Thesis Ph.D. - University of Glasgow, 2009. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Scottish Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, 2009. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Hugh MacDiarmid est considéré comme le poète écossais le plus important du XXᵉ siècle. Il est surtout célébré pour les poèmes lyriques écrits en scots dans les années Vingt et le poème A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, paru en 1926. Les poèmes des années Trente, pour la plupart issus du projet non publié Mature Art, ainsi que In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), ont rarement suscité le même intérêt de la part des critiques à cause de leur caractère fragmentaire. Pourtant, ils représentent l’aboutissement d’une crise stylistique complexe que cette étude se propose d’analyser à travers la question du lien, en particulier du lien problématique. L’œuvre complète dresse le portrait d’une humanité déchirée par les divisions sociales, la trahison et la mort mais évoque aussi une perte, une perte fondamentale et fondatrice de la modernité : la perte de l’altérité transcendante désignée par la figure de Dieu. Une analyse diachronique des poèmes révèle comment l’évolution de l’œuvre poétique de MacDiarmid peut être conçue comme une rupture avec le divin, comme un processus de sécularisation et de déthéologisation. À partir de A Drunk Man, l’instance d’énonciation, les pratiques intertextuelles, et le rythme de l’œuvre se métamorphosent pour permettre l’avènement de listes et de catalogues matérialistes. Grâce à un lexique de l’immanence et grâce à l’imitation de la forme infinie du pibroch, les poèmes dévoilent une philosophie post-chrétienne qui abandonne le principe de fin mais conserve celui de finalité. Les hommes et la poésie demeurent tournés vers une altérité immanente, qu’ils ne peuvent toutefois pas atteindre. Finalement, malgré la souffrance causée par une quête du sens jamais achevée, l’option existentielle du partage dans la nature s’unit au partage que seule l’écriture poétique rend possible, pour inscrire l’œuvre dans la plénitude. / Hugh MacDiarmid is considered the most important Scottish poet of the 20th century. He is mostly celebrated for the Scots lyrics he wrote in the 1920s and his long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, published in 1926. Because of their fragmentation, the poems of the Thirties, most of which were part of the unpublished project Mature Art, and In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), have not attracted the same critical attention. However, they represent the culmination of a very complex stylistic crisis that this study offers to analyse thanks to the question of bonds, especially problematic bonds. The poetry portrays humanity torn by social division, treason and death, but it deals with loss too, with a fundamental and founding loss for modern men: the loss of God, the embodiment of transcendent otherness. A diachronic analysis of the poems reveals how the transformation of MacDiarmid’s poetry may be understood as a rupture with the divine and as a process of secularisation. From A Drunk Man, the enunciator, the intertextual methods and the rhythm of the poetry change so as to allow the emergence of materialist lists and catalogues. Thanks to immanent terms and to the imitation of the infinite form of the pibroch, the poems display a post-Christian philosophy that abandons the concept of ending but retains that of end (aim). Humanity and poetry are still turned towards an immanent form of otherness, though one which they cannot reach. Finally, despite the pain caused by a never-ending quest for meaning, poetic writing makes serenity possible through the appearance of a vital existential option: sharing.

This dissertation, Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean: Modern Makars, Men of Letters, transcribes and annotates 76 letters (65 hitherto unpublished), between MacDiarmid and MacLean. Four additional letters written by MacDiarmid’s second wife, Valda Grieve, to Sorley MacLean have also been included as they shed further light on the relationship which evolved between the two poets over the course of almost fifty years of friendship. These letters from Valda were archived with the unpublished correspondence from MacDiarmid which the Gaelic poet preserved. The critical introduction to the letters examines the significance of these poets’ literary collaboration in relation to the Scottish Renaissance and the Gaelic Literary Revival in Scotland, both movements following Ezra Pound’s Modernist maxim, “Make it new.” The first chapter, “Forging a Friendship”, situates the development of the men’s relationship in terms of each writer’s literary career, MacDiarmid already having achieved fame through his early lyrics and with the 1926 publication of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle when they first met. MacLean, on the other hand, was a recent university graduate, young teacher, and fledgling poet when he began to provide translations of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Gaelic poetry for MacDiarmid to versify in English with the odd Scots or Gaelic word. This assistance was essential to MacDiarmid’s compilation of The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry, which he wished to be representative of Scotland’s literary traditions in Scots, Gaelic, English, and Latin. The work resulting from MacDiarmid and MacLean’s literary collaboration further reinforced MacDiarmid’s credibility as a nationalist poet well versed in each of these traditions. Chapter two, “Cultural Nationalism – Politics and Poetry” discusses the significance of each writer’s stance on language in relation to Scottish literature and explores their success in avoiding the ideological antagonisms which plagued the literary and language revivals in early twentieth-century Ireland. “Modern Makars” scrutinizes MacDiarmid and MacLean’s renderings of several Gaelic poems in The Golden Treasury, particularly in relation to the implications of the term “translations”. The final chapter, “Epistolary Discourse and the Legacy of the Letters” sums up the significance of MacDiarmid and MacLean’s collaboration and long-standing friendship, as revealed through their letters, and addresses these writers’ subsequent influence on both writing and cultural life in Scotland. The letters are followed by two appendices. Appendix A includes a transcription of Michael Davitt’s interview with Sorley MacLean for the Irish journal Innti in 1986 wherein MacLean discusses such issues as his political views, the influences on his poetry, and his relationship with MacDiarmid. The interview is provided in its original Irish text and accompanied by a translation into English. Appendix B is a transcription of the Times Literary Supplement’s 4 January 1936 review of MacDiarmid’s translation of The Birlinn of Clanranald as it was originally published in The Modern Scot. Sorley MacLean served as the ghost writer of MacDiarmid’s response to this critique of his work. This research, conducted both here in Victoria and in Edinburgh, Scotland, provides the first book-length study of the literary collaboration of these influential Scottish poets and the first critical discussion of their collected letters.

This dissertation, Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean: Modern Makars, Men of Letters, transcribes and annotates 76 letters (65 hitherto unpublished), between MacDiarmid and MacLean. Four additional letters written by MacDiarmid’s second wife, Valda Grieve, to Sorley MacLean have also been included as they shed further light on the relationship which evolved between the two poets over the course of almost fifty years of friendship. These letters from Valda were archived with the unpublished correspondence from MacDiarmid which the Gaelic poet preserved. The critical introduction to the letters examines the significance of these poets’ literary collaboration in relation to the Scottish Renaissance and the Gaelic Literary Revival in Scotland, both movements following Ezra Pound’s Modernist maxim, “Make it new.” The first chapter, “Forging a Friendship”, situates the development of the men’s relationship in terms of each writer’s literary career, MacDiarmid already having achieved fame through his early lyrics and with the 1926 publication of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle when they first met. MacLean, on the other hand, was a recent university graduate, young teacher, and fledgling poet when he began to provide translations of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Gaelic poetry for MacDiarmid to versify in English with the odd Scots or Gaelic word. This assistance was essential to MacDiarmid’s compilation of The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry, which he wished to be representative of Scotland’s literary traditions in Scots, Gaelic, English, and Latin. The work resulting from MacDiarmid and MacLean’s literary collaboration further reinforced MacDiarmid’s credibility as a nationalist poet well versed in each of these traditions. Chapter two, “Cultural Nationalism – Politics and Poetry” discusses the significance of each writer’s stance on language in relation to Scottish literature and explores their success in avoiding the ideological antagonisms which plagued the literary and language revivals in early twentieth-century Ireland. “Modern Makars” scrutinizes MacDiarmid and MacLean’s renderings of several Gaelic poems in The Golden Treasury, particularly in relation to the implications of the term “translations”. The final chapter, “Epistolary Discourse and the Legacy of the Letters” sums up the significance of MacDiarmid and MacLean’s collaboration and long-standing friendship, as revealed through their letters, and addresses these writers’ subsequent influence on both writing and cultural life in Scotland. The letters are followed by two appendices. Appendix A includes a transcription of Michael Davitt’s interview with Sorley MacLean for the Irish journal Innti in 1986 wherein MacLean discusses such issues as his political views, the influences on his poetry, and his relationship with MacDiarmid. The interview is provided in its original Irish text and accompanied by a translation into English. Appendix B is a transcription of the Times Literary Supplement’s 4 January 1936 review of MacDiarmid’s translation of The Birlinn of Clanranald as it was originally published in The Modern Scot. Sorley MacLean served as the ghost writer of MacDiarmid’s response to this critique of his work. This research, conducted both here in Victoria and in Edinburgh, Scotland, provides the first book-length study of the literary collaboration of these influential Scottish poets and the first critical discussion of their collected letters.

This thesis aims to engage with the poetry of Scotland and Greek-speaking Cyprus, and examine the relationship between poetry defined as high culture and articulations of national identity in the two places. Scotland and Cyprus share characteristics that make the establishment of a single, coherent national identity with the appearance of permanence challenging, including their relationships with culturally dominant neighbours, competition between local and official languages, and the insecurity of their status as nations. Both Scotland and Cyprus have historically had hybrid identities; in Scotland, British identity is made problematic by England's cultural dominance, while in Cyprus Greek-speakers have a conflicted relationship with Greece. This is made more complex by the fact that Scotland's political union with England may be ending, while Cyprus is divided in half as a result of tensions between Christian and Muslim populations and the unsubtle past involvement of Greece and Turkey in the island's affairs. This thesis aims to locate trends of national identity through the analysis of poetry and its reception in three distinct contexts. Part 1 analyses the evolution of Scottish and Greek-speaking Cypriot 'national character' through the poetry of national poets Robert Burns and Vasilis Michailidis, and the poets Walter Scott and Dimitris Lipertis. Part 2 explores the effects of modernity on the expression of national identities in literature through the lens of the Modernist movement, and how this was adopted and modified in Scotland and Cyprus. This is discussed with reference to three poets, Hugh MacDiarmid, Kostas Montis and Edwin Morgan, and their treatment of the national past and search for a national literary language. Finally, Part 3 analyses deliberate engagements of poets with national identity and issues of national importance, using Seamus Heaney's idea of 'adequate' poetry as a guide. Two functions of poetry are considered: the role it can play in transforming the landscape into the national homeland, and its potential to address communal trauma, and transform it into a unifying experience.