Oppressed nations are
sometimes very good at the arts. They
can fiddle away or poetize or drink to salve the pain. Ireland is a standout in the
modernist period because of its literary scene, as it had lots to be miserable
about. James Joyce is the leader of the
bunch, rated as the best author in the English language by critics. His greatest work is “Ulysses,” a take on the classic Greek tale, which mostly centers on
a walk through Dublin
by Leopold Bloom, a cuckholded Jewish fellow on a day of small-time errands. Joyce left Ireland when he was 22 years old
because he was fed up with its religion, politics and small-mindedness, but its
history and life still fed his creativity.
 |
| The Pen is not always mightier than the Sword. |
But then we have Sean
O’Casey, the socialist dramatist, whose plays ‘Shadow of a Gunman,” ‘Juno & the Paycock” and “The Plough and the Stars’ depicted
working class life in Dublin
for the first time. Samuel Beckett, the not
really ‘absurdist’ author of “Waiting for
Godot’ and many other great plays, and a close compatriot of Joyce’s. He even did research for Joyce for “Finnegan’s Wake.” Brendan Behan, whose ‘Borstal Boy” told you all you needed to know about a youth
prison called a school. Prison stories being a
particular favorite of mine, I don’t know why.
Liam O’Flaherty, a founder of the Irish Communist Party, who wrote the
famous book ‘The Informer” and later,
“Famine,” “Land” and “Insurrection.” At the end, he converted to Catholicism.
Or earlier authors: Oscar
Wilde, son of a female Irish revolutionary involved in the 1848 Young
Irelanders movement, who paid for his gayness with 2 years in a British jail
and a life-time of acerbic quips, among other things. Bram
Stoker, whose seminal ‘Dracula” still
lives, kill him as you might. Jonathan
Swift, author of “Gulliver’s Travels,”
whose ‘modest proposal’ is also relevant, being an attack on English capitalist
mores. It might as well have been written
now, not in 1729. George Bernard Shaw, a
mild Fabian socialist whose musty plays are still performed, though perhaps not
much loved anymore. William Butler
Yeats, an English literature class 1001 poet and minder of the Abbey Theater in
Dublin. Oliver Goldsmith, the author of the ancient
classic “The Vicar of Wakefield.” And the hopelessly Catholic C.S. Lewis and
his simple fantasies of good and evil in Narnia.
Pretty good crowd for such a
small island, aye?
The first realist novel
written about Ireland was by
a woman, Maria Edgeworth, who wrote “Castle
Rackrent” about tenant / landlord relations in rural Ireland. Oh,
such a dull topic! Even if it is
absolutely central…
 |
| The Prick With a Stick? Joyce and citizens. |
So you can take the
“Ulysses” walking tour if you print out the map on the internet, as they no
longer print it at the Joyce
Centre or the Irish
Writer’s Museum. Hard times, perhaps... There is also a Joyce museum
at the Martello Tower
in Sandycove south of Dublin,
where ‘Ulysses’ starts with the
waking of young Stephen Dedalus. Bloom’s
Day is celebrated every year on June16.
It takes you through Leopold Bloom’s and Stephen Dedalus’ day in Ulysses – mostly
Bloom’s wander down O’Connell Street
into the city, internally musing over Dublin’s
people, buildings and events of Irish history. He visits Westland Row railway station, Davey
Byrnes pub and Sweny’s pharmacy; window-shops after crossing the O’Connell Bridge
to Grafton Street; takes in a famous cemetery, the National Library, other
bars – in total 18 stations of Ulysses’ cross - based on the chapters of the original story. Many with plaques now. This book is
the original source of clever book structures I think.
7 Eccles Street, Leopold’s
home with Molly, was not far north from the center of town. It starts and ends the book. It was merely an empty lot
with only a door that had “Molly Was Here” scrawled across it in spray paint when
I last visited in the early 1970s. Now the
actual 7 Eccles Street
is a prosperous brick medical facility, while the door was rescued and placed
in the Joyce Centre’s backyard. They
removed the scrawl. Good of them. At Swenys
they still have readings by bystanders every day, and on the day we were
there, a chapter from ‘The Dubliners.’
Joyce picked that day, June
16, because it was on that day he went on a walking date with, yes, yes, one
Nora Barnacle. According to the movie,
she graced him with a hand-job around Merrion
Square somewhere.
And this of course cemented the following tempestuous relationship for
this sexually frustrated boy. “Ulysses’ was banned from the U.S. because it revealed that Bloom masturbated
on Sandymount Strand, a bus ride away from downtown Dublin, while looking at a female beach
goer. Is there another sub-text here?
Yes, jest? Joyce buried it in a mountain
of wordplay, humour and myth.
Molly Malone was a Dublin fishmonger and perhaps prostitute who is connected to the song and lyrics "Cockles & Mussels, Alive Alive Oh." She somehow also lent her name to a radical Irish miners group in the U.S. that was not shy about violence. Her statue now stands on Suffolk Street. Trinity College named its theater after Beckett, which Beckett
probably would laugh at, given he never studied theater at Trinity. The Irish Writers’ Museum is worth a visit,
located on Parnell Square
across from the Garden
of Remembrance (named for
the famine.) The Joyce Centre on Great
George’s Street is also worth a visit, if you are too far into his
writing. It is not far from the writer’s
museum.
Write on, crazy feeling!
Red Frog
June 9, 2018 (nearly
Bloomsday…)
No comments:
Post a Comment