Inventing Ireland Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter One A New England Called Ireland?

  IRELAND – ENGLAND'S UNCONSCIOUS? Chapter Two Oscar Wilde – The Artist as Irishman

  Chapter Three John Bull's Other Islander – Bernard Shaw

  ANGLO-IRELAND: THE WOMAN'S PART Chapter Four Somerville and Ross – Tragedies of Manners

  Chapter Five Lady Gregory and the Empire Boys

  YEATS: LOOKING INTO THE LION'S FACE Chapter Six Childhood and Ireland

  Chapter Seven The National Longing for Form

  RETURN TO THE SOURCE? Chapter Eight Deanglicization

  Chapter Nine Nationality or Cosmopolitanism?

  Chapter Ten J. M. Synge – Remembering the Future

  REVOLUTION AND WAR Chapter Eleven Uprising

  Chapter Twelve The Plebeians Revise the Uprising

  Chapter Thirteen The Great War and Irish Memory

  WORLDS APART? Chapter Fourteen Ireland and the End of Empire

  INVENTING IRELANDS Chapter Fifteen Writing Ireland, Reading England

  Chapter Sixteen Inventing Irelands

  Chapter Seventeen Revolt into Style – Yeatsian Poetics

  Chapter Eighteen The Last Aisling – A Vision

  Chapter Nineteen James Joyce and Mythic Realism

  SEXUAL POLITICS Chapter Twenty Elizabeth Bowen – The Dandy in Revolt

  Chapter Twenty-One Fathers and Sons

  Chapter Twenty-Two Mothers and Daughters

  PROTESTANT REVIVALS Chapter Twenty-Three Protholics and Cathestants

  Chapter Twenty-Four Saint Joan – Fabian Feminist, Protestant Mystic

  Chapter Twenty-Five The Winding Stair

  Chapter Twenty-Six Religious Writing: Beckett and Others

  UNDERDEVELOPMENT Chapter Twenty-Seven The Periphery and the Centre

  Chapter Twenty-Eight Flann O'Brien, Myles, and The Poor Mouth

  Chapter Twenty-Nine The Empire Writes Back – Brendan Behan

  Chapter Thirty Beckett's Texts of Laughter and Forgetting

  Chapter Thirty-One Post-Colonial Ireland – "A Quaking Sod"

  RECOVERY AND RENEWAL Chatper Thirty-Two Under Pressure – The Writer and Society 1960–90

  Chatper Thirty-Three Friel Translating

  Chatper Thirty-Four Translating Tradition

  REINVENTING IRELAND Chatper Thirty-Five Imagining Irish Studies

  Notes

  Index

  INVENTING IRELAND

  Declan Kiberd was born in Dublin in 1951. He took a degree in English and Irish at Trinity College, Dublin, and he holds a doctorate from Oxford University. Among his books are Synge and the Irish Language, Men and Feminism in Modern Literature and Idir Dha Chultur. He writes regularly for Irish newspapers, has prepared literary scripts for the BBC, and is a former director of the Yeats International Summer School. He has lectured on Irish culture in more than twenty countries and has taught at University College, Dublin, for sixteen years. He is married with three children.

  BY DECLAN KIBERD

  Synge And The Irish Language

  Men And Feminism In Modern Literature

  Anglo-Irish Attitudes

  Omnium Gatherum: Essays For Richard Ellmann

  An Crann Faoi Bhláth: The Flowering Tree

  Contemporary Irish Poetry With Verse Translations

  Idir Dha Chultur

  Inventing Ireland:

  The Literature Of The Modern Nation

  'Inventing Ireland is that completely unusual thing: a highly readable, joyfully contentious book whose enormous learning and superb understanding of the literary text will introduce readers for the first time to a remarkably lively panorama of Irish culture during the last century. Full of novel readings, theoretical investigations and audacious connections, Declan Kiberd's book lifts Ireland out of ethnic studies and lore and places it in the post-colonial world. In doing so he situates its great cultural traditions where they jostle not only the major texts of English literature, but also those of writers like Salman Rushdie and García Márquez. The result is a dazzling, bravura performance'

  Edward W. Said

  '[A] thought-provoking and entertaining critical blockbuster... There is no doubt that this book immediately joins a small group of indispensable books on Anglo-Irish literary history. It is also typical of the best of that school in the brio and wit with which its learning and intelligence are carried' Bernard O'Donoghue,

  Times Literary Supplement

  'Inventing Ireland is exactly what its title claims – an act of exuberant creativity. Nimbly, skilfully, and almost with a sense of near-wonderment at his own discoveries, Kiberd explores the continuities between Irish past and Irish present. And by focusing on what he calls "revered masterpieces", and by examining them in the wider social context out of which they came, he fashions a nation that is hospitable to all its prickly constituents'

  Brian Friel

  'A critical study laced with wit, energy and unrelenting adroitness of discourse... Mr Kiberd possesses a special gift for patient exploration of works of art in relationship to their surroundings... wit, paradox and an almost indecent delight in verbal jugglery place Mr Kiberd himself in a central Irish literary tradition that also includes Swift, Joyce and Beckett... impudent, eloquent, full of jokes and irreverence, by turns sardonic and conciliatory, blithely subversive but, without warning, turning to display wide and serious reading, a generosity of spirit, a fierce and authentic concern for social and political justice. Rather like Wilde and Shaw... a remarkable achievement'

  Thomas Flanagan, New York Times

  'Inventing Ireland... deserves to be read, not only by people with a special interest in Irish writing, but also by people with a strong interest in modern writing in English. Kiberd has much that is original and valuable to say... I recommend Inventing Ireland to my readers'

  Conor Cruise O'Brien,

  Sunday Telegraph

  'That somebody so knowledgable of the roots of Irish writing – in Irish – could move through Anglo-Irish literature and engage all the contemporary debates make one stand in awe of the breadth of Kiberd's scholarship. That the story is presented with wit and vigour is a further pleasure'

  Michael D. Higgins T.D.

  'Declan Kiberd's passionate, opinionated, often witty, celebratory study... will engage both specialists and general readers'

  Eileen Battersby,

  Books of the Year, Irish Times

  'A splendid book... A striking quality of this book is the author's ability to combine perceptive insight into literary matters with a keen awareness of the political forces that shaped this century'

  Ulick O'Connor, Sunday Independent

  'A dazzling book, a book to cherish and revisit. As you read and reread the Anglo-Irish texts, you'll find it altering them, lightening them up. It changes Beckett and Joyce; it especially changes John Millington Synge. It ends by offering to reshape Irish Studies curricula'

  Hugh Kenner, Washington Times

  'Often brilliant and always intelligent'

  Fintan O'Toole, Observer

  'A fabulous story... and an important, partisan and highly readable book for believers and sceptics alike. Someone ought to put it on John Major's bedside table'

  Brenda Maddox, Literary Review

  'Formidable, thoroughly enjoyable, always engaged, often brilliant... This is the fullest attempt we have had to date to read both Irish historical experience and the literature that this has involved in the light of post-colonial theory'

  Terence
Brown, The Tribune Magazine

  'One of the best studies of Irish literature to come along in years'

  Michael Stephens, Washington Post

  'A joy to read – endlessly provocative in its arguments and inventive in its comparisons'

  Joseph O'Connor, Sunday Tribune

  'Epical in its aims and achievements... Kiberd's most striking characteristic as a critic is his. intellectual daring, a kind of dignified audacity: he is capable of saying things that simply take one's breath away'

  Brendan Kennelly, Sunday Business Post

  'A magisterial book... the prose sparkles. Kiberd wears his impressive learning lightly and relishes aphorism and anecdote... Inventing Ireland displays numerous themes on a huge canvas, but is remarkably lucid'

  Robert Taylor, Boston Globe

  'A life-affirming and positive book... Declan Kiberd has a genius for making what has not yet been expressed into the most blindingly clear cop-on... Aphorism and quotable quotes spring up at every hand, jokes appear unannounced and every sentence lands on all fours... The tone here is one of celebration and success and generosity'

  Alan Titley, Books Ireland

  'Kiberd is a gifted linguist, uniquely qualified as a writer and critic in both Irish and English languages... One ends the book admiring his intellectual brio and engagement, and applauding his recognition of Irish cultural diversity'

  Roy Foster, The Times

  'Since Roy Foster published his Modern Ireland in 1988 the national shrine has been echoing with impious voices... But the arrival of the 'Revisionists' is already an old story. Now they have been put on their mettle by the 'Re-Inventers'... Declan Kiberd's brilliant new book, Inventing Ireland, is an example'

  Neal Ascherson, Independent on Sunday

  Declan Kiberd

  INVENTING

  IRELAND

  The Literature of the

  Modern Nation

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409044970

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 1996

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  Copyright © Declan Kiberd 1995

  The right of Declan Kiberd to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain by

  Jonathan Cape 1995

  Vintage Books

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

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  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781409044970

  Version 1.0

  For Lucy, Amy, Rory – and the coming times.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author and publishers thank the following: the Society of Authors and the Bernard Shaw Estate for permission to quote from John Bull's Other Island and Saint Joan, A. P. Watt Limited and Michael and Anne Yeats for permission to quote from Collected Poems, Collected Plays, Autobiographies and A Vision; the Macmillan Publishing Company and the Estate of Eileen O'Casey for permission to quote from The Plough and the Stars and The Silver lassie; Random House UK, Jonathan Cape and Sean Sweeney, trustee of the Estate of James Joyce for permission to quote from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses; Random House UK, Jonathan Cape and the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen for permission to quote from The Last September; the Samuel Beckett Estate and the Calder Educational Trust, London, for permission to quote from Murphy by Samuel Beckett (copyright © Samuel Beckett 1938, 1963, 1977 and copyright © the Samuel Beckett Estate 1993) and the Beckett Trilogy – Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable – (copyright © Samuel Beckett 1959, 1976 and copyright © the Samuel Beckett Estate 1994); Stephen P. Maher, executor and trustee of the late Evelyn O'Nolan and Mercier Press Limited, PO Box 5, French Street, Cork, Ireland for permission to quote from An Béal Bocht by Brian O'Nolan (alias Myles na gCopaleen) 1941 and to HarperCollins Publishers and Patrick C. Power for permission to quote from the latter's translation of the aforementioned text The Poor Mouth; to the Tessa Sayle Agency and the Estate of Beatrice Behan for permission to quote from The Quare Fellow and The Hostage; to Faber and Faber Limited, Publishers, and to the respective authors for permission to quote from Translations by Brian Friel 1981, from Death of a Naturalist, North, Station Island and Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney 1966, 1975, 1984 and 1991, and from Quoof by Paul Mul-doon 1983; to Faber and Faber Limited, Publishers and to the Samuel Beckett Estate 1993 for permission to quote from Waiting for Godot and Endgame, to Thomas Kinesella for permission to quote from Downstream 1962, Nightwalker 1968 and "The Divided Mind' 1971, 1972; to John F. Deane of Dedalus Press and the Devlin family for permission to quote from 'Lough Derg' and 'The 'Colours of Love' by Denis Devlin, ed. J.C.C. Mays 1990; to R. Dardis Clarke, 21 Pleasants Street, Dublin 8, Ireland, for permission to quote from Collected Poems of Austin Clarke, Mountrath, 1974; to Michael Smith and New Writers' Press for permission to quote from 'De Civitate Hominum' and 'Gloria de Carlos V' by Thomas MacGreevy 1971, and from 'Nightfall, Midwinter, Missouri' by Brian Coffey 1973; to Peter Fallon, Publisher, of Gallery Press for permission to quote from 'The Rough Field' and 'The Siege of Mullingar' by John Montague 1972, 1978, from 'Belfast Confetti' by Ciarán Carson 1989, from Pharaoh's Daughter by Nuala ní Dhomhnaill 1990 (with English translations by Ciarán Carson, Paul Muldoon and Eiléan ní Chuilleanáin); to Sairséal Ó Marcaigh Teoranta and Máire Mhac an tSaoi for permission to quote lines from An Cion go dtí Seo 1987,1988 and to the author for her self-translation; to Sairséal Ó Marcaigh Teoranta and the Estate of Seán Ó Ríordáin for permission to quote from Eireaball Spideoige and Brosna 1952, 1964; to Carcanet Press Limited, Publishers, and Eavan Boland for permission to quote from 'The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish' and "The Emigrant Irish' 1987; to Oxford University Press and Derek Mahon for permission to quote from "The Mute Phenomena', "The Spring Vacation', 'Afterlives' and 'A Disused Shed in County Wexford'; to Caomh Kavanagh and Dr Peter Kavanagh for permission to quote from The Complete Poems of Patrick Kavanagh, copyright © 1972, 1995, Peter Kavanagh Hand Press, New York 10016, and to the Goldsmith Press, Newbridge, Co. Kildare; to Colin Smythe, Publisher, Gerrards Cross, for permission to quote from Selected Plays of Lady Gregory. Every effort has been made to secure all necessary clearances and permissions. Both the author and publishers will be glad to recognize any holders of copyright who have not been acknowledged above.

  Some sections of this book have been rehearsed as essays, as broadcasts, or as newspaper articles: the author is grateful to many editors and producers for encouragement in exploring certain themes at an earlier stage in their development.

  INTRODUCTION

  If God invented whiskey to prevent the Irish from ruling the world, then who invented Ireland?

  The obvious answer might be the Irish, a truth suggested by those words Sinn Féin (ourselves) which became syn
onymous with the movement for national independence. That movement imagined the Irish people as an historic community, whose self-image was constructed long before the era of modern nationalism and the nation-state. There are many texts in the Irish language to bear this thesis out (and a few will be surveyed in my opening chapter), but what they also register is the extraordinary capacity of Irish society to assimilate new elements through all its major phases. Far from providing a basis for doctrines of racial purity, they seem to take pleasure in the fact that identity is seldom straightforward and given, more often a matter of negotiation and exchange.

  No sooner is that admitted than a second answer to the question suggests itself: that the English helped to invent Ireland, in much the same way as Germans contributed to the naming and identification of France. Through many centuries, Ireland was pressed into service as a foil to set off English virtues, as a laboratory in which to conduct experiments, and as a fantasy-land in which to meet fairies and monsters. The 1916 insurrection was a deliberate challenge to such thinking: though often described by dreamy admirers as well as by sardonic detractors as a poets' rebellion, it was an assertion by a modernizing élite that the time had come to end such stereotyping. One 1916 veteran recalled, in old age, his youthful conviction that the rebellion would "put an end to the rule of the fairies in Ireland". In this it was notably unsuccessful: during the 1920s, a young student named Samuel Beckett reported seeing a fairy-man in the New Square of Trinity College Dublin; and two decades later a Galway woman, when asked by an American anthropologist whether she really believed in the "little people", replied with terse sophistication: "I do not, sir – but they're there anyway". The underlying process, however, was reciprocal: to the Irish, England was fairyland, a notion developed by Oscar Wilde to whom the nobility of England seemed as exotic as the caliphs of Baghdad. If England had never existed, the Irish would have been rather lonely. Each nation badly needed the other, for the purpose of defining itself.