Biography Essay

Hugh MacDiarmid has long been considered the greatest Scottish poet since Robert Burns. That might not be the most impressive of distinctions, but his admirers would add that his work has dimensions beyond Burns's, and that in a contemporary context a just appreciation would place it alongside Ezra Pound's and T. S. Eliot's. If so, the question that immediately confronts us is why MacDiarmid should have received so little attention in comparison with these celebrated names.

Perhaps there are two main reasons for his lack of renown: the extreme unevenness of his output and the fact that much of the best of it is in Scots. To appreciate the latter requires of most readers (even Scottish readers, whose anglicized educational system requires of them little or no knowledge of their native languages) a special effort to extend and sustain their linguistic receptivity. Those who have most...