Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney 16 April 2010

George Mackay Brown

THE GEORGE Mackay Brown Fellowship instituted a Memorial Lecture on the poet in 2007, to be held on or as near St Magnus Day (16 April), as possible. Aficionados will know how important to the author the saint was – the subject of many of his poems, and a full length novel.

With uncanny synchronicity, he died in the month he loved best, when the daffodils were out, and his funeral was held at St Magnus Cathedral on the saint’s day. As Maggie Fergusson remarks in her excellent biography of the poet, “before, in the language of the sagas, he ‘passed out of the story’… he said ‘I see hundreds and hundreds of ships sailing out of the harbour.'”

These last words – and the mention of sagas – set the scene neatly for this year’s lecture, by Dr Donna Heddle, programme leader in Cultural Studies at Orkney College, UHI, and Director of the Centre of Nordic Studies. She is a saga specialist, and took as her theme the myriad voices the poet exhibits and the rhetoric of the sagas, which inspired his work.

Other Orcadian writers, such as Eric Linklater, have experimented with ‘saga language’. But Linklater experimented with many voices. For GMB the economy of the old stories – and the communities and personalities and events they were about – underpinned his creative life.

Dr Heddle pointed out that the preconceived idea of GMB the hermit was too simple – he is not parochial, but looked for a room with a view. His language is concrete, spare and direct. Like the saga writers, he was not an explorer for himself, and his poems are saturated with life. Like them too, he’s a mood setter, not a commentator.

He rarely uses direct speech, and it is formulaic when he does – again a saga trait. His emphasis is also character-led. His women, like those in the sagas, are strong but often thwarted. His perception of time, too, is ‘an ocean of narratives’, rather like the orality of saga tales, which often define action through character.

If you want to see a Nordic treatment of the way a man acts, she suggested, look at the story ‘The Wireless Set’ ¬ a deceptively simple tale about stoicism and simplicity in the face of family tragedy.

There is also, however, a Celtic strain running through his work. He called himself Mackay Brown, recognising his mother’s roots, and his deep rooted belief that what has once happened always exists, his timeless evocation of landscape, the circularity of it, the paradox that the end is always in the beginning – that is reminiscent perhaps of the Book of Kells.

Then there’s the spiritual voice, as a reflection of the creative power of God, his fondness for liturgy and its language. For him human lives are always rooted in ceremony – he is the poet as spiritual significator.

Dr Heddle described the importance of Thomas Mann’s influence, and speculated about the similarities between G M B and Icelandic writer Haldor Laxness (Iceland being much in the mind, as some of the participants were unable to make the weekend because of flight disruption).

She summed up by suggesting that the most Nordic part of Mackay Brown was a residue of the sense of value, oldness and permanency of community. In the course of the lecture she discussed in passing the relationship between Muir and Mackay Brown, and said she would love to do that lecture. The audience will look forward to it. This was a fine beginning to a weekend celebrating literary endeavour.

© Morag MacInnes, 2010

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