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Mary Stanley Low

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British political activist and poet (1912–2007)

Mary Stanley Low
Born14 May 1912
London, England
Died9 January 2007 (aged 94)
Miami, Florida, US
Occupationpolitical activist, poet, Latin teacher
CitizenshipCuba
GenreSurrealism
Notable worksRed Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war
SpouseJuan Breá (m. 1937, died 1941)
Armando Machado (m. 1944)
Children3

Mary Stanley Low (14 May 1912 – 9 January 2007) was a British-Cuban political activist, Trotskyist, surrealist poet, artist and Latin teacher.

Life

Low was born in 1912 in London, England, to Australian parents. She was educated in France and Switzerland, spoke English, French and Spanish, and travelled with her parents in Europe as a child.

In her early career, Low worked as a Latin teacher, wrote for English magazines and edited Classics Chronicles, a biannual magazine dedicated to the Latin language and the history of Rome.

Low met the Cuban surrealist poet Juan Ramón Breá (1905–1941) in 1933 in Paris. They befriended members of the French surrealist movement, such as the painter Óscar Domínguez, the painter Wifredo Lam and the poet Benjamin Péret. The couple became lovers and travelled extensively in Europe, including trips to Prague, Vienna, Belgrade, Istanbul, Bucharest, Brussels and London, and visited Breá's native Cuba. In 1934, during their visit to Bucharest they campaigned with Victor Brauner for the Romanian Communist Party.

Low and Breá travelled to Barcelona, in August 1936, following the military uprising against the Spanish Republic in July 1936 and crossed into Spain from France. Low had won a considerable sum in a Monaco casino just before travelling to Spain. During the revolutionary period Low and Breá supported the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (Spanish: Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; Catalan: Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista, POUM). Low was employed an English-language announcer for the POUM radio station in Barcelona, translated POUM publications into English for international circulation and produced propaganda imagery, for which she was paid twelve pesetas per day. Low and Breá lived in Spain until December 1936 and during these five months Breá was imprisoned twice. They both fled back to France when they were threatened with death by Stalinists. Low wrote when leaving Spain, which she called "the centre pivot of the world," that "the regret came up bitter in my mouth."

In England, Low and Breá co-wrote the Red Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war, published by Secker and Warburg, which was the first English language written testimony and political analysis of the 1936 Spanish revolution. Mary wrote her chapters and translated chapters written by Breá into English. The book was forwarded by the Marxist historian and critic Cyril Lionel Robert James, and was praised by the author and journalist George Orwell in a review for Time and Tide magazine. It was reissued in 1979 by City Lights Book, with a new introduction written by Eugenio Fernandez Granell.

In the book, Low disputed claims that milicianas were mostly concerned with their appearance, recounted the burial of the anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti after his death in November 1936, and noted her experiences of the bureaucratic culture of politicians of the Catalan government in contrast to the "egalitarian" mood on the street. Low's chapters also praised the efforts of the POUM Women’s Secretariat in establishing courses for women on the subjects of "socialism, child welfare, French, hygiene, women’s rights, the origin of the religious and family sense" and which taught them "to knit and sew and make flags."

Low and Breá married on 24 September 1937 in London, and lived in Prague from 1938 to early 1940. Here, they befriended Czech surrealists including Toyen, Bohuslav Brouk and Jindřich Heisler. During this period they also co-wrote the French language book of surrealist poetry La Saison des flûtes, which was released by Editions Surréalistes of Paris.

Low and Breá witnessed the occupation of the streets of Prague by Nazi German troops in the early period of World War II. In February 1940, Low and Breá emigrated to Cuba from Europe, after obtaining safe-conduct papers through their acquaintance with a German cultural attaché who was a member of the nobility. Not long after the couple settled in Cuba, Breá died in 1941, aged 35.

After her husbands death, Low remained in Cuba for almost 25 years. Low gave talks at the Havana Institute of Marxist Culture and, in 1943, she published a selection of political and cultural essays forwarded by her friend Benjamin Péret. Also that year she edited La Verdad Contemporanea, the first work of surrealist theory published in the Caribbean. Low also taught at the Instituto de El Vedado, the Universidad de la Habana. She taught English at the Community House.

In 1944, Low married for a second time to Armando Machado (1911–1982), a Trotskyist Cuban trade-union leader, gaining Cuban citizenship. They had three daughters together. She retained her British citizenship, holding duel nationality.

In 1954, Low won the Rubén Martínez Villena Prize. She next published the poetry volume Tres voces – Three Voices – Trois Vois in 1957, which was a trilingual book illustrated by José Mijares.

In the 1950s she supported the Cuban revolution, helping and hiding revolutionary militants opposed to the Batista regime in her home. By 1964, Low had become frustrated with what she viewed as the Stalinisation of Fidel Castro's Cuban government. Her husband was arrested, although he was quickly released.

In 1964, Low moved to live in Australia for ten years, before settling in Florida, United States, where she contributed to the growing American surrealist movement. Low published several works of poetry in America, including Alive in Spite Of (1981), A voice in Three Mirrors (1984) and Where the Wolf Sings (1994). She also wrote the historical novel In Caesar’s Shadow (1975) and produced surrealist collages which were exhibited in Paris, Chicago and Montreal. Low also taught Latin at the private school Gulliver Academy. She retired from teaching in 2000.

Low remained politically active to the end of her life. In July 1999, she was a signatory of the Manifesto “Combat for History”. In October 2002 she was one of the signatories to the Surrealist-sponsored declaration Poetry Matters: On the Media Persecution of Amiri Baraka.

She died in 2007 in Miami, Florida. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in Paris and Santiago de Cuba.

Selected works

  • Red Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war (1937)
  • La Saison des flûtes (1939)
  • La Verdad Contemporanea (1943, editor)
  • Tres voces – Three Voices – Trois Vois (1957)
  • Alive in Spite Of (1981)
  • A voice in Three Mirrors (1984)
  • Where the Wolf Sings (1994)

References

  1. ^ Jump, Jim (30 January 2007). "Obituary: Mary Low". The Independent. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  2. Rosemont, Penelope (5 July 2010). Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-78769-8.
  3. ^ Diego, Josefina de (21 April 2019). "Una inglesa no muy británica: Mary Stanley Low y su ancho mar". OnCubaNews (in Spanish). Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  4. ^ Guillamón, August (4 March 2023). "Mary Low: Surrealist Poet, Trotskyist and Revolutionary (1912–2007)". Medium. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  5. ^ "Mary Low, poeta, trotskista y revolucionaria". La Bataille socialiste (in French). 5 April 2009. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  6. ^ Bayó Belenguer, Susana (26 November 2018). "Mary Low: A Trotskyist with the POUM in Barcelona". Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America. 95 (9–10): 311–324. doi:10.1080/14753820.2018.1537285. ISSN 1475-3820.
  7. ^ Badillo, Jorell A. Meléndez; Jun, Nathan J. (29 July 2013). Without Borders or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 133. ISBN 978-1-4438-5105-3.
  8. Smith, Angela K. (28 February 2018). Gender and warfare in the twentieth century: Textual representations. Manchester University Press. pp. 86–87. ISBN 978-1-5261-3070-9.
  9. ^ MacPhee, Josh; Reuland, Erik (1 January 2007). Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority. AK Press. p. 283. ISBN 978-1-904859-32-1.
  10. Rosemont, Franklin (1978). André Breton and the First Principles of Surrealism: A Companion Volume to What is Surrealism? : Selected Writings of André Breton. Pluto Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-904383-70-6.
  11. ^ Høgsbjerg, Christian (2 April 2016). "'The Fever and the Fret': C.L.R. James, the Spanish Civil War and the Writing of The Black Jacobins". Journal of Socialist Theory. 44 (1–2). doi:10.1080/03017605.2016.1187858. ISSN 0301-7605.
  12. Orwell, George (3 May 2001). Orwell in Spain. Penguin Books Limited. p. 401. ISBN 978-0-14-191390-2.
  13. Alba, Victor (4 September 2017). Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War. Routledge. p. 289. ISBN 978-1-351-48855-6.
  14. Lines, Lisa Margaret (2012). Milicianas: Women in Combat in the Spanish Civil War. Lexington Books. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-7391-6492-1.
  15. ^ "J.J. Plant: Obituary - Mary Stanley Low (1912-2007)". Marxists.org. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  16. ^ Aspley, Keith (2010). Historical Dictionary of Surrealism. Scarecrow Press. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-8108-5847-3.
  17. Hampton, Paul. Mary Low Machado (1912-2007). Marxist Theory and History, Spanish Revolution 1936-7. 26 January 2007. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  18. Goodkind, Molly; Mitchell, Marcella Hayes and Amanda (26 October 2015). Spanish Civil War and Its Memory, The. Edicions Universitat Barcelona. p. 56. ISBN 978-84-475-3927-7.
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