As the locus of Burns-mania keeps shifting, so does the image of the poet himself
FOR MILLIONS of homesick Scots in every corner of the world, it is an enjoyable wallow in cultural exotica. From black-tie dinners to informal gaggles of friends who admire the poet’s rambunctious spirit, the birthday of Robert Burns on January 25th is feted with whiskey, haggis and bagpipes. It rounds off with a maudlin rendering of Burns’s oath of loyalty to old friends and fondly remembered events that occurred many years ago, or in the poet’s words: “Auld Lang Syne”.
Apart from the Anglophone and Celtic diaspora, he has always been popular in eastern Europe and the Slavic world, especially Russia. Now, says Gerard Carruthers, a professor of literature at Glasgow University, China is showing enthusiasm. Mr Carruthers is in high demand as a lecturer there, and there is strong Chinese interest in attending the Centre for Burns Studies, which he directs.
It was only in the communist era that the real Burns boom began. The Soviet authorities thoroughly approved of him and so did their ever more literate subjects. That was partly because Burns found a gifted translator in Samuil Marshak, the father of Soviet children’s literature, who managed in his own verses to combine orthodox socialist messages with thumping good rhymes.
Burns would probably relish the confusion he has caused among his later interpreters. He knew how to cover his traces and to send mixed signals about his real opinions and impulses. When he arrived in Edinburgh in 1787, he cultivated the image of a rough, self-taught ploughman-poet. That was half-true at best. His childhood, spent in small farms which his father cultivated without great success, had its share of hard manual labour which had damaged his health.
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