sandy: In a sense, perhaps, but think of Schoenberg, who insisted on disciples. Think of his attitude towards Webern and Berg. What does that tell us? The Viennese composer and conductor H.K. Gruber, who was a student in the early 1960s, said he ‘felt terrorised by the Second Viennese School, especially Schoenberg, who was effectively saying to the world, “I have discovered a musical technique which enables us to dominate the world for the next 100 years.” I thought, “Is that a goal for composers, to dominate countries?” What a fascistic idea for a Viennese composer whose name is Schoenberg and who was Jewish.’ Now, MacDiarmid never insisted on disciples in that way. alan: Maybe the single main inspiration for what MacDiarmid had in mind was Patrick Geddes (1854– 1932). He really instigated the Scottish Renaissance – his comprehensive vision sparked off MacDiarmid’s ‘worldview’ and his appetite for interdisciplinarity – joining the dots. MacDiarmid certainly acknowledged Geddes. They met in Edinburgh in 1922. In 1891, Geddes was the first person to use the phrase ‘Scottish Renascence’ (and he used that spelling), heralding a new, comprehensive vision on the horizon. sandy: Geddes wasn’t an artist himself but he was closely involved with the likes of Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852–1936) – whose remarkable murals for the Catholic Apostolic church suggest a combination of Fra Angelico and William Blake; they remain a unique achievement in the field of large-scale wall painting in Scotland; and with 1.4 Desmond Chute 1895–1962 Patrick Geddes 1930 Pittendrigh MacGillivray (1856–1938), the sculptor and poet whose public commissions are considerable works of art. They were hailed as such by MacDiarmid in 1923, in The Scottish Nation. MacGillivray also wrote poetry in Scots, again, much admired by MacDiarmid. alan: Geddes was a botanist, sociologist and town planner who envisioned Scotland restored to ‘something of the older pre-eminence in the world of thought’ and Edinburgh recreated as an active centre. He thought that this would help resist the dominant centralising power of London. He wanted to replace the stereotyped methods of education by ‘a more vital and synthetic form and to encourage national art and literature.’
Page 3: Arts of Resistance Poets, Portraits
Page 6 and 7: for Marshall Walker ‘a torchlight
Page 9 and 10: vii Acknowledgements We are immense
Page 11 and 12: ix Introduction All art is a long c
Page 13 and 14: Introduction xi for a relevant arti
Page 15: Introduction xiii radical nature of
Page 18 and 19: xvi Arts of Resistance 1.22 William
Page 20 and 21: xviii Arts of Resistance 3.6 James
Page 23 and 24: 1 Part One Hugh MacDiarmid and the
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