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Sunset Song Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Sunset Song.

Sunset Song Quotes

“Compton Mackenzie, who is getting quite Scotch (probably from now living so near Glenlivet), gave [Sunset Song] a column in the Daily Mail. The Mail! Oh Goddelpus! I as a good anarcho-communist shrivel up internally.”

Daily Mail Sunset Song Compton Mackenzie Glenlivet

Author:James Leslie Mitchell

“To return to Gibbon for a moment. The great epitaph for the fallen soldiers on the last page of Sunset Song is more than effective; in an early chapter it might have roused sneers. But Gibbon himself would not have written it there.”

Epitaph First World War Sunset Song Fallen Soldiers Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Book:Jabberwock: Edinburgh University Review, Volume 3, No. 2: Summer 1950

Source: Jabberwock: Edinburgh University Review, Volume 3, No. 2: Summer 1950

“When I left home, I faithfully carried my copy of Sunset Song onward into life. Each reading brought a new layer and deeper understanding, but it was the notion of Two Chrisses that always echoed in my soul. Through Chris Guthrie, I understood the inferiority complex I felt as a working-class Scot as I began to move in different circles. I remember arriving at drama school with Doric words in my mouth, as other students looked blankly at my attempts to find an English equivalent. I'd then return home and feel 'posh' amongst my Scots speaking family. I was part of two worlds, but felt like I belonged in neither. The feeling persistently lingered but surfaced in earnest during the pandemic. At that time, I was working with the Scots Language Centre on their 'Scots Wark' project, and I was asked to deliver a creative learning resource. My offering was called 'The Twa Chrisses: A Love Letter to Sunset Song', a cathartic and empowering story to scrieve, but it also made my fingers itch to write a full theatrical adaptation. Somehow, gorgeous synchronicity ensued when Andrew Panton, Artistic Director of Dundee Rep, and Finn den Hertog contacted me with this very idea.”

Scots Language Sunset Song Chris Guthrie

Book:Sunset Song: 2024 Tour

Source: Sunset Song: 2024 Tour

“To its original readers in 1932 Sunset Song was a book in itself; they could not know it was the first part of a trilogy. Many reacted with disgust to its frank treatment of sex and childbearing, its scorn for the rich and powerful, its sometimes strident anti-clericalism.”

Author:Lewis Grassic Gibbon

“It must have been soon after that when ways and means were much under discussion that Leslie and Ray came to see us in Wokingham. Leslie was working at high pressure on all sorts of subjects but although he was beginning to find his financial worries lessen he still seemed not to have found and in my opinion did not exactly know what he might be able to do best. I suggested that he wrote a great Scots drama or novel. With one voice Leslie and Ray said it would never pay. I protested that it would if it was good enough - that Scotland was gasping for a picture of the true Scotland as he and I knew it - a picture that was neither A House with the Green Shutters nor yet A Bonnie Briar Bush, neither of which to me rang true.”

Scotland Kailyard Scottish Literature Sunset Song James Leslie Mitchell

Book:Another Song at Sunset: Jean Baxter, Scots poet and friend of Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Source: Another Song at Sunset: Jean Baxter, Scots poet and friend of Lewis Grassic Gibbon

“So that was Kinraddie... the Scots countryside itself, fathered between a kailyard and a bonny briar bush in the lee of a house with green shutters.”

Kailyard Scottish Literature Sunset Song Kinraddie Scottish Countryside

Author:Lewis Grassic Gibbon