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Edwin Morgan on Hugh MacDiarmid (38pp, Published for the British Council by the Longman Group, 40p)
Artistically, historically, socially and politically, it would be difficult to overemphasise Hugh MacDiarmid's position as a figure of universal significance. It is all the more irritating, therefore, when one finds people who ought to know better (usually the presenters of English arts programmes) dwelling on the peripheral trivia of MacDiarmid's personality - his Anglophobia, for instance, or the oft-suggested contradiction (which isn't really a contradiction at all, when you come to think of it) of his Communism and his Nationalism. Such things don't matter at all when considered next to the concerns of his creative work yet, all too ogten, MacDiarmid is discussed in these terms.
Such a charge could not possibly be made of this book. With an economy which verges on the brilliant, Professor Morgan has provided the newcomer to MacDiarmid with one of the most comprehensive and satisfying essays on the subject to have appeared so far. Taking the whole corpus of MacDiarmid's work into account, Professor Morgan very skilfully selects passages from every period of MacDiarmid's career, and, by examining these passages in some detail, charts Mac- Diarmid's development with a high degree of clarity.
This is perhaps the most important thing about this book - it goes some way towards putting MacDiarmid into perspective, thereby making clear to the reading public the true nature of MacDiarmid's considerable genius. This does not simply involve pointing to MacDiarmid's successes - it involves pointing to his failures too. Of course, MacDiarmid's failures are often of more significance than other men's successes but, if we are to fully appreciate the enormous achievement of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, we must realise the failed intention of To Circumjack Cencrastus. In that particular case, and a number of others, Professor Morgan does not stint his critical duty.
write Socialist verse because he is a Socialist (although, of couse, he is) but because he is a poet. His concern with the 'interdependencies of life' flows from his concern for art - MacDiarmid would argue that there is no area of life with which art should not be concerned - and his political philosophy is the logical extension of his artistic approach.
This, it seems to me, is what lies at the very core of MacDiarmid's achievement and what makes him such an important writer for our time. In considering some of the so-called Socialist leaders of the Labour Movement, it often seems that they have a vested interest in deprivation and mediocrity; a need to keep a large section of the community in an under-privileged and ignorant state, so that they can build careers on the foundation of mass inadequacy. MacDiarmid has never been less than an uncompromising enemy of such false prophets - but perhaps the fire of his opposition has tended to obscure the brighter flame of his belief that every man is a 'quart that's squeezed into a pint'. In a literary career that has spanned over half a century, MacDiarmid has never deviated from the basic premise that every man has a capability - if not a duty - to fulfil his own potential. This comes across very strongly in Professor Morgan's book.
As well as dealing with MacDiarmid's poetry, Professor Morgan also devotes some space to a survey of his prose. It is often 15
forgotten that, although he is internationally known as a poet, MacDiarmid's first book was, in fact, a prose work Annals of the Five Senses. It often seems a pity that MacDiarmid didn't spend more time on creative prose - so much of his prose work seems rushed, careless, rambling, disfigured by the need to get the thing finished - but. there is a sense in which even his discursive prose is creative. The conditions under which much of this work was written created a style which, at its best, makes for dynamic and invigorating reading. As with the poetry, Professor Morgan gently but firmly separates the wheat from the chaff says what is good about the best of the books and doesn't waste any time with the slighter productions, a number of which were never intended to have any lasting significance.
The book is completed by a very comprehensive biography of MacDiarmid's publications and publications about Mac- Diarmid. I'm not at all sure of the purpose of including such a list — unless it is to draw attention to out-of-print volumes - but it's handy to have, historically interesting, and gives a finishing touch to what is, I repeat, one of the most comprehensive and satisfying essays on MacDiarmid to have appeared so far DONALD CAMPBELL
Donald Campbell is the author of the "Jesuit" and has just completed a play on the Scottish Rising of 1820.