Justified Sinners Quotes

“News from Strathclyde Region: The Region is among the official 'advisers' to the Glasgow Garden Festival. Among those not advising are Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton and Alexander Pope.”
― Ian Hamilton Finlay, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“The counter-culture was global - or so we thought. For the first time we felt in touch with California and Paris, Poland and India and together we would change the world. Even Edinburgh would move to a more open and humane and anarchic direction. It and we would be a tonic to the nation and the very idea of 'nation' would become irrelevant.

Scottish culture believed itself to be 'European' but surely it gloried in a powerful insularity too. And that was all to be moribund, this was a brave new world and we had no irony in that belief. The dystopias of Huxley and Orwell were forgotten - we now had the key to happiness. And surprisingly even now, it still seems we were doing the right thing and it was good.”
― Halla Beloff, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“Yes, I go along with the idea of a Scottish Spring. It was genuinely a time of beginnings, a time of openings, and I always felt that those who left Scotland then - eg. Kenneth White, Douglas Dunn - were too impatient and should have stayed. New international configurations - Sottish-American, Scottish-Russian, Scottish-Brazilian - appeared. New genres like concrete poetry and sound-poetry challenged a fair amount of opposition. I remember Hugh MacDiarmid growling in 1970 "I'd hate an Ian Finlay poem on my gravetstone." Publishers like Wild Hawthorn, Migrant, Eugen Gomringer, Hansjörg Mayer, encouraged Scotland to see the world and the world to see Scotland.”
― Edwin Morgan, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“This credo of youth is engulfed in a chorus of other voices: pilot-plans, social models, manifestos, concrete poetry, sound poetry, Happenings - new models of order in spaces of doubt. But what followed? The epitome of youthful rebellion is a thunderbolt; its aftermath so much charred earth. Re-reading Tom McGrath's Riverside Interview, I was struck by the characterisations of Alex Trocchi and R.D. Laing as justified sinners, strewing psychic chaos, inspiring a thunderous mixed-up scene. Their adventures in consciousness spiralled into drugs, alcoholism, broken relationships and early graves. Tom describes them as prototypes of evil but, while admitting their darkness, pledges himself again to the rebel party.”
― Alec Finlay, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“When will Scottish culture be able to sustain a body of criticism worthy of its cultural production?”
― Alec Finlay, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000