|
Extracts
from:
Sabina Schmid
George Mackay Brown: European Poet?
To suggest that George Mackay Brown - who in fact never ventured to the
Continent - could have been a 'European Poet', is deliberately
provocative. Such a claim might seem surprising if not far-fetched to
those critics who have successfully manoeuvred Brown into a neat
'compartment' of literary 'provincialism', not to say 'parochialism'.
However, I would like to justify my rather bold claim by specifying some
of the European sources from which Brown drew his inspiration.
No doubt Orkney and the historical, sociological,
linguistic and literary background of the Islands were the major
source of inspiration for Brown. His accounts of the Orkney people and
their legendary past have come to speak for the Islands as well as for
the whole of Scotland. Brown's ability to widen his vision and to invest
the typically Orcadian consciousness and the often local setting with a
universal relevance has been appreciated by some critics. Yet it tends
to be underrated on the whole and has taken on the form of a
commonplace, a formula which fails to do justice to the artfulness which
Brown achieves.
~~~<>~~~
It was in the mid-1940s that Brown was introduced to Muir's work and the
work of other British and European contemporaries of Muir's. He read
Muir's The Story and the Fable (1940) and, apart from the general
strong influence the book had on his work and vision, it is unlikely that
Muir's marked bias towards German literature escaped Brown as he read
widely in Muir and also studied his critical works. If we take Brown's
word for it, his first experience of Mann was a piece of pure serendipity,
as he suggests in his recently published autobiography, For the Islands
I Sing.
One afternoon in the
Stromness bookshop, I took from the shelf the Everyman edition of Selected
Stories by Thomas Mann. I think I must have bought it because there was
nothing else to read on that particular day. (John Murray, 1997, p65)
Thus, to suppose any direct influence of Muir in relation to Brown and
his acquaintance with Mann might be going too far. Yet it seems a very
striking coincidence indeed that Brown should have discovered the works of
Muir and Mann at the same time.
Irrespective of how specific Muir's influence on Brown
was with regard to German literature, there is no denying the fact that
German literature, particularly Thomas Mann, made a deep impression on
him.
~~~<>~~~
As to the precise nature of
Thomas Mann's influence, Brown was hardly ever explicit. However, we can
confidently surmise that one thing Brown admired in Mann was what Harry
Levine, in his critical work on James Joyce (1944), called the "shift
from the personal to the epic".
~~~<>~~~
. It is for instance quite
remarkable that the title of Brown's novel Beside the Ocean of Time
directly echoes the The Magic Mountain chapter "By the Ocean
of Time". This is significant and suggests that Mann's chapter, and
the novel in general struck a powerful chord in Brown. Beside the Ocean
of Time demonstrates in many ways that Brown assimilated Mann's
writing and that he was inspired by The Magic Mountain. In Mann's work
Brown found confirmed that a writer's task is to find ways of transcending
time and transposing the myth (or Muir's Fable) 'sub specie temporis
nostri'. Beside the Ocean of Time shows how Brown elaborates on the
idea of the timeless fable that is evoked by following Thorfinn on his
journeys through space and time. At the end, we return to the great ocean
of life, whence we set out at the beginning. We come full circle and
return to the "ocean of the end and the beginning". This accords
with the cyclic conception of time shared by Mann and Muir.
~~~<>~~~
George Mackay Brown shared
with Mann a deeply humanistic outlook and a spiritual impulse towards
wholeness.
~~~<>~~
Brown's distinct Orcadian identity and the reputation he had for being
'the Orkney bard' has often led to the belief that his writing is
characterised by a certain narrowness of field. In his contribution to
Norman Wilson's Scottish Writing and Writers (1977) Douglas
Gifford, for instance, has tentatively suggested that "Brown's case
is a sad one of a truly great writer who has chosen to live in a room with
only one view from its single window". By indicating therefore that
Brown looked for inspiration from beyond his native Orkney, it might open
up a new dimension to his work. In any case, it could demonstrate that
with regard to Brown, this room with its single window was in fact 'a room
with a view' - a view and a vision oriented towards other British and
European trends as well as a departure point for his own peculiar way of
absorbing these stimuli into his art.
~~~<>~~~
to
read the full article Click
Here [this link will take you out of the GMB website] |