The Pogues, Synge, and Clancy's Kitchen

“Riders to the Sea” by J. M. Synge is intense, sustained, tragic perfection.  With a title referring to the Old Testament God (or stories) of Exodus and the New Testament God (or stories) of Revelation as well as the overwhelming and all-consuming fate-like presence of the sea, it paints a bleak picture of life in its inevitable journey towards death. It is riddled with what must be symbolism: a pale horse, a red mare, white boards, the pig with the black feet, a rope, crowing cocks, and a spinning wheel.  But like life itself, the symbols are not always clear. The priest (who never appears in the play) has claimed that Maurya (the old mother) should not be worried about her last living son going out to sea. “Almighty God won’t leave her destitute,” the priest says, “with no son living.”  The sea, it seems, has other plans. Maurya at the end, after the death of 6 sons, says “No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.” It feels like resignation, but it could be courage in the face of overwhelming loss and a battle that seems hopeless. All we can do is be and endure, or not to be and not endure. Endurance itself is impressive.

We went to see a musical performance as guests of the Waterford Festival of Food that is held each year in Dungarvan.  The band we saw was Clancy’s Kitchen, which is a folk band comprised of the descendants of The Clancy Brothers.  They played folk favorites before an adoring audience and also played a version of “The Broad Majestic Shannon” by the Pogues. Clancy’s Kitchen put their own spin on it.  Of course, when I returned back to the townhouses, I felt compelled to find the original to listen to again.  The Pogues were a favorite of mine in my earlier days, and I began thinking of how fitting many of their songs would be for us to listen to in class.  “Thousands are Sailing” is a tune that could work well on our final day of class. Certainly, we can make some connections between Clancy’s Kitchen, The Pogues, and Synge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPim4PR_UvI

Poetry of Place

 This time, travelling to Ireland with students, I was able to return to two places that are associated with Irish poets.  Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle Pennisula is associated with Seamus Heaney and his poem “In Gallarus Oratory” and Thoor Ballylee just outside Coole Park is often referred to as Yeats’ Tower, as it is the place where he lived later in life. In both places I read some poems for students and in both places, I was recorded.  It is always a bit shocking to be captured on video, but I will share, nonetheless.

It is sad that Thoor Ballylee isn’t open to visitors, or should I say, the inside wasn’t open when we were there.  I know it had suffered from substantial flooding in recent years, and the damage inside to the electrical system and flooring was certainly intense.  Outside, it was nice to see recent improvements to signage and parking, which does suggest some hope for monies for refurbishment in the future.  It isn’t the easiest place to find or to drive to as it sits far from the main road, and the lanes are narrow and winding.  That was and is part of the attraction, I think. The tower sits near a stream and is tucked away. It is a quiet, beautiful, woody, and welcoming place.

Gallarus Oratory sits on a hill, and if the newly planted row of trees wasn’t there, it would be utterly exposed. It offers sweeping views across the rocky landscape and a commanding view of the three sisters (a group of three peaks) out in the ocean. With broad views of land, sea, and sky, it is no surprise that the early monks would have come to it as a place of transcendence.

The two places are quite unique and quite different from each other, and yet they both provide great inspiration for great poetry. Like a pilgrim, it was delightful and refreshing for me to return to each.

For Those Who Care

 

We are having another sunny day in Dungarvan.  It was cloudy and a bit rainy last week, but it has been good for every side trip we have taken.  Actually, we have only had two rainy days the whole time we have been here. Today is a bank holiday in Ireland (Easter Monday) so government agencies and many businesses are closed. The news about the death of Pope Francis is just now being heard by the people of Dungarvan.  I had coffee with some locals this morning, and they were, as yet, unaware. His death has particular meaning not only because of it happening the morning after Easter, but also for what he has represented. For the Irish, this Pope has been particularly loved because of his stance on immigration, human dignity, people on the margins, and the poor.  Irish history makes the people here particularly sympathetic with those causes.

The suffering of oppressed people is on the minds lately around the world, but particularly it seems from both the former pope and the Irish.  The Irish know what it means to be oppressed, and they know what it means to receive harsh treatment.

Seamus Heaney remembers General Sir James Dombrain in “For the Commander of the Eliza,” who felt compelled to “interfere” and offer help when he saw people starving during the 1846 famine in Ireland.  While he was English, and “had no mandate to relieve distress” (17), he “urged free relief / For famine victims in the Westport Sector / And earned tart reprimand from good Whitehall” (30-32). Clearly the use of “good” to describe Whitehall is ironic.  The speaker of the poem is a commander who isn't as sympathetic as Dombrain and thus doesn’t offer help to 6 starving people, refusing them food even though they had “gaping mouths and eyes / Bursting the sockets” (8-9). The brutality of his actions culminate in him thinking “Let natives prosper by their own exertions; / Who could not swim might go ahead and sink” (33-34). He easily absolves himself from any responsibility, but the reader realizes that choosing to do nothing in this type of situation is an action that must have consequences. 

A Return to Yeats - The Two Worlds

Yeats says, "I have no speech but symbol." Yeats also says: "Man can embody truth, but he cannot know it. . . . You can refute Hegel but not the Saint or the Song of Sixpence" (quoted in Ellmann, Yeats 285). Ellmann claims, "each Yeats poem is likely to begin in decadence, and to end in renaissance . . . in general, the poems present decadence in order to overcome it" ("Uses" 14). Finally, Ellmann says there are two worlds in Yeats' poems, the natural and the "daimonic" world. In the first, "the life that we generally experience . . . is incomplete, but at moments it appears to transcend itself and yield moments of completeness or near- completeness, moments as he says half-humorously in the poem "There,"- "all the barrel- hoops are knit, . . . all the serpent-tails are bit." In his early work Yeats conceives of the boundary line between the worlds of completeness and incompleteness as twilit, in his later work it is lit by lightning" ("Yeats Without" 26).

Many of the later poems try to find a way to reconcile these contradictions in this world, often through images like ceremony, custom, courtesy, dancer and dance. Ellmann also writes, "Every poem establishes alternatives to indicate only one choice is worth making, and that [is] the agonized, unremunerative one" ("Yeats Without" 29). Finally, he says that Yeats' "poems take one of two directions: either they are visionary, concerned with matters of prophecy, of the relations of the time-world and daimonic timelessness, or with their own secret hopes and ambitions. In the visionary poems such as "Leda and the Swan" or "The Second Coming," Yeats is concerned to intermesh the divine world with the animal, to show the world of time as centaurlike, beautiful and monstrous, aspiring and deformed. In the poems which deal with artists or with heroes or with other men, he wishes also to show how brute fact may be transmogrified, how we can sacrifice ourselves, in the only form of religious practice he sanctions, to our imagined selves which offer far higher standards than anything offered by social convention" ("Yeats Without" 32).

** Liberally taken from: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Yeats.html **

                                                         Works Cited
Ellmann, Richard. "The Uses of Decadence." a long the riverrun: Selected Essays.
        New York: R-H-Vintage, 1990. 3-17.
- - -.Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: Dutton, 1948.
- - -"Yeats Without Analogue." a long the riverrun: Selected Essays. New York:
        R-H- Vintage, 1990. 18-32.
Yeats, W. B. The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1965. _______________________________________________________________________

Digging More Deeply in Dublin

I was able to go back to Dublin again this weekend. Of the major European cities I have visited in my life, I am certain I have been to Dublin the most times. It is a fine city, a “fair city,” and a very walkable city. This time I was able to be there with my wife for a few days. She and I have been there together two times before, so this was a return for both of us. Yet, our time in Dublin this time was leisurely and self-directed. We did what we wanted without any timelines or schedules to follow. For me, I was able to see things I had never really seen before, or things I wanted to see in more depth. We looked at Christchurch Cathedral and took time to follow along with the self-guided tour to see the burial site of Strongbow, a rare copy of the Magna Carta, and some amazing architectural features like stained glass windows and ornately tiled floors. We were in no rush. The original building dates to 1080, so there are many layers to explore. It was wonderful to have the time to take it in fully.

    We also went to Dublin Castle, which I have seen many times before, but I have never toured the state rooms. It is a place full of grandeur and history. It was here that Ireland was handed over to the Irish, ceremonially to Michael Collins, and it is also here where James Connolly spent his last days before he was executed for his involvement in the Easter Rising. In other places, like the Throne Room, the Irish government decided to leave the building, with all its English details and decorations to remind itself about its past. Above the throne there is a lion (representing England) and a unicorn (representing Scotland). Each animal has a harp in its clutches.

    The symbolism is strikingly clear. But other elements are there to represent the Irish as an independent nation, including many artworks that have been added to the collections by Irish artists, and many portraits of modern Irish leaders. The last room of the tour is Saint Patrick’s Hall, a place where many banquets, state dinners, inaugurations, balls, and ceremonies have been held. A display provides details of the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 2011 where she laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance and talked about the complexity of English / Irish relations over their long history. She stated that now “we can all see the things that we wish had been done differently, or not at all.” In the video of her speech, I was delighted to see Seamus Heaney sitting at her table. The poet is given pride of place. Then we also saw the Chester Beatty Library, which is chocked full of very early manuscripts and illuminated texts. It is a marvelous collection. There is much more to explore in Dublin if we ever return. Like Christchurch Cathedral, it has a long history, and many complex layers to explore.

The Dungarvan / Lismore Connection

 

Dungarvan Castle

A short trip to Lismore on another sunny day was well worth the time.  We took a short but historically interesting tour of the town, saw an impressive VR tour of Lismore Castle, and had a lovely bowl of soup and toastie sandwich at a local pub. For me, it was a stop that brought much of the history of Ireland and the local area of County Waterford and Dungarvan together. Lismore Castle, built by King John in the later 1100s, is the same man that built Dungarvan Castle. The Dukes of Devonshire built the bridge in Dungarvan across the Colligan River and the bridge in Lismore across the River Blackwater. And Tom Keith gets recognized and stopped on the street in both Lismore and Dungarvan.  Of course the towns are not too far apart, and especially today with the Local Link bus service, there are many links between the two. Lismore’s history seems richer in the modern sense because of its connection to John F. Kennedy, Fred Astaire, and the Cavendish family.  It was also the birthplace of Robert Boyle (the father of modern Chemistry), the onetime home of Sir Walter Raleigh (when he was still in the good graces of Queen Elizabeth I), and the home of the Book of Lismore (a book full of early Irish manuscripts including many stories from the Fenian Cycle).

Lismore Castle

But Dungarvan, too, has a rich history. Ernest Walton (from Abbeyside) won the Nobel prize for Physics in 1951. There is the story of (or mythology of) Mrs. Nagle who saved the town from Cromwell’s invaders in the 1640’s.  It is claimed that she drank to his health when he entered the town.  One of Cromwell’s generals died in town around the same time, so I’m thinking there is much more to this story.  There are also several famous shipwrecks in Dungarvan including the SS Coningbeg and the SS Formby that were torpedoed by the Germans in 1917. And then, of course, there is Gallows Hill.  Dungarvan has a rich history.  It’s less Hollywood than Lismore, but more significantly Irish in its stories methinks.

Gallows Hill

The Depth of Irish Bogs

 

As I have been looking for a newer Irish woman author for my classes on Irish literature, I’ve been trying out a few different names that have been given to me.  Sally Rooney was suggested, and so I picked up a copy of Normal People.  Rooney is a talented writer with a creative narrative style, and in this book her two young-adult characters, Connell and Marianne, lead troubled and complicated lives. They are compelling, and richly painted characters.  At first, I felt uncomfortable with Connell (and his treatment of Marianne) and then I became uncomfortable with Marianne.  They are two characters that develop, but maybe not in the most positive ways. It is a novel that explores mental health issues, sexual desire, and changing relationships.  Overall, it was a book that made me uncomfortable, which is not always a bad thing for a novel to do, but in this case the plot left me convinced that it wasn’t something that would transition easily into the classroom for me. So that was crossed off the list. 

Then I found a copy of Bog Child at the local charity shop.  It is a work that I had heard about, and because of the “Bog Poems” by Seamus Heaney that I had already assigned in previous classes, I thought it would tie in well.  Set in the 1980s, Bog Child, by Siobhan Dowd was a quite enjoyable read.  It is set against a backdrop of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the somewhat random boundary line between the two countries, the issue of ownership (of the past and of the present), the hunger strikers, the Provisional IRA, religious differences, and of course, the recovery of and the mystery around a bog body. It is a quick read that I would categorize as Young-Adult fiction, but I do think I would use it for a class if I travel with students to Ireland again. It has so many possibilities for tying into Irish culture, history, and the literature we read. It is a work that does a good job of presenting the depth of the Irish experience.  As Heaney writes in “Bogland” “Every layer they strip / seems camped on before. / The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. / The wet center is bottomless” (25-28).