Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Great Regulars: [Robert] Crawford has righted old wrongs--

[Robert] Crawford has righted old wrongs--scraping layers of yellowing varnish from received impressions of [Robert] Burns--and he has also made some vital new connections between Burns's independent-minded politics and the nationalism of contemporary Scotland. The effect is not to produce an expediently up-to-date version of the national poet (there's enough plain-speaking about Burns's laddishness, his support for the slave trade, his snobbishness and his hypocrisy to prevent that happening). Rather, we get a portrait of a man with astonishing natural gifts, living in toughly actual times.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: 'Humming the air with the verses I have framed'

~~~~~~~~~~~

No comments :