Science in the Poetry of Hugh Macdiarmid, Judith Wright, Edwin Morgan, and Miroslav Holub

AD3<A73A6"13<AB?E >=3A?E /<2 @173<13 @173<13 7< A63 >=3A?E =4 6B56 ;/127/?;72! 8B27A6 D?756A! 32D7< ;=?5/<! /<2 ;7?=@9/C 6=9B0 2SRFPI 5NGVSR / AMJVNV @XGQNWWJI KSU WMJ 2JLUJJ SK >M2 FW WMJ BRNYJUVNW\ SK @W /RIUJZV '%&* 4XPP QJWFIFWF KSU WMNV NWJQ NV FYFNPFGPJ NR ?JVJFUHM.@W/RIUJZV-4XPPAJ[W FW- MWWT-$$UJVJFUHM"UJTSVNWSU\#VW"FRIUJZV#FH#XO$ >PJFVJ XVJ WMNV NIJRWNKNJU WS HNWJ SU PNRO WS WMNV NWJQ- MWWT-$$MIP#MFRIPJ#RJW$&%%'($+%), AMNV NWJQ NV TUSWJHWJI G\ SUNLNRFP HST\UNLMW Twentieth-Century Poetry and Science Science in the Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid, Judith Wright, Edwin Morgan, and Miroslav Holub Donald Gibson This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews December 2015 ii ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to arrive at a characterisation of twentieth century poetry and science by means of a detailed study of the work of four poets who engaged extensively with science and whose writing lives spanned the greater part of the period. The study of science in the work of the four chosen poets, Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 – 1978), Judith Wright (1915 – 2000), Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010), and Miroslav Holub (1923 – 1998), is preceded by a literature survey and an initial theoretical chapter. This initial part of the thesis outlines the interdisciplinary history of the academic subject of poetry and science, addressing, amongst other things, the challenges presented by the episodes known as the ‘two cultures’ and the ‘science wars’. Seeking to offer a perspective on poetry and science more aligned to scientific materialism than is typical in the interdiscipline, a systemic challenge to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is put forward in the first chapter. Additionally, the founding work of poetry and science, I. A. Richards’s Science and Poetry (1926), is assessed both in the context in which it was written, and from a contemporary viewpoint; and, as one way to understand science in poetry, a theory of the creative misreading of science is developed, loosely based on Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence (1973). The detailed study of science in poetry commences in Chapter II with Hugh MacDiarmid’s late work in English, dating from his period on the Shetland Island of Whalsay (1933 – 1941). The thesis in this chapter is that this work can be seen as a radical integration of poetry and science; this concept is considered in a variety of ways including through a computational model, originally suggested by Robert Crawford. The Australian poet Judith Wright, the subject of Chapter III, is less well known to poetry and science, but a detailed engagement with physics can be identified, including her use of four-dimensional imagery, which has considerable support from background evidence. Biology in her poetry is also studied in the light of recent work by John Holmes. In Chapter IV, science in the poetry of Edwin Morgan is discussed in terms of its origin and development, from the perspective of the mythologised science in his science fiction poetry, and from the ‘hard’ technological perspective of his computer poems. Morgan’s work is cast in relief by readings which are against the grain of some but not all of his published comments. The thesis rounds on its theme of materialism with the fifth and final chapter which studies the work of Miroslav Holub, a poet and practising scientist in communist-era Prague. Holub’s work, it is argued, represents a rare and important literary expression of scientific materialism. The focus on materialism in the thesis is not mechanistic, nor exclusive of the domain of the imagination; instead it frames the contrast between the original science and the transformed poetic version. The thesis is drawn together in a short conclusion. iii CANDIDATE’S DECLARATIONS 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, Donald Robert Gibson, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 83,200 words in length, has been written by me, and that it is the record of work carried out by me, or principally by myself in collaboration with others as acknowledged, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September 2009 and as a candidate for the degree of PhD in September 2011; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2009 and 2015. Date …… signature of candidate ……… 2. Supervisor’s declaration: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date …… signature of supervisor ……… 3. Permission for publication: In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the publication of this thesis: PRINTED COPY No embargo on print copy ELECTRONIC COPY No embargo on electronic copy Date …… signature of candidate …… signature of supervisor ……… iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the publishers and copyright holders for permission to quote from the published collections of the poets studied in this thesis. Carcanet have granted permission to quote Hugh MacDiarmid from Lucky Poet and the two-volume Collected Poems; Carcanet have also granted permission for the extracts used from Edwin Morgan’s Collected Poems, his Collected Translations, and from the late collection, A Book of Lives. I am grateful also to Hamish Whyte of Meriscat Press for permission to quote from Morgan’s Hold Hands Amongst the Atoms. For the right to use the extracts from Judith Wright’s work, thanks are due to two copyright holders, HarperCollins Australia, and Tom Thompson of ETT Imprint. Bloodaxe Books have kindly granted permission to quote from the work of Miroslav Holub published in Poems Before and After. I would like to thank the librarians and staff at the National Library of Scotland and the University of Glasgow Special Collections who have been kind and helpful during my research into archives relating to Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan respectively. Sarah Hepworth of Glasgow University, in discussion with the Edwin Morgan trust, has accepted my use of the MS Morgan material. For the NLS, Sally Harrower has accepted my use of the MacDiarmid archive. Thanks are also due to the librarians at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow for their help in researching Morgan’s personal collection of books. I would like to thank as well the librarians and staff at the University of St Andrews library and the British Library in London. Regarding the use of an image from Miroslav Holub’s Immunology of Nude Mice, I am grateful to CRC Press for directing me to the U. S. Copyright Clearance Centre, where permission was granted. Regarding a second image, a Moscow postcard from 2012, I am grateful to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in London for suggesting that the probable copyright holder is the organisation responsible for the monument, the Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation. I have written to the Federal Guard Service, in English, requesting permission, but for understandable reasons this permission may be difficult to progress. I hope and trust the Russian copyright holders will not object to the use of this image and the context in which it is placed. I would like to extend my warm and sincere thanks to my supervisor, Robert Crawford, for his consistent encouragement and support over the six part-time years of this thesis. I am particularly grateful to Alexandra Wallace, the postgraduate secretary, for her friendly and knowledgeable help and advice with numerous things during the course of this work. Thanks are also due to my second supervisor Chris Jones, and to Tom Jones and Katherine Hawley for encouragement during the early part my studies. I would also like to thank and acknowledge Tim Liardet of Bath Spa University. Over the years it has been a pleasure to meet many times with my fellow student, Vicky MacKenzie, for wide ranging discussions. Also, discussions and emails with fellow postgraduate Russell Jones of Edinburgh University were always stimulating. I would like to thank my friend and colleague Brian Buggy for many discussions over many years on science and technology; and in this regard I would like to mention other friends and colleagues, Dave Ettle, Jon Craton, and Nick East, for their interest and support. I would like to thank my children, Ian and Jenny; I am grateful to Ian for bringing Raphael Samuel’s The Lost World of British Communism to my attention. Finally, with deep v gratitude, I want to thank my wife Christine, who with love and support, has made all this possible.

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