A "Dissociation of Sensibility": The Gaelic Dilemma in the Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean

Abstract

Hugh MacDiarmid [Christopher Murray Grieve] (1892 - 1978) and Sorley MacLean [Somhairle MacGill-Eain] (1911 - 1996) are two Scottish poets whose works represent a painful dialogue between their native Gaelic identity and the identity of an overriding, neighbouring English culture. MacDiarmid, born in Langholm, Dumfriesshire in 1892, engages in the exploration of a lost Scottish identity; the cultural effects of the loss of nationhood. He laments the loss of a living Gaelic culture which has been cut off by historical accidents and which should have provided him with the tradition within which to express his awareness. His situation is that of a volatile castaway; a poet who is able to appreciate the extent of the loss of his tradition and the need for recovery, and yet is unable to effect that recovery because of the very nature of the original loss. MacLean, likewise, is a Gael, born on the Hebridean island of Raasay in 1911. He has written poetry in both languages (Gaelic and English) and similarly evolved a divided lyric voice between his Gaelic and non-Gaelic worlds. This dichotomy involves a split not only aesthetic, but linguistic as well. MacLean envies the eighteenth-century Gaelic poet who did not suffer a split of cultural sensibility like his modern counterpart, such as himself, who engages simultaneously in unrest and division when confronting the Gaelic and non-Gaelic, particularly the English, worlds.

Keywords

• dissociation of sensibility
• hugh macdiarmid
• sorley maclean