Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve (August 11, 1892 - September 9, 1978). He was probably the most important Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a truly Scottish version of modernism and was, perhaps, the leading light in the Scottish literary Renaissance of the 20th century. Unusually for a first generation modernist, he was a communist. Unusually for a communist, he was a committed Scottish nationalist. He wrote both in English and in literary Lowland Scots (Lallans).

Later Writings

As his interest in science and linguistics increased, MacDiarmid found himself turning more and more to English as a means of expression so that most of his later poetry is written in that language. His ambition was to live up to Rilkes dictum that 'the poet must know everything' and to write a poetry that contained all knowledge. As a result, some of the later work is a kind of found poetry reusing text from a range of sources. This led to accusations of plagiarism, to which the poet's response was 'The greater the plagiarism the greater the work of art.' The great achievement of this late poetry is to attempt on an epic scale to capture the idea of a world without God in which all the facts the poetry deals with are scientifically verifiable.

Related Topics:
Rilke - Found poetry - Plagiarism - Epic

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MacDiarmid wrote a number of non-fiction prose works, including Scottish Eccentrics and his autobiography Lucky Poet. He also did a number of translations from Scottish Gaelic, including Duncan Ban MacIntyre's Praise of Ben Doran, which were well received by native speakers including Sorley MacLean.

Related Topics:
Scottish Gaelic - Sorley MacLean

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