Listings for Reader:
William Soutar
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Aldington : [brochure on Lawrence]
'To bunk. Finished reading Aldington's brochure on Lawrence. A slight thing. Odds. Wrote home. Reading. Supper. Finished reading Book I of "Golden Treasury". Sisters and nurses here all very decent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Unknown
[unknown] : Golden Treasury
'To bunk. Finished reading Aldington's brochure on Lawrence. A slight thing. Odds. Wrote home. Reading. Supper. Finished reading Book I of "Golden Treasury". Sisters and nurses here all very decent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[unknown] : [unknown]
'To bunk about 8.0. Reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[n/a] : Encyclopaedia Britannica
'Began reading through the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" today. Another ten years project, at least. My odyssey through Chambers's "Twentieth Cent. Dictionary" seems to be within a year of completion - that will make it nine years - one less than my calculated time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Chambers : Twentieth Century Dictionary
'Began reading through the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" today. Another ten years project, at least. My odyssey through Chambers's "Twentieth Cent. Dictionary" seems to be within a year of completion - that will make it nine years - one less than my calculated time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Paul Gauguin : The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin
'Finished reading "The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin". Very fresh mind - he at once joins the company of those whom we wish we could have met. Such a distinctive French book makes a Scot feel that he is rather a dog-collared dog. We cannot recall Mary Stuart without seeing the shadow of Knox at her back.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[unknown] : [ballads]
'Read a couple of ballads to Eve.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar
Chambers : Twentieth Century Dictionary
'An historical moment - completed my odyssey through Chambers's "Dictionary" - I began 8 years and 8 months ago. Have still 30 pages of supplement - but last night saw the completion of the dictionary proper.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
John Buchan : The Northern Muse
'Finished reading "The Northern Muse", arranged by John Buchan. A fine anthology - yet one must admit that our greatest poems are ballads by unknown men. If a choice had to be made, we could not sacrifice the ballad corpus even for Burns or Dunbar. Here all the passions and pains of humanity stark clear from the shadow of individuality. Here are the poems of Everyman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[unknown] : [unknown]
'Read to-day that Corot, Degas, Manet, Cezanne were all "paternal parasites" as regards money - if I can do my share in the Scottish Renaissance perhaps I'll justify my parasitism yet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Unknown
F Yeats-Brown : Bengal Lancer
'Finished reading "Bengal Lancer" by F. Yeats-Brown. A pleasant book - by a likeable fellow. It's a pity he merely whets our appetite for a feast of yoga - but cannot satisfy it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[unknown] : [unknown]
'Writing and reading: continue to wrestle with words in a very sticky fashion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Unknown
[unknown] : [unknown]
'Writing and reading: To have the great masters always before one is the most thorough searchlight upon self-esteem: especially is this necessary for any Scot - since a literary reputation is so easily won here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Unknown
Edmund Blunden [ed] : An Anthology of War Poems
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Wilfred Owen : Strange Meeting
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon : [poems]
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : [unknown]
'Nietzsche is one of the very few philosophers who remain poets in the midst of their philosophising; perhaps he is the only one. His words are often as near to actual living as it is possible for words to be - they are very nearly made of flesh. Often, when reading Nietzsche, one feels as if one were on a high hill in a bright windy day; we are always aware of action, space and an atmosphere which is best rendered by the word "caller". We may call Nietzsche's philosophy pantomimic - every word is a bold gesture, a moment in a noble dance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
C.J. Jung : Psychology of the Unconscious
'When looking at Hacker's "Annunciation" I was especially attracted by the water-pot, and said as much in my letter to L-. Afterwards, from Jung, I learned how much symbolism has gathered about the "vas". I learned from Jung also why I chose the whale as a symbol in "Stanzas on Time" and in the bairn-rhyme "The Whale". Sunch an illuminating explanation of one;s own intuitive choosing is startling.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[n/a] : Glasgow Evening News
'The first review of "Seeds in the Wind" came along today - "The Glasgow Evening News" - Power may have done it. Overpraised - but some truth too in it: certainly a good send-off to the verse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Newspaper
T.S. Eliot : Poems 1909-1925
'Read "Poems 1909-1925" by T.S. Eliot. I have never had any inclination to read Eliot's book but a whim prompted me to name it when Moll asked what book I'd like. I am afraid reading Eliot hasn't changed my opinion of him. His poetry is rooted in a pedantic intellectuality: a waste-land verily: a valley of dry bones without any blood: there is wit - but the wit is also dry; brittle - no Rabelsaisian sap: no human richness: only the false disillusionment of the young could model itself on this verse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Karl Marx : Capital
'Finished "Capital" - the cenotaph of its subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[n/a] : New Britain
'Such a moment I experienced last night when I read Murray's article in "New Britain" on "Shakespeare and Socialism" - I felt as if in my sonnet, "To Marx", I had put Murray's prose into verse. Both the article and the sonnet must have been written practically at the same time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Serial / periodical
T.S. Eliot : After Strange Gods
'Has Eliot, for example, not returned from the "Waste Land" back to a more dogmatic climate - his latest book, "After Strange Gods", is almost priggish in tone; and slightly medieval. I do not suggest that his attitude is valueless - it is, I fancy, a necessary corrective'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
William Soutar : The Solitary Way
'Copies of "The Solitary Way" came along: looks quite nice. Looking at this handful of lyrics of unequal quality, one is tempted to question if they are worth all the bother of a publication. Yet a glimpse of life may be reflected here and there which might have been unrecorded by any other intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
William Soutar : journal
'Reading over the adjoining note, on Gibbon's death, today, leaves me with a sense of inhumanity.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Codex
William Soutar : Brief Words
'Advance copy of "Brief Words" came along; looks very well - scarcely anything that could be improved upon - excepting the actual contents. I can understand something of a woman's feelings on seeing her child.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Lewis Grassic Gibbon : Sunset Song
'Finished "Sunset Song". No doubt at all about the richness, the routhiness of this book. Careless, often unnecessarily "course", to employ his own far too much over-worked word, but the humanity is there, and the bright objectiveness which is the need of modern art.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Gerard Manley Hopkins : [poems]
'What I gather from the few poems of Hopkins that I have read is that the passion in his verse is predominantly intellectual and has a tortured quality about it; indicative almost of an unnatural constriction of the body: and this may be so, as Hopkins was a Jesuit priest.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Aldous Huxley : Brave New World
'Had Aldous Huxley been as richly endowed with imagination as with intellectual penetration, his "Brave New World" might have been a truly creative challenge to our machine age. But, lacking the moral indignation and the humanising solicitude of Swift, he fails in his Savage to create a real sponsor for humanity. And the superficiality of his philosophy is shown in the last scene.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Lewis Grassic Gibbon : Grey Granite
'Finished reading "Grey Granite" by Grassic Gibbon. Hasn't the richness of "Sunset Song" but has much of its verve. One is ever conscious of a certain rank liveliness about G's work: much of it fermentive - like maure'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
John Middleton Murray : Keats and Shakespeare
'Finished reading Murray's "Keats and Shakespeare" again. This work to me was, and still is, a critical masterpiece: I can think of no other study - of this nature - carried through so consistently and with so keen an awareness: it is a classic of imaginative sensitivity.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman : More Poems
'Having read again Housman's "More Poems", one is forced to the conclusion that his philosophic attitude had been definitely exploited in his previous two collections; and his self-awareness is shown in limiting his work to these.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
H. Thomas : As It Was
'It was an exhilarating coincidence that my re-reading of H.T.'s "As It Was" should follow just after I had made my diary entry on the "spiritual" type of women suggested by Mrs X.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
T.F. Henderson : Scottish Vernacular Literature
'Such a shocked surprise came to me the pther day on opening T.F. Henderson's book on "Scottish Vernacular Literature" to find out what he had to say by way of comment on Hume's "The Day Estivall". I had just been reading this poem again - a poem to which I am often persuaded to return when prompted by a lovely day - and, having its freshness so vividly in my mind, it was all the more astonishing to be confronted by Henderson's contemptuous aside: "...'The Day Estivall', if absurdly prosaic, is occasionally picturesque."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Alexander Hume : The Day Estivall
'Such a shocked surprise came to me the pther day on opening T.F. Henderson's book on "Scottish Vernacular Literature" to find out what he had to say by way of comment on Hume's "The Day Estivall". I had just been reading this poem again - a poem to which I am often persuaded to return when prompted by a lovely day - and, having its freshness so vividly in my mind, it was all the more astonishing to be confronted by Henderson's contemptuous aside: "...'The Day Estivall', if absurdly prosaic, is occasionally picturesque."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Rudolph Roeber : Anarcho-Syndicalism
'Finished reading "Anarcho-Syndicalism" by Rudolph Roeber. This is my introduction to Anarchism, and I find that there is something in its basic recognition of the living struggle of the people which essentially appeals to me. It has an element of humanness which seems lacking in Marx-Leninism, but at present I am not qualified to compare and contrast the two.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Tom Scott : On my 21st Birthday
'Tom Scott came in, bringing a typed copy of his lengthy poem, "On my 21st Birthday". Much of this modern verse is unintelligible to me - and, naturally, much of this particular sample of it is too intimate in incident for general understanding. Scott also brought a couple of poems by his pal George Fraser. There is a ninetyish quality about the verse of these young moderns - but with a difference; the self-conscious daring is not in the carnality but in the technique: this gives their poetry a hardness which cuts through sentimentality but also shears away something of humankindness.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Sheet
G.S. Fraser : [poems]
'Tom Scott came in, bringing a typed copy of his lengthy poem, "On my 21st Birthday". Much of this modern verse is unintelligible to me - and, naturally, much of this particular sample of it is too intimate in incident for general understanding. Scott also brought a couple of poems by his pal George Fraser. There is a ninetyish quality about the verse of these young moderns - but with a difference; the self-conscious daring is not in the carnality but in the technique: this gives their poetry a hardness which cuts through sentimentality but also shears away something of humankindness.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Unknown
David Guest : Dialectical Materialism
'In the afternoon I finished "Dialectical Materialism", by David Guest - a promising young philosopher killed in the Spanish War. I find that my own conception of the relationship between love and necessity has much in common with Marx's philosophy, and I hope to be able to resolve them both. As a contrast to Guest's book I read, in the latter part of the day, T.S. Eliot's essat "The Idea of Christian Society". Eliot has an aristocratic clarity of style, but dry in the mouth, and if it keeps the mind alert it rarely warms the heart; the quality is fine but lacks fullness; and we savour him in sips, never in a mouthful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
T.S. Eliot : The Idea of Christian Society
'In the afternoon I finished "Dialectical Materialism", by David Guest - a promising young philosopher killed in the Spanish War. I find that my own conception of the relationship between love and necessity has much in common with Marx's philosophy, and I hope to be able to resolve them both. As a contrast to Guest's book I read, in the latter part of the day, T.S. Eliot's essat "The Idea of Christian Society". Eliot has an aristocratic clarity of style, but dry in the mouth, and if it keeps the mind alert it rarely warms the heart; the quality is fine but lacks fullness; and we savour him in sips, never in a mouthful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
John Spiers : The Scots Literary Tradition
'Finished reading "The Scots Literary Tradition" by John Spiers - a capable little study within its limits, and comes near enough the truth in its analysis of the frustration which contemporary Scottish poets inherit.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
A.C. Bradley : Shakespearean Tragedy
'Finished reading A.C. Bradley's "Shakespearean Tragedy", which has lain unread for 20 years: a work of profound penetration. Not only has it taught me much about Shakespeare; but its analysis of those values which underlie Shakespeare's tragic conception has in some measure confirmed my own convictions embodied in "But the Earth Abideth".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
W.S. Graham : Cage Without Grievance
'Read a little book of verse entitled "Cage Without Grievance", by a "modern Scot", W.S. Graham. Montgomerie's gift; and inscribed on it by him is Marston's line: "I feare Gods onely know what Poets meane" - certainly applies to Graham's stuff.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Henri-Frédéric Amiel : The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel
'Finished reading Amiel's "Journal Intime" today. How easy for a critic to lapse into a patronising attitude towards this most sensitive man who was so critical of himself. But it is Amiel who reveals the world's malformities in the undistorted mirror of his self-revelation'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Hugh MacDiarmid [pseud.] : Scots Unbound
'Re-read MacDiarmid's "Scot's Unbound" - some fine lyrics; but the "thoct" in the lengthy poems confounds the poetry; why must Grieve so often use his verse as a shop-window for displaying curiosities of erudition?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
[unknown] : Edward
'Just before tea, I read the ballad "Edward"; of its kind, it is as great a poem as "The Wife of Usher's Well"; there is the imprint of a fine artist upon this ballad, as the form of the verses in itself reveals.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
George Burnett [ed] : Book of Scottish Verse
'I finished reading a "Book of Scottish Verse" yesterday - edited by George Burnett. What a number of minor Scottish poets there are of the latter part of last century and the beginning of this who are remembered in the one or two poems. How circumscribed the themes; how limited the vocabulary; yet within their narrow field they were assured of the usage of their speech'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Tom Scott : [poems]
'At half past one Tom Scott strode in, having come home from West Africa: very little change in him after his two years in the tropics. Brought some poems for me to look over with a critical eye. Much experimentation in his verse in English; his solitary poem in Scots, and his first, exhibited the chief fault of all the younger school: many of the words haven't passed through the blood and imagination; they remain counters and are often set into the wrong context.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Unknown
Walter De La Mare : [poems]
'It is very difficult to assess the poetry of De la Mare. Compared with Davies and Housman (for example), he is the most comprehensive poet of the three, and has definitely created a world of imagination; but Davies and Housman have a reality in their poems which is often absent from De la Mare, and in the optimism of the one and the fatalism of the other we are ever conscious of listening to human utterance, the warmth of the flesh is in the words.'
