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Lochaber

The National Party of Scotland was founded 80 years ago

Yesterday,  Monday 11th February 2008, was the the 80th anniversary of the creation, in 1928,  of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 - the first political party to promote Scottish Independence, and one of the key components in the foundation of the SNP . An image of its founders at the first public meeting of the National Party of Scotland can be found at

http://www.scran.ac.uk/database/r...che=412036p1pm&searchdb=scran

From left to right in the photograph:
    Duke of Montrose - Founder in 1931 of the Scottish Party
    Sir Compton Mackenzie - famous author (e.g. 'Whisky Galore' and 'Monarch of the Glen')
    R B Cunninghame Graham - Founder of the Scottish Labour party and the first socialist to be elected to the House of Commons. He was a famous internationalist and author. (His real life experiences were the basis for several of Conrad's novels and he was accredited by George Bernard Shaw as the source for his play Captain Brassbound's Conversion. Cunninghame Graham's book "A Vanished Arcadia" was the basis for the Jeremy Irons/Robert de Nero film "The Mission"). Cunnghame-Graham later became the first president of the SNP.
    Hugh MacDiarmid - the famous Scottish poet and radical
    James Valentine - Glasgow university student who went on to be a well-known psychiatrist
    John MacCormick - One of the main driving forces in the creation of the National Party. He was a law student who had founded the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association the year before (from a group of Labour students disillusioned by the collapse of yet another Home Rule Bill at Westminster). He became a founder of the SNP and father of the present-day former SNP MEP Professor Sir Neil MacCormick.  
iainmhor

Giants of the independence movement.
Aventinian

I tracked down the full size photograph. Hugh MacDiarmid looks hilarious in it.
Lochaber

Aventinian wrote:
I tracked down the full size photograph. Hugh MacDiarmid looks hilarious in it.

That's extremely interesting. I couldn't find a publicly available full-size image. Could you give the url please?
Aventinian

Lochaber wrote:
Aventinian wrote:
I tracked down the full size photograph. Hugh MacDiarmid looks hilarious in it.

That's extremely interesting. I couldn't find a publicly available full-size image. Could you give the url please?


Alas, it wasn't publicly available; but I've quickly set up a Flickr account so you can digest. Enjoy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23703252@N05/2261681300/sizes/o/
azzuri

Aventinian wrote:
Lochaber wrote:
Aventinian wrote:
I tracked down the full size photograph. Hugh MacDiarmid looks hilarious in it.

That's extremely interesting. I couldn't find a publicly available full-size image. Could you give the url please?


Alas, it wasn't publicly available; but I've quickly set up a Flickr account so you can digest. Enjoy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23703252@N05/2261681300/sizes/o/


Flippin' hell - he does look a bit strange...
Lochaber

Aventinian wrote:
Lochaber wrote:
Aventinian wrote:
I tracked down the full size photograph. Hugh MacDiarmid looks hilarious in it.

That's extremely interesting. I couldn't find a publicly available full-size image. Could you give the url please?

Alas, it wasn't publicly available; but I've quickly set up a Flickr account so you can digest. Enjoy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23703252@N05/2261681300/sizes/o/
Thanks  -  SCRAN has the full-size image but that is not available free-of-charge.

Incidentally there is an excellent webpage on Hugh MacDiarmid at PoetryArchive.org http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1557
which includes an audio (real player) recital - by the poet himself. This is of The Watergaw, the first lyric he wrote in Scots.
Poetry Archive wrote:
(The Watergaw)... describes the moment of death, possibly of his father. In these twelve lines can be felt the cross-currents of MacDiarmid's work - the linguistic innovation allied to traditional form; the archaic words which express a modern psychology; the homely imagery that captures a fleeting ambiguity. The effect is private and haunting as the glancing vision of the watergaw itself, the broken shaft of a rainbow. In this recording MacDiarmid paraphrases the poem in English before reading the original - the contrast is instructive, the music of the latter conveying an urgency and strangeness lost in the translation.

One can quite see why MacDiarmid is widely regarded as the leading figure of the Scottish Literary Renaissance.
RadgeJougal

azzuri wrote:
Flippin' hell - he does look a bit strange...


That's cos he's n artist.
Lochaber

RadgeJougal wrote:
azzuri wrote:
Flippin' hell - he does look a bit strange...

That's cos he's n artist.

MacDiarmid - the son of a postman - had a tremendously troubled life which was strongly influenced by his experiences in the First World War. His power resides in his grasp of international literary ideas and the ability to hold opposing positions in his mind (in the manner of Blake, Coleridge and Yeats). He would not have been bothered by the trite comments of the less well-informed:
Quote:

       I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
       Extremes meet—it’s the only way I ken
       To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
       That damns the vast majority o’ men.

       I’ll bury nae heid like an ostrich’s,
       Nor yet believe my een and naething else.
       My senses may advise me, but I’ll be
       Mysel’ nae matter what they tell’s…
Lochaber

Since the subject of Hugh MacDiarmid has come up may I point out that Scottish Pen - the organisation MacDiarmid founded in 1927 to campaign for international writers' freedom of expression - is holding a book sale on March 8th; see http://www.scottishpen.org/about-us
Quote:
Book Sale
On March 8th - International Women's Day - Scottish PEN  will be having a Sale of Books @ the Storytellng Centre in the High St Edinburgh, from 11 am - 5 pm.
There will also be three readings by Women Writers, to celebrate International Womens Day - these will be at 2, 3, and 4pm, each lasting about 15 minutes.
RadgeJougal

"the ability to hold opposing positions in his mind"

Isn't that called "doublethink"?
Lochaber

RadgeJougal wrote:
"the ability to hold opposing positions in his mind"
Isn't that called "doublethink"?
It is a literary concept often referred to as antisyzygy - a term introduced by G Gregory Smith in 1919 and later taken up by MacDiarmid in his essay The Caledonian Antisyzygy and the Gaelic Idea
G Gregory Smith wrote:
... Perhaps in the very combination of opposites - what either of the two Thomases, of Norwich and Cromarty, might have been willing to call 'the Caledonian antisyzygy' - we have a reflection of the contrasts which the Scot shows at every turn, in his political and ecclesiastical history, in his polemical restlessness, in his adaptability, which is another way of saying that he has made allowance for new conditions, in his practical judgement, which is the admission that two sides of the matter have been considered. If therefore, Scottish history and life are, as an old northern writer said of something else, 'varied with a clean contrair spirit,' we need not be surprised to find that in his literature the Scot presents two aspects which appear contradictory.
P.S. Since a question was asked, I have answered it, but I don't think this is the best place to discuss the literary merits of Hugh MacDiarmid. My objection was merely to a trite comment being made about a man whose presence has enriched our nation. Those interested in pursuing these aspects of MacDiarmid further might care to read Alex Thomson's essay on A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle; see the Edinburgh University website http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/studyi..._2/Handouts/athomson_drunkman.htm
RadgeJougal

Lochaber wrote:
RadgeJougal wrote:
"the ability to hold opposing positions in his mind"
Isn't that called "doublethink"?
It is a literary concept often referred to as antisyzygy - a term introduced by G Gregory Smith in 1919 and later taken up by MacDiarmid in his essay The Caledonian Antisyzygy and the Gaelic Idea


"Antisyzygy" is something out of astronomy, and I suspect MacDiarmid liked it because few people could say it, let alone spell it.

The concept of holding two opposing concepts in your mind at the same time, and believing them both, is known as "doublethink". Quote Orwell -

Quote:
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.


Not one of MacDiarmid's finer traits!

Quote:
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink
Lochaber

RadgeJougal wrote:
"Antisyzygy" is something out of astronomy
The term syzygy is derived from the Greek σύζυγος (syzygos), "yoked together" and is used in a variety of academic disciplines (Astronomy, Mathematics, Medicine, Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Zoology). The term Caledonian antisyzygy  was first coined by G. Gregory Smith in his 1919 book Scottish Literature: Character and Influence and, in my opinion, is not the same thing as Orwell's concept of doublethink - but here is not the place to elaborate on reasons why.

More relevant to independence issues might I draw attention to the article in Scotland on Sunday 17 February 2008 which gives an account of MacDiarmid's apparent plan to return the Stone of Destiny to Scotland:
Hugh MacDiarmid in 1934 wrote:
I had travelled down from Edinburgh to London specially to try to remove the Scone Stone from under the Coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, believing that once brought up over the border again, the Scottish people would refuse to allow it ever to go back to England and that the inevitable controversy might well set the whole Scottish movement alight at last.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/politics?articleid=3786109
RadgeJougal

Why not? Caledonian doublethink has always been the problem. One moment British and the next a Jock.

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