Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBEwas an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of the Auden Group, also sometimes known as the "Thirties poets", that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, nicknamed collectively "MacSpaunday" – a term coined by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco. MacNeice's body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed, but socially and emotionally aware style. Never as overtlypolitical as some...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth12 September 1907
A poet should always be 'collaborating' with his public, but this public, in the mass, cannot make itself heard, and he has to guess at its requirements and its criticisms.
A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape.
My sympathies are Left. On paper and in the soul. But not in my heart or my guts.
I have just finished my novel (rough draft). It is to be called 'Anacoluthon.' This will make the public think it is an historical romance.
I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities.
I am more proud of what distinguishes man from the animals than of what he has in common with them.
I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city.
I am 33 years old, and what can I have been doing that I still am in a muddle? But everyone else is, too; maybe our muddles are concurrent.
Before I joined the BBC I was, like most of the intelligentsia, prejudiced not only against that institution but against broadcasting in general.
All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery.
All experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment.
Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort.
Broadcasting is plastic; while it can ape the press, it can also emulate the arts.
Nationalism of the Irish type is often regarded as reactionary. With the World Revolution and the Classless Society waiting for the midwife, why take a torch to the stable to assist at the birth of a puppy? Even if the puppy is pedigree. On this question I am unable to make up my mind.