|
|
 |
Poets' Pub » Sydney
Goodsir Smith
Under The Eildon Tree
The wider context
The mood of ending, exhaustion, and an unwillingness or inability
to face the future that pervades Under the Eildon Tree can be related
to the immediate post-war period - the exhaustion and poverty of
the European states (both the victorious and the defeated), the
liberation of the concentration camps and the two atom bombs dropped
on Japan. Western Europe needed the American dollars of the Marshall
Plan to begin to rebuild its devastated cities, while the Soviet
Union consolidated victory over Germany and its position as the
main rival to the USA by extending its influence over eastern Europe.
There comes to mind Adorno's statement that 'to write a poem after
Auschwitz is barbaric'. Under the Eildon Tree is one attempt to
write poetry nonetheless, but of a type which in its obsession with
the individual is a rejection of the collective politics which led
the world to ruin. Smith, who did not fight during the war, but
worked with Polish exiles in Scotland, was made aware by them of
Stalin's brutality in eastern Europe: indeed it is Smith whom Sorley
MacLean credits as ridding him of his attraction to Stalin's brand
of communism.
|
|
Sydney Goodsir Smith
Under The Eildon Tree
|
