Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography by John Sutherland (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.3, 2??5 799 Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), the editors rightly claim that their book moves constructively beyond Trumpener, particularly in that it broadens the enquiry into Welsh Celticism, an area previously neglected in Romantic studies. Certainly, a strength of English Romanticism and the Celtic World is its diversity in approach, revealed most interestingly in analyses which converge from various directions on key moments or motifs; the resulting intertextuality proves fruitfulin? deed. One such cluster foregrounds the Welsh bardic tradition, taken up in Michael J. Franklin's discussion of the Celtic Revival, in Caroline Franklin's study of the Madoc legend, in William D. Brewer's treatment of bardic values in Hemans, and in J. R. Watson's study of Wordsworth and the 'Celtic landscape' of North Wales. James Macpherson's Ossian poems form another cluster: Dafydd R. Moore surveys their reception, and the vogue forOssian informs Murray Pittock's tour of 'Scott and the British tourist'. National myth-making, a fascinating map of which is drawn by David Punter's reading of Blake via Deleuze and Guattari, is considered elsewhere by Arthur Bradley in Shelley's conflation of Ireland and the Orient, and in Brewer's comparison of 'cosmopolitanism' in Byron and Hemans. Byron's ambivalent Scottishness is explored by both Bernard Beatty and Andrew Nicholson. Romantic legacy features in two of three contributions devoted to Ireland, in Malcolm Kelsall's treat? ment of Charles Lever's 1865 Luttrell of Arran and in Michael O'Neill's analysis of contemporary Northern Irish poetry. By its very nature (and paradoxically), an edited collection is filled with gaps, the importance of which varies according to reader expectations. James Hogg, for example, is virtually absent; yet in The Three Perils of Woman, in Queen Hynde, and in ballad- and song-collectinghe constructs Celticism in ways arguably more complex than Scott's and certainly less trampled by literarycritics. The Irish poet Mangan does not appear, though his response to Shelley would prove illuminating in terms of the book's concerns. While Welsh antiquarianism is dealt with in detail, that movement in other areas receives relatively little attention. And given the multilingual character of the 'four nations' under consideration, the lack of specific focus on language is surprising. This is a slim volume, however, and the fact that it does not cover all bases does not detract from its value. It engages crucial issues from the cutting edge of an emerging area of criticism, inviting a response that will prompt furtherventures into this dynamic field. University of Stirling Suzanne Gilbert Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography. By John Sutherland. London: Viking Penguin. 627 pp. ?25- ISBN 0-670-88303-4. Writing to Spender in April 1942, Auden suggested: 'I believe that you are a very strong, ruthless character [. . .] you escape fromthe guilt of having a destructive effect on those weaker than yourself, by imagining you are a sensitive sympathetic plant' (The Map of All My Youth: Early Works,Friends and Influences, ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 82). In reading John Sutherland's authoritative biography, Auden's portrait often comes to mind. One of its leitmotifs is Spender's uncomprehending response to critical attacks. Re? views of The Edge ofBeing (1949) made him resolve 'not to run the gauntlet of another volume of new poetry ever again' (Sutherland, p. 348). His dispute with the pugilistic right-wing poet Roy Campbell moved from the exchange of hostility in print to a physical assault at a wartime reading, to which Spender submitted himself with what 800 Reviews Bernard Bergonzi described as 'Christ-like passivity' (Sutherland, p. 343). Sutherland 's biography is littered with similar incidents: his Spender is a martyr to the calumny of critics and the mockery of friends. It is a portrait in keeping with World within World, where Spender recalls that as a child he 'often regretted that there were no great causes left to fight for; that I could not be crucified, nor go on a crusade' (World within World (London: Faber & Faber, 1951), p. 2). If Spender brieflyfound his crusade in the Spanish Civil War, Sutherland suggests that he was crucified by critics...