Abstract
The poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) was the major driving force behind the twentieth-century Scottish literary renaissance and was also a passionate Scottish nationalist. His poem ‘On a Raised Beach’ (1934) has been understood in theological and philosophical terms as a metaphysical exploration, albeit one grounded in an immediate experience of nature that took place on Shetland. In this paper, MacDiarmid’s epic is placed in the context of the present environmental crisis and the ongoing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘On a Raised Beach’ can now be re-located within the hermeneutical tradition of ‘Geopoetics’, a Scottish genre that is articulated and asserted by the poet Kenneth White (1938–). Whilst, however, White draws upon the highly contested and polyvalent concept of ‘shamanism’ in elaborating his standpoint, we shall argue that it is also appropriate to look for affinities between this dynamic poem and the ethos and mysticism of ‘deep ecology’, a perspective that invokes the equally contested mythology of ‘Gaia’.
Highlights
MacDiarmid is seeking to is seeking to realise in make of this extraordinary opening? We suggest that MacDiarmid realise in text the long and transformative moment he spent in an altered state of context the long and transformative moment he spent in an altered state of consciousness (ASC)
Hugh MacDiarmid’s austere epic On a Raised Beach confronts humanity with the intransigence of the rocks, yet it implies a union between the microcosm of the grasped pebble and the macrocosm of the Earth, of the Cosmos as a globalised totality (Csordas 2009)
In this paper we have maintained that this apparently simple juxtaposition of thumb, stone and finger was grounded in an experience which has affinities with contemporary moves in ‘deep ecology’
Summary
Religions 2022, 13, 31 paths to fame and prominence in Scotland, but the juxtaposition of White’s birth in the Gorbals, an upbringing in Fairlie near Largs, a father who was a railway signalman, a double first in French and German at the University of Glasgow, a state doctorate in Paris, and a life lived for extended periods in France and Europe appear to have placed him well outside the shared norms of the dominant Scottish poetic elite. What both men share is an immediacy of direct (as opposed to recollected) experience, and it is this direct contact with the physical world that has an increasing salience in an era of complex, potentially catastrophic crises. We shall argue that whilst the salience of geopoetics may have increased, the paths of appropriation have become more fraught, arduous, and problematic. This is apparent when we briefly review the present crisis
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