In Memoriam James Joyce. From a Vision of World Language. With Decorations by John Duncan Fergusson

MACDIARMID, Hugh

Published by Glasgow: Published on behalf of the Subscribers by William MacLellan, 1955

About this Item

First edition. 4to. 150 pp. Publisher's green cloth, gilt lettered to the spine and with a matching gilt device to the upper cover, supplied dust jacket, inscribed on the front free endpaper "To Professor Denis Saurat, With gratitude and every high regard. Hugh MacDiarmid. July 1955", the address section of the postmarked brown parcel wrapping featuring Saurat's address in Nice and MacDiarmid's return one in Biggar, as well as a 33 line handwritten letter "To my dear Saurat" signed by the author under his real name Christopher Grieve. A large full page line illustration in green plus multiple other smaller illustrations at intervals. Fading to the spine and edges of the boards plus some light wear, jacket marked and worn too, contents slightly shaken but sound. Hugh MacDiarmid was the nom-de-plume of the writer Christopher Murray Grieve (1892-1978). He was at the literary vanguard of the multidisciplinary "Scottish Renaissance" movement that emerged in the early 1920s, having previously lived a somewhat itinerant existence as a journalist. He published poetry collections in this period written in "Llallans" or "synthetic Scots" - a modern melding of different Scots dialects with the aim of forging a new Scottish identity and sensibility. Already well established by then, the march of this nationalist movement was acknowledged by the French writer and academic Denis Saurat in a 1924 paper "Le Groupe de la Renaissance Écossaise", Saurat having been a reader in French at the University of Glasgow at the start of World War One and a language assistant there between 1917 and 1919. MacDiarmid remained committed to the Scottish cause throughout his life, he was one of the founding members of the National Party of Scotland (forerunner of the Scottish Nationalist Party in 1928), though by the 1930s he increasingly began to write in English. Denis Saurat (1890-1958) moved to London in 1920, firstly as a professor of French at King's College London until 1926 and then as director at the Institut Français for several decades. Although Saurat's championing of the Scottish Renaissance wasn't the first mention of it in print, it was certainly one of the earliest to bring it international attention. Having moved in similar Scottish and literary circles in the 1920s, the pair's friendship clearly remained strong through to their later lives as evidenced by the warmth of the letter presenting the book - "[h]ere for your acceptance.". MacDiarmid laments that he had wanted to send a set of proofs in advance but that problems with the publisher and printer had prevented him from doing so. MacDiarmid goes on to describe a visit to Czechoslovakia as a guest of the government, a trip that he thoroughly enjoyed and that introduced him to writers from many countries including Tristan Tzara. He then thanks Saurat for sending him a copy of his "Encaminament Catar", promising to write back as soon as he had finished reading it. He closes the letter by asking after Saurat and his wife's health and signs off "Yours affectionately and with very high regard.". MacDiarmid's poetical tribute covers roughly 55 pages of this large format book, written in the immediate aftermath of Joyce's death in 1941 which occurred during a self imposed exile on the Shetland Islands. As he explains in the introduction, it was meant to have been published at the time but the death of the prospective publisher, Jack Kahane of Paris' Obelisk Press, and war shortages put paid to it. The remainder of the volume is taken up with five further long form poems, each with eyes and soul aimed towards lands beyond England. His antipathy for his English neighbours underlined by the title of the penultimate poem - "England is Our Enemy". The volume was illustrated by MacDiarmid's artistic contemporary John Duncan Fergusson, one of the leading lights in the "Scottish Colourists" group of artists. An important copy.

Seller Inventory # 47615

Bibliographic Details

• Title: In Memoriam James Joyce. From a Vision of World Language. With Decorations by John Duncan Fergusson
• Publisher: Glasgow: Published on behalf of the Subscribers by William MacLellan
• Publication Date: 1955
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature