Return of the native

FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, IAIN Crichton Smith’s writing in Gaelic hasn’t received the international attention the rest of his work commands. But given that it constitutes almost a third of his literary legacy, that it includes much of the most innovative writing in the language in the last century, it is equally obvious that Crichton Smith - who died in 1998 - should also be the first writer honoured by the inaugural Gaelic Word Festival.

Although born in Glasgow, he grew up in Lewis, speaking only Gaelic until he went to school. His father died when he was an infant and his mother was left to look after her three sons alone. The absence of the father figure and the subsequent importance of the mother figure are common motifs in his writing. The island, Lewis, is a recurring feature, as is the Gaelic language, either as a vehicle that allows him to explore his ideas of communication and interpersonal relationships or as a feature of his own cultural identity that is under threat.

In many of his short stories, such as "An Coigreach" (1960) or his 1966 play Chirt, which prefigures his novel Consider the Lilies, Crichton Smith uses features of the Gaelic language to add depth that would be impossible in English. In many cases he often seems to be switching between his two languages to find out which one best suits the story.

In An t-Aonaran, probably the best Gaelic novel ever published, he uncovers a theme that also haunts much of his poetry - how the educated Gael, through having had to learn another language, becomes alienated from his own community. The poems at the end of An t-Eilean agus An Cnan (1987), his last collection in Gaelic, also show this. He sees the spread of English as a positive thing, just as he accepts modernisation, new technology and increased opportunities for travel as positive things. However, he also sees the potentially negative, in that each of these things can dominate and then suffocate the smaller, less widespread cultures.

This collection also provides a solution to the question of why he stopped publishing as much Gaelic in his last decade. There are some practical reasons, as well as what we can read into his work. As a full-time writer, it would have been difficult to make much of a living out of Gaelic books, poems, stories or plays. The Gaelic population is very small, dropping from around 80,000 in 1981 to under 60,000 in 2001, of whom a third cannot read the language.

A more subtle problem for someone trying to make a living from writing in Gaelic is that the literature was slow to modernise. Genres such as the Gaelic novel and short story did not emerge until the 20th century; even then, their development was sluggish and not always well received. But while such factors were no doubt at work, none of them explain why this was Crichton Smith’s last sizeable Gaelic work, more than ten years before his last English books appeared.

I would suggest that An t-Eilean agus An Cnan was the moment at which Crichton Smith finally confronted the influence that his Lewis upbringing and his Gaelic heritage had had on him. In it, he uses the island as a metaphor for isolation, and language is the bridge that is meant to overcome that isolation. And, although language is never quite adequate to overcome this metaphorical isolation, the island and the language nevertheless become inextricably linked to one another. Place, and the language of that place, take on characteristics of one another, to the point where it becomes difficult to distinguish them fully. So, in poem 17 of the "Cnan" section, Smith writes: "Seo mo chnan for, // am fear a fhreagras air an talamh seo, air a’ / mhintich, / am fear a n cmhradh ionadail" - "this is my true language, the one that suits this land, the one that makes local conversation".

Gaelic, therefore, is the language appropriate to the island. Smith, however, no longer lives on the island: as a result, he is no longer in a position to choose Gaelic. The poem tells us that there is a gap in the land: this gap is caused by the split which necessitates the choice for the bilingual. The bilingual must constantly choose between two languages or else choose one over the other once and for all.

This choice, therefore, stands in the way of fulfilment, according to these poems. When Smith writes "Seo mo chnan for" - "this is my true language" - he then leaves a gap in the poem, just like the gap in the land that isolates him from his home. Gaelic is his true language, but it is not the language he can choose, because he cannot choose to be an islander. If the language and the land are infinitely bound up together, choosing one also means choosing the other. What An t-Eilean agus An Cnan tells us is that, given the free choice, Smith would choose Gaelic. But, because place and language are woven together both societally and psychologically, he does not have the free choice.

This is an edited extract from the lecture Moray Watson will give at the Word Festival this afternoon.