Scotland, translation and Edwin Morgan's polyphonic Concerto of voices

Abstract

Starting with the adaptation of Scottish literature to its multilingual reality, this article looks at how the flexibility of ‘the border’ has been both a weakness and a strength for Scotland. Various cosmopolitan and multicultural programmes — working mainly through translation, poetic appropriation and rewriting — make the tension apparent between the centrality of English and the peripheral syncretic heritage of the Scottish world; in‐between these two worlds, there is a space that points beyond ancient dichotomies, while entering ‘threshold literature’, where ideas and linguistic inventions can be creatively translated into new forms. Morgan, an important representative of Scottish literature, considers poetry as a form of translating ‘outside’ reality into ‘essences’ of everyday occurrences. His ability to breathe in and out of tradition and innovation, in and out of his native tongue and the several languages from which he translates, have enabled him to transform — traditionally ‘sentimental’ — poetry into literary constructs expressing the Scottish longing for a democratic and translating mind.