Between Two Shores / Idir Dha Chladach

Transcription

1 Reimagining Ireland 32 Between Two Shores / Idir Dha Chladach Writing the Aran Islands, Bearbeitet von Mairead Conneely 1. Auflage Taschenbuch. X, 289 S. Paperback ISBN Format (B x L): 15 x 22,5 cm Gewicht: 440 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Literatur, Sprache > Englische Literatur schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, ebooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte.

2 Chapter 1 Introduction Réamhrá From Connemara, or the Moher clif ftop, Where the land ends with a sheer drop, You can see the three stepping stones out of Europe. [ ] And on Galway Bay, between shore and shore, The ferry plunges to Aranmore. Seamus Heaney, The Evening Land (in O Sullivan, 1976: 6) Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, the three Aran Islands1, lie across the mouth of Galway Bay, some 50 kilometres from the city of Galway, resembling a group of stranded whales (O Sullivan, 1976: 7).2 The Islands bedrock of grey-black limestone gives them their visually arresting appeal. Though some (see Robinson, 1986; Waddell et al., 1994) agree that their collective name Árainn, or Aran, derives from their similarity to the shape of a kidney, or ára, O Sullivan of fers the Irish expression Ard-Thuinn, meaning the height above the waves (1976: 7) as an alternative suggestion. The Islands have been populated for four thousand years (Robinson, 1986: 1; Ó heithir, 1991: 1) and are perhaps Ireland s greatest (re)discovered, 1 Aran or the Islands will be used throughout this book to connote The Aran Islands, and the capital I will indicate the Aran Islands as opposed to other Irish islands. 2 Hugo Hamilton s Hand in the Fire also uses the imagery of the Islands as whales: I was probably not the first person to think of this, but it felt to me like an original way of describing them because it was my first time seeing them. Whatever way the light falls, they keep moving a little, dipping and coming up again (2010: ).

3 2 Chapter 1 recovered and uncovered landscapes. They are regarded as Ireland raised to the power of two (Robinson, 1992: xvii); their magnetic pull upon tourists and scholars alike is well documented and has been continually employed by advertising campaigns and tourism brochures to attract people to the Islands shores. The Islands are variously described on tourist websites as: rugged, wild and beautiful (< unique and timeless [ ] where one day is never enough (< and dif ficult to describe, and dif ficult to forget (< Though such descriptions contain elements of truth, island life is a complex phenomenon: for instance, I once observed a day-tripper to Inis Mór, the largest and most visited of the three Islands, swiftly demand her money back from the ferry company who had sold her a return-ticket to the island when, to her horror, she discovered that a Supermac s fast food restaurant had been opened there.3 The tourist could not reconcile the presence of this latter-day symbol of mainland modernity with her utopian expectation of how the Islands should be, and what the islanders should be embracing and preserving. Tourist websites, however, are not the only sources for these kinds of idealised descriptions. Guide books and travel literature of fer similar, overly romanticised interpretations of life on the Islands, and when Aran Island literature is used to supplement these pen-pictures, selected, familiar, passages are included for apparently more authentic ef fect. Passages from John Millington Synge s The Aran Islands are regularly found on Island websites, as are some texts by Liam Ó Flaithearta, and, though not as frequently, the poetry of Máirtín Ó Direáin. Perhaps the most essential information imparted by these sites relates to the physical features of the Islands. In terms of size and population Inis Meáin (5km 3 Supermac s, an Irish-owned fast food restaurant chain, opened in Inis Mór on 19 June The Tidy Towns Competition Report of 2007 noted that Supermacs (sic) does not fit in well with the rest of the island streetscape (< ie/u_reports/2007/2007%20county%20galway%20inis%20mor% pdf>). One islander labelled the fast-food outlet vulgar (< msn.com/id/ />).

4 Introduction Réamhrá 3 by 3km; 154 in 2006) and Inis Oírr (2.5km by 2.5km; 247 in 2006) are much smaller than Inis Mór (12km by 3km; 824 in 2006), but in terms of tourist figures, the middle island of Inis Meáin remains the least visited. Inis Mór enjoys over 70 per cent of the total tourist inf lux to the Islands, with Inis Oírr getting a further 20 per cent, and Inis Meáin receiving the remaining 10 per cent. Inis Meáin s lower volume of tourists is accounted for by the fact that it attracts long-stay visitors more so than day-trippers, who are more likely to frequent Inis Mór. The greatest foot-fall on the Islands is provided by ferry services from Ros a Mhíl, in County Galway. There are usually four daily sailings to Inis Mór, whereas there are only two daily sailings to both Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, thereby enticing people to travel to the larger island while also allowing them to leave earlier in the day.4 However, this comes at a cost. Inis Mór s economy has suf fered in recent years because of what has become known as the tinfoil brigade, the day-trippers who come armed with their own food and supplies, and who leave very little in the way of spare change on the island itself. However, people come to Aran for all kinds of reasons; many come in search of peace and quiet, others come looking for somewhere dif ferent, and some arrive to seek out places for inspiration for writing and composition. There may be historical reasons for this; Inis Mór and Inis Oírr were considered to be of more strategic importance than Inis Meáin during the period of English ownership and occupation of the Islands, and as a result, Inis Meáin became associated with the less-contaminated essence which cultural and political nationalists have sought out in the West of Ireland. One example of this is found in Patrick Pearse s decision, in 1898, to establish a branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, the Gaelic League, on the middle island at the expense of Inis Mór (Dudley Edwards, 1977: 27), which is often considered the capital of the three Aran Islands.5 The British f lag had 4 During the summer season, the Islands are also serviced by sailings from Doolin in County Clare. Daily year-round f lights with Aer Arann also service the Islands. 5 As Irish was not part of the school curriculum at this time, the Aran Islanders could speak Irish but had no formal education in the reading or writing of the language. Conradh na Gaeilge saw its role as promoting Irish in English-speaking areas but also

5 4 Chapter 1 never f lown over Inis Meáin and this was particularly important to Pearse, as it further emphasised the purity of Inis Meáin s history.6 Throughout the nineteenth century, scholars and sojourners visited Inis Meáin in various groups and with varied intentions, congregating in a cottage which was known as Ollscoil na Gaeilge, or the University of Irish. The cottage is now knows as Teach Synge, or Synge s Cottage. As Robinson notes, Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill, and the young Patrick Pearse [were] all looking for Ireland in Inis Meáin (1986: 9). Indeed, in 1898 Synge left Inis Mór for Inis Meáin: [the men from Inis Meáin] seem a simpler and perhaps a more interesting type than the people here [on Inis Mór] [ ]. I have decided to move on to Inishmaan, where Gaelic is more generally used, and the life is perhaps the most primitive that is left in Europe (Synge, 1992: 10). It is interesting to note that Synge found that it gave [him] a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find [himself ] moving away from civilisation (1992: 12) on his journey to Inis Meáin; perhaps the civilisation he was referring to was that of both Inis Mór and that of the mainland.7 However, Synge was not the first of the literary set to land on Inis Meáin s shores; Father Eoghan O Growney and Lawless had visited Inis Meáin as early as 1885, and W.B. Yeats visited in Emily Lawless s novel Grania: The Story of an Island (1892) was to become somewhat akin to required reading for visiting members of the literary community (Robinson, 1995: 130), as both Synge and Yeats read it on their way to Aran. It is revealing, however, that this novel is largely unknown among islanders today while as preserving Irish in Gaeltacht areas. See Sisson (2004: 15, 36) for information on Pearse s desire to establish St Enda s school on Inis Meáin, thereby strengthening the learning, writing and reading of Irish on the island. A further connection between the island and the Pearse family lies in the fact that Pearse s father, James, carved the altar for the church in Inis Meáin. 6 Thomas MacDonagh also spent time on Inis Meáin, organising rif le practice (see Robinson, 1992: xvi xvii, and Norstedt, 1980: 28). 7 In the Introduction to The Aran Islands Synge writes: Kilronan [ ] has been so much changed by the fishing industry, developed there by the Congested Districts Board, that it now has very little to distinguish it from any fishing village on the west coast of Ireland. The other islands are more primitive, but even on them changes are being made [ ] (1992: 3).

6 Introduction Réamhrá 5 the relationships of Synge, Yeats, and Gregory et al. with the Islands are famed and revered. The Aran Islands were, and continue to be, a Mecca for tourists, writers and artists, and most recently, for eco-friendly and spiritually-inclined individuals who are drawn to a retreat established by Celtic priest Dara Molloy on Inis Mór.8 However, when Leon Ó Broin enquired of Breandán Ó heithir: [d]id you ever ask yourself why so many people find those three limestone rocks in the Atlantic so terribly interesting? (Ó heithir, 1991: 3), he inadvertently signalled the predominant motivation behind this book. Aran islanders very rarely question their place in the world, or indeed the importance of their island homes in the larger scheme of things. Islanders are aware that strainséirí 9 find both the Islands and their inhabitants of interest, but only occasionally consider why they might actually be of interest to these tourists, as well as writers. It is even more exceptional to find Island authors writing about what outside or mainland authors have been writing about for years, namely the significance of the Aran Islands and their inhabitants. When my grandmother, Máire Bean Uí Fhátharta, passed away on 6 January 2005, an obituary in the Irish Times marked it as the passing of a cultural moment (O Grady, 7 March 2005). Bean Uí Fhátharta s grandparents Bríd and Páidín Mac Donnchadha, were J.M. Synge s hosts, and her uncle Máirtín10 was Synge s guide and language teacher during his time on the island. Bean Uí Fhátharta was of a similar generation to novelist and short-story writer Liam Ó Flaithearta11 and poet Máirtín Ó Direáin, both Inis Mór men, and though she herself was 8 Aisling Árann could be described as an intentional community (Sargent, 1994: 4). 9 Strainséir, or strainséara, pl. strainséirí, is the most commonly used word on the Aran Islands for a tourist or visitor to the Islands. Strainséir means stranger, but can also connote outsider or alien. It is also generally used to describe tourists or visitors. This may extend as far as estrangement, and may perhaps explain the feeling of being outside of current reality that many associate(d) with being on the Islands. 10 Máirtín Mac Donnchadha appears as Michael in Synge s The Aran Islands. 11 I will refer to the author as Liam Ó Flaithearta. The Irish form of the author s name will be used in favour of Liam O Flaherty. However, when and where critics and other authors refer to Ó Flaithearta as O Flaherty, the English form of his name will remain unchanged.

7 6 Chapter 1 not a writer, she had an immense store of folkloric, literary and historical knowledge. The tribute af forded to her in the Irish Times reminded many islanders of both her individual contribution to island life, and also her generation s crucial role in safeguarding and promoting the literary and geo-cultural significance of the Aran Islands. This book extends an examination through the past, present and possible future of the Islands, in search of other salient moments in the literature and culture of the Aran Islands. Aran s past has been mythologised, re-discovered and raised to the level of national ideal (Gibbons, 1996: 23); Aran s present is heavily reliant on its past, especially from an economic point of view, while trying to forge its way into the future. Aran s future, however, is uncertain in terms of whether it will press ahead with a more modern understanding of its own culture and heritage or whether it will remain faithful to its past, even in the face of huge changes on the Islands. Some predict, based on past events, that continued adherence to traditional values will preserve Aran from the doom of depopulation and geographical and cultural erosion, while others argue that the Islands must engage with mainland Ireland s progressive doctrines to some extent if they are to survive and prosper. Consideration is given throughout this book to Aran s past, present and future, as seen through literature and more recently, through cultural and social changes on the Islands themselves. This study focuses primarily on Aran Island writing, and principally on Emily Lawless s Grania: The Story of an Island (1892), J.M. Synge s The Aran Islands (1992 [originally published 1907]), Liam Ó Flaithearta s Dúil (1953) and Máirtín Ó Direáin s Dánta (1980). Some translated examples of Ó Direáin s poetry from Mac Síomóin and Sealy s Tacar Dánta / Selected Poems (1984) will also be used in this work, as will work from Ó Direáin s autobiographical essays found in Feamainn Bhealtaine (1961). Translations of Ó Flaithearta and Ó Direáin s work are provided as appropriate and were carried out by this author unless otherwise stated. Lawless and Synge were authors from outside the Islands, and yet Grania and The Aran Islands show levels of personal and communal intimacy which contradicts their supposed exteriority. While Lawless s Grania was widely read following its publication, it was quickly, and somewhat harshly, discredited by some of her fellow authors following their own

8 Introduction Réamhrá 7 visits to the Aran Islands. Synge was especially, and uncharacteristically, aggrieved by Lawless s novelistic treatment of Inis Meáin; however, his principal criticism of Lawless pertained to the amount of time she had allegedly spent on the island prior to writing Grania. Though Lawless does appear to exaggerate some elements of island life, and portrays her chief protagonist Grania as being closer in spirit to the warrior pirate queen Grace O Malley, or Granuaile as she was more commonly known, than to any recognisable female islander, there are aspects of Grania that could only have come from Lawless s personal observations.12 Synge carefully avoided charges of inauthenticity by writing a first-person travelogue about his four stays on Inis Meáin. However, both Grania and The Aran Islands share many common images and insights, and thus Synge would appear to have been slightly disingenuous in some of his criticism of Lawless s novel. Ó Flaithearta and Ó Direáin, on the other hand, were insider-island authors, though both left Inis Mór in their teens. Ó Flaithearta received a scholarship to attend secondary school in Co. Tipperary and Ó Direáin left to seek employment in Galway city. Ó Flaithearta s relationship with the island of his birth and adolescence was complex and coloured significantly by his linguistic binarism, his fraught relationship with the Catholic priest on Inis Mór, and by the economic dif ficulties of writing in Irish in the mid 1920s and 1930s. Ó Direáin s association with Inis Mór was less complicated. His emotional relationship with the island centred on his remembrances of youth, and his early and middle poetry emphasised his imaginative re-creation of his island home. His later poetry, however, ref lected his growing awareness that the island of his poetry and memory was incongruous with the realities of his former home. 12 Lawless s intricate descriptions of the limestone landscape, and of Inis Meáin s topography in particular, further reinforce this: Inishmaan is divided into a succession of rocky steps or platforms, the lowest to eastward, the highest to westward, platforms which are in their turn divided and subdivided by innumerable joints and fissures. This, by the way, is a fact to be remembered, as, without it, you might easily wander for days and days over the islands without really getting to know or understand their topography (1892: 58).

9 8 Chapter 1 This book examines and treats of all four texts, and also all four authors, exploring the island(s) and the concept of islandness as it or they appear in the chosen works. Using postcolonial, utopian and island studies theories, this work investigates the literary, cultural and personal moments which emanated from the writing of Lawless, Synge, Ó Flaithearta and Ó Direáin. In doing so, this study considers how best to appreciate this writing, as well as present-day writing on and about Aran. This book exemplifies the seminal importance of the power of language, Irish and English, the authority of the island as a literary place of production an interior labyrinth and as a space of conception an exterior mirror and also the magnitude of the island as a metaphor and arena of tradition and memory in Irish literature. This book also proposes the wide-ranging significance of an Irish Islands Literature canon.