Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism
- Part I Transforming Traditions
- Part II Ideology and Literature
- 5 Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars
- 6 Neil M. Gunn: Re-imagining the Highlands
- 7 Modernism and Littérature Engagée: A Scots Quair and City Fiction
- 8 Poetry and Politics
- Part III World War Two and its Aftermath
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
5 - Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars
from Part II - Ideology and Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism
- Part I Transforming Traditions
- Part II Ideology and Literature
- 5 Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars
- 6 Neil M. Gunn: Re-imagining the Highlands
- 7 Modernism and Littérature Engagée: A Scots Quair and City Fiction
- 8 Poetry and Politics
- Part III World War Two and its Aftermath
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
Summary
There can be no true development of Nationalism under Capitalism, as there can be no true development of Nationalism without Internationalism […] All those writers and intellectuals (and their readers and followers) must ally themselves with the working class and the organisations of the working class, and so assist and be assisted in the realisation of their ideals and aspirations if they are (a) genuine humanitarians, (b) real lovers of their country's best traditions, etc., (c) haters of war and Fascist bestiality and barbarism, (d) striving honestly to end the human misery and degradation which arises from the exploitation of man by man, and therefore necessarily striving for the betterment and advancement of humanity.
James Barke, Left Review (1936)As discussed in previous chapters, Scottish modernism had from its beginnings an essential ideological dimension. This was no ‘avant-garde art for art's sake’ movement, nor one which sought to revitalise cultural activity within an existing political system. ‘Making it new’ meant changing not only the artistic culture, but, by what Michael Levenson has called ‘challenging an unfreedom’, transforming also the country's political, social and economic life. Like the Russian artists in the heady early days of the 1917 Revolution – the period of ‘heroic communism’ – who took art into the streets and the countryside in order to create ‘a living factory of the human spirit’, MacDiarmid and his associates believed that the artist had a critical part to play in building a new future.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918–1959Literature National Identity and Cultural Exchange, pp. 93 - 112Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009