At 11:28 AM 1/6/2001 -0800, Mark Weiss wrote:
> Britain and Ireland for a lot of Americans, myself
>included, remains so laden with mythic association--it's why hordes descend
>on Stratford every year--that the actual is barely visible.
Inresting post, Mark. Mairead and I and the two childern visited Ireland
last Christmas, did dublin-limerick-galway triangle to visit family, no
northern stuff. It was my first trip and the first time we'd all gone as a
family. To say Mairead's family is "fun" (hello, Steven Evans!) would be
unnerstate (as Bobby Bouche might say).
When I was kid/dweeb I was enthusiast for Heaney's work. And though it
seems in many ways his work has moved out of hte fields (but only slightly)
and into the livingroom, his work is obiously so at variance with the
Ireland of the 80s and 90s that it can only be seen as some kind of
Freudian nostalgic reaction formation. Though this of course was no
surprise to me, what struck me upon getting actually to
see/taste/smell/listen to Ireland is the disparity between Heaney's Ireland
,as represented in his poetry, and the current wealth booming Ireland, like
every kid on Grafton street had a cell phone at his head (never before
could I see at a glance over a crowd the statistical difference between
right and left handers). Anyway, Heaney's work in that context is so
purposefully offering the mythic Ireland, tying himself as powerfully to
the "ancient' Ireland in order to retain a kind, maybe, of literary power:
Sweeney, bogs, scribes who flap their heads, laconic dock workers, ghosts
on Station Island yadayada; a world so at odds with anything really there
anymore, which is precisely the reason he's doing this, increasingly urban
and the peat bogs are just about exhausted. And then to read at The Winding
Stair with Mairead Byrne, Maighread Medbh, and Randolph Healy and see their
Irelands was "a rush" (as Brian Dennehy might say). Medbh talked about her
cunt as a spud and how her husband so loves this spud that he's this great
patriot for lovin this spud so much; and then Healy's anagrams of "The
Republic of Ireland" (which he did by moving the letters around on his
kitchen table); and Byrne's memory piece centering on Nelson's Pillar.
Medbh who recited/chanted her work barefoot I think scarified the audience
to such a degreee that that some of the childern there now have white hair.
Healy tickled their wit bones and punted our hearts out over the liffey.
And Mairead wedged that room back into an earlier Dublin. But they did
their work without wrapping their work in a mythic packaging. Besides that,
I got finally to meet Maurice Scully Skully who'd Mairead told me so much
about when she knew him when she was putting on her plays when back when.
-guh
|