Alone with the Alone

Some of the most critically acclaimed English poetry of the twentieth century shares a vision that reaches back to the dreamy promise of childhood. T. S. Eliot nostalgically recalled 'the children in the apple-tree', Edwin Muir harked back to a place where 'incorruptible the child plays still', and Dylan Thomas fondly harped on the time when he was 'young and easy under the apple boughs'. MacDiarmid had a good national reason, too, for avoiding in principle the theme of repossessing the lost Eden of childhood. What MacDiarmid hoped to achieve was an alternative vision, an entirely adult conception of the world. MacDiarmid had long wanted to write a national epic with international cultural connotations. MacDiarmid's aim is to replace inspiration with information and to substitute science for sentiment.