Interesting, Trevor. I didn't know Mangan wrote in Gaelic as well as
English, so I learnt something there. I have always, since I knew of him,
thought of his work as important historically, though must confess that I
find it verbose and verbally uncertain and phonetically clogged, as in the
piece posted, however, if you could illuminate to me his relation to writing
in Gaelic I'd be most grateful.

All the Best

Dave


David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Trevor Joyce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 12:21 AM
Subject: Re: « Qu1est-ce qu1une littérature mineure? » What is a Minor
Literature?


Hi cris,

There's a nice specific application of these angles from Deleuze in David
Lloyd's "Nationalism and Minor Literature: James Clarence Mangan and the
Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism", California, 1987. The first
half-decent consideration of Mangan ever, reclaiming him from positionings
as poet of Ireland, poet of Catholicism, and poet maudit, before the event.
It set the bar for whatever's followed afterwards on JCM.

For anyone who can't lay hands on his stuff, here's on of my favourites,
wrenched from the Irish:

O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire

I
Where is my Chief, my Master, this bleak night, movrone?
O, cold, cold, miserably cold is this bleak night for Hugh,
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone!

II
Rolls real thunder? Or, was that red livid light
Only a meteor? I scarce know; but, through the midnight dim
The pitiless ice-wind streams. except the hate that persecutes him
Nothing hath crueller venomy might.

III
An awful, a tremendous night is this, me-seems!
The floodgates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide -
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.

IV
Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear he,
The sharp sore sleet, these howling floods.

V
O, mournful is my soul tonight for Hugh Maguire!
Darkly, as in a dream, he strays! Before him and behind
Triumphs the tyrranous anger of the wounding wind,
The wounding wind, that burns as fire!

VI
It is my bitter grief - it cuts me to the heart -
That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate!
Oh, woe is me, where is he? Wandering, houseless, desolate,
Alone, without or guide or chart!

VII
Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright,
Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds
Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleet-shower blinds
The hero of Galang tonight!

VIII
Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is,
That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stately form,
Should thus be tortured and o'erborne - that this unsparing storm
Should wreak its wrath on head like his!

IX
That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed,
Should this chill, churlish night, perchance, be paralyzed by frost,
While through some icicle-hung thicket - as one lorn and lost -
He walks and wanders without rest.

X
The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead,
It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds -
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds,
So that the cattle cannot feed.

XI
The pale bright margins of the streams are seen by none.
Rushes and sweeps along the untameable flood on every side -
It penetrates and fills the cottagers' dwellings far and wide -
Water and land are blent in one.

XII
Through some dark woods, 'mid bones of monsters, Hugh now strays,
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly brow -
Oh! what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his were now
A backward glance at peaceful days!

XIII
But other thoughts are his - thoughts that can still inspire
With joy and an onward-bounding hope the bosom of Mac Nee -
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea,
Borne on the wind's wings, flashing fire!

XIV
And though frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes,
And white ice-gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o'er,
A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore,
The lightning of the soul, not skies.

XV
Avran
Hugh marched forth to the fight - I grieved to see him so depart;
And lo! to-night he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad, betrayed -
But the memory of the limewhite mansions his right hand hath laid
In ashes warms the heroes heart!
(1846)

Incidentally, also, in her "Melville's Marginalia", in which she envisages
Mangan as the original of Melville's Bartleby, Susan Howe explicitly credits
Lloyd's work. And he's a fine poet in his own right, but published by no
large press, promoted by no consortium. Is it for those sorts of reasons
that we so rarely get to discuss the specifics of "non-mainstream" poets (by
that, I mean those not pushed by the major presses)? It's not necessarily,
prima facie, ludicrous to charge a poetry-reader for being lazy if they
admit to not reading the Larkins or Muldoons of this world. How can we, on
the other hand, easily discuss the specifics of Allen Fisher or Maggie
O'Sullivan? - Probably few on this list have access to their work.

So, anybody got opinions about the Carcanet MacSweeney? Mine is on order,
but having a Xerox of the Tempers of Hazard selection, and John Wilkinson's
review essay, I'm reading Blake and the Ranters by way of excited
preparation.

Best,

T