The Speak of the Place  Vol.5 No.3, Autumn 2006

Not just the same old Song

 A fascinating marketing war involving the increasingly commercial commodity of Lewis Grassic Gibbon has developed in the wake of Sunset Song’s popular election last year  as the best Scottish novel ever.

 Canongate of Edinburgh, who initially set the pace with publication of  Thomas Crawford’s immaculately prepared editions of the three Scots Quair volumes in their Scottish classics series in 1988, 1989 and 1990, have just reissued the first volume in a handsomely re-designed abstract patterned jacket by James Hutcheson.

 Next up were Polygon, with their attractive sunburst version of Sunset Song, expertly edited with introduction and notes by Professor Ian Campbell of Edinburgh University, fresh from delivering the Linklater Lecture on Gibbon at Aberdeen University’s Word Festival on 12 May, and with a most useful 250 word glossary of Gibbon’s Scots idioms compiled by the North-east’s very own Norman Harper. 

Now Polygon have newly followed up this first volume of the famous trilogy with an equally striking single volume edition of the complete Quair, again edited and with notes by the industrious Professor Campbell. 

With Penguin due to publish their Penguin Classics edition of Sunset Song, with an introduction by Ali Smith, in the new year to tie in with the book’s recent adoption in the Open University’s Literature module ‘What is literature for?’, Gibbon fans are destined, for once, to be politively spoiled for choice, at least with regard to Gibbon texts.  It is to be hoped that Polygon will carry on to complete the full Grassic Gibbon reprint series in  years to come. 

As ever, all available editions of books by both Leslie Mitchell and Grassic Gibbon are available at the Centre, with Friends qualifying for normal discount on mail order.

Like no other meal on earth 

Following his timely address at the 2005 Grassic Gibbon Supper, Carl MacDougall, novelist, critic and broadcaster, eminent champion of Scottish culture, develops his personal reflections upon Grassic Gibbon’s achievement exclusively for The Speak. 

Two or three times a week I walked down Keppochhill Road, turned right at the Mosshouse, passed St Theresa’s Chapel and crossed the road at the Askit factory, passed the blind asylum then walked up the wee brae to Possil Library.

      They didn’t have much of a poetry section, but I was 16 or 17 when I found a small blue book called Penny Wheep tucked at the back of the second stack of fiction.  I liked, but didn’t understand, the title, read the book at a sitting, took it home and read it again that night.  I kept it out for weeks and only gave it back when I could get another by the same writer. 

      I forget the order I read MacDiarmid’s works, but Penny Wheep, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle and the autobiographical Lucky Poet were early pieces.  The librarian told me a book, co-written with another author, was available.  I took out Scottish Scene and found Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

      His pieces fascinated me, especially the essay on Glasgow, which hadn’t changed all that much in the 30 or so years since it was written: ‘The tenement itself in a line or a grouping with hundreds of its fellows, its windows grimed with the unceasing wash and drift of coal-dust, its stairs narrow and befouled and steep, its evening breath like that which might issue from the mouth of a lung-diseased beast.’

      When I first read this, the city was undergoing something of a reconstructional renaissance.  The past, we were told, was being swept away and the flagship for the new Glasgow was Sir Basil Spence’s high-rise Gorbals, now demolished, but chosen I believe for its literary associations.  When people thought of Gorbals, they thought of No Mean City, not the image the council wished to project. In fact, their creation made the Gorbals even more notorious as a by-word for poor housing.  Known as ‘the dampies’, the multis created all sorts of health and social problems.

      Gibbon’s piece outlines both the vision and the consequence.  For, however well intentioned the social engineers may have been and however much Gibbon called for the slums to be swept away, echoes of the world he hated are with us still: ‘… they live on food of the quality of offal, ill-cooked, ill-eaten with speedily diseased teeth for the tending of which they can afford no fees.’

      These pieces in Scottish Scene altered my view of Scottish writing. They were radical and opinionated, descriptive and energetic; they ranged widely and expressively in their sources and references and betrayed a wealth of remembered reading as well as a variety of obscure sources and features.   More importantly, as with most autodidacts, the range and intelligence was neither ostentatious nor glitzy.  Nothing was there to impress. It all was relevant and revealed a love of learning and information.  Everything was grist to his mill.

      What was truly impressive was his eye, not simply for detail, but for life.  ‘High tea in Aberdeen is like no other meal on earth.  It is the meal of the day, the meal par excellence, and the tired come home to it ravenous … Tea is drunk with the meal, and the order of it is this: First, one eats a plateful of sausages and eggs and mashed potatoes; then a second plateful to keep down the first.  Eating, one assists the second plateful to its final home by mouthfuls of oatcake spread with butter.  Then you eat oatcake with cheese.  Then there are scones.  Then cookies.  Then it is really time to begin on tea – tea and bread and butter and crumpets and toasted rolls and cakes.  Then some Dundee cake.  Then – about half past seven – someone shakes you out of the coma into which you have fallen and asks you persuasively if you wouldn’t like another cup of tea and just one more egg and sausage …’

      They were the first pieces I’d read which seemed to define Scots identity, and they did so from a parochial point of view.  Though I had been to Aberdeen only once, I could identify with it as readily as I could identify with Glasgow, because Gibbon imbues both cities with ingredients which are identifiable to any Scot.

      The language seemed and still seems modern; but what I found exciting was the way Gibbon used this language to describe contemporary events, especially in the stories, where the rhythmical insistence of the language drives the narrative. 

      This alone makes him one of our most innovative writers, a man who is in the great line of Scottish writing from the ballad makers, Robert Fergusson, Burns and so on, a man who listened to the sound of his own voice and tried to replicate it, and who did so not by looking back to what other writers had done, nor by imitating, but by looking forward and absorbing what was current in world literature in innovators like William Faulkner, James Joyce and so on.

      In Sunset Song, his continual use of the word ‘you’ creates both an intimacy and a universality, so that even in the most personal moments of Chris’s life, there is a sense that everyone is included, that her experiences are universal; that Gibbon is discussing a general rather than a particular experience and in many ways helping to define that experience.  This intimacy, the way we understand everything about her, I believe, makes Chris Guthrie the most convincing female character in Scottish fiction.

      One of his great achievements is the ways in which the author’s voice merges with the community, yet he never loses sight of the fact that it is a communal voice he is using.  This is important to an area where the way words are spoken as opposed to the way words are written is extremely relevant.  Gibbon’s language on the page presents no great difficulty, but when read aloud demands to be heard in the local accent.  This is an extraordinary achievement and one which no other Scottish writer has successfully emulated. 

      Gibbon obviously believed language was a living thing, capable of being shaped to an individual’s needs without losing its communicative value, far less its relevance to the place where it originated, something which is, in a sense, a definition of the act of writing itself.

      Gibbon’s work in Scots has been enormously influential.  It allowed successive generations of writers to believe their voice was good enough, that the real reason for using our own voice, not to mention encouraging its development, is not that it should articulate everything, but that it can articulate things which cannot be articulated in English, or that it articulates its own meanings, which are often beyond English.           

      A renewed confidence in our voice may mean a closer relationship with English, where the tensions and similarities can be exploited, as has been happening in literature for some time.  The creative ability of people to renew their spoken language has never been in doubt.  And Lewis Grassic Gibbon showed how our spoken voice can be articulated, showing yet again  that the effect of spoken Scots on the written Scots can be very dynamic.

Teaching A Scots Quair – Personal Experiences in Germany and the USA

Subsequent to the report published in The Speak a year ago of recent translations of  Grassic Gibbon’s novels published in France, Dr Uwe Zagratzki reflects upon his personal experiences teaching A Scots Quair in Germany and in the United States.

 Scottish literature has gained a solid reputation in German university curricula over the last few years and the present writer has been anxious to have his share in this most welcome awakening. What then would be more reasonable than to include Grassic Gibbon’s eminent trilogy in my teaching syllabus, since it appears to attract young contemporary academic readers inside and outside Scotland? With at least three major studies on Mitchell’s complete works from Continental universities as a proof of continued interest, I had sufficient reason to set out on a literary journey through A Scots Quair.

      I was first joined by German ‘travel companions’ from a ‘Hauptseminar’ (graduate class) at the University of Oldenburg (Germany) in the winter of 2003/04 reading the entire trilogy, then by American students in their final BA year (undergraduate 4000 course) at the University of West Georgia in spring 2004 reading Sunset Song among other Scottish prose of the 19th and 20th century. Both classes were chiefly attended by female students.

      It must be noted that two different methods of treating the novel were chosen. Whereas both classes were invited to pursue traditional academic reading and analysis, the West Georgia class, in addition, were made to reflect upon their personal responses to Sunset Song. For Oldenburg students reading the trilogy resulted in selecting topics for final papers and oral examinations.

      One of the primary results concerning either class was a surprising range of reactions spanning from outright rejection to positive or even (over-) enthusiastic reception. Oldenburg as well as West Georgia students struggled hard to cope with Gibbon’s complex philosophy of freedom, which at its heart, offers a synthesis of idealism and historical materialism. Both German and American students, astonishingly, took their time to clear language barriers and both, in particular the female participants, gained easy access to Chris’ ‘modernity’ in terms of female self-awareness and individual aspirations.

      As stated, West Georgia students were also asked to relate Sunset Song to their personal life and reading experiences. Interestingly enough, Gibbon’s synthetic Scots bore a challenge for most of them. One student wrote:  ‘….The Sunset Song falls rather uninterestingly on the ears. It becomes hard to decipher all the Scottish terms and a pronunciation, sounding a little like extraneous syllables, but all that gets easier once you begin to recognize the first few characters of those awful indigenous personal pronouns of locations and character names and skip over the rest of the words. I believe this quality of semi-skimming could be characterized or at least answered by one’s Americaness. I think that “we” may be known elsewhere as rather lacquadaisical [sic!] creatures, ones who may not read closely enough the antiquated foreign literature of even older times.’

      Once these obstacles appeared to be cleared the focus of reception moved to Chris’s strong character. Especially female participants felt drawn to her and drew parallels to their own lives: ‘Chris Guthrie’s emotions and apprehensions made me remember how I felt about the upcoming events of life at a younger age.’ Or: ‘I liked the character of Chris and could identify with the type of personality she had….’ The passage of time does not obstruct a deeper sympathy with a literary figure. It is Gibbon’s astute representation of  strong femininity which makes a common link possible between a Scottish figure of the 1930s and an American readership at the beginning of a new millennium. Several statements reveal how strongly the students appreciated the author’s sensitiveness and his capacity to translate a female experience into a (gendered) ‘feminine language’: ‘The way the book reads seems more like a woman is speaking directly to me rather than existing as words on a page….I can understand why some people thought that Sunset Song was written by a woman; it is completely synchronized with a woman’s personal character.’ More reticent statements (‘I have been taught that identification with a character is bad way to approach literature anyway!’) still underscore Chris’s humanity and universality and point to the timeless value of the novel, one ending with a plea: ‘We Americans should probably try to expand our canon, at least a little!’

      The most personal response came from one of the two male participants:  ‘Chris Guthrie to me is my grandmother and I was not only reading the novel book listening to the stories of my grandmother….she stayed at home to endure the hardship of the farm, survived the depression, a World War, and the loss of loved ones, including her own husband. Through her life she remained as strong as the standing stones on the hillside overlooking the town.’

      Even for a stark anti-fundamentalist view from the Southern Bible Belt,  Sunset Song seems to offer a good line of argument: ‘It shows how organized religion is both hypocritical and manipulative, attempting to control the populace through fear and guilt…. It seems as if the church and politicians have worked in concert to give the Scottish people a hard road to walk.’

      The only outright rejection (‘His book is very terrible’) refers to ‘the intense imagery and focus on nature….the static nature of the Scottish hierarchy of social position.’ And finally this culminates in the phrase: ‘I do not like Gibbon, because he chooses the mundane.’

      No matter how students respond to Gibbon’s texts seventy years later, the range of reactions is broad and versatile and, moreover, bridges cultural gaps between the ‘producing’ and ‘receiving’ cultures involved.  Jill Rubenstein, discussing Robert Weimann’s thesis of a work of art as the product and producer of its age, asks :  ‘...in what manner the foreign reader shares a part of that future produced by the text, and how can we expect any similarity of interpretations among readers rooted in different cultural milieu which have themselves been differently ‘produced’ by the texts in question?’ 

(Jill Rubenstein, ‘Scottish Fiction and the Foreign Reader’, in Scottish Literary Journal, 20, No. 2 (November 1993), pp.86-91; 90)

      If a text out of the 1930s succeeds in evincing similar responses by readers from different cultures, does this not speak in favour of its common appeal and intercultural capacity? 

Centre News

 Congratulations to Jim Brown, who has just taken over as chairman of the board of directors at The Grassic Gibbon Centre, in a completely bloodless coup.  Thanks are due to retiring chairman Keith Arbuthnott for his sterling contribution since the Centre’s inception...

 The controversial planning application for a windfarm to be sited in Arbuthnott adjacent to Leslie Mitchell’s old home of Bloomfield, as reported in The Speak in Spring 2005, has been turned down by Aberdeenshire Council, possibly subject to appeal.  Those interested in the Centre’s welfare are relieved that the unique landscape of Sunset Song, which has proved such a  draw for visitors, is set to be preserved intact for the foreseeable future... 

Long standing Friend of the Centre John Manson has a typically detailed analysis of Leslie Mitchell’s political activities, long subject to tortuous speculation, in the most recent edition of the Communist History Network Newsletter No 19 (Spring 2006), pp.11-12.  While the evidence remains inconclusive, it is invaluable to have such a concise collation of the known facts...

 Congratulations to the Centre’s thriving Arts Group, who have just been awarded a grant for £10,000 from Awards for All to carry their good work forward into the future.