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).

Good Day Sunshine : Dungarvan Edition

 

It’s another beautiful day in Dungarvan. 52 degrees and sunny.  That’s the normal temperature pretty much year-round, I think.  It is a bit warmer in the summer and a bit colder some days in the winter, but they don’t get temperature extremes like we do in the States during the different seasons.  They call the south of Ireland the “Sunny Coast.”  That name seems to have merit. Ireland is known for being rainy, but we have been lucky with weather, and lucky to be in the sunny part of Ireland. Today we wrapped up the poetry of William Butler Yeats, a Nobel Prize winning Irish poet.  Today’s poems were written later in Yeats’ life, and thus they are a bit more difficult and a bit longer winded. That is something I can relate to. The students did well with them. Yeats describes the changing cycles of the seasons, the circles of life, the spirals “turning and turning in the widening gyre” (1) as described in “the Second Coming,” and the “bell-beat” (17) of the swans’ wings as they “scatter wheeling in great broken rings” (11) as described in "The Wild Swans at Coole." Seasons change, but in the cycle of life some things remain constant, like the repetition of the cycle itself.  We finished today’s class with “Among School Children” which I think is a reflection on the cycle, or arc, of life.  It is about youth and age, the corporal and the spiritual, restrictive learning and expansive imagination, art and nature, spiritual love and earthly love, and how these things are not easily separated into oppositions or component parts. The stages of life cannot be separated from life itself, Yeats may be saying. All these things are needed to form something complete, like “the yolk and the white of the one shell” (16). All the seasons are needed, and all the stages of life are needed in order to have a whole. And so, the winter turns to spring, and the spring turns to summer, and the seasons change, if only somewhat when one is in Ireland. 

"Our guttural muse / was bulled"

 “I’m wishing that she won’t be having a beef with me.” – “No, indeed, no, I’m certain.” This exchange was heard between a local young man and a local young lady who were crossing the Greenway bridge with me.  I find myself eavesdropping on conversations to try and pick up the phrasing. They were walking, as young people do, much quicker than me. I wish I could have heard more, but they were soon out of ear shot.  “No, indeed, no” is something I hear often, as is “God willing” and Thanks God.”  I say, “I’ll see you later” and the response is “God willing.” I say, “It’s a beautiful day” and the response is “Thanks God.”  I’ve heard some people using “sound” instead of “thank you” or “that’s good.”  “Are you alright?” they might ask at the pub.  The response is “Pint of Guiness.”  When the pint is served, they say “Here’s you,” or a plain "Now." The response from the patron as they pay might be “Sound.” It is a unique way of communicating that is essentially Irish. 

I also like phrases like “how is himself?” and “your man, there” and “I’m after going for a coffee,” and “he does be a bit dense.” Again, this doesn’t follow convention, or should I say the conventions of others. The poem “Traditions” by Seamus Heaney starts “Our guttural muse / was bulled long ago / by the alliterative tradition” (1-3).  The word “bulled” is interesting here because it is a word that isn’t much in use anymore, but it is much like bullied, or being pushed, I think. I also do believe that the alliterative tradition, like the alliterative revival, is seen as a bit of an easy way to construct poetry, and could certainly be tied to English rather than Irish wordsmiths. Heany might see it as a bit lazy, or uninteresting.  But the Irish way of phrasing things defies English grammar and pushes back against the expectations of outsiders. Maybe it is a language of resistance, or, at least, maybe it is a language that doesn’t want to be constrained by rules.  Makes sense.

Heart of Stone - Deep Heart's Core

 

The Kenmare stone circle, suprisingly quite near the center of town, was well worth seeing.  Not only did we get to have a substantial chat with the local man who manned the entrance and who grew up “at the bottom of the street,” but we also were able to see the circle in our own small group.  There was time to ponder the place and there were ample fairy trees on hand where we left some wishes. My wish was politically motivated and aimed towards a hope for better times in the States.  It was a wish, or a dream for a better future. 

In class, I know there is some interest in pre-Christian sites and works of art, which made me think of Yeats’s “To Some I have Talked with by the Fire.”  To me the poem is about ancient desire that Yeats feels needs to be rekindled: “of the dark folk who live in souls / Of passionate men, like bats in dead trees; / And of the wayward twilight companies / Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content, / Because their blossoming dreams have never bent / Under the fruit of evil and of good” (4-9). It is about the brooding passions of old, intense, authentic, dark, deep, Irish blood that will rise up and “like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name” (12).  This is the hope for something that can’t be spoken of, or named just yet.  For Yeats this may have meant a united and free Ireland. To me (via the wish on the fairy tree) it might stand for the dream of a rational, free, empathetic, and ethical government. In “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” Yeats is asking for, or hoping for, a shift in our way of thinking and seeing the world.  He does not write a lament about the glories of the past, or a desire to return to the old ways (Make Ireland Great Again).  Instead, he asks for “New Dreams, new dreams” (26). The salvation from the shackles we have placed upon ourselves, the “mind-forged manacles” (as Blake would say), comes from words that celebrate the good parts of the past, but that are also pointed to a progressive future. As he reminds us at the outset of “The Song of the Happy Shepheard,” ---“The woods of Acardy are dead” (1).

Full Circle Irish - A Positive Spin on Eternal Return

 

Today we had a walking tour of Dungarvan with an old friend who is a local historian and a man who everyone in town knows.  He was very active in the first years when Mercyhurst was coming to Ireland, including the first year, 2010, that I was a part of.  He is beginning to be forgetful, and he moves a bit more slowly, so we didn’t cover as much physical ground as we have in the past, but we covered a good amount of historical and cultural ground.  He continues to delight everyone with his gentle demeanor, his good humor, and of course his Irish sensibility.  At one point he mentioned Oliver Cromwell coming through town on his march of destruction, and he made as if he needed to spit.  This pleased me, but I’m not sure that everyone understood the implications of the gesture.  I remembered the 1^st time I was in Ireland, many years ago, and a man told me that when some Irish say Cromwell, they may need to spit.  They must get the bad taste out of their mouths, he said. The walking tour of life continues to repeat itself, but each new time is a blessing.  We hear the story again in different ways and in different places.  It is the same and anew. 

The tour made us a bit late for starting my class today, but the students were happy to stay a bit later to finish the poetry we are working on.  It is cold and windy today, so they were not itching to get outside.  It gave us some time to look at some extra Yeats poetry (beyond the required reading). This included a short, but famous piece:

Last night at the “Upstairs Reading/Music Group” at Downey’s we heard an old Irish tale performed in the character of a Shanachie.  We also heard an acapella rendition of “Down by the Sally Gardens.”  Everything comes full cycle in Ireland for those with eyes that see and ears that hear.

“The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” – Invisible Imprisonments of Mind and Body in The Crock of Gold

 

Many students travelling with me in Ireland this semester are Criminal Justice majors.  They are taking a class in their area of study and seeing (or not really seeing) the Irish Guarda (police). They also hope to tour a prison.  They have noted that there seem to be fewer prisons, and it would appear that the police presence is not as visible on the streets as one might find in the states.  I think they use cameras for surveillance more, which is an interesting difference.  I wonder if the long history of law enforcement, from what some would call an occupying and oppressive force, creates a desire for a less visual presence of authority. 

In James Stephens’ The Crock of Gold, the police that come to arrest and imprison the Philosopher are a bumbling, comic, absurd lot. They are like a slapstick retelling of the old Keystone Cops.  For Stephens, part of the police officers’ problem is that they enforce un-natural law. The Philosopher, who is also a comic representation himself states “I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen, . . . nor do I understand how the custom first originated.  Dogs and cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their polity is progressive and orderly” (93). The novel suggests that there needs to be a balance in all things, and yet it clearly presents the importance of the heart (instead of just the head), the passions (instead of only reason), and the “divine imagination” that can be awakened in all of us (rather the rigidness of mundane reality and law). 

At the end of the book, Angus Og (an old Irish god) has been reawakened, replacing the foreign gods (like Pan), and the newer man-made forces like the police. He tells his people “The dark people of the Formor have ye in thrall; and upon your minds have fastened a band of lead, your hearts are hung with iron, and about your loins a cincture of brass impressed, woeful!  Believe it, that the sun does shine, the flowers grow, and the birds sing pleasantly in the trees.  The free winds are everywhere” (140). In this hopeful conclusion, the Philosopher is freed from prison, and the people are freed from the prisons they have constructed in their minds.  We could hope the same for ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Good Craic at Minnie's

 

“Good craic at Minnie’s tonight” echoed down the dark, cool streets. “Indeed it was” was the reply.  True enough. An evening of trivia in “table quiz” fashion with music, banter, and an exuberance of Irish hospitality, all in support of the Augustinian Foreign Missions, sponsored by the Dungarvan Friary Church, was unquestionably the event of the week for me. My table partners, who identified themselves as Mary, Kate, and Ashley, were top prize winners. I was delighted by their clever game playing: listening to the talk at other tables, carefully writing their answers down so others might not see, and then whispering the same answers to friends that were struggling to solve an anagram or riddle. It was all in good fun and for a good cause. The music sections of the quiz, where the crowd was encouraged to sing along (until the music stopped) and then were asked to record the verse that followed, never really worked.  Or maybe, it worked wonderfully.  The crowd never stopped singing, and so the answers were revealed to all.  “That’s the fun of it!” said Mary, Kate, and Ashley. “No one can stop singing!”

What's in a Name?

 In Dungarvan, there is a wealth of eating establishments, a bevy of coffee shops, and a multitude of public houses. In each, there is rich and plentiful conversation. I’ve tried to record (in writing) or reconstruct a few that I’ve heard today.

Conversation heard at Ormond’s Café:

What’s the difference between a Blaa and a Bap?
Did you mean the Breakfast Blaa?
Yes, is it a Bap?
Well, no..
What is it then?
Well it’s like a Bap, but here we name it a Blaa.
So it is a Bap then?
No, no.. A Bap’s a Bap and a Blaa’s a Blaa.
Well then, what’s the difference?
I don’t rightly know. Do ye want one then?
Well, if it’s a Bap, I’ll have one.
Ok then.

The rhythm and sound of the language here is wonderful, but I can’t rightly say exactly why it’s so enjoyable to listen to.  It’s like playful banter. It’s like music.  It’s fun and it’s quick witted. It seems to depend on questions and to steer clear of resolution. It delights in itself.

Conversation heard at the Enterprise Bar:

Billy, who was that girl in here yesterday?
What do you mean?
Who was she?
That’s Marianne, that.
Oh yes, that’s a darlin’ name, that. Is she a local girl?
Never-you-mind that, there.  She’s too young and too good for ye.
Too good you say Billy?
Yes, it don’t take much, by God, for the likes of you.
Ah Billy, you’re painin’ me.  That’s not right.
Well I should give you a pain, for all you gives me.

Both conversations, in the café and in the bar, were dotted with laughter and dramatic expression.  The conversations sparkled. The repetitions resonated.  It was appealing to me on what seemed to be a subconscious level.

Seamus Heaney writes a poem (or many poems) about the sounds of Irish language and the etymology of English names and phrases in Ireland. The words and the sounds of the words have meanings. In “A New Song,” he emphasizes the importance of language beginning the poem with “I met a girl from Derrygarve / And the name, a lost potent musk, / Recalled the river’s long swerve” (1-3). Here, the name of the place, and not the name of the girl, has the effect. The word Derrygarve, like Dungarvan, has a deep historical meaning associated with it.  I know (or think I know) that Dun stands for fort.  I suspect that garve stands for a bend in the river. Derry is a proud Irish name in the North. To come from Derrygarve conjures up poetic meaning. To come from Dungarvan is to come from a location whose very name speaks a grounded and ancient sense of place.

Upstairs at Downey’s

 

Downey’s is a place I’ve been before. The craic is grand and the session playing is spontaneous and authentic. It is the place in Dungarvan that is best known by outsiders as a U2 bar, where the band has visited, and “your man” Bono has been more than once.  In Dungarvan itself, it may be best known for its warm hospitality and a tradition of “bucket singing.”  That is something I may have time to get to in the future.  I can tell you are intrigued.  Right now, I’m interested in telling you about upstairs at Downey’s.  I’ve never been upstairs before last evening.  It seems on Tuesday nights a group gathers upstairs to recite poetry, sing songs, and tell stories. A colleague of mine from Mercyhurst and I had the honor and privilege of being invited upstairs to witness it for ourselves.  To me, it was magical.

Mr. Power, a family name well known in the area as one-time brewers and many times voice of Irish patriotism, was the master of ceremonies. To get us started, he recited two Shakespearian soliloquies in dramatic fashion including from Richard III:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Of course he recited the full version.  We also heard a sonnet recited by a young man, some poetry recited in Irish by an older gentleman, a song by Sarah McLauchlan sung by a visiting young lady, and some original compositions by others as the guitar was passed around the group.  What a beautiful and meaningful way to cap off our first full day in Dungarvan. My hope is there will be many more opportunities to go upstairs at Downey’s on a Tuesday evening.  When the time comes, maybe I’ll even have the moxie to recite.

Back to the Dẻise

 

Tomorrow evening about 24 people from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania will be heading to Ireland.  We will go to Dungarvan, in County Waterford, known historically as The Dẻise, and home to Mercyhurst Dungarvan since 2010.  I’m proud to say I was with the first group who travelled there from Mercyhurst. I’m also humbled to say that this year will not only mark the 15^th anniversary of our relationship with Dungarvan, but also my third time of having the privilege of bringing our students to study there. They are in for a treat. Dungarvan is a lovely seaside town with lovely people. It is the perfect homebase for our students to experience the hospitality and culture of Ireland.

This year many of the students are Criminal Justice majors, but we also have a contingent of English majors and others who will take classes in Criminal Justice, Irish Culture, Irish Literature, and Ethics. We will journey out on short excursions to Dublin and Belfast, and we will travel to the west to visit Dingle, Galway, and the Cliffs of Moher. It will be magical.

How fitting that students in my Irish Literature class will start by reading James Stephens’s novel Crock of Gold, a work chock-full of mythology, folklore, philosophy, and Irish humor. I’m excited to read it again. We will of course also read some Joyce, Yeats, Heaney, Synge, and other great Irish authors. What a delightful way to transition into spring!

Oscar Wilde - Man of Fashion and Letters

       


 While we are not reading Oscar Wilde in this travelling class, my lord we should be.  If only time permitted.  There are some sites in Dublin associated with Wilde, and so he is doubly worth thinking about.

We remember Wilde as a critic, a poet, an essayist, a dramatist, a letter writer, and a novelist who lived his life his way, as an eccentric genius, full of enthusiasm, decadence and flair, which ultimately ended too soon, and indeed most tragically.

If we begin at the beginning, it is easy to see that Oscar Wilde came by his eccentric genius honestly.  Wilde’s mother, whose name was Jane Frances, demanded that everyone refer to her as Francesca Speranza. She felt her poetry (she was a poet) was so infectious that if the public was exposed to it, they would catch her poetic fever, and it would spread through the country like a contagion.   She repeated this so regularly that she became known as Francesca Speranza Influenza Wilde.

The reputation of Wilde’s father, a famous eye and ear doctor in Dublin, in the Merrion Square neighborhood of Dublin (where there is a lovely statue of Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock) was even more widespread that his son. His fame, involving chlorophorm, an ex-lover, and a lengthy trial is too complex to get into here. It does serve to show that the Wilde men do not fare well with litigious lovers.

Take warning, Dear Oscar.

We know very little about Oscar as a child, other than from his mother. She, who seems to be attached to impressive names, dubbed her second son, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.  A flair for extravagance is rooted early in Oscar as well. An early piece of his writing comes to us as a letter to his mother while at summer camp, age 13. 

Oscar Wilde Statue - Merrion Square Dublin

It starts thus:

“Darling Mama,

The [clothes] hamper came today and I never got such a jolly surprise.  It was more than kind of you to send it, though the flannel shirts you sent are . . . not mine.  Mine, as you may remember, are the one quite scarlet and the other that divine lilac shade . . .”

Not the typical note one might get from a young lad at summer camp, but Oscar Wilde, my friends, was in no way typical. He was certainly a man of fashion.

At Trinity College in Dublin, Wilde became attracted to the Aestheticism movement, and thus he decided to always surround himself with beautiful things, and here is when he decided to make his symbol the lily.  When asked why he chose the lily, he respond by saying “Because it is the most beautiful, and useless thing in the world.”

When Wilde finished his time at Trinity, he also, in essence, finished his time in Ireland, moving to Oxford England to escape the confining and claustrophobic atmosphere of Dublin. James Joyce, his fellow Irishman, who we will hear about in our next reading, would heartily agree with these sentiments.  In Oxford, Wilde did well in his classes, but they did not take up too much of his time, as he spent much of his time furnishing and refurnishing his rooms.  Again, surrounding himself with beauty as well as variety.   After one of his great refurbishings (and there were many), he noted “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”

In his 20s Wilde was known mostly for his entertaining wit at parties, his extravagance in dress, and his connection to the aesthetic movement. He had a successful speaking tour in America, where he notoriously presented a lecture to miners (in a mine mind you) in Leadville Colorado, where he spoke about the beauty of ornate silver.  He followed his presentation by drinking whiskey with the men.  He was a huge success.  Even so, he returned to England as a 28-year-old man who was still unsure of what he would do for a career.   

In part because of his well-documented travels in America, Wilde was a favorite topic in the newspapers, and as such, gossip and rumors began to spread about him, particularly that he was spending too much time with young men, and not enough time with young women.  In the Victorian age to be a homosexual, and a public figure even more so, was not tolerated by the ass…… by the puritanical moralists.  Family members and friends encouraged Oscar to find a wife.  Particularly a wealthy one.  He was successful, . . .  successfully marrying the wealthy Constance Lloyd, successfully designing her gown for the wedding, and successfully giving her two sons.  The marriage, though, was not ultimately successful.  Oscar preferred the company of young, intelligent, beautiful men, who shared an interest in the arts.  He was living a double life.

And so in 1890 Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Like much that was produced by Wilde, it created a sensation.  On one level, It is about a dashing young man and his pursuit of sensual pleasures.  Dorian Gray continues to look young and beautiful throughout the novel, even though his actions become more and more unacceptable to society and to himself.   It might be an ingenious commentary on the problem of seeing oneself in art. Indeed, a portrait that Gray keeps hidden in a remote upper room, takes on the physical costs of his actions and becomes hideous to look at.  And while the opening preface suggests that art and morality should remain separate, that art is for art’s sake, there seems to a theme in this novel about the problem of living the double life, or a warning about selfish hedonism.  At the end, mm Gray can no longer bear to look at the rotten image of his inner self that the portrait represents, and so in an eerie and delightful gothic moment, in his attempt to slash the picture, he instead just slashes himself.

Lord Alfred Douglas, a young beautiful man who also was the youngest son of the Marquis of Queensbury, impressed Wilde by saying he had memorized large passages from the work.  Lord Alfred Douglas was charming, and reckless, and he loved vexing his father, the Marquis of Queensbury.  Wilde and Lord Douglass became inseparable.

Now the Marquis of Queensbury, is a towering figure in the sport of Boxing.  If you know anything about boxing…..well you have me there….but I do know this…. there is something called the Queensbury rules.  They are named for him.

Not surprisingly Queensbury wanted his son to graduate from Oxford with a fine reputation, and thus he began tyrannizing his son.  The son used his relationship with Wilde to pester and enrage his father.  And indeed, it was clear to many that Lord Alfred Douglas was doing just that: Using Oscar Wilde.  In a way, we could say that:  Lord Douglas was good looking on the outside, but rotten inside. 

During this time Wilde pumped out may of his greatest works :Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) A Woman of no Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest a story that is in part about living the double life in (1895).  Like Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest was a sensation.

Indeed, The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest, wittiest, pun-filled (I did say Pun –filled) play you will ever see.  It questions whether marriage is a plague, or just a dull responsibility.  It skewers Victorian prudery and pretensions, and it presents a life of triviality, decadence, and the double-life as a life of liberty.  Both central male characters in the play have secret identities and activities.  Jack is Jack in the country and Earnest in the City.  Algenon is Algey in the City and Earnest in the country.  Neither is exactly Earnest.

In an attempt to cut Wilde down as he came to the height of his fame, Queensbury heightened his attacks on Wilde by leaving a calling card addressed to “Oscar Wilde, posing as a Sodomite” at his club for all the members to see. At least that is what is what was recorded as evidence by the judge.  The national Archives shows the original copy saying  - (either because Queensbury was in a rage, or in a rush, or just … ignorant) “Oscar Wilde Posing Somdomite – or Oscar Wilde posing a Somdomite”  - I’m not sure what either of those means….but it sounds compelling.  Anyway… Even though it created some embarrassment, we are told Wilde would have never done anything about it, but Lord Douglass egged him on demanding that Wilde take out a slander suit on his father, which Wilde finally agreed to do.  The trial did not last long and a second trial did not end in Wilde’s favor, Victorian England and all that rot. 

Ultimately, for his “Gross Indecency” The Judge sentenced Wilde to “Two years Hard Labor.”   This tragic sentence was a disaster for Wilde.  His name was removed from the playbills and he was pressed to sell most all of his beautiful furniture and possessions, including his blue china, to pay lawyer’s fees.  Worst of all, his time in prison weakened his heath immensely.  While he did not die there, he did not live long after his release. 

In a squalid Paris Hotel, Wilde died in poverty, without his beloved beautiful surroundings.  One of the last witticisms Wilde gives us is from this deathbed:

“My Wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.  One or the other of us has to go!”

But that isn’t the witticism I wish to leave you with.  Instead, let us turn back to the trial, whereas the Marquis of Queensbury leapt up and accused Wilde stating “You are in the gutter and you are dragging my son there too” – Wilde, in his erudite elegance retorted “We are all of us in the gutter, sir, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

 

 

Dog and Bear: Who Wins? (Who Cares?)

 

Near the end of Waverly, after Edward and Rose are married, they agree to “spend a few days at an estate which Colonel Talbot had been tempted to purchase in Scotland as a very great bargain” (367). It seems after the old Scottish estates were ransacked by the English, they could acquire them at a great discount.  Clever Brits.  It reminds me of the white flight – slum lord – urban decay - gentrification schemes we have seen (and are seeing) in the States. Anyway, after Colonel Talbot partially restores Tully-Veolan, and the Baron of Bradwardine is being shown his former ancestral home, there is an interesting exchange between Colonel Talbot and the Baron of Bradwardine.  As the Baron surveys the grounds, and sees the two great bears that previously adorned the gates returned to their rightful place, he exclaims, “While I acknowledge my obligation to you for the restoration of these images of bears as being the ancient badge of our family, I cannot but marvel that you have no where established your own crest, Colone Talbot, whilk is, I believe, a mastiff, anciently called a talbot” (369).  After a bit of poetry, Talbot assents that his crest would include a dog, and follows with “if crests were to dispute precedence, I should be apt to let them, as the proverb says, ‘fight dog, fight bear’”(369).  I found that a bit odd, or hard to make sense of, and even stranger that our editors didn’t include a footnote to help explain. While bears are not found in Scotland (at least not in modern times) there are some family crests that include the rampart bear or the bear’s head.  The dog image for Talbot makes me think of an English bulldog.  The bear could be symbolic for Scotland in a similar manner, but it isn’t as obvious to me.  That leaves us with the quote” fight dog, fight bear.” It seems there is an old Scottish proverb “Fight dog, fight bear; wha wins, deil care.”  I think that means who cares which wins.  Deil, I’m guessing, means the devil.  The devil may care, or nobody cares.  In a few pages we find out that Talbot has been restoring the estate for Waverly, who has purchased it to restore to the Baron, and who [Waverly] will inherit it as he has married the Baron’s daughter, Rose.  Who cares?  It’s all good.  No harm done. All the loose ends are tied up, and the Baron even has his old drinking vessel in the shape of a bear restored to him.  A toast is made to “The prosperity of the united houses of Waverly-Honour and Bradwardine” (374), and likewise the jacobite lays downs with the English.  The fight is over, and it seems who won doesn’t matter. The Devil may care.

The Bonnie Prince of Waverly

Charles Edward Stuart
(Bonnie Prince Charlie)
Painted by Allan Ramsay

In Waverly, our hero Edward is taken captive by English forces. His family name, family history, association with known Jacobites, some papers he has on his person, and his outraged demeanor all work against him. He is put on trial for treason and is hustled away towards Stirling Castle. This is where things get interesting. Edward will need to pick sides between the English loyalists and the Jacobites. His newly found Scottish friends, like Mac Ivor and even Donald Bean Lean are certainly behind the ambush of the English troops that secures Edward’s freedom. They bring Edward to Holyrood in Edinburgh (where we will be) which was acting as the center of Jacobite military and political power and the court (illegitimate court the English would say) of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). Bonnie Prince Charlie has recently joined the cause, coming from France undercover to help lead the forces to restore the Stuart royal line. When Mc Ivor, who meets Edward at Holyrood, introduces Edward to the “bonnie” prince, Edward is taken with him.
    Bonnie Prince Charlie, born in Rome, and educated in French courts, is a model of aristocratic manners and refinement. Scott describes him in Waverly as “A young man, wearing his own fair hair, distinguished by the dignity of his mien and noble expression of his well-formed and regular features” (213). The prince is likewise taken with Edward, noting that there would be “no master of ceremonies necessary to present a Waverly to a Stuart” (213). It seems the prince is familiar with Waverly’s family history, and so when the prince asks Edward to join the Jacobite cause, he quickly agrees. In his “Review Essay: Sir Walter Scott,” (Romanticism 16.1, 2010 page 94-99) Christopher MacLachlan states: “Scott’s story, of how the sensitive but naive young Englishman Edward Waverley finds himself caught up in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and carried by a mixture of personal affections and political manipulation to Edinburgh, a meeting with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and participation in Jacobite victory at the battle of Prestonpans, . . . is told with a sureness and vitality that lifted the novel as a form to a new height. . . . . His perception that history can be told through characters and personal relationships transformed the idea of the past and opened it up to Romantic understanding. Edward Waverley himself is like a time-traveller, a proto-Wordsworthian avid for nature and the sublime, mediating between the reader and the period of the novel at the same time as he assures us that a new sensibility will triumph over the divisiveness of the past” (99). Like Waverly, we are seduced by Bonnie Prince Charlie, but Scott may also be telling the reader that his aristocratic ideas, like the divine right of kings, are archaic. Scott suggests it is time to look at these old divisions between the Stuart and Hanover line with reason, after all (as we are continually reminded) it has been “sixty years since.” 

 Scott, Sir Walter. Waverly; Or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2015.

Remembering the Olde Cheese

 

I’m thinking back on the last time I travelled with students in London.  We were in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, an old pub (a bit touristy, but an old pub) with an interesting literary history.  Dickens supposedly wrote there, and the story goes that Oliver Goldsmith and James Boswell frequented the place. (But then, what place didn’t they frequent, one wonders.)  Anyway, in the pub was a group of seven or eight male orderlies from the nearby hospital.  They were talking a break after work. Big, burly, middle-aged men in their scrubs.  They could tell we were Americans, of course, and so they struck up a conversation.  When they found out we were studying literature they began to question us.  “What are you reading?” and more to the point “what do you know?” What they wanted to know, really, was what could we recite.  One of them stood up with his pint in hand and began reciting Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”  The students were stunned.  Another man began on Milton’s “Lycidas” and another did some Wordsworth, of course.  Then they turned to us.  “What have you got.”  I was able to recite some T. S. Eliot, but it was rough going. These working-class men knew their poetry, and we did not.  It was an interesting lesson and part of the reason for travel.   In my African-American Literature class this term we are reading James Baldwin.  In his introduction to Nobody Knows My Name, 

he writes: “A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition – of intellectual activity, of letters – and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends.  But this tradition does not exist in America” (6-7).  Baldwin suggests that we feel differently about writers and writing in America.  We think differently about the arts and about vocations.  He leaves the U.S.A. for Paris at one point in his career to learn about himself.  He learns as much about his own country as he does about himself.  He says “The writer is meeting in Europe people who are not American, whose sense of reality is entirely different from his own. They may love or hate or admire or fear or envy this country [the U.S.A.] – they see it, in any case, from another point of view, and this forces the writer to reconsider many things he had always taken for granted. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable” (9). I think that is one of the great values of study abroad.  We can learn much about other cultures, but we can learn just as much about our own culture, and indeed, about ourselves. I can’t wait to learn more about myself this time across the pond. Studying abroad is a transformational and enlightening experience.