Sunset Song (Canons)

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He developed – maybe invented is not too strong – a kind of word music of his own, without becoming as iconoclastic as Hugh MacDiarmid, who was writing poetry at the same time, in which he tried to re-invent a whole lowland Scots language that was consciously set up in opposition to English (which I once heard him describe as “a linguistic disease”, though admittedly he was drunk at the time). Grassic Gibbon’s prose, sometimes glorious, is stamped with individuality: he never seems to be imitating anyone else’s style, but going his own way. The thing to understand is that It was less wage slavery than a way of life. Despite the itinerant nature of this way of life, social relationships were maintained through the farm households and bothies, the weekly markets, and the quarterly fairs. Countries were much smaller: for example, I once worked out that my grandmother had lived her entire life within a sixteen-mile radius of where she was born. My grandfather was only ever displaced from his native country in Stirlingshire by the First World War and its aftermath, which disrupted rural populations in Scotland in ways that Robert Colquhoun eulogises in Sunset Song. Strong and abiding relationships were maintained in the smaller worlds of the farming communities of the time, as evidenced by Robert McLellan’s Linmill Stories.

Jean Murdoch, Long Rob, Chae Strachan, Ewan Tavendale...y, como no, Chris Guthrie, una joven inteligente, salvaje, valiente y bondadosa, encabezan una lista de personajes que no voy a olvidar en la vida.

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

It presumes that particular nations have distinctive psychological make-ups which are culturally reinforced by a common language and/or heritage, which of course they don’t. Nowadays, we’re more accustomed to thinking of nations as ever-changing pluralities of language and/or historical communities.

It is said that Grassic Gibbon (just 33 years of age when he died, even younger than that other Scottish genius Robert Burns at the time of his death) wrote this masterpiece in six weeks. In doing so, he gifted us one of the finest literary accomplishments Scotland has ever known. Leslie grew up in rural Aberdeenshire and was a profoundly unhappy child. He begins a semi-autobiographical novel, The 13 th Discipline , with the story of how, as a five-year-old child, a boy sets off from home with the express desire ‘to commit suicide’. Leer «Canción del ocaso» es viajar a Escocia, trasladarse a parajes naturales, vientos frescos que retuercen las ramas, colinas verdes que evocan la paz de un lugar que no ha sido alterado por la mano del hombre. Seremos partícipes de las costumbres, de la veneración por la tierra, de aquel lugar al que llamamos hogar y que sentimos parte de nuestro ser a pesar de la distancia. Sufrirá cambios con la llegada de la primera guerra mundial, pero su esencia siempre perdurará. As you enjoy it, I invite you to marvel at this. It is said that Lewis Grassic Gibbon (just thirty-three years of age when he died, even younger than that other Scottish genius Robert Burns at the time of his death) wrote this masterpiece in six weeks. In doing so, he gifted us one of the finest literary accomplishments Scotland has ever known.Zenzinger thinks this has to do with a host of factors but he singles out our ‘Calvinist heritage’ with its ‘negative attitude towards sexuality’ claiming it ‘has crippled the Scots emotionally’ and goes on to state: ‘The inability to love is … the primary curse of Scottish life.’ I think one has also got to be careful about attributing this harshness to Scotland rather than to Victorian and Edwardian generations. My father was not British and although he wrote tenderly of his father after his father’s death in his diary as kind, dedicated and faithful (that’s my memory of my grandfather too) he commented to me once that in the generations before his father (i.e. my father’s grandfather, Stefan, born around 1860) that people of that time seemed to be hard and judgemental. But that ‘nowadays’ (1980s) people were kinder and more inclined to want to assist those who had fallen on hard times rather than judge them as weak, profligate, or failures. La historia de Chris Guthrie y Kinraddie, esa pequeña comunidad de campesinos en Escocia, que deben enfrentarse día tras día a la dura vida del campo pero al mismo tiempo aman y veneran esa tierra, es de esas que se quedan contigo. Above all, it was the conflict that brews in Chris, between tradition and modernity, learning and the land, moving away or staying put, that resonated with me. Of course, in so many ways, the lives and experiences of the characters in Sunset Song are worlds away from my own. I grew up in a very different place and time. The harshness of rural life in the years leading up to and through the First World War was beyond my direct ken. That, though, is part of the appeal. The book quite literally introduced me to a part of my own country – Aberdeenshire – that until then had been as alien to me as a foreign land. It opened my ears to a language – an echo of the speak of the Mearns – that was of my country, but not really mine. It seeded in me a fascination and deep affection for the names, places and people of the North East of Scotland. To this day, a journey to Aberdeen past the road signs for the towns and villages of the Mearns always makes me think of Sunset Song – of Kinraddie, Blawearie, Peesie’s Knapp.

Being evicted from your home is probably the most brutalising experience you can experience short of actual violence, and a very costly experience too. Es curioso, porque hay varias veces en las que el espectro de Thomas Hardy sobrevuela la historia. Hay momentos puntuales en el libro que son dramáticos y sabes perfectamente que con cualquiera de ellos Hardy se hubiera montado el dramón de la vida. Pero Grassic Gibbon no es Hardy, así que pese a mostrarte la crudeza de la vida de vez en cuando, la novela nunca se convierte en una tragedia, Chris Guthrie no sufre emociones que la desbordan, no es un "simple muñeco del Destino". Es una chavala que al comienzo de la novela llega a ese asentamiento con su familia campesina y que tiene que lidiar con lo que le toca: lo bueno y, a veces, lo malo. But the novel is also, and without a hint of sentimentality or ‘kailyardism’, a story of human resilience and spirit.The characters draw strength and perspective from the land, even as it takes its toll on them. The ancient Standing Stones, at which the book’s main character, Chris Guthrie, seeks refuge at times of grief or personal turmoil, help to place the story and its setting in a historical context. And they remind us that the joys and heartbreaks of our own lives are but the blink of an eye in the grand sweep of history. It is a story of both transience and continuity.Es uno de esos libros tristes y melancólicos que al mismo tiempo está cargado de humor e ironía, que parece narrado por un amigo, alguien que te va contando la historia de su vida y de su familia de una manera tan íntima que al terminar la novela sientes que eres uno más en Kinraddie. No puedo dejar de recomendar esta historia que me ha robado el corazón y que me va a resultar difícil olvidar... ¡Leedla! Y compradla, así Trotalibros nos traerá más libros de este maravilloso autor. The author lived a short life between 1901 and 1935. For a man of his time he was unusual in that he often placed women as the central characters of his stories, many of which were told from a female perspective. So pronounced was this tendency that during his lifetime some people thought his books were written by a female author using a penname. Lewis Grassic Gibbon was in fact a penname, though of a man called James Leslie Mitchell. “Sunset Song” fits this pattern, with its central character being a young woman, Christine (Chris) Guthrie. And so she marries young Ewan Tavendale and together they are content to farm their land, Chris' happiness enhanced when she bears her first son. But the world is changing and over in Europe war clouds are gathering. And during the four years of fighting, life for Chris and for this entire community will be changed forever. I have had further time to reflect after my angry comment above. I am no longer angry but feel that this article is an embarrassment.