Lewis Crassic Gibbon: A Commentary - Essay Example

Lewis Crassic Gibbon: A Commentary In Lewis Crassic Gibbon’s Letter to Helen Cruickshank, he famously quipped, “I am so horrified by all our dirty little cruelties and bestialities that I would feel the lowest kind of skunk if I didn’t shout the horror of them from the house-tops.” This statement pretty much encapsulated Gibbon’s priority as a writer and the themes he was interested in. Some of his peers and academics are scandalized with the sheer force and vulgarity by which his words were delivered, but it was essentially in keeping to what he was saying. There was so much pent-up fury packed in those words and it appears that it drove Gibbon to write so that he could enlighten, inspire, warn even and change something about literature and its objectives. In the context of the fact that Gibbon is a writer and he was referring to the literary world as the object of his frustration, there is a clear attempt to convey how writers should not merely write about a pretty, glossed over and superficial picture of life because there is so much more to it: realities that are darker, uglier, but, realities nonetheless, deserving of attention. He said he was the kind that would not see a Parthenon in the glory of Athens; rather, he hears the whips in the Athenian law-courts. So Gibbon wanted to “shout” in order for people to hear about what is real in this world, shout through the barriers that keep them from thinking about the inconsequential and superficial and see the truth, recognize it for what it is and perhaps do something about it. Gibbon displayed all these preoccupations in Sunset Song, which he intended as some anti-capitalistic propaganda. The Sunset Song The Sunset Song (2004) is the first installment of the trilogy, A Scots Quair. Written in the span of merely two months, the story told the tale of Scottish peasants, their problems and their way of life. It is a narrative about power set in the environs wherein man and nature’s cruelty dominated. It also was a tale about the indomitability of the human spirit, how it rises amidst adversity. The depiction coincided with Gibbon’s historical and social readings of his time, of Scotland and its citizens and of the world. The story revolved around the heroine, Chris Guthrie, who, in various stages of her life assumed different identities, beginning with her life as a schoolgirl, wife, then, her being a mother. In the end, Guthrie came to represent Scotland and all that the country stood for during Gibbon’s time. In the context of Gibbon’s position, the novel fulfills the so-called revolutionary literature being advocated by many similarly-minded writers who believed that the working class journalists and writers should write about the class that they represent. According to Douglas Guiford, this was a sort of enlightenment period that came after the war. Commenting on Gibbon’s work, he explained that, “all over Europe, small countries after the war, were re-discovering their land. They were sickened with the war and they wanted to go back and find their own territory and their own languages so in fact this is what Gibbon does.” (DVD reference) The Sunset Song talked about the Scottish peasantry, which was mired in the seemingly infinite cycle of Scottish life: birth, marriage, and then death. Then, there was the realistic and, at times, graphic depictions of sex and childbirth or the negative representations of the family. These themes are close to Gibbon’s heart that is why he veered away from the styles seen in other novelists who followed the Kailyard school. Instead of harmony and sentimental representation of Scottish life, Gibbon opted to use a modernist fictional form, eventually using Scotland and the Scots to depict the cracks and realities in the Scottish life. Richard Zumkhawala-Cook (2008) wrote that “the rapid dissolution of the peasantry, the rent-and-wage formations of capitalist agriculture, and the displacement of farmers from their local homesteads to the bitter conditions of the urban industrial environment” became the focus instead. (p93) Gibbon himself has criticized his literary antecedents. In addition, in the Sunset Song, Gibbon was able to do away with the supernatural and fantastic devices in order to portray the struggle that the heroine or other characters in the story must endure. For example, there is the case of H.G. Wells who, for his part, used his stories to achieve his own propaganda. One thing he did that clouded his cause, however, was to have included mystical elements and fantastic storyline. There was the invention of the “time machine”, for example. What Gibbon was able to do was surpass the likes of Wells by pursuing his socialistic objectives on his own terms. No time machine or any fantastic device was used to discuss and emphasize issues and themes. Literary Value Gibbon also laid out his position about the socialist revolution according to his own interpretation. Unlike other writer-activists who harbor the same hostility towards capitalism, his indignation was characterized by two fundamental distinctions. First, he disagreed that the capitalist literature is spiraling in a steady decline, stressing that the many revolutionary writers, “from their own second-rateness [those ‘revolutionary’ writers] hate and despise good work as they look upon any measure of success accruing to a book (not written by one of their own intimate circle) with a moronic envy.” (Johnson, p118) Secondly, Gibbon was adamant that writers must produce “work of definite and recognised literary value.” (p118) These distinctions actually answered two prominent questions raised by academics regarding Gibbon’s motivations in writing his stories. According to Johnson: Does Sunset Song succeed as an anti-capitalist propaganda? Is it a work of unquestionable literary value? The first question was already answered in the previous sections. Gibbon is an anti-capitalist, expressing personal hate on the system whenever he had the opportunity. It is easy to understand, hence, how his works such as the Sunset Song served an instrumental function. They provided a critique not just of capitalism but of the related established norms such as the Old Lie – the cliché about dying blindly for one’s country. The criticism covered the political, moral and social spheres. Then, there was the second condition – that the progressive writers should refrain from working on substandard pieces. His derision for those “second-rate” writers underscored how Gibbon put importance on literary form despite his personal crusades. Without the propagandist symbols, his works such as the Sunset Song could still stand. For a number of his contemporaries, the themes that occupied Gibbon were crude and unrefined. Not a few have publicly ridiculed Gibbon’s equating his name to the unruly sectors of the English society. But this literary obsession helped perpetuate the movement of rediscovering one’s roots by writing about them. It was also crucial in achieving Gibbon’s ambitions in writing his pieces. His attitude was comprehensively analyzed by Johnson who noted his strong commitment for social revolution. Secondly, the novel was admittedly an attempt at criticizing capitalism and was all about proposing that the socialist model of cooperation is the better alternative. This brings us to the issue at hand. Gibbon, through his novels such as the Sunset Song, wanted a more activist role for writers in their work. What is Literature For? In David Johnson’s reading of the Gibbon’s position on literature, he first drew parallels with some Platonic principles about literature. In his discourse, for instance, Plato’s objection to poetry was brought forward. The philosopher was quoted saying that poetry “has a terrible power to corrupt even the best characters.” (p9) This argument was further supported by an account regarding the relationship of gun crime to the lyrics of rap songs. A UK Culture minister was said to have declared: For years I have been very worried about these hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiot rappers come out with. It is a big cultural problem. Lyrics don’t kill people but… it has created a culture where killing is almost a fashion accessory. (Brown, p4) Then, Plato’s position was finally provided: that poetry should provide moral guidance. (p4) Johnson was able to establish that literature can have a potent influence on the minds of its readers. And one may be sure; Gibbon’s recognized this and he, effectively, built his literary ambitions along this principle. As previously explained, his used his novels to espouse his ideals. Plato’s position on literature, unfortunately, is not the only definition and standard in providing the cause and ultimate goal for literature. There is the case of aestheticism, which was all the rage in Britain and France back in the nineteenth century. This school maintained that art should not have moral, political or social function but rather, it should only be concerned with what is beautiful. (p4-5) Aesthetes believed that art must not dabble in proselytizing, persuading or influencing its audience. (p5) Brown, finally, explained that art and literature by extension may have to be balance these two extremely opposing poles. Both have valid claims. For example, Orwell, who has criticized the aesthetic school, admitted that he cannot write a book “if it were not an aesthetic experience.” But the most important variable in this discourse is that the utilitarian and aesthetic arguments seldom overlap since they are in opposing sides. However, art or literature can lean towards one and still be considered as art; but, taking away one of these elements in a literary work may diminish its artistic value. Hence, to answer what literature is intended for, one could go back to the Sunset Song novel. If the main intention of Gibbon was purely instrumental, utilizing the novel for political purposes, he would not have bothered to carefully experiment and design a narrative language that appeal to the literary reader and wrote entirely in Scots language. According to William Malcolm, “what Grassic Gibbon did, which was very, very clever, was to make this kind of combination, this fusion of essentially an English style with a few Scots words that are very expressive words put in, er, added in for effect, for flavour, for texture.” (DVD reference) Gibbon, hence, should not have obsessed with form, texture and such if he was not concerned about the experience. This was also what happened in the case of Orwell. This aspect in the 1930s Scottish literature demonstrated how Gibbon might have overreacted about the “dirty little cruelties and bestialities” that we commit. He was clearly including other writers’ preoccupation with beauty and form in their works. This claim is actually valid especially when the opposing school also prescribed an absolute focus on beauty and experience in order for an artifact or a novel in this case to be called as literary art. But all things considered, without the form and aesthetic factor, the Sunset Song could have been reduced as a mere political tract. This is like The Fish poem analyzed by Brown. The poetry began with “I caught a tremendous fish.” But the simple act of catching the fish was complicated by numerous other variables such as the age and color, which led the angler to reflect on the fish’s extraordinary life. The poem, explained Brown, “enacts the process through which the angler’s act of watching – ‘I stared and stared’ – develops into a realization of something deeper than the simple fact of catching a fish.” (p16) Clearly, form is married to function in this case. Without the aesthetic devices, the political objectives of Gibbon in Sunset Song could not have swayed readers to his cause and so, there is no reason for him to despise this factor. . Conclusion The difference about Gibbon in his writing is that he was motivated by a cause, a righteous one at that. But he personifies a version of the pessimist. For instance, when other writers saw a harmonious and blemish-free Scotland, he saw the mines where the slaves were chained, and nothing else. With the Sunset Song, he might have written about the triumph of the human spirit but there were no other notes on the redeeming factors of man and nature. This is the reason why he was easily frustrated by what he saw in his peers. There is such a fatalistic attitude that might be over the top especially with what he said in his letter to Helen Cruickshank. The world may be cruel but he is not alone in the crusade to do something about it. He has his ways but others do as well. A positive consequence, however, is that Gibbon was able to write modernist fictions that not only depict reality vividly but also make people notice and change perspectives. References Brown, R 2005, "What is Literature For," Richard Danson Brown and Suman Gupta (Eds.). Routledge, London. Gibbon, LG 2004, Lewis Grassic Gibbons Sunset song. Nick Hern Books, London. Johnson, D 2005, "Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song." Richard Danson Brown and Suman Gupta (Eds.) Aestheticism and Modernism. Routledge, London. Zumkhawala-Cook, R 2008, Scotland as we know it: representations of national identity in literature, film and popular culture. McFarland, Jefferson, NC. Read More