Sunset Song (Canons)

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The book is essentially a lament for the passing of a way of life. Gibbon shows how the war hurried the process along, but he also indicates how change was happening anyway, with increasing mechanisation of farms, the landowners gradually driving the tenant farmers off as they found more profitable uses for the land, the English-ing of education leading to the loss of the old language and with it, old traditions. Although the cruelties and hardships of the old ways are shown to the full, he also portrays the sense of community, of neighbour supporting neighbour when the need arises. And he gives a great feeling of the relative isolation of these communities, far distant from the seat of power and with little interest in anything beyond their own lives. But here too he suggests things are changing, with some of the characters flirting with the new socialist politics of the fledgling Labour Party.

Grassic Gibbon – his real name was James Leslie Mitchell – was radical in the way he used language (as he was in politics) to convey feelings in descriptions that read as if they are the inner thoughts of people, rendered with a poetic pulse that he manages to sustain against the danger that the artificiality might get too much. The book’s personality is shaped by that language. I have been an avid reader of fiction for as long as I can remember, probably longer. My childhood memories are full of the stories of Beatrix Potter, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Laura Ingalls Wilder and many others. For me, nothing – not TV or playing games with friends – could beat the joy and exhilaration of being transported by a story to a place of the imagination. I still love and marvel at the power of story to lift us from our own reality.The assertion was that ‘there will soon be no ‘normal’ culture to reinforce a distinctive ‘Scots psyche’ [over and against ‘other’ cultures in our society that could be (and are) deemed ‘non-Scottish’ in relation to that norm]. It would indeed be wonderful if plurality rather than identity became the new cultural norm. 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. It was also a very attractive place to live (if a little dry).the homes on Handside Lane and Attimore road are some of the first built, very nice. I lived there myself for a time. 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.

two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day; and the next you’d waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you’d cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies. I know there are many historical-fictionistas out there who dislike dialects and there is a further modernist warning: A short biography of Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell) and a brief summary of his published works.In Chapter 3, John died and Chris inherited all of his money and property. Rather than sell it, she decided to continue to run Blawearie on her own. Chris started a relationship with a local laborer called Ewan Tavendale. They got married and Chris later discovered that she was pregnant. The same can be said about ‘Frenchness’ or ‘Italianness or ‘Russianness’ as has been said about ‘Scottishness’. The point is not to be dismissive of any discussion of nationality and what it means to be ‘Scottish’ or ‘French’ or Italian’ or Russian’ or whatever; the point is that any contemporary discussion of nationality needs to question how useful the concept of a ‘national psyche’ is in the contemporary world. Good point! It’s important to recognise that John Guthrie was ‘brutal’ not because such brutality is somehow inherent to the ‘Scots psyche’, but because he had been brutalised by the material conditions of his existence. This understanding of the character would be more consistent with Mitchell’s Marxism. Large-scale migration to Scotland has merged or mixed our languages and heritages to the extent that no ‘national psyche’ (if there ever was such a thing) is any longer discernible. As this continues and increases, there will soon be no ‘normal’ culture to reinforce a distinctive ‘Scots psyche’.

But I do know that I, and I suspect many Scots, found in her something of myself and what it meant to be Scottish; and that she helped me make sense of the conflicts and choices my teenage self was grappling with. I understood through her the love/hate (but ultimately love) relationship with the land that many of us feel. Through Chris, I could give expression to the feelings that stirred in me as I looked across the field and out to the sea from my grand-parents’ croft on the west coast of Scotland – dreaming of going to university in the “big city”, but knowing that part of my soul would always belong there. Chris also helped me understand the inferiority complex that working-class Scots can sometimes feel, worried that our way of speaking isn’t “proper English”, but also knowing that it is the best and purest way of expressing who we are.Above all, he portrays the cataclysmic impact of the war on a generation and their expectations. Chris loses her men, she has to cope with rumours of cowardice and desertion, and she sees the territory around her transformed. Life was hard for her – a cruel, incestuous father and a community that was often unforgiving in its iron-clad morality. But she was stirred by the power of the land, and therefore clung with her heart to a past that hadn’t been kind to her.

Throughout Sunset Song, there is repeated reference to “two Chrisses” as a way of describing the conflict that she carries within her. It is best articulated in this beautiful passage which I still think of regularly: A brilliant book that fully deserves its reputation. Highly recommended, though I should warn you I sobbed solidly through most of the second half... Being evicted from your home is probably the most brutalising experience you can experience short of actual violence, and a very costly experience too. 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. What surprised me though was how dogged the remaining agricultural labourers were and the efforts they made to keep up social networks. This spoke to me of deeply felt relationships with neighbours, kinfolk and the land. They loved the land. They had great pride in their work. They were determined to stay and stake out their claim even though they had no hope at all of ever owning a square inch of it.And when war begins, Gibbon handles beautifully the gradual change within the community, from feeling completely detached and uninvolved to slowly finding their lives affected in every way. As the men begin to either volunteer or, later, be conscripted into the Army, each character reacts differently but truly to the personality Gibbon has so carefully created for them. Some of the writing is heart-breaking in its emotional intensity but never overloaded with mawkishness or sentimentality. Gibbon touches on questions that must still have been hugely sensitive so soon after one war and with another already looming – conscientious objection and desertion – and asks not for forgiveness for his characters but for understanding and empathy. The ending echoes the beginning, as Gibbon again takes us round the community showing the irrevocable changes wrought by war and modernisation on each family – some winners, some losers, but none unaltered. And as he brings his characters together one last time, we see them begin to gather the strength to face their uncertain future in a world that will never be the same again. 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. The cruel aspects of Gibbon’s story flow in part from his diffusionist philosophy which blames agriculture for society’s woes. He also detested religion and thought Calvinism responsible for the Scots’ unnatural attitude towards sexuality and the human body. But Leslie Mitchell, Gibbon’s real name, had his own personal reasons to feel alienated from his family and culture and to consider it brutal. In the third chapter, John dies. Guthrie comes into possession of his wealth and property. Despite an urge to sell the land and move on from it, she resolves to take care of Blawearie as her own project in homage to her roots. She falls in love with a working-class man Ewan Tavendale. Soon, he proposes to her, and she accepts with little hesitation. Not long after their marriage, she learns that she is pregnant. I am listening to the audiobook narrated by Eileen McCallum. You have to pay attention. Understanding the Scottish dialect is difficult, but worth it. I don't understand all the words. Most you understand from the context. The dialect captures the colloquial speech of the area. The dialect is said to be artificial, but I didn’t realize this. McCallum's intonation reflects the humor, sadness and anger found in the lines. She sings the Scottish tunes. Five stars for the excellent narration. In my view the narration enhances one's appreciation of the text.