by Luca Fumagalli

Born in Orkney, George Mackay Brown was one of the most important Scottish poets of the last century, although today he is mainly remembered for his extensive prose output, including short stories, novels, essays, articles, and plays.

The conversion to Catholicism was fundamental in his life and in his artistic career. Besides providing him with themes and images for his writing, Catholicism also prompted him to reconsider his vision of the homeland from a sacramental point of view, with the consequence that in his verse the work of fishermen and farmers, the rituals of daily life, and the changing seasons become part of a cosmic relationship.

The celebration of nature and references to Norse sagas are also part of Brown’s attempt to break down the boundaries of space and time in an intergenerational communion between people and God, who is simply the origin of life itself. The poet’s aim is therefore to become a sub-creator or an artisan constantly committed to maintaining the sacred web of creation in the name of humanity.

From these preliminary considerations emerges a community model that reflects the Church itself, a unity in diversity identified with the symbolic image of the tapestry. Brown describes a bond that is not merely juridical and that concerns not only the living but also the dead, not only the present but also the past and the future; and as a lover of islands, he often repeated, “no man is an island”.

On the other hand, the most serious threat to the natural and divine order is what he called “progress,” that is the manifestation of an increasingly brutalized and self-referential modernity; in other words, it is a rather demonic exaltation aimed at eradicating everything, sweeping away any affection, exactly the opposite of the example set in medieval times by Saint Magnus, patron saint of the Orkney, who sacrificed his own life to ensure peace and prosperity for his people.

Reading the works of such great authors such as Edwin Muir, the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Mann was very important for Brown in order to elaborate such fascinating and complex poetics (without losing his originality).

Muir, Orkney’s most famous writer, was instrumental not only in stimulating Brown’s creativity but also in launching his career. The two met in person in 1951, and Muir was so struck by his poetry that he decided to take him under his wing. He wrote an introduction to Brown’s first collection of poems, The Storm, and then proposed a second collection, Loaves and Fishes, to the prestigious Hogarth Press, which was published in 1959, the same year of his death. Brown also drew from Muir the idea of ​​a medieval Scotland conceived as a harmonious Catholic society, irremediably destroyed by the immense tragedy of Calvinism.

Concerning Hopkins, this is how Brown described his first approach with the latter’s work in his autobiography, For the Islands I Sing: «In those days – the early 1960s – there seemed to be plenty of money to spare for post-graduate study. I got to know about this, and applied, and was accepted to do a year’s post-graduate work on Gerard Manley Hopkins. It would be honest to say that I chose Gerard Manley Hopkins because … Hopkins’ collected poems are probably the fewest in English literature. … But I had always loved Hopkins’ poetry. … The image that comes closest to Hopkins is that of a blacksmith, fettling ‘for the great gray dry-horse his bright and battering sandal…’ No English poet ever fell upon the language with such skill, sweetness and boisterous daring”.

Brown wrote within a central pool of ideas (a Catholic epistemology) that became increasingly clear to him. This clarity can be seen in his Hopkins studies. He saw his origins in the Logos and all his writings came through God and were imbued with his grace. Like Hopkins, his work stands as an intricate illumination in the darkness, and even though the darkness at times takes the appearance of overcoming the light, it is not able to do so. In fact, they both knew that the darkness was a necessary part of their life and work that elicited from them an interlaced and illuminated sensational vision.

Another writer Brown revered to the end of his life was Mann, whose short stories and novels he avidly read. The Magic Mountain, for example, is often mentioned in Brown’s memoirs as a book crucial to his artistic development. Mann’s works not only contain many situations with which Brown could readily identify, but his own thoughts often reflect those of Mann, especially regarding time and the past. Mann also fascinated him with his narrative methods and concerns.

The influences of these three great authors are described in detail in Sabine Schmid’s excellent essay, “Keeping the Sources Pure”: The Making of George Mackay Brown. Unlike her compatriot Berthold Schoene, who also authored a valuable volume on Brown that explores his specific qualities as an Orcadian writer, the German scholar adopts a more inclusive approach. She grapples with the question of whether Brown’s personal vision was shaped by a dialectical tension between indigenous and other British and European influences, which are many and vital. Therefore, “Orkney’s bard” is a circumlocution that fits Brown well, provided, however, that it does not imply an insular approach, impervious to any external influence. This, among other things, would undermine a more authentic and in-depth understanding of his works.

Schoene, in the epilogue to his essay, also suggests other possible poets who influenced Brown, such as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, and Steven Spender. Another poet whose interests overlap considerably with Brown’s is David Jones, who wrote extensively about art and sacrament. It’s a vast and still unexplored field of study: it’s just waiting for someone to scrutinise it.

Sabine Schmid, ‘Keeping the Sources Pure‘: The Making Of George Mackay Brown, Peter Lang, Bern, 2003, 314 pages, 84 Euros

Purchase link: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1094832

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