In defence of democracy
MacDIARMID, Hugh. The Battle Continues. Edinburgh: Castle Wynd Printers Limited. 1957.
8vo; Red publisher's boards, ruled in blind to upper board, and gilt along spine; in the striking grey dust jacket with single colour lino cut by Zeljiko Kujundzic; pp. [viii], 107, [1]; essentially fine, the jacket slightly creased and nicked at upper edge; author's signature to front free endpaper.
First edition, signed by the author.
Ian Hamilton wrote that Hugh Macdiarmid "makes his own rules, contemns categories, cracks open water-tight compartments, bestraddles disciplines, scorns social, cultural, and academic cliques and claques, and affirms ... that it is not failure but low aim that is criminal".
The Battle Continues is Macdiarmid's resolute stand against Fascism under General Franco, following the publication of a poem on the Spanish Civil War by South African poet Roy Campbell, a staunch opponent of the democratic Left. The poem was a direct response to Campbell's "Flowering Rifle", serving as a rebuke that remained unpublished at the time, aside from a limited number of quarterly passages. The Battle Continues now stands as a revolutionary rallying cry in defence of democracy everywhere.
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