Ireland – EuropeA Symbiosis

Heaney’s “Tollund Man”Danish Iron-Age Man

ISome day I will go to AarhusTo see his peat-brown head,The mild pods of his eye-lids,His pointed skin cap.In the flat country near byWhere they dug him out,His last gruel of winter seedsCaked in his stomach,Naked except forThe cap, noose and girdle,I will stand a long time.Bridegroom to the goddess,She tightened her torc on himAnd opened her fen,Those dark juices workingHim to a saint's kept body,Trove of the turfcutters'Honeycombed workings.Now his stained faceReposes at Aarhus.

“Tollund Man”

IIISomething of his sad freedomAs he rode the tumbrilShould come to me, driving,Saying the namesTollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,Watching the pointing handsOf country people,Not knowing their tongue.Out there in JutlandIn the old man-killing parishesI will feel lost,Unhappy and at home.

II

I could risk blasphemy,Consecrate the cauldron bogOur holy ground and prayHim to make germinateThe scattered, ambushedFlesh of labourers,Stockinged corpsesLaid out in the farmyards,Tell-tale skin and teethFlecking the sleepersOf four young brothers, trailedFor miles along the lines.

Kavanagh’s “EPIC”World War I and Homer’s Iliad

“EPIC”I have lived in important places, times

When great events were decided: who owned

That half a rood of rock, a no man’s land

Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims,

I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’

And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen

Step to plot defying blue cast-steel-

‘Here is the march along these iron stones’

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which

Was most important? I inclined

To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin

Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind

He said: I made the Iliad from such

A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Longley’s “Laertes” and “Ceasefire”Greek Epics and Northern Ireland

Longley’s “Laertes”When he found Laertes alone on the tidy terrace, hoeing

Around a vine, disreputable in his gardening duds,

Patched and grubby, leather gaiters protecting his shins

Against bramblers, gloves as well, and to cap it all,

Sure sign of his deep depression, a goatskin duncher,

Odysseus sobbed in the shade of a pear-tree for his father

So old and pathetic that all he wanted then and there

Was to kiss him and hug him and blurt out the whole story,

But the whole story is one catalogue and then another,

So he waited for images from that formal garden,

Evidence of a childhood spent traipsing after his father

And asking for everything he saw, the thirteen pear-trees,

Ten apple-trees, forty fig-trees, the fifty rows of vines

Ripening at different times for a continuous supply,

Until Laertes recognised his son and, weak at the knees,

Dizzy, flung his arms around the neck of great Odysseus

Who drew the old man fainting to his breast and held him there

And cradled like driftwook the bones of his dwindling father.

Longley’s “Ceasefire”

I

Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears

Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king

Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and

Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

II

Taking Hector’s corpse into his hands Achilles

Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake,

Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry

Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

III

When they had eaten together, it pleased them both

To stare at each’s other’s beauty as lovers might,

Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still

And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV

‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done

And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.”

Yeats ”Easter 1916”The Birth of a Republic

VI. The Stare’s Nest by My Window

The bees build in the crevices

Of loosening masonry, and there

The mother birds bring grubs and flies,

My wall is loosening; honey-bees,

Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned

On our certainty; somewhere

A man is killed, or a house burned,

Yet no clear fact to be discerned:

Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;

Some fourteen days of civil war;

Last night the trundled down the road

That dead young soldier in his blood:

Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart of fantasies

The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love; O honey-bees,

Come build in the empty house of the stare.

*From Meditations in Time of Civil War

W. B. Yeats

Joyce’s UlyssesTrieste – Zurich – Paris,1914-1921

An Irish Jew based

on a Greek hero

Flann O’Brien’s ‘The Third Policeman’A Joycean comic!

Frank O’Connor’s ‘My Oedipus Complex’

“But as time went on I saw more and more how he managed to alienate Mother and me. What made it worse was that I couldn’t grasp his method or see what attaction he had for Mother. In every possible way he was less winning than I. He had a common accent and made noises at his tea. I thought for a while that it might be the newspapers she was interested in, so I made up bits of news of my own to read to her. Then I thought it might be the smoking, which I personally thought attractive, and took his pipes and went round the house dribbling into them until he caught me. I even made noises at my tea, but Mother only told me I was disgusting. It all seemed to hinge round that unhealthy habit of sleeping together, so I made a point of dorpping into their bedroom and nosing round, talking to myself, so that they wouldn’t know I was watching them, but they were never up to anything that I could see. In the end it beat me. It seemed to depend on being grown-up and giving people rings, and I realized I’d have to wait.But at the same time I wanted him to see that I was only waiting, not giving up the fight. One evening when he was being particularly obnoxious, chattering away well above my head, I let him have it.…/…

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…/…‘Mummy,’ I said, ‘do you know what I’m going to do when I grow up?’‘No, dear,’ she replied. ‘What?’‘I’m going to marry you,’ I said quietly.Father gave a great guffaw out of him, but he didn’t take me in. I knew it must only be pretence. And Mother, in spite of everything, was pleased. I felt she was probably relieved to know that one day Father’s hold on her would be broken.‘Won’t that be nice?’ she said with a smile.‘It’ll be very nice,’ I said confidentialy. ‘Because we’re going to have lots and lots of babies.’‘That’s right, dear,’ she said placidly. ‘I think we’ll have one soon, and then you’ll have plenty of company.’I was no end pleased about that because it showed that in spite of the way she gave in to Father she still considered my wishes. Besides, it would put the Geneys in their place.It didn’t turn like that, though.”

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Kate O’BrienA Limerick woman and Spain

‘MARIE-ROSE sat at her dressing table in dim lamp-light and brushed her silky gold hair, which curled and lolled very prettily against her shoulder. In spite of weary lines about her eyes, she was looking –she could not but admit – delicious. She ran her hand affectionately along her smooth young cheek, and mused with an impartial pleasure upon the whiteness of her throat. The white frills of her night dress, the flounces and ruches of her white silk wrap, foamed delicately, and made a dramatic darkness of the shadows in which she sat.She gazed and meditated –and pleasure grew less impartial and more tender. With pity at last she studied herself, remembering the life of clash and resistance in which her beauty was compelled to wither.And there was no escape, not even here in her own home! Oh, if only he hadn’t come to-day! If only she could have had this interval of peace with Nag! Tears filled her eyes, and she let them fall, leaning her cheek on her hand, and staring into the glass.”

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Montague’s ‘A Welcoming Party’Ireland and Auschwitz

Brian Friel

John Boyne’s‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’

Auschwitz again

Hogan’s ‘Lebanon Lodge’A story of Irish Jews

Light Relief!Flann O’Brien’s

AT-SWIM-TWO-BIRDS

Beckett’s ‘Catastrophe”Ireland and Czechoslovakia

Some Mother’s Son - The Auld Enemy – Ireland and Britain –

The Civil ServantHe was preparing an Ulster fry for breakfastWhen someone walked into the kitchen and shot him:A bullet entered his mouth and pierced his skull,The books he had read, the music he could play.

He lay in his dressing gown and pyjamasWhile they dusted the dresser for fingerprintsAn then shuffled backwards across the gardenWith notebooks, cameras and measuring tapes.

They rolled him up like a red carpet and leftOnly a bullet hole in the cutlery drawer:Later his widow took a hammer and chiselAnd removed the black keys from his piano.

Wreath

s - Michael Longley

The GreengrocerHe ran a good shop, and he diedServing even the death-dealersWho found him busy as usualBehind the counter, organisedWith holly wreaths for Christmas,Fir trees on the pavement outside.

Astrologers or three wise menWho may shortly be setting outFor a small house up the ShankillOr the Falls, should pause on their wayTo buy gifts at Jim Gibson’s shop,Dates and chesnuts and tangerines.

Wreath

s - Michael Longley

The Linen WorkersChrist’s teeth ascend with him into heaven:Through a cavity in one of his molarsThe wind whistles: he is fastened for everBy his exposed canines to a wintry sky.I am blinded by the blaze of that smileAnd by the memory of my father’s false teethBrimming in their tumbler: they wore bubblesAnd, outside of his body, a deadly grin.When they massacred the ten linen workersThere fell on the road beside them spectacles,Wallets, small change, and a set of dentures:Blood, food particles, the bread, the wine.Before I can bury my father once againI must polish the spectacles, balance themUpon his nose, fill his pockets with moneyAnd into his dead mouth slip the set of teeth.

Wreath

s - Michael Longley

‘The Commitments”Based on Roddy Doyle’s novel

Thank you!