Aitken, Scottish Literature in English and Scots, vol. 37 of American Literature, English Literature and World Literatures in English (Detroit, 1982). Malcolm’s 1984 bibliography is up-todate and lists most fully the Grassic Gibbon and Mitchell publications. D. M. Budge has a good paperback anthology of short stories and essays in Smeddum: Stories and Essays (London, 1980). Mitchell died with his papers in some disarray, and the article on his correspondence cited above gives some introduction to that subject: a further treatment is in ‘A Tribute that never was: the Plan for a Lewis Grassic Gibbon Festschrift’, Studies in Scottish Literature XX (1985), 219–30. Also among the papers was the novella which has appeared as The Speak of the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1982). Patricia J. Wilson has an excellent article on ‘Freedom and God: Some implications of the Key Speech in A Scots Quair’, Scottish Literary Journal 7, 2 (December, 1980), 71. A more recent, and very valuable discussion of Mitchell appears in ‘Novelists of the Renaissance’ by Isobel Murray, a chapter of vol. 4 of The History of Scottish Literature ed. Cairns Craig (Aberdeen, 1987, 103–17). For further discussion by the present author see ‘Chris Caledonia, the Search for an Identity’, Scottish Literary Journal 1, 2 (December, 1974), 45–57; ‘James Leslie Mitchell’s Spartacus: a Novel of Rebellion’, Scottish Literary Journal 5, 1 (May, 1978), 53–60; Kailyard: A New Assessment (Edinburgh, 1981) and Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Scottish Writers Series, 6, (Edinburgh, 1985)).

The most recent works to touch on Mitchell’s writing include two books by R. C. Craig, Out of History (Edinburgh, 1996) and The Modern Scottish Novel (Edinburgh, 1999); M. Walker, Scottish Literature Since 1707 (London 1996); and Ian Campbell, ‘The Grassic Gibbon Style’ in Studies in Scottish Fiction: Twentieth Century (Scottish studies 10) ed. J. Schwend and H. W. Drescher (Frankfurt and Bern, Peter Lang 1990), 271–87.

Two important contributions to recent criticism from Germany are Uwe Zagratzki, Libertäre und utopische Tendenzen im Erzählwerk James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) (Peter Lang, Frankfurt and New York, 1991) and Christoph Ehland, Picaresque Perspectives – Exiled Identities (Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2003). Daniel Grader has a valuable MSc thesis (University of Edinburgh, Faculty of Arts, 2004) on Spartacus as a historical novel, and Mitchell’s use of Latin sources. Parts of this may be published in due course.

SPARTACUS

by James Leslie Mitchell

O thou who lived for Freedom when the Night

Had hardly yet begun; when little light

Blinded the eyes of men, and dawntime seemed

So far and faint – a foolish dream half-dreamed!

Through the blind drift of days and ways forgot

Thy name, thy purpose: these have faded not!

From out the darkling heavens of misty Time

Clear is thy light, and like the Ocean’s chime

Thy voice. Yea, clear as when unflinchingly

Thou ledst the hordes of helotry to die

And fell in glorious fight, nor knew the day

The creaking crosses fringed the Appian Way –

Sport of the winds, O ashes of the Strong!

But down the aeons roars the helots’ song

Calling to battle. Long as on the shore

The washing tides shall crumble cliff and nore

Remembered shalt thou be who dauntless gave

Unto the world the lordship of the slave!

I. INSURRECTION

The Gathering of the Slaves

It was Springtime in Italy, a hundred years before the crucifixion of Christ

[i]

WHEN Kleon heard the news from Capua he rose early one morning, being a literatus and unchained, crept to the room of his Master, stabbed him in the throat, mutilated that Master’s body even as his own had been mutilated: and so fled from Rome with a stained dagger in his sleeve and a copy of The Republic of Plato hidden in his breast.

He took the southwards track, not the Way, but the via terrena, hiding by day and walking swiftly by night. His face was pallid, his eyes green and weary. He had no faith in the Gods and could know no pleasure in women. Under his chin was tattooed in blue the casqued head of Athena, for he was of Athenian descent, though sold by his father in the slave-market of Corinth in time of famine.

Purchased thence, he had been for twelve years the lover of a rich merchant in Alexandria. The merchant was brown and stout and paunched, holding faith in forgotten Canaanite Gods, for he had been born in Tyre.