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PAPER 2 Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the Scottish Renaissance Submitted by: Hanne Tange Roesskovsvej 60, 2 MF 5200 Odense V Denmark Phone: 0045 65912320 Mail: sorttange@yahoo.dk
Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the Scottish Renaissance Lewis Grassic Gibbon remains one of the paradoxes of the Scottish Literary Renaissance. On the basis of language, he famously characterised his colleagues as ‘no more than the commendable writers of the interesting English county of Scotshire’ 1). Yet he challenged the apparent nationalism of ‘Literary Lights’ when in the essay ‘Glasgow’ he declared small nations ‘a curse to the earth’ 2). In the present paper I want to examine A Scots Quair in relation to a number of the predominant themes in the Renaissance literature. It is my belief that the novelist was not necessarily influenced by the cultural revival in Scotland when he sent out Sunset Song in 1932, but that he soon thereafter became involved with the cultural politics of the Scottish Renaissance. In Cloud Howe and Grey Granite he chose to incorporate references to the national movement, although the vision he promoted at the end of the Scots trilogy contradicts the nationalist philosophy behind the Scottish revival. I define the Scottish Literary Renaissance as a discourse about the state of the nation characteristic of Scottish poetry, fiction and non-fiction between 1919 and 1939. In the early 1920s, the manifestos of Hugh MacDiarmid had launched the programme for a Scottish revival, and his lead was followed by other artists, journalists and intellectuals. At the centre of the Renaissance was a revaluation of the Scottish scene. ‘It is the Scots themselves who have still most to learn about Scotland’, William Power observed in Scotland and the Scots 3), for according to the inter-war authors the real nation had for too long been obscured by nineteenth-century romance and sentimentalism. In the place of the distortions, the Scottish Renaissance authors offered what they regarded as an acute analysis of the political, economic, social and cultural condition of Scotland. The writers undertook this challenge during some of the worst years of the Depression, which undoubtedly coloured their perception. What they discovered was a Scotland that was in a very bad way and therefore in desperate need of change if it was ever to be restored to its former position in the world. It was a ‘Scotland in eclipse’, as Andrew Dewar Gibb titled his 1930 account of the nation 4). On the basis of the socio-economic readings, the authors of the ‘Condition of Scotland’ books argued for a new, and often nationalist, approach. What the Scots wanted, the Renaissance claimed, was a restored faith in their own capacity, for only the confidence of a young, resurgent country would warrant the success of the revival. Meanwhile the creative artists used poetry and fiction to attack previous generations’ images of the nation. If Scottish literature was to be recognised in Britain, Europe and the world, Scotland required modernism as well as nationalism, and to the Renaissance such radicalism was incompatible with a nineteenth century ideology. With the appearance of Sunset Song in 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon moved to the centre of this vibrant, intellectual movement. As Ian Munro observes in his biography of the novelist 5), Gibbon’s Scottish contemporaries were excited by the sudden emergence of a writer whose prose could finally match the poetic achivement of Hugh MacDiarmid. ‘The book is a triumph’, Renaissance associate George Malcolm Thomson declared 6), but although it was certainly a success for its author, Sunset Song should perhaps not be considered a victory for the Scottish Renaissance. For, as I stated in my introduction, I do not think Gibbon was necessarily aware of the Scottish revival when he wrote the first part of his trilogy. Only in 1933-34, when he became more actively involved in the Scottish debate, did he begin to employ a Renaissance ethos in the fiction. Even at this point, he refused to commit himself fully to the programme of the revival, however, as I shall demonstrate in my reading of A Scots Quair. Contemporary readers would probably have considered language the most significant element in Sunset Song. Since his publication of ‘The Watergaw’ in 1922, Hugh MacDiarmid had promoted the Scots vernacular as the true medium of the Scottish Renaissance, and although few had actually followed the poet’s example, many Scottish authors agreed about the bright future for Scots. Unlike these theoreticians, Lewis Grassic Gibbon viewed the language issue as a practical problem. In the introductory note to Sunset Song, he reflects:
Gibbon’s statement shows his ambivalent position in relation to the linguistic programme of MacDiarmid and the Renaissance. On the one hand, the novelist’s ambition to represent in written English the peculiarities of oral Scots appears to be motivated by concerns similar to MacDiarmid’s. On the other, Gibbon stresses that his experiment is conducted within rather than in opposition to Standard English, which is unlike the poet. The Mearn’s writer concludes: ‘The courtesy that the hypothetical Dutchman might receive from German a Scot may invoke from the great English tongue.’ 8) On the basis of that statement, I will argue that Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s conversion to Scots could have been inspired by artists unconnected with the Scottish revival. On the Scottish side, Nan Shepherd had employed a North East idiom in The Quarry Wood (1931), which may have convinced Gibbon about the potentials of the Doric. In Britain, modernism had highlighted the need for an experimental medium that could express the complexity of a modern existence. James Joyce’s Ulysses had turned a multitude of Dublin voices into one stream of consciousness, and as the references to Joyce in ‘Literary Lights’ show 9), Gibbon was aware of the Irishman’s venture. Whereas Joyce, in the wording of Emer Nolan, had ‘defined’ his Dublin through gossip, slang and story-telling 10), Gibbon used a North East dialect. Yet both novelists chose to base their narrative styles on the curiosities of ordinary speech. Also Gibbon’s rendition of Scottish community would have been of importance to the contemporary readers of Sunset Song. Through the creation of a realistic Scotland in literature, the intellectuals challenged the imagery of the past, which to the inter-war generation was essentially flawed. As a Lowland novelist, Gibbon’s most immediate concern was with the so-called Kailyard novels of the Victorians. In Scottish Journey (1935), Edwin Muir observed how ‘the increasing bestiality of industrial Scotland [had] turned the countryside of fiction into a Schlaraffenland’ 11), and now Gibbon found himself struggling against such misrepresentations. From the beginning, he placed Sunset Song in opposition to the existing portraits of rural Scotland. In ‘The Unfurrowed Field’ he writes:
The purpose behind the author’s references to Ian MacLaren’s Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush and George Douglas Brown’s The House with the Green Shutters is clear. On the one hand, Gibbon wanted to underline his awareness of the traditions of Kailyard and anti-kailyard; on the other, he stressed his personal ambition to part with these conventions in order to create a fiction that was at once modern and Scots. Gibbon’s emphasis on a realistic portrait of the countryside reflects a regionalist trend characteristic of western writing in the inter-war period. In Anglo-American culture, the precursor of regionalism was Thomas Hardy, who had created a fictional universe from his native West Country. Hardy’s example inspired many young British and American writers. In the 1920s and 1930s, the writings of William Faulkner and the Agrarians meant that regionalism gained particular momentum in the U. S. South. Like Gibbon, who in Cloud Howe would turn his native Mearns into a ‘Howe of the World’, Faulkner used Southern history and geography in an attempt to answer the universal questions confronting a modern artist. At the same time, he defined an alternative to the traditional centre of American culture through his insistence on the local aspect. The regionalists were not political nationalists in the manner of the Scottish Renaissance. On the contrary, their main preoccupation was a cultural identity made up from the linguistic, historical and geographical peculiarities of their home region. They were local in orientation, not national, which may be of significance to our reading of Lewis Grassic Gibbon. For it raises the question of whether Sunset Song should be classified as a regional rather than a national fiction. If national, it would reflect the Renaissance urge to recover an essential, more realistic Scotland. If regional, on the other hand, Gibbon could have launched his Scots trilogy with only little consideration of Scottish cultural politics, which would place Sunset Song outwith the Scottish Renaissance. During the twelve months that passed between the publication of Sunset Song and the appearance of Cloud Howe, Lewis Grassic Gibbon seems to have accepted a place at the heart of the Scottish movement. In interviews he stressed the Scottish dimension to his work, whereas his various letters and reviews in the Scottish Press engaged with the problems of Scottish culture. The somewhat detached author of Sunset Song now communicated with most of the Scottish revivalists and he appears to have enjoyed the company of Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir and the like. The novelist’s growing awareness of the Scottish revival also influenced his art, for, while the first part of A Scots Quair was probably inspired by the more general trends in modernism, the sequel was clearly composed in a Renaissance vein. Gibbon acknowledged the Scottish connection through textual references to his fellow-Scots. Towards the end of Cloud Howe, for instance, the rather unsympathetic laird Mowat mentions several of the Renaissance leaders:
In my opinion, the most important recognition of the Scottish revival in Cloud Howe is Gibbon’s decision to dedicate the novel to nationalist and journalist George Malcolm Thomson. The gesture could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of the novelist’s growing friendship with Thomson, who since the publication of Sunset Song had become a close acquaintance of the Mitchell family. Yet I believe there is a second reason behind the dedication. For Thomson’s main contribution to the Scottish Renaissance was his publication of socio-economic surveys such as Caledonia from 1927 and Scotland That Distressed Area from 1935. As early as 1929, Gibbon mentions Caledonia in a letter to his schoolmaster Alexander Gray 14), which proves his awareness of Thomson’s work. Gibbon may thus have chosen to include a reference to the journalist in Cloud Howe in order to stress the connection between the non-fictional ‘Condition of Scotland’ genre and the political, economic and social reading he himself offers in Cloud Howe. Like the non-fictional writers of the Renaissance, Lewis Grassic Gibbon depicts a Scotland in eclipse. The narrative centres on the smalltown of Segget, but whereas the Kinraddie of Sunset Song had been rooted in the countryside, this royal burgh could be read as a Scotland in microcosm. The Meiklebogs farm provides the connection with an agricultural system, while the mill represents industrialism. Aristocrat and capitalist meet in the character of Mowat, who is confronted by the rising proletariat in the shape of the spinners. Like the inter-war society it was based upon, Segget is, in the words of George Malcolm Thomson, ‘a distressed area’ 15): Politically, the town suffers from the ideological polarisation which in the 1930s would drive the proletariat towards communism, the middle-class to the extreme right. Economically, the mill closure is symptomatic of the recession that since the early 1920s had caused a decline in production, a rise in unemployment and a general loss of confidence in the capacity of Scottish industry. As regards the social circumstances, a comparison between Gibbon’s narrative and Edwin Muir’s Scottish Journey, which in a sense provides the factual companion to Cloud Howe’s fiction, underlines that poverty, malnutrition and a shortage of housing were the reality of inter-war Scotland. Scotland is dying, Gibbon observes in Cloud Howe, and the Edwin Muir of Scottish Journey appears to agree:
The Muir quotation shows that Gibbon’s bleak image of the nation is not unique in the Renaissance literature. As a whole, the ‘Condition of Scotland’ genre stresses the negative aspects of Scottish life, for, in spite of their ideological differences, the Renaissance writers meet in the belief that Scotland has failed the Scots. In spite of such negativism, the pessimistic account of contemporary Scotland is complemented by an optimistic vision of future regeneration in the majority of the inter-war books. Not so in Gibbon’s Cloud Howe. In episodes such as the Armistice Day Parade, the General Strike and the downfall of the minister, the novelist portrays the destruction of a community unable to overcome its internal divides, yet offers no valid alternative. The laird’s fascism is mocked, while Colquohoun’s Christian Socialism cannot survive his death. The trade unionist Jock Cronin loses our sympathy when at the end he exchanges his radicalism for the bread-and-butter politics of established Labour, while the liberalism of Chris Guthrie and Ake Ogilvie is confined to a Scotland that has passed. As Cloud Howe closes, no belief seems sustainable, which undermines the novel’s worth as a Renaissance vision. The idealism that failed to convince at the end of Cloud Howe penetrates the concluding part of A Scots Quair. Through the city of Duncairn, Gibbon stresses that the political, economic and social condition of Scotland has deteriorated since the downfall of Segget. Yet the author offers in young Ewan a national leader that may inspire the Scots commoners to the building of a new nation. On the surface, this kind of imagery resembles the visionary aspect of Scottish Renaissance literature. In ‘"Facts" and "Vision" in Scottish Writing in the 1920s and 1930s’, Edmund Stegmaier underlines how the inter-war analysts’ negative view of the Scottish present would be followed by the ideal of national regeneration:
On the basis of Stegmaier’s thesis, it is tempting to interpret Grey Granite as a Renaissance vision of Scottish revival, but there is something in the novel which suggests that this was not how the author wanted us to see it. In the beginning of the narrative, young Ewan confesses that he has not read the poetry of Lewis Spence and Marion Angus, which is interesting as Gibbon had himself described Spence as one of ‘the two solitary lights in modern Scots Literature’ in ‘Literary Lights’ 18). Ewan is no more sympathetic to MacDiarmid’s Synthetic Scots: ‘Why synthetic? Can’t he write the real stuff?’ 19). Gibbon’s intention could be ironic, for he had himself dedicated Grey Granite to his friend and collaborator in Scottish Scene. At the same time, the passage highlights the novelist’s reluctance to commit himself fully to the programme of the revival, which would compromise his communist message. The setting of Grey Granite is the city of Duncairn. In his 1934 travelogue The Heart of Scotland Glasgow novelist George Blake stated that ‘The Coatbridge man . . . stands with the crofter of Skye and the shepherd of Peebles as a representative Scot in his own right’ 20). Gibbon appears to have agreed that the industrial worker was as central to Scottish experience as agricultural and smalltown existences. In consequence, he chose to end his epic journey through the history of modern Scotland in an urban, industrial setting that was the reality for the majority of inter-war Scots. The transition to modernity could only come at the expense of the Scottish element. As Edwin Muir points out in Scottish Journey, industrialism was an international phenomenon, which paid little heed to the peculiarities of Scottish culture 21). In Grey Granite, ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, which Chris had sung at her wedding in Sunset Song, has therefore been substituted by commercial Dixie tunes. The joiner, blacksmith and tailor of Segget are made redundant by the mass production of the Duncairn factories. The goods are provided by Woolworths, whereas the cinema has replaced the ceilidh. Gradually, Scotland is being denationalised, many inter-war artists noted with concern, and it was in order to counter such trends that they had themselves chosen to emphasise the Scottish element. Although he watched the passing of ancient customs with sadness, Gibbon accepted the process of denationalisation. His personal ideology of communism was itself an international movement, and if the price Scotland had to pay for revolution was the loss of its national distinction, he was willing to pay. ‘There is nothing in culture or art that is worth the life and elementary happiness of one of the thousands who rot in the Glasgow slums’ he declared in ‘Glasgow’ 22), indicating that the cultural awakening was never his first priority. The old Scotland survives in Grey Granite in the character of Chris Guthrie. In the beginning of the narrative, she accepts Ewan’s choice of an apprenticeship over college education, then decides to accompany her son into industrial Scotland. To Ewan, their transition offers a stimulating change of environment as he gradually becomes absorbed into the lives and beliefs of his fellow-workers. In contrast, Chris finds it difficult to settle down in Duncairn, for, as the personification of a peasant nation, she cannot relate to a denationalised, consumer-oriented society. Chris’ peripherality is underlined in ‘Sphene’ when Ma Cleghorn brings her to an American movie:
Although Chris struggles to maintain a sense of Scottishness throughout the novel, her author recognises that the world of Mickey Mouse, mass culture and industrialism is the future of Scotland. As A Scots Quair moves towards its climax, Scottish culture is confined to the past societies of Echt, Kinraddie and Segget, which is interesting in relation to the Scottish Renaissance. For, whereas Hugh MacDiarmid, Eric Linklater and Neil Gunn, among others, based their idealism on a return to native values, Gibbon discards Scotland as an idea relevant to contemporary readers, which proves that he founded his regenerative vision on communism rather than the Renaissance principle of nationalism. On the basis of the thematic parallels identified in my discussion, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair could be claimed as a Renaissance text. In his choice of a Scottish setting, language and subject matter, the novelist participates in the general revaluation of the Scottish scene, whereas his attempt to combine a strong sense of Scottishness with an existential quest for meaning corresponds to A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle where Hugh MacDiarmid’s twin philosophies of nationalism and modernism are fused into one vision of Scottish regeneration. At first, Gibbon’s choice of a Renaissance philosophy appears to have been accidental. As I suggested in my discussion of Sunset Song, the author’s conversion to Scots was probably provoked by Joyce rather than MacDiarmid, while the narrow regional focus hardly qualifies as evidence for a Renaissance connection. Whether or not the novelist was aware of it, however, Sunset Song expresses concerns similar to those of the Scottish revival, which explains why the Scots were eager to claim the Mearns writer for their own. Cloud Howe shows that this feeling of sympathy was mutual. By the time he published the sequel to Sunset Song, Gibbon had become actively involved with the politics of the Renaissance. In Cloud Howe he acknowledged this link through his dedication of the novel to George Malcolm Thomson, the inclusion of textual references to MacDiarmid, Gunn and Compton Mackenzie, and, not least, the choice of a ‘Condition of Scotland’ theme. The Renaissance influence is less obvious in the final part of A Scots Quair. In Grey Granite Gibbon occasionally refers to the national movement, but his first priority is not the Scottish Renaissance. The conclusion to the trilogy was meant to present the reader with a communist ideal as the author admits in a 1933 letter to Glasgow novelist James Barke:
The Barke letter underlines some of the difficulties the critic encounters in his or her attempt to classify Lewis Grassic Gibbon as a representative of the Scottish Literary Renaissance. For, even if the Mearns novelist spoke the language of the revival, he did not share the ideological belief in Scotland that is so central to the Renaisssance vision. On the contrary, the Scots trilogy demonstrates to what a degree Gibbon considered his national heritage a thing of the past, which had little bearing upon the future. The future belongs to Ewan and to the industrial city of Duncairn, the novelist concludes, which is controversial in the light of the Renaissance concern with the Scottish element. Yet Gibbon never committed himself to a nationalist philosophy. Until his death in 1935 he maintained the distance that enabled him to choose from the Renaissance programme only the themes that would substantiate his personal beliefs. Notes: 1) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, ‘Literary Lights’ in Scottish Scene (London 1934): 199. 2) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, ‘Glasgow’. Scottish Scene: 144. 3) William Power, Scotland and the Scots (Edinburgh 1934): 31. 4) Andrew Dewar Gibb, Scotland in Eclipse (London 1930). 5) Ian S. Munro, Leslie Mitchell: Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Edinburgh 1966): 74-5. 6) Munro: 75. 7) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song. Canongate ed. (1st ed.; 1932; Edinburgh 1995): xiii. 8) loc. cit. 9) ‘Literary Lights’: 195, 197 and 205. 10) Emer Nolan, James Joyce and Nationalism (London 1995): 87. 11) Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey. Flamingo ed. (1st ed.; 1935; Edinburgh 1985): 68. 12) Sunset Song: 24. 13) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Cloud Howe. Canongate ed. (1st ed.; 1933; Edinburgh 1995): 177. 14) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, letter to Alexander Gray, dated 13 June 1929. National Library of Scotland (MS 26109): 4. 15) George Malcolm Thomson, Scotland That Distressed Area (Edinburgh 1935). 16) Muir, Scottish Journey: 3-4. 17) Edmund Stegmaier, ‘"Facts" and "Vision" in Scottish Writing of the 1920s and 1930s’. Scottish Literary Journal 9: 2: 72. 18) ‘Literary Lights’: 203. 19) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Grey Granite. Canongate ed. (1st ed.; 1934; Edinburgh 1995): 31. 20) George Blake, The Heart of Scotland (London 1934): 45. 21) Muir, Scottish Journey: 102-3. 22) ‘Glasgow’: 140-41. 23) Grey Granite: 85. 24) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, letter to James Barke, dated 26 July 1933. The Mitchell Library (Barke papers, box 4). Return to ASLS Conference Main Page LGG-The Author | Critical Works | A Scots Quair | Other Published Work | |The GG Centre | Newsletter | Events | Mail order | Links |
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| LGG-The Author | Critical Works | A Scots Quair | Other Published Work | |The GG Centre | Newsletter | Mail order | Links | |