I must admit I wasn’t familiar with the name and work of Sir William Topaz Mcgonagall (though I presumably read him in my occasional ego-sustaining forays into Very Bad Poetry) until I happened upon Anthony Daniel’s article, “Knight of the White Elephant”, recently published in The New Criterion.
I’ll let the article stand for itself, and simply comment that the most troublesome aspect of the story of McGonagall is not his delusions of genius, nor the cruelty of his audiences, but rather his humanity, his fallibility, his very similarity to each of us. I see my own writing in McGonagall’s poor poetry. I see my own longing for a life imbued with culture in his self-styled commitment as “Poet and Tragedian”. I see myself, I see others, too, and I try not to wince.
Perhaps most devastating in the McGonagall biography is the utter futility of his efforts despite an impossible commitment to his art. McGonagall earned neither satisfactory remuneration or praise for his work during his life, nor fame and respect for his aesthetics after his death. And yet he battled (with “psychological armor-plating”) to fulfill this dream and capitalize on what he clearly saw as a supreme talent. Daniel, comparing the memory of McGonagall to the fellow Scot and better poet Hamish Henderson, remarks that “a cruel posterity does not always distribute fame among writers according to literary merit”–suggesting that though we may remember McGonagall as “the worst poet of the English language” at least we remember him.
If I may say so without malice, to be a poet as McGonagall I’d rather be forgotten.
