Bruce Charlton's Notions

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I have just discovered that the greatest British long poem of the Twentieth Century (in my opinion!) - that is A drunk man looks at the thistle (published 1926) - has been put onto YouTube, being read by its author, Hugh MacDairmid.

[See above or : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt2gOOtrYRc ]

Up to twenty years ago I had read pretty much everything published by and about Hugh MacDiarmid - which was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve (1892-1978).

On reflection he was a terrible man who liked and wanted terrible things, on the whole; but his early poems written in his own version of a Scots dialect are simply sublime, and for a few brief years he was certainly inspired.

Sublime IF you can get to grips with the difficult dialect and arcane vocabulary. This, very few people have ever done, and fewer as the years go by; so I almost never recommend reading him to other people.

But here is one of my favourite passages from A Drunk Man:

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At the time he wrote The Drunk Man, MacDiarmid was 'making' these poems from already existing poems and translations, and his explorations in Jameson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language.

His own English Language (i.e. non-Scottish) poetry written up to that point had been hopeless (although his prose was distinctive in a strangely '1890s' sort of way) - and his later attempts were also mostly poor - clunky, contrived, utterly devoid of lyricism.

But for a few years in the 1920s he seems to have been a channel for an unique and amazingly sure-footed type of poetic spirit which worked for expression in Scots dialect - I really don't think he knew what he was doing, nor was he in control of it.

After the peak of A Drunk Man, he quarried out a few more pieces from the residue of this spirit - notably the implausibly wonderful and assured 'Harry Semen' (I would have thought it beyond-possible to write a beautiful and uplifting poem with that theme - look it up) - while his other writings and speeches and public persona was ranting and raving and boasting with an embarrassingly-wilful, incoherent, sophomoric petulance about anything which entered his head - but mostly totalitarian utopian communist nationalist politics.

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When all has been said, to produce such a quantity of lyric poetry of the highest class is so rare and valuable that I am prepared to filter the gems from the dross: Or, as MacDiarmid truly said about himself in a lucid moment:

"My job, as I see it, has never been to lay a tit's egg, but to erupt like a volcano, emitting not only flame, but a lot of rubbish."

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Other stars may have their Bethlehem and the Calvary too. Professor JY Simpson

Wha kens on whatna Bethlehems
Earth twinkles like a star the nicht,
An' whatna shepherds lift their heids
In its unearthly licht?

'Yont a' the stars oor een can see
An' farther than their lichts can fly,
I' mony an unco warl' the nicht
The fatefu' bairnies cry.

I' mony an unco warl' the nicht
The lift gaes black as pitch at noon,
An' sideways on their chests the heids
O' endless Christs roll doon.

An' when the earth's as cauld's the mune
An' a' its folk are lang syne deid,
On coontless stars the Babe maun cry
An' the Crucified maun bleed.


Written in a version of Scottish dialect: kens = knows; the nicht = tonight; whatna = whichever; heids = heads; licht = light; 'yont = beyond; een = eyes; unco = strange; bairnies = children; lift = sky; cauld's the mune = cold as the moon; lang syne = long since; maun = must


MacDiarmid is, for me, the best lyrical poet of the 20th century - mainly for his early work in a version of the Scots dialect he created using his own knowledge and experience supplemented by archaic words from Jamieson's etymological dictionary.

This method shouldn't work, as a way of making poetry... but it did.

MacD was a man of stark and unintegrated contradictions; and a hardline, activist Communist and Scottish Nationalist materialist for much of his adult life; and this ultimately overwhelmed and corrupted his work. But in these early years politics was overwhelmed by a profound and mystical, unorthodox Christianity of transcendent beauty.

The word Ingwaz seems a useful term, that I invented a few years ago, but haven't much used for emphasising that Romanticism is not a static-state of things; but a be-ing, a develop-ing, a perpetual becom-ing.

Ingwaz could be translated as 'process', or that word used instead - but I find that word to be too abstract and to have too many misleading connotations derived from physics. (Also there have been and are 'process theologies of Christianity that are Not what I mean.)

To be a Romantic is to engage in Ingway with respect to reality; that is, one rejects the objective and systematic account of external reality as primary; and begins the business of 're-imagining' it in personal experience.

But Ingwaz is not a means to an end but the end in itself; it does not aim at any final point because it is the participation in divine creation; and creation has no end. So, when applied to Christianity, Ingwaz is the grappling with given aspects - such as scripture, doctrine, creeds, institutions, morals; in order to appropriate them to the distinctive, here-and-now, living individual experience of the Christian.

To be Good, Ingwaz must - of course- be well-motivated; in brief it must be motivated by the desire for truth, beauty and virtue. It must Not, therefore, be motivated by (for example) the desire to adapt Christianity to one's own sexual or political desires, or to the desire for power or pleasure.

But this means that it is an error to look for any fixed and final statement from Ingwaz. It is to be judged on whether the practitioner is succeeding in vitalizing Christianity - firstly in himself, secondly in the reader or onlooker. 

This can be illustrated with poetry. For example William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell is engaged in Ingwaz. e.g.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plough.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloak.

Blake is engaged in an argument with himself, is hammering out partial statements from inner insights. He is making Christianity live for himself as he composes, for us as we read (assuming we are able to appreciate his work).

So long as we are satisfied with Blake's intent; to then extract dogmatic statements from Blake, and to evaluate him in terms of Christian orthodoxy is both crazy and ultimately self-destructive of real Christianity.

By my understanding, such attitudes from Christians have been a partial but significant cause of the demise of Christianity in the West; since they drive-out net-well-motivated creative Christians, often and tempt them into apostasy. 


If we take Ingwaz as a correct description of Romanticism, we can find Romantic Christianity in some unlikely places; such as the early poetry of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid - who is better known as a highly political and materialist writer, a Communist and Scottish Nationalist who advocated permanent revolution; and who said many hostile things against Christianity generally, and specifically the Scottish Free Kirk brand of his upbringing.

But in his first three volumes of Scots language lyrics of 1925-7 - Sangshaw, Penny Wheep and the epic A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle; which contain by-far his best work - MacD engages in Ingwaz applied to Christianity in most of the most powerful poems and sections.

In a little-known longer-poem from Sangshaw; MacDiarmid engages in an extraordinary, beautiful and inspiring 'cosmic' exploration of God, death and creation. I lack the patience to type in the whole poem, but here are a few stanzas (I've translated a few key words in [square brackets]:

I was as blithe to be alive [happy]
As ony man could be, 
And felt as gin the haill braid warl' [whole broad world]
Were made yince-yirn for me. [especially]

I wot I kept my senses keen, 
I wot I used them weel. 
As God felt when he made the warl'
I aye socht to feel. ...

O I wist it was a bonny warl'
That lies forenenst a' men, [over against all]
But it's naething but a shaddaw-show
To the warl' that I saw then. ...

Wae's me that thocht I kent the warl' [knew]
Wae's me that made a God, 
My senses five and their millions mair
Were like bones beneauth a sod. 

For the world is like a flourishing tree, 
And God is like the sun; 
But they or I to either lie, 
Like deid folk in the grun'. [dead, ground]

There are all kinds of ways that this poem could be criticised from an orthodox Christian position, not least for collapsing the distinction between God's creation and that of a man; the world especially made for the poet; the general pantheistic feel etc. It might be assumed that the 'shadow show' reference was a positive statement of Platonism. The idea that Heaven and Hell are (merely) perspectives on mortal life is also put forward...

Well, this is the crux of what confronts us, here and now and for the past two centuries plus.

Are we to take our deepest convictions from outside, from that dead materialist external world which is what modern Man experiences outside of his own subjectivity? Or are we to make a new synthesis of inner and outer, each for himself, from our own thinking and based on intuition (that is, God within each of us - present because we are his literal children)?

If we are to live by experience in the real world that is God's creation; I believe that we need to engage in Ingwaz, as applied to all aspects of Christianity that we personally find essential; in sequence, perpetually.


Sadly, MacDiarmid was corrupted away from this, by his radicalism and the usual modern combination of sexual and political revolution. The reason was probably that his motives had always been too mixed, and various temptations were too much to resist and were not repented.

McD discarded Christianity as conflicting with sex (and alcoholic intoxication and continual cultural conflict, advocated as sources of vitality) and Communism (advocated on the basis of Lenin and Stalin being more realistic saviours than Christ); and embraced earthly and mortal utopianism as a goal... while simultaneously (paradoxically) asserting that ultimately things would never become any better... while continuing to assert a kind of anti-rational mysticism, but one that was metaphysically without foundation. 

Well, such is life. But there are several artists, writers, philosophers and other culturally creative persons who went through a phase of Romantic Christianity en route to becoming (usually) mainstream materialist Leftists of one or another flavour. JK Rowling is perhaps the best current example.

Yet, their work is available for us to benefit from, if we wish.

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I' the how-dumb-deid o' the cauld hairst nicht
The warl' like an eemis stane
Wags i' the lift;
An' my eerie memories fa'
Like a yowdendrift.

I'll ha'e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur 

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It was not always thus - but in recent decades (since about the mid 1980s, perhaps) I have often 'lived with' a particular biography or autobiography for periods of weeks or months - dipping in frequently, and trying to get at the heart of the human subject of the book.

These books (which I am about to list) were not necessarily ones which I would (wearing a critical hat) regard as exceptionally well written books, nor would I necessarily recommend them, and sometimes I would regard them as rather disappointing (the subject was generally more important to me than the style)  nonetheless these are indeed biographies with which I spent a lot of time.

The following is incomplete - but in broadly chronological order, or rather the period of my life (some weeks or months) dominated by the book:

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Lucky Poet by Hugh MacDiarmid

JRR Tolkien and The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter

MacDiarmid: a critical biography by Alan Bold

Robert Graves by Martin Seymour Smith

Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick

Emerson: the Mind on Fire, by RD Richardson (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

The Flowering of New England by Van Wyck Brooks (group biography of early 19th century)

Robert Frost by Jay Parini

Joseph Campbell by Steven and Robin Larsen

Autobiography by John Cowper Powys

Charles Williams by Alice Mary Hadfield

Father Seraphim Rose by Heiromonk Damascene


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For example, the Emerson biography by Robert D Richardson is associated with a long period around 1996-8 - I was continually going back and re-reading certain parts, until my copy was fallen into pieces. I then was more easily able to carry pieces of the book to read in bed, the garden or cafes (it is, intact, a very thick book).

My interest in this, as in others listed, was that Emerson seemed (at the time, not now) to have lived a kind of life (not specifically his life - but in some specific respects) which I wanted (in some way) to live - and I think I was trying to learn from this. In fact my motivations were not clear to me, now or since, but anyway I kept returning to the book and trying to puzzle-out something.

Or, and this would apply to the next book - The Flowering of New England, I returned to the parts of these books because they 'cast a spell' on me. VW Brooks prose is incantatory, and evokes a delicious (to me) idyllic quality.

There was, here and elsewhere, an element of day-dreaming, wish fulfillment and escape. The book was working as a technology, or a magical device, to create an alternative world in my mind.

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Of course, most people get this from novels - which are, after all, designed to do it. But novels don't usually work for me; at least seldom since my late twenties (for example, the novels of Halldor Laxness did this for me, for a while circa 1999-2001, after visiting Iceland).

So biographies have been, for better or worse, a linking thread of life over the past 25 years.

It may have been for worse - in so far as they were a distraction (on the one hand) yet (on the other hand) apparently held out a (slender) promise of ultimate worldly gratification.

The idea that there had been satisfactory lives, and that these might perhaps be emulated - at least in their satisfactoriness - was a delusion, ultimately. 

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NB: It is probably not relevant - but I have myself written a (very) mini-biography. A chapter length account of the life of writer/ painter Alasdair Gray - published in The Arts of Alasdair Gray, 1991 - and based on a few months of  proper archival research in diaries, letters etc.

The moonbeams kelter i the lift, 

The fool card from Gareth Knight's Tarot

The great Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid wrote a profound phrase in his A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle when he vowed to avoid "The cursed conceit o' bein' richt that damns the vast majority o' men". 

The dialect bein' richt = being right and you see this 'cursed conceit' everywhere; in real life and on the internet. It is what fuels the evil of cynicism (and cynics make the best bureaucrats, all senior managers are recruited from ex-cynics).

It is also the habit that blocks so many Christian conversions. An atheist feels that people would regard him as stupid, naive, gullible if he was to accept an 'obvious' fairy tale ('flying spaghetti monster') like Christianity. 

Supposing, he thinks, I anm wrong about this? What will happen?

Then everybody will think I am a fool, and nobody will ever 'respect' me again! 

For intellectuals, especially, not being thought a fool seems to be the prime motivator. 

Yet, being prepared to be thought a fool is the basis of genius! 

A genius essentially does not care if 'people' think he is a fool - because his motivations and convictions are inner (and divine). 

Being prepared to be thought a fool is also the basis of sainthood. 

Most real saints were widely regarded as fools (or else frauds) - some even courted the status - but they did not allow that fact to stop them doing what they regarded as most important. 

For anyone publicly to affirm the side of God, Good and creation; of truth, beauty and virtue; of spirit, soul and the supernatural - is (nowadays) to be generally regarded as a fool (as well as evil). 

We should not be deterred by the fear of making a fool of ourselves in the eyes of Men - otherwise we have already joined the other-side. 

Nearly everybody I respect as being on the right side in the spiritual war is, or would be, regarded as a fool by most. 

All truth-seekers and truth-speakers must (here, now, 2021) be prepared to make fools of themselves: this is not an option. 

Conversely those who regulate their behaviour so as Not to be regarded as fools (and who advise others to regulate their behaviour likewise) are - by that fact - self-destined for damnation.

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http://solitude-exile-ecstasy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/solitude-exile-and-ecstasy.html

The link to the recording is at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3-9JKn2PJz3R2c4azJGRGdjcFU/view?usp=sharing

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"Books that I really enjoy dipping-into but never read all the way through" seems to be a definite category in my lifetime. 

I first became aware of this with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (published from 1621 onwards); which I used to keep by me in my twenties, but never read consecutively, and probably only a modest proportion of its total. Indeed, I would probably have named it as my desert island book for exactly the reason that I would be unlikely ever to finish it, yet enjoyed returning again and again. 

Another, albeit shorter, book of this type I engaged-with for a few years was Hugh MacDiarmid's autobiography Lucky Poet (1943); which I would similarly browse almost randomly in; and stumble across passages that I did not recognize but appreciated - and then could never find again! 

This business of going exploring then getting lost in a book, and stumbling across what seem like new treasures (but which may have been read before, in a less appreciative mood); is one of the pleasures of this kind of reading - and for this reason it is better when the book is both big and dense or complex in arrangement (and when it lacks a good index!). 

Perhaps the earliest example was our family Complete Shakespeare in a WWII economy-paper edition - with woodchips; which had been salvaged by my father from an army library being discarded in occupied Germany circa 1950. As a young child, I used to pick this up and read the titles, and passages here and there - with excited incomprehension. As a result I was far more impressed by The Phoenix and the Turtle, All's Well That Ends Well, or Love's Labours Lost - because of their intriguing names; than the lists of 'King X' plays, or the single word titles like Sonnets, Macbeth or Hamlet. 

Nowadays; my undisputed champion dipper-in and desert island book is The History of Middle Earth (in 12 or 13 volumes according to definition) edited by Christopher Tolkien. I have read-in this book for hundreds of hours; never get sick of it, keep discovering new surprises and pleasure -  yet never seem to get any closer to completing or comprehending it.  

Not finishing favourite books is a much under-rated pastime.

'I'll hae nae haufway hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet - it's the only way I ken
To dodge the cursed conceit o' bein' richt
That damns the vast majority o' men.'

From 'A drunk man looks at the thistle' by Hugh MacDiarmid

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was prone to the cursed conceit of being right! - he always tried to show that he had been consistent in all his assertions (when looked at deeply), and never - really - changed his mind about anything.

Well, we all have our faults - but this one was very misleading when it comes to describing how it was, by what stages, that Steiner became one of the most insightful and important thinkers of recent centuries.

As a child and young man he was a natural 'clairvoyant' of the usual type seen throughout history - the state that Steiner later called 'atavistic clairvoyance' - a 'throw-back' to Man's original unreflective and unselfconscious state of perceiving spirits and being a part of everything.

That is, Steiner lived spontaneously in a dream-world that was true - yet imprecise. He could perceive the universal spiritual reality, but in a state of altered (and somewhat impaired) consciousness. By his own account; he found it difficult to focus on the material mundane world, he lacked interest-in and awareness-of specific details and was naturally forgetful of facts.

But from his later twenties, Steiner the philosopher created a theoretical world-view in which active, alert, purposive thinking - thinking of the real and universal self - was considered to be reality and truth. Indeed the key to all knowledge - past and present - including knowledge of meaning, purpose and morality.

This is brilliantly argued in his early works, at first only partly consciously but with increasing clarity and explicitness: developing throughout the prefaces to Goethe's scientific work from 1883, the book on Goethe's implicit philosophy (1886), the published PhD thesis of 1892 (Truth and Knowledge) up to The Philosophy of Freedom (published 1894) where it reaches its final and complete statement.

 So - first Steiner was a dreamy-spiritual person; then from his early twenties to his middle thirties he developed a theoretical framework for a new kind of clairvoyant (clear seeing) spirituality based on thinking rather than dreaming.

But only when Steiner was in his mid thirties was he actually able to live this new kind of alert and thinking focused spiritual-seeing - which he later called Spiritual Science.

And that was not the end - because in his middle thirties Steiner was broadly hostile to Christianity. However, over the next seven or so years he used his new ability in spiritual science to explore Christianity; and at the end of this time, around 1900 and aged about 42, Steiner finally arrived at what was to be his resting point of Christianity as the basic metaphysical and theological frame within-which the method/ process of Spiritual Science operated.

Steiner changed - he ended up very different from how he started-out; and the change took many years - about twenty years, in fact, from beginning to end!

Why is this important? Because:

1. It shows that change is possible.

2. But change is slow. If it took Steiner twenty years, it might well take us longer...

3. Theory may be well worth doing, and productive and constructive - it can lead to a change of person.

4. Method (spiritual Science) is not enough: religion is also required.

5. Religion can be a thing of the spirit, primarily.

6. Steiner's personal trajectory was very unusual - in that he went from being naturally an atavistic (dreamy, passive, mediumistic) atavistic clairvoyant - to Spiritual Science; whereas most of those who wish to follow him will be coming-from the opposite direction - from an utterly un-spiritual materialism.

7. For me this explains the proven ineffectiveness of Steiner's spiritual 'exercises' - since they were implicitly designed to increase concentration and precision in people who were naturally dreamy-spiritual; while most of us nowadays are all-but unable to be dreamy spiritual and live in a meaningless, purposeless dead-materialism.

8. In sum - to end up where Rudolf Steiner was aged from 42 onwards; we modern Westerners need first to escape materialism and enhance our spiritual sensitivity - perhaps initially with dreamy-clairvoyance: but with the conscious eventual aim of both spiritual science as process, and Christianity as framework.