Editing Sorley MacLean (section)

===Influences===

Before he went to university, MacLean was writing in both English and Gaelic.<ref name=larach/>{{efn-lr|He later described his English poetry as "mostly imitative of Eliot and Pound... over-sophisticated, over-self-conscious".{{r|Gaeilge|p=5}}}} After writing a Gaelic poem, ''A' Chorra-ghritheach'' ("The Heron"), in 1932, he decided to write only in Gaelic and burned his earlier poems.{{r|contexts|p=2}} MacLean later said, "I was not one who could write poetry if it did not come to me in spite of myself, and if it came, it had to come in Gaelic".{{r|MacInnes|p=417}} However, it is also clear from his correspondence with MacDiarmid that his choice was also motivated by his determination to preserve and develop the Gaelic language.{{r|thesis|p=77, 155}} The Gaelic language had been in decline for several centuries; the 1931 census registered 136,135 Gaelic speakers in Scotland, only 3% of the Scottish population.{{r|MacAulay|p=141}} Despite his decision to write in the language, at times MacLean doubted that [[language death|Gaelic would survive]] and his poetry would be appreciated.{{r|culture of translation|p=4}}{{efn-lr|In 1943, he wrote in a letter to Hugh MacDiarmid: "The whole prospect of Gaelic appals me, the more I think of the difficulties and the likelihood of its extinction in a generation or two. A ... language with ... no modern prose of any account, no philosophical or technical vocabulary to speak of, no correct usage except among old people and a few university students, colloquially full of gross English idiom lately taken over... (what chance of the appreciation of the overtones of poetry, except amongst a handful?)"{{r|culture of translation|p=4}}}}

For 1,500 years, [[Scottish Gaelic literature]] had developed a rich corpus of song and poetry across "literary, sub-literary, and non-literate" [[register (sociolinguistics)|registers]]; it retained the ability to convey "an astonishingly wide range of human experience".{{r|MacInnes|p=392-3}} MacLean's work drew on this "inherited wealth of immemorial generations";{{r|MacInnes|p=393}} according to MacInnes, few people were as intimately familiar with the entire corpus of Gaelic poetry, written and oral, as MacLean.{{r|MacInnes|p=416}} In particular, MacLean was inspired by the intense love poetry of [[Uilleam Ros|William Ross]], written in the eighteenth century.{{r|thesis|p=67}} Of all poetry, MacLean held in highest regard the Scottish Gaelic songs composed before the nineteenth century by anonymous, illiterate poets and passed down via the oral tradition.{{r|larach}}{{r|open|p=17}}{{r|MacInnes|p=397}} He once said that Scottish Gaelic song-poetry was "the chief artistic glory of the Scots, and of all people of Celtic speech, and one of the greatest artistic glories of Europe".{{r|open|p=17}}

[[File:Испанская 11 интербригада в бою под Бельчите. 1937-edit.jpg|thumb|Members of the [[XI International Brigade]] at the [[Battle of Belchite (1937)|Battle of Belchite]]]]

MacLean once said that various Communist figures meant more to him than any poet, writing to Douglas Young in 1941 that "[[Lenin]], [[Stalin]] and [[Georgi Dimitrov|Dimitroff]] now mean more to me than [[Prometheus (disambiguation)|Prometheus]]<!-- It's unclear which Prometheus he's referring to; probably one of the poems --> and [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]] did in my teens".{{r|contexts|p=4}} Other left-wing figures that inspired MacLean included [[James Connolly]], an Irish [[trade union]] leader executed for leading the [[Easter Rising]]; [[John Maclean (Scottish socialist)|John Maclean]], Scottish socialist and pacifist; and [[John Cornford]], [[Julian Bell]], and [[Federico García Lorca]], who were killed by the [[Francoist regime]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]].{{r|contexts|p=4}} Many of these figures were not Gaels, and some critics have noted MacLean's unusual generosity to non-Gaelic people in his work.{{r|open|p=34}} Perhaps the one uniting theme in his work is MacLean's [[Egalitarianism|anti-elitism]] and focus on social justice.{{r|open|p=37}}

Nevertheless, MacLean read widely and was influenced by poets from a variety of styles and eras. Of contemporary poets, Hugh MacDiarmid, [[Ezra Pound]],<ref name=two/> and [[William Butler Yeats]] had the greatest impact.{{r|contexts|p=3}} After reading ''[[A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle]]'' by MacDiarmid, MacLean decided to try his hand at extended narrative poetry, resulting in the unfinished ''An Cuilthionn''.{{r|day|p=145}} He was also influenced by the [[Metaphysical school]]. However, he disdained the popular left-wing poets of the 1930s, such as [[W. H. Auden]] or [[Stephen Spender]], and sometimes regarded poetry as a useless aesthetic hobby.{{r|contexts|p=4}}