Consolidación de capacidades para CTI

Chapter 3: Local and Global Outlooks X80

thinking about tlie world. Its logically-arranged yet puzzlingly diverse layout of themes and ideas, its provoking juxtaposition of materials and perspectives, could have made the institute into a large-scale version of one of his 'thinking machines', the diagrams which Geddes created in order to condense his socio-geographical methods of thinking and observation into a readily accessible form.

This proposed National Institute of Geography was to be a much more ambitious project than the Outlook Tower, comprising a more complex 'Tower of Regional Survey'. But what is perhaps most striking about this proposal are the plans for the inclusion of Elisée Reclus' great Terrestrial Globe, a huge relief model of the Earth itself, eighty feet in diameter (see Figure 5).33 The considerable scale and meticulous detail of this representation of the planet suggests an entirely new perspective on the world and humanity's place in it. Globes had, of course, long been used as the tool of the cartographer, tlie navigator, and tlie commercial geographer, however the sheer scale of this globe surely marks it out as something more radical than a mere atlas. Planned as it was to

58 See Patrick Geddes. 'Note on Draft Plan for Institute of Geogr aphy'. Scottish

Geographical Magazine. Vol. XVIII (1902) p.l43. The globe was part of an ongoing project, separate from the plans for the geogr aphical institute. Geddes provides further details of

the globe project in his obituary for Reclus: '1895-96 - Projet de Construction d'un Globe

Terrestre on the scale of 1:100,000'. Patrick Geddes, 'A Great Geographer: Elisée Reclus,

1830-1905'. Scottish Geographical Magazine. Vol.XXI (1905). p.554. Abbie Ziffren notes in

her 'Biography of Patrick Geddes' that the globe project's '$1 million price tag warded

off...would-be investors', in Mar'shall Stalley (Ed.) Patrick Geddes: Spokesman for Man and

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complement M. Galeron's equally massive Celestial Globe, together with panoramas of various landscapes, map-rooms and libraries, and the regional survey method represented in the tower. Reclus's Terrestrial Globe might have seemed both in and out of context. The scheme had a dual potential; offering a holistic, totalising view of the earth, but at the same time a giddily bizarre perspective, accurate yet unreal. Today the Earth viewed from space has become a commonplace, but early on in the century the Eartli as a planet was still largely known in theory, mapped m segments and only just beginning to be surveyed in glimpses from gas balloons and aeroplanes. 'Universal Geography' must have been an impressive and challenging concept, an attempt to gain concrete views of a hitherto abstracted Earth. One can only speculate whetlier MacDiarmid, during one of his many long discussions with Geddes, was exposed to tiiese fascinating plans, and if so, whether these influenced his own representations of tine planet Eartli.

Whilst views of tlie physical earth were beginning to be developed in geography and education, the events and technological advances of the early twentieth century had brought home tlie significance of international contexts. Political, cultural and economic global outlooks were beginning to be recognised, with the experience of international conflict, the inception of international peace treaties, the formation of the

Chapter 3: Local and Global Outlooks X82

League of Nations in 1920, even the setting-up of cultural organisations such as the P.E.N. club, 'that remarkable international literary organisation' which MacDiarmid helped to set up.^^ This proliferation of international outlooks, of course, had as its corollary the development of nationalist allegiances. Hie dual nature of this new political scene had implications for geographer and cultmal protagonist alike. Patrick Geddes's geograpliical protégé, A.J. Herbertson, argued in 1902 for the unique status of geographical study:

Hie geographer . . . shows forth tiie dignity of Man in his achievements as a co-operator with Nature, and at the same time tiie humility of Man controlled by his environment. . . . A geographer is at once a patriot and an internationalist, keenly alive to tiie necessity of stimulating tiie full development of local activity and resources, yet worldwide in liis outlook and sympathies. 55

However, regionalism, despite Geddes' enthusiasm for the concept, was sometimes viewed witii suspicion by Modernist writers such as MacDiarmid, who associated 'regionalism' witli a provincial, backward outlook.56 MacDiarmid had been stalking the cosmopolitan pages of The

Neiu Age - and a whole host of other magazines - since the 1910s, voicing

the European trends which suited his eclectic brand of poetic inspiration.

54 Hugh MacDiarmid. 'Whither Scotland?' The Raucle Tongue. Vol. III. pp.256-293.

55 A.J. Herbertson. 'Geography in the University'. Scottish Geographical Magazine, No.III

(1902). pp.124-132; p.l31

55 Hugh MacDiarmid. 'Arne Gai'borg, Mi- Joyce, and Mi" M'Diarmid.' The Raucle Tongue,

Chapter 3: Local and Global Outlooks 183

He was particularly on the look-out for new ideas concerning poetic form, methods of representation and consciousness, and above all, linguistic potential. Jonathan Bate suggests in The Song of the Earth that Modernism is antithetical to ecological auüienticity, the concept of 'dwelling' whicli has to involve groundedness, local knowledge - 'the essence of bioregionalism', as he puts it.®^ Modernism, Bate suggests, is 'wedded indissolubly to twentieth-century multinational capitalism', while the Modernist poet is 'notoriously deracinated', and is 'the very antithesis of the bioregionally grounded p o e t ' . 58 Bate sets up a division

between what he calls literary 'bioregionalism' and 'multinationalism' or 'cosmopolitanism' - in other words, the local and tlie global. This is quite an orthodox, unchallenging view of Modernism, and one which has now been questioned by critics such as Robert Crawford, who point to tiie importance of provincial, regional identities in the formation of many writers in the Modernist c a n o n . 59 Certainly, regional identities were

important to MacDiarmid, although he is sometimes keen to avoid the label of 'regionalist', fearing its negative associations with petty provincialism. However, MacDiarmid's fusion of the global and the local is in keeping with both 'ecology' and 'modernism', adapting the sort of

52 Jonathan Bate, The Song of tire Earth. London: Picador, 2000. p.234

58 Ibid. p.234

59 For example, R. Crawford. Devolving English Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

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outlooks fostered by Geddes' education projects in his poetry and prose of the 1930s and 40s.

Questions of locality, more than anything else, dominated Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scottish Scene (1934).

The names of all the Shetland Isles We rattle off like lightning thus. The Orkneys then, the Hebrides, Like coloured balls in an abacus. And Cunningham and Leimox And all our ancient provinces —No fool among us but in his mind Better than an ordnance survey seesl^o

This, a fragment from the poem, 'Scotland', Hugh MacDiarmid's opening contribution to Scottish Scene, sets about satirising tiie ignorance and apathy of tlie average Scot when it comes to knowledge of Scottish geography. The synoptic vision MacDiarmid would like to see instiUed into every Scottish school child was perhaps more accessible to tlie multiple selves (and viewpoints) of C.M. Grieve than it was to the average person. He returns to this theme at the close of the book, in liis essay 'The Future', remarking that the perpetuation of tlie distorted representations of the various regions of Scotland - Highland, Lowland

59 Hugh MacDiarmid. 'Scotland', Scottish Scene, or. The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn.

London : Jarrolds, 1934 pp.13-16; repr. Complete Poems 1920-1976, Vol.I. Ed. Michael

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and Border - have served to obscure the true, diverse nature of the country to its inliabitants:

Intranational elements of every kind have been obliterated in these false concepts as m an all-obliterating fog; the very regional names - Lennox, Cunningham, Rough Bounds, Angus and the Mearns, the Lammermuirs and the Merse - are not known and mean nothing even to the majority of the Scottish people.^i

MacDiarmid suggests throughout Scottish Scene that there are no adequate surveys of Scotland or its regions by Scottish writers, either literary, scientific or sociological. 'Germs of promising novelistic regionalism have appeared', he says, alluding to liis co-author's fictionalisation of the Mearns in Sunset Song and Cloud Howe {Grey

Granite, the final book of the Scots Quair trilogy, had not yet been written).

However, 'of descriptive essays and nature study scarcely a beginning has been made':

Witli regard to any other country in Europe it is possible to get hold of good up-to-date books surveying the national position... Nothing of the sort is possible in respect of Scotland. There is no such book. 52

An attentive, intuitive observation of the natural world together with the search for clarity of linguistic representation are two of MacDiarmid's obsessions in his later poetry - and are certainly related to this impulse to

54 Hugh MacDiannid. 'The Future'. Scottish Scene, p.335.

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'survey' the Scottish scene. Such concerns were reflected in later academic surveys such as the ecologist Frank Fraser Darling's West

Highland Survey, a project spamiing a number of years which was

eventually published in 1955. Neil Gunn, reviewing Frank Fraser Darling's Survey, suggested that it was successful due to 'inner knowledge' and 'long personal experience' stemming from direct involvement with the regional environment 'as a naturalist, [who] studied wÜd life on Rona... [and] as a crofter, [who] dug his own c r o f t ' .53

'Tam o' the Wilds', another of MacDiarmid's poems from Scottish Scene,

is an endorsement of the nobility of life-long learning, and of appreciating the natural world by actively seeking to know it and understand it - and an example of the sort of 'ordnance survey' vision he talks about in 'Scotland'. In fact, Tam's vision is a more comprehensive one, his 'passion for nature and science', a motivation which few understand, leading to an acuteness of observation which few share:

He had the seein' eye frae which naefliing could hide And nocht that cam' under his een was forgotten. Fluently and vividly he could aye efter describe The forms, and habits o' a' the immense

Maingie o' animals he saw .. .54

53 Neü Gunn. 'Surveying the Highlands'. Neil Gunn Papers, National Library of Scotland. Dep.209. p.3

54 Hugh MacDiarmid. 'Tam o' the Wilds and the Many-Faced Mystery', Scottish Scene,

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Tam, 'a common workin' man' has an interest in natural history which alienates him from his peers. In contrast to 'maist folk bogged in clish- ma-claver' or 'a solid basis o' dull conventions', Tam's lifestyle acliieves synthesis and meaning, whilst these others:

Miss a million times mair o' the wonders o' life Than Tam missed gi'en average routines the bye Night after night up a tree wi' the birds

Or in a badger's hole or eagle's nest to lie.55

MacDiarmid introduces a series of stanzas which seem to anticipate his later poetry, chanting the diversity of the Scottish wildlife and landscape, the names of motlis, birds, fish and momitains, suggesting that this sort of complex regional knowledge is of more value tlian that transmitted by die Scottish educational system. Tam is possibly based on Thomas Edwards, a Scottish self-taught naturalist MacDiarmid mentions in passing in an article for Fonvard. Edwards, he says, 'had no higher educational training at all, but had spent most of his time obsei*ving birds and other phenomena of natural history on the Banffsliire coast'.55 According to MacDiarmid, Ford Madox Ford said Edwards had influenced 'tlie formation of his prose style', and tiiat 'the patient observation of natural liistory' was one of the crucial ingredients in the

55 p.372

55 Hugh MacDiarmid. 'Memorial to William Steward (1948). The Raucle Tongue, Vol. 111.