being irish together

8/19/2019 Being Irish Together

1/6

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Being Irish TogetherAuthor(s): Denis DonoghueSource: The Sewanee Review, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Winter, 1976), pp. 129-133Published by: Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27543064Accessed: 28-12-2015 20:38 UTC

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2/6

THE

STATE

OF

LETTERS

BEING

IRISH TOGETHER

DENIS DONOGHUE

Most

of the towns

and

villages

in

Ireland

are

as

peaceful

as

Rupert

Brooke's

Grantchester.

Derry

is

safe

at

the

moment,

but

it

is

not in its

nature

to

be

quiet

for

long.

Belfast

is

ugly

with

fear

and

hatred,

though

it is

still

possible

to

live

an

unmolested

life

there,

as

Oliver

Edwards

does,

pursuing

an

interest

in

the

relation

between

Yeats

and

the

German

poet

Dautendey.

The

professor

of

Italian

at

Queen's

Uni

versity,

Belfast,

has

just

published

an

important

translation

of M?n

tale:

it is

a

consolation

to

think of

him

pondering

a

crux

of

diction

while the

bombs

wreck

a

bar

and

one

assassin

shoots,

perhaps,

another.

There

is

a

small

district

in

South

Armagh

where

the

English

queen's

writ does

not

run

and

a

British soldier

is

everyone's

natural

enemy.

Yesterday

(December 5,

1975)

the

secretary

of state for northern

Ireland announced

the end

of

detention,

formerly

called

internment

without

trial. This

morning

the

Irish

Times

carried

a

photograph

of

a

young

man

released

from

Long

Kesh,

taking

his

child

by

the

hand

and

walking

off into

freedom:

a

charming

picture

if

we

could be

as

sured that

in

a

few

days

he

will

not

take

up

a

gun

or

make

a

bomb

which

will

kill

without

prejudice

men,

women,

Catholics,

Protestants,

or

a

child of the

same

age

as

his

own.

The Irish Times

shows

a

decent

interest

in

the end

of

detention,

but like

nearly

everybody

it

has be

come

weary

of

the

theme and

turns,

with

undisguised

relief,

to

the

country's

economic

problems,

the

high

incidence of

unemployment,

and

current

legislation designed

to

prevent

the Irish

banks from

award

ing

to

their

employees

an

increase of

salary higher

than

the

terms

of the

National

Pay

Agreement.

Meanwhile

men

and

women

in

Ireland

write

verses,

novels,

short

stories,

paint

pictures,

sculpt,

and

compose

string

quartets.

I

have

done

none

of these

things

and

therefore

speak

of

them

with

impunity:

I

am

not in

a

competitive

trade.

It

may

be

said

that

the

troubles

in

northern

Ireland

since

1968 have

been

bad

for

human

life but

good

for

literatureT

they

have

gained

for

young

poets

an

audience

which

would

not

normally

be

willing

to

attend,

and

they

have

provided

themes and occasions more

demandingly

intense than those which

generally

emerge

from

a

comfortable

society.

A

few

poets,

including


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3/6

130

THE STATE OF LETTERS

Thomas Kinsella

and

John

Montague,

have

responded

to

these

occa

sions

directly, getting

the

horror of

it

hot;

but

the resultant

poems

are

hysterical

rather than

impassioned:

it is

better

for

a

poet

to

let

such

occasions wait in

silence for

a

while. Seamus

Heaney

has

been wiser

in

his

economy,

approaching

these

violent

themes

indirectly,

as

if his

poems

composed

not

a

politics

but

an

anthropology

of

feeling?start

ing

well back

and

deep

down.

One

of these

days

the

poets

from

the

North will

have

to

be

read with

an

interest

not

chiefly

topical.

A

reading

in

that

spirit

is

perhaps premature,

but

I

hope

its

day

will

come

soon,

and

that

Kinsella,

Heaney,

Mahon,

Deane,

Montague,

and

the

rest

will

be

read

in

the

critically

disinterested

spirit

we

bring

to,

say,

Geoffrey

Hill,

Roy

Fisher,

Charles

Tomlinson,

A. R.

Ammons,

John

Ashbery,

Philip

Larkin,

Ted

Hughes.

It

is true

that

Irish

writers

work

under

special

difficulties

and that

they

deserve

the

advantages

of

a

compellingly

ill

wind. When

Larkin

writes

the

poems

in

High

Windows

he

knows

what

he

is

doing,

es

tablishing

his

language

in

relation

to

the

general

body

of the

English

language

as

a

secure

possession,

mediated

by

Hardy,

Auden,

and

other

poets.

Larkin

s

general body

of

reference

is

contemporary

English

so

ciety,

dismal

in

many

respects

but

well

understood

in

terms

of

class

and the

preoccupations

of class.

As

an

economist

of

poetry

he

knows

what

he

needs,

judges

precisely

the moment

at

which

his

art

tempts

itself

to

archness

or

extravagance.

Most

of what

he knows

he

has

been

told

by

his

masters.

But the Irish

writers

find

it

peculiarly

difficult

to

know

what

they

are

doing:

they

live

upon

a

fractured

rather

than

an

integral

tradition;

they

do

not

know

which

voice

is

to

be

trusted.

Most

of

them

speak

English,

but

they

have

a

sense,

just barely

acknowl

edged,

that the

true

voice

of

feeling

speaks

in

Irish,

not

a

dead lan

guage

like

Latin

but

a

banished

language,

a

voice

in

exile.

English,

Irish: Protestant, Catholic: Anglo-Irish, Gael: in Ireland today we do

not

know what

to

do with

these

fractures. Conor

Cruise

O'Brien

urges

us

to

accept

our

experience

as

mixed

and

plural

and

to

live

accord

ingly

in

a

spirit

of

tolerance.

We

are

to

repudiate

the

spirit

of

Repub

licanism

which

insists

upon

defining

the

essential

Irish

experience

as

that

of

driving

out

the

English

and

spilling

blood

in

this noble

cause.

His

arguments

may

be found

victorious

at

the end

of

the

day,

but

meanwhile

the

spirit

of

acceptance

which

he

espouses

is

attractive

mainly

to

people

who

are

disgusted

with

the

Irish

question

and

want

to

be rid of

it;

or

to

people

who

are

weary,

indifferent,

interested

only

in

getting

on

in

the world.

O'Brien

words

are

not

only

despised

by

every

nationalist

and

republican,

but

they

are

rejected

by

anyone

whose

sense

of

life

demands

that

life

be lived

in

conflict

and

stress.

There

are men

and

women

who

despise

the

concept

of

a

plural

so




4/6


131

ciety

and

who

are

ready

to

kill

and

be killed

for the

sake of

national

purity.

O'Brien

does

not

understand

such

people,

or

the

aboriginal

loyalties

which

mean

far

more

to

them

than

a

contemptible

liberal

peace.

He

answers

that his

policy

will

not

cause

a

single

death:

it

is

true.

But

a

Republican

will

assert

that

there

are

things

more

glorious

than

liberal tolerance?a

martyr's

death,

for instance.

So

the

old

rhe

torical

battle

starts

up

again.

The real

trouble

in

Ireland

is

that

our

national

experience

has

been

too

limited

to

be

true.

Since

the

Plantation

of Ulster there

has

been

one

story

and

one

story

only

in

Irish

feeling:

the

English,

how

to

get

rid of

them,

or,

failing

that,

to

circumvent

them,

cajole

them,

twist

their

tails.

Our

categories

of

feeling

are

therefore

flagrantly

limited;

our

history

has

been

at

once

intense

and

monotonous.

We have

had

no

industrial

revolution,

no

factory

acts,

no

trade

union

movement:

hence

the

frail

basis

upon

which

our

Labour

Party

exists,

by

contrast

with

the

two

major

parties

which

still

define

themselves

in

terms

of

our

civil

war.

A

limited

history,

a

correspondingly

intimidating

my

thology,

a

fractured

language,

a

literature

of fits and

starts

and

ges

tures:

no

continuity

from

one

age

to

the

next.

Irish

novelists,

the

few

who

survive,

feel the

anxiety

of influence but not the incitement or

the

challenge

of

a

tradition.

The

nineteenth-century

writers

whom

Thomas

Flanagan

studied

in

The

Irish

Novelists do

not amount to

a

tradition;

there

are

novelists but

there

is

no

tradition

of the

novel,

the

force of

vision,

technique,

and

precedence

available

to,

say,

Angus

Wilson

when

he reads

George

Eliot and writes

Anglo-Saxon

Attitudes.

The

contemporary

Irish

novelist looks for

a

tradition

capable

of tell

ing

him

what

has

been done

and how

he

ought

to

proceed:

instead

he finds

Joyce,

an

overbearing

presence.

Take the

story

by James

Plunkett in the

present

issue

of the

Sewanee

Review: I have

no

in

formation

on

the

circumstances

in

which

Plunkett

wrote

the

story

or

the difficulties he

met

in

writing

it,

but

I

am

sure

his

main

difficulty

was

the

inescapable

presence

of

Joyce's

Portrait

of

the

Artist

as a

Young

Man.

The

price

we

pay

for Yeats

and

Joyce

is

that

each

in his

way gave

Irish

experience

a

memorable but

narrow

definition;

they

established

it

not

as

the

ordinary

but

as

a

special

case

of the

ordinary,

Synge

and

the minor

writers of

the Irish

literary

revival

were

not

strong

enough

to

counter

Yeats's

incantatory

rhetoric:

no

writer

in

Ireland

has been

strong

enough

to

modify

Joyce's

sense

of Irish

ex

perience

in fiction.

As

a

result

the writers

we

particularly

revere

are

those

who encountered

Yeats

and

Joyce

and

contrived

to

preserve

minds and arts of their own. I think of Flann O'Brien who somehow

deflected

the blow of

Joyce

sufficiently

to

write

At-Swim-Two-Birds

and The Third

Policeman,

books

which

could

not

have

been

written




5/6

132


without

Joyce's

example

but which

could

not

have

taken their

defini

tive

form if

Flann

O'Brien had allowed

himself

to

be

intimidated

by

that

example.

I

think

also of

Austin

Clarke's later

poems,

the work

of

a

poet

who

languished

in

Yeats's

shadow

until,

late and

not

a

moment

too

soon,

he

swerved

away

from

the shadow

and struck

out

for him

self.

T.

S.

Eliot has

maintained

in

What

Is

a

Classic?

that

every

su

preme

poet,

classic

or

not,

tends

to

exhaust

the

ground

he

cultivates,

so that it must, after yielding a diminishing crop, finally be left in

fallow for

some

generations.

I

find

this

an

ambiguous

idea,

but noth

ing

in

it is

more

significant

than Eliot's

assumption

that

we

have

world

enough

and time.

Certainly

there

are

cultures

of which

we

feel

that the

question

of

time

is

not

the

main

problem:

it

is

possible

to

think

of

the

cultures of

France,

England,

and Greece

as

providing

a

cadence

of

feeling

which

allows

for

historical

change

and

continuity.

To think

of

Shakespeare

and Milton

exhausting

the

ground

they

cul

tivate is

to

respond

once

again

to

the

plenitude

of

a

literary

culture

in

which

that

ground

may

be

allowed

to

remain in

fallow for

some

generations.

But

it

also exacerbates

our sense

of the

vulnerability

of

those

societies

which

cannot

afford fallow

years

or

generations.

Modern Ireland

as

a

state

rather

than

as

a

province

of

England

is

only fifty

years

old.

The

separation

of North and

South

is

arbitrary,

a

politician's

device.

We have

had

to concentrate

in

one

generation

the

experience

which

more

fortunate

countries

have been

able

to

de

velop

in

several;

and

we

have

largely

been

prevented

from

doing

so

by

the

exorbitance

of rival

mythologies.

So

we

have had

to

live from

day

to

day

and hand

to

mouth.

I mention these

facts

to

explain

the

impression

of

spasmodic

achievement

in

Irish literature:

our

experi

ence

has

not

been

sufficiently

diverse,

and

we

have

had

not

enoug?h

time, to produce

an

adequate literature. Our writers are, for the most

part,

solitary

workersY

they

do

not

find themselves

as

participants

in

an

enterprise,

a

common

pursuit.

Henry

James

said of

the

solitary

worker

that,

apt

to

make awkward

experiments,

he

is in

the

nature

of

the

case

more

or

less of

an

empiric.

I

take

it

that

empiricism

is

work

from

hand

to

mouth.

It

is

remarkable,

and

a

joy,

that work

as

fine

as

Clarke's

Ancient

Lights

has

been

produced

in

Ireland

by

such

an

un

concerted

method.

It

is

probably

idle

to

posit

the

conditions

in

which

good

work

is

done.

Was

it

necessary

for

Brian

Moore

to

leave Belfast

and

go

to

Canada,

then

to

California,

for

the

sake of

writing

Catholics? Would

Michael

McLaverty

have

developed

a more

complete

art

by

resorting

to the

same

itinerary?

It

is

common

to

have the

experience

and

miss

the

meaning.

Who

knows?

Who

knows

enough?

Anyway

it

is

my

im




6/6


133

pression

that

Irish

writers

sense a

rift between

experience

and

mean

ing,

but

in

reverse:

the

meaning

is

premature,

already

inscribed

by

a

mythology they

have

no

choice but

to

inherit,

and the

experience

is

too

narrow

to

be

entirely

natural

and

representative.

THE

JOURNAL

OF

STEPHEN

MacKENNA

ROGER

ROSENBLATT

Where

everyone

else

could

see one

side of

an

issue,

MacKenna

saw

two;

where

everyone

saw

two

sides,

he

saw

three;

where

all

sides

could

be

tolerated,

he

saw

one.

He

was

as

capable

of

serene

per

spective

as

of

fanaticism,

and

often

showed

both

on

the

same

subject.

He

wanted to

write

fiction;

he

wrote

theory.

He wanted

to

write

poems;

he filled letters with comic

doggerel,

and the

only

serious

poem

he

ever

finished

was

a

translation from the

Irish

of

Aoghan

OUahilly's

The

Merchant's

Son. He

had

contempt

for

journalists,

with

whom he

spent

most

of his

time,

and

contempt

for

journalism,

which

was

the

way

he

made his

living.

For

fifteen

years

he

practiced

on

musical instruments

that

he

couldn't

play.

His

house

was

head

quarters

for the

Gaelic

League,

much of

whose work he

despised.

He

called talk

benumbing

but

was

known

as

the

greatest

talker in

a

circle

that included

James

Stephens,

Yeats,

and

George

Russell. He

loved

the

company

of

friends,

and

passed

his

final

ten

years

in

seclusion

in

England, where he refused nomination to the Royal Irish Academy

because

it

was

English.

Infinitely

generous,

he

was

responsible

for

getting

Austin

Clarke's

first

poem

into

print.

When Clarke

came

to

him with

a

second,

MacKenna

asked,

What

am

I,

your

errand

boy?

As

a

critic

he

could be

brilliant

or

blind?and blind

intentionally.

His

capacity

for

stoicism

was

equalled only by

his

capacity

for

self-pity.

He

used

the

last

energy

of

his life

translating

a

philosophy

in

which

he

no

longer

believed.

Modesty

was

his

one

consistency.

He

would

have been

bewildered

by

someone

wanting

to

write

about

him.

I had

never

heard of

MacKenna before

reading

The

lournal

and

Letters

of

Stephen

MacKenna

(1936),

edited

by

E.

R.

Dodds,

Regius

professor

of Greek at Oxford. I wrote Dodds when I was

living

in

Dublin

in

1965. He

responded

by

lending

me

all

the

MacKenna

papers

in

his

possession,

including

MacKenna's

notebooks,

his

letters

to

James


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