David Goldie, who teaches in the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, is an editor of Beyond Scotland: Scottish Literature in the 20th Century, due later this year.
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Vol. 24 No. 11 · 6 June 2002
pages 24-25 | 2452 words
The Fug o’Fame
David Goldie
- New Selected Letters by Hugh MacDiarmid, edited by Dorian Grieve
Carcanet, 572 pp, £39.95, August 2001, ISBN 1 85754 273 8
One day, in the early years of the 20th century, a poetically-minded young man from the Scottish borders called Christopher Murray Grieve walked to Ecclefechan, the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle. It wasn’t a long way, but his trek was a gesture of hero-worship to one of the greatest Scotsmen and largest egos of the previous century. He toured Carlyle’s house and, as some visitors did, tried on the great man’s hat. To his enormous delight, it was too small for him.
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Letters
Vol. 24 No. 12 · 27 June 2002
From W.S. Milne
It is of course not true that Hugh MacDiarmid 'lost his sense of rhythm', as David Goldie claims (LRB, 6 June), even though the poet himself thought he had. 'Bracken Hills in Autumn' belies the self-criticism, as do 'late' poems such as 'The Wreck of the Swan', 'Off the Coast of Fiedeland' and the translations of Ungaretti into Scots. Such poems, and others, attest to an undiluted rhythmical strength.
W.S. Milne
Esher, Surrey
