Inventing Ireland (86 page)

The fact that many who learned Irish as a second language are also the ones who have mastered French and German has had its exemplary
value in answering negative criticisms of the amount of time devoted to the study of Irish in schools. One of the less admirable features of British culture (aped by many nationalists) was its insularity, when it came to the speaking of continental languages. Arguably, the Irish-speaking lobby has done more than most others to counter this. Equally, the fact that many of the most successful business "achievers" in society have been enthusiastic
Gaeilgeoirí
has strengthened arguments for a connection between cultural self-confidence and economic success. Such self-belief might ultimately prove far more attractive to uncertain unionists in search of a viable identity than the more fretful nationalism which preceded it. The polls in the south show a huge majority against coercing unionists into a united Ireland.
¹⁶
At the same time, Irish speakers, rightly resentful of a Southern state whose officials could not always deal with them in their native language, made a new kind of case on the basis of minority rights: and in making it they repeatedly urged unionists to keep a close eye on this "test case", which might have implications for the treatment of a unionist minority in some
future "agreed Ireland".

Useful lessons from the Irish experience might be learned and applied in other places and settings. The major moral – it is not too strong a word – is
this:
that, if the native culture of a people is devalued and destroyed for the sake of material progress, what follows may not be material progress of the kind hoped for, but cultural confusion and a diminished sense of enterprise. The Irish prosper mightily abroad, whenever they are pan of a dynamic community with a belief in itself. At home during the earlier decades of the independent state, they often seemed to stagnate through lost self-belief. Given that
they
had just done the impossible and dislodged a mighty imperial army, this was a remarkable failure – although it seems less astounding now in the light of subsequent failures in Africa and elsewhere. Nevertheless, some significant element in that failure may be traceable to the experience of losing Irish.

The confusion which followed was, in the words of one of Brian Friel's characters, not an ignoble condition.
¹⁷
It produced a great experimental literature, which is admired across the world and which has, coded into its texts, many elements which might be helpful in redesigning an Ireland of the future. If other, less original groups in that society were to look to artists for inspiration, and not just for ornament, much could be learned from the scrutiny. Their art shows that the Irish are still, despite all their frustrations, vibrant – a people of immense versatility, sophistication and multiplicity of viewpoint. The
past decade has seen a notable emergence of regional theatre companies, of publishing houses devoted to local authors and local history; and the new community radio stations are winning more and more listeners. If "Ireland" is recovering an interest in its constituent parts, that may be all to the good: writers nowadays are more alert to the dangers of overriding real differences of class, region or language. While the peripheries seem ever more vital, the Abbey Theatre – despite the brilliant successes of Friel, Murphy and
Frank McGuinness – has found it increasingly difficult to reconcile its "national" duty to perform a largely ruralist canon with its "civic" desire to service its immediate hinterland. Perhaps by redefining the National Theatre as an abstract, federal entity, encompassing vibrant regional companies who might play parts of that canon, the Abbey could be freed to move in that direction. In this way the idea of a national theatre could be defended and updated.

If the notion of "Ireland" seemed to some to have become problematic, that was only because the seamless garment once wrapped like a green flag around Cathleen ní Houlihan had given way to a quilt of many patches and colours, all beautiful, all distinct, yet all connected too. No one element should subordinate or assimilate the others: Irish or English, rural or urban, Gaelic or Anglo, each has its part in the pattern.

1.
Benedict Anderson, "Exodus",
Critical Inquiry,
Vol. 20, No. 2, Winter 1994, 316.

2.
Ibid., 319.

3.
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin,
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures,
London 1989, 33.

4.
On the Janus-faced nature of nationalism in the "developing" world, see three brilliant recent interventions: Partha Chatterjee,
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse,
London 1986; Kwame Anthony Appiah,
In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,
London 1993; and Basil Davidson,
The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State,
London 1992. The increasing influence of African (and Indian) analyses on recent Irish cultural debates may be measured by reading books as different as Desmond Fennell's
Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modem Ireland,
Belfast 1993 and Liz Curtis,
The Cause of Ireland,
London 1995.

1.
See Declan Kiberd, "The Fall of the Stage Irishman",
The Genres of the Irish Literary Revival,
ed. R. Schleifer, Norman, Oklahoma 1979, 39–60 where this argument was first elaborated.

2.
Edmund Spenser, "A View of the Present State of Ireland" (1596),
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing,
1, Derry 1991, 183 ff.

3.
"An Síogaí Rómhánach",
Five Seventeenth Century Political Poems,
ed. C. O'Rahilly, Dublin 1952, 29.

4.
Spenser, ibid., 191.

5.
See Piaras Béaslaoi,
Éigse NuaGhaedhilge
1, Dublin n.d., 64.

6.
Philip Edwards,
Threshold of a Nation: A Study in English and Irish Drama,
Cambridge 1979, 79.

7.
Act 3, scene 2, lines 120–4. Touchiness on matters of national pride was not confined to the Irish. After the disappointments of the Earl of Essex's campaign in Ireland, this passage may have been censored on the Elizabethan stage: certainly it does not exist in the 1600 Quarto. By July 1599 the open discussion of Irish affairs was itself a serious offence: already Ireland was turning into the official English Unconscious. On this see Janet Clare,
Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority: Elizabeth and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship,
Manchester 1990, 71–2.

8.
Quoted by Edwards, 79.

9.
Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating),
Fonts Feasa or Éirinn
1, ed. David Comyn, London 1902, 76.

10.
Ibid., 30.

11.
See Andrew Carpenter, "Double Vision in Anglo-Irish Literature",
Place, Personality and the Irish Writer,
ed. Carpenter, Gerrards Cross 1977, 182–3.

12.
See Edmund Burke,
Irish Affairs,
London 1988 (first published 1881).

13.
Edmund Burke,
Works,
Boston 1869, Vol. 10, 217.

14.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 2, 222.

15.
Burke,
Correspondence,
ed. T. Copeland, Cambridge Mass. 1958, Vol. 5, 255.

16.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 2, 195.

17.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 12, 23–4.

18.
Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the Revolution in France
in
Works,
Vol. 2, 320.

19.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 2, 205.

20.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 5, 225.

21.
Burke,
Works,
Vol. 5, 148.

22.
Conor Cruise O'Brien, introduction to
Reflections on the Revolution in France,
Harmondsworth 1969, 42–9.

23.
Burke,
Correspondence,
Vol. 1, 202.

24.
Standish O'Grady,
Selected Essays and Passages,
Dublin 1918, 180 ff.

1.
John Keats,
Letters,
selected by Frederick Page, London 1954, 149.

2.
Matthew Arnold,
The Study of Celtic Literature,
London 1891, 115.

3.
Ibid., 104.

4.
Shaemas O'Sheel,
Jealous of the Dead Leaves,
New York 1928.

5.
Arnold, ibid., 92.

1.
Henry Craik, letter to John Forster, Forster MS 48.E.25, British Library.

2.
W. B. Yeats,
Autobiographies,
London 1955, 138.

3.
Ibid., 138.

4.
Ibid., 137.

5.
Richard Ellmann.
Oscar Wilde,
Harmondsworth 1987, 11–12.

6.
Oscar Wilde,
Plays,
Harmondsworth 1968, 267.

7.
Oscar Wilde,
Complete Works,
Glasgow 1994, 770.

8.
Wilde,
Plays,
51.

9.
Quoted by H. Montgomery Hyde,
Oscar Wilde,
London 1976, 31.

10.
Oscar Wilde,
Selected Letters,
ed. R. Hart-Davis. Oxford 1979, 20–1.

11.
Quoted Hyde, 232.

12.
Wilde,
Selected Letters,
100.

13.
Quoted by Hyde, 85.

14.
Quoted by Richard Ellmann,
James Joyce,
Oxford 1959, 226.

15.
Richard Ellmann,
Eminent Domain,
Oxford 1967, 12–13.

16.
Wilde,
Selected Letters,
197.

17.
See Hyde, 38 ff.

18.
Oscar Wilde,
The Artist as Critic,
ed. R. Ellmann, London 1970, 389.

19.
Ibid., 136–40.

20.
On this see Lionel Trilling,
Sincerity and Authenticity
Oxford 1972, 118– 22.

21.
Wilde,
Plays,
288.

22.
Ibid., 290.

23.
James Laver,
The Concise History of Costume and Fashions,
New York 1969, 182.

24.
Wilde,
Plays,
310.

25.
On Wilde's critique of determinism, see Christopher Nassaar,
Into the Demon Universe,
New Haven 1974, 135–7.

26.
Quoted by Rodney Shewan,
Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism,
London 1977, 193.

27.
Wilde,
Plays,
263.

28.
Ibid., 277.

29.
See L. P. Curtis Jnr.,
Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England,
Bridgeport 1968.

30.
Wilde,
Selected Letters,
50.

31.
Otto Rank,
The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study,
New York 1971.

32.
Wilde,
Plays,
262.

33.
Eric Stern, review of Rank's
The Double, Die Literatur
XXIX, 1926–7, 555.

34.
Rank,
The Double,
48 ff.

35.
Wilde,
Plays,
284.

36.
Quoted by Harry Tucker, introduction, Rank,
The Double,
xvi.

37.
G. W. F. Hegel,
The Phenomenology of Mind,
London 1966, 229–40.

38.
Ashis Nandy,
The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism,
Bombay 1983, 7–8.

39.
Ibid., 79–113.

40.
Ibid., 11.

41.
Wilde,
The Artist as Critic,
403.

42.
Quoted by R. K. R. Thornton,
The Decadent Dilemma,
London 1983.

43.
Quoted by H. Kingsmill-Moore,
Reminiscences and Reflections,
London 1930, 45.

44.
Nandy, 32–5.

45.
Almy, "New Views of Mr. O. W.",
Theatre,
London 1894, 124.

46.
Wilde,
Plays,
268.

47.
Ibid., 268.

48.
Quoted Ellmann,
Oscar Wilde,
20.

49.
Quoted by Hyde, 71.

50.
Wilde,
Selected Letters,
29.

51.
Ellmann,
Oscar Wilde,
186.

52.
Quoted by Tom Nairn,
The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy,
London 1988, 328.

53.
Quoted ibid., 332.

54.
Ibid., 340.

55.
Wilde,
Selected Letters,
112.

56.
Wilde,
The Artist as Critic,
396.

57.
Ibid., 373.

58.
Wilde,
The Artist as Critic
405.

59.
Jorge Luis Borges,
Labyrinths,
Harmondsworth 1970, 216.

60.
George Russell,
Letters from AE,
ed. Alan Denson, London 1961, 20.

61.
Quoted by Wilde,
The Artist as Critic,
130.

62.
Quoted by Ellmann, 186.

63.
Wilde,
The Artist as Critic,
386.

1.
G. B. Shaw,
John Bull's Other Island,
in
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing,
Vol. 2, Deny 1991, 438.

2.
G. B. Shaw,
The Matter with Ireland,
ed. David H. Greene and Dan H. Laurence, London 1962, 33.

3.
Shaw,
John Bull's Other Island,
432.

4.
Ibid., 429.

5.
Ibid., 427.

6.
Ibid., 426.

7.
Ibid., 459.

8.
Ibid., 440.

9.
Ibid., 436.

10.
Ibid., 433.

11.
Shaw, Matter,
16.

12.
On this see Alfred J. Turco Jnr.,
Shaw's Moral Vision: The Self and Salvation,
Ithaca 1976, 178 ff.

13.
Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
tr. by Constance Farrington, Harmondsworth 1967, 124.

14.
Shaw,
John Bull's Other Island,
439.

15.
Ibid., 470–1.

16.
Ibid., 460.

17.
Ibid., 431.

18.
Ibid., 425.

19.
Ibid., 467.

20.
Ibid., 467.

21.
Ibid., 469.

22.
Ibid., 436.

23.
Ibid., 467.

24.
Shaw,
Matter,
99.

25.
Shaw,
John Bull's Other Island,
461.

26.
Ibid., 471.

27.
Shaw,
Matter,
35.

28.
Ibid.. 149.

29.
Ibid., 252.

1.
Quoted by Gifford Lewis,
Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish RM,
Harmondsworth 1987, 165.

2.
Lewis, ibid., 9.

3.
E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross,
The Real Charlotte,
London 1977, 11.

4.
Quoted by Gifford Lewis, 104.

5.
Gifford Lewis ed.,
Selected Letters of Somerville and Ross,
London 1989, 252.

6.
E. Oe. Somerville,
Irish Memories,
Chapter 8.

7.
Quoted by Gifford Lewis,
Somerville and Ross,
127
.

8.
Charles Lever,
Tom Burke of Ours.
Dublin 1844, 71.

9.
Somerville and Ross,
The Real Charlotte,
67.

10.
Ibid., 117.

11.
Ibid., 45.

12.
Ibid., 79.

13.
Ibid., 124.

14.
Somerville,
Irish Memories,
Chapter 20.

15.
Quoted by Hilary Robinson,
Somerville and Ross: A Critical Appreciation,
Dublin 1980, 87.

16.
Lewis,
Somerville and Ross,
196.

17.
Quoted by Lewis, ibid., 134.

18.
The phrase is D. W. Harding's from the essay of that tide in
Scrutiny
VIII (1940), 346–62.

19.
Quoted by Robinson, 88.

20.
Quoted ibid., 88.

21.
John Cronin, "The Real Charlotte",
The Anglo-Irish Novel,
Belfast 1980, 146.

22.
Somerville and Ross,
The Real Charlotte,
327
.

23.
Ibid., 42.

24.
C. S. Lewis, "A Note on Jane Austen",
Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays,
ed. Ian Wan, New Jersey 1963, 33.

25.
Somerville and Ross,
The Real Charlotte,
223.

26.
Ibid., 344.

27.
Ibid., 198.

28.
Ibid., 338.

29.
Ibid., 198.

30.
Ibid., 338.

31.
Ibid., 80.

32.
Ibid., 178.

33.
Ibid., 24.

34.
Lewis,
Somerville and Ross,
44
.

35.
Quoted ibid., 195.

36.
Somerville and Ross,
The Real Charlotte,
50–1.

37.
Ibid., 245.

1.
Augusta Gregory,
Seventy Years 1852–1922,
ed. Colin Smythe, Gerrards Cross 1974, 1.

2.
Gregory, Holograph Diary, Vol. 12, 11 April 1896, Berg Collection, New York.

3.
Mary Lou Kohfeldt Stevenson, "The Cloud of Witnesses",
Lady Gregory: Fifty Years After,
eds. Ann Saddlemyer and Colin Smythe, Gerrards Cross 1987, 60.

4.
Holograph Diary, Vol. 2, Berg.

5.
George Moore,
Vale,
New York 1920, 184.

6.
See
Lady Gregory: Fifty Years After,
197 and 195.

7.
Brian Jenkins, "The Marriage", ibid., 79.

8.
Gregory,
Seventy Years,
34.

9.
Ibid., 35.

10.
Ibid., 36.

11.
Ibid., 38.

12.
Ibid., 59, 35.