Nobel Laureates Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney a Series of SCULPTURES by ROWAN GILLESPIE I Dedicate This Booklet to the Memory of My Father, the Honorable John J
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THE FOUR IRISH LITERARY nobel laureates yeats, shaw, beckett and heaney a series of SCULPTURES BY ROWAN GILLESPIE I dedicate this booklet to the memory of my father, the Honorable John J. Burns and to the Jesuit priests who made it possible for him and for countless others from humble beginnings to reach for the stars and achieve greatness. Brian P. Burns, Palm Beach, 2012 The publishers would like to thank Professor Thomas Hachey, Dr Robert O’Neill, Lee Pellegrini, Joan Reilly and Brian Smale THE FOUR IRISH LITERARY NOBEL LAUREATES YEATS, SHAW, BECKETT AND HEANEY A series of sculptures by Rowan Gillespie First published by Clonlea Studios and Brian Burns in 2012 Text © Roger Kohn 2012 Copyright for typesetting, editing, layout, design © Roger Kohn 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Badger Press Limited, Bowness on Windermere, Cumbria, LA23 3AS Design, typesetting and production Roger Kohn Copy editors Jayne Booth and Joan Reilly Photography Rowan Gillespie, Lee Pellegrini, Brian Smale and Roger Kohn Printed on Revive 50:50 Silk, a 50% recycled paper. The composition of the paper is 25% de-inked post-consumer waste, 25% unprinted pre-consumer waste and 50% virgin fiber. All pulps used are Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) and the manufacturing mill is accredited with the ISO 14001 standard for environmental management. THE FOUR IRISH LITERARY NOBEL LAUREATES YEATS, SHAW, BECKETT AND HEANEY s e t A SERIES OF SCULPTURES ǡ RIPPLES OF ULYSSES, a e BY ROWAN GILLESPIE 2000, Regis University, r Denver, Colorado. u a l l e PROLOG b Ĭ THE THREE JOYCES, o n 2000, was inspired by the n 2000, the Jesuit fathers of Regis University in Denver, y photograph of a group r IColorado, commissioned the Irish sculptor, Rowan of friends; Martin Hart, a r Gillespie, to create the embodiment of Irish literary genius Rowan Gillespie and e t James Joyce to preside over their campus. For Rowan, this i Roger Kohn standing by l was a mammoth task, for it required him to come to terms a second version of THE h s with both the eccentric writer and his hugely complex RIPPLES OF ULYSSES, i r masterpiece, Ulysses . Rowan recalls that it was as if Joyce i 2000, in the garden of the himself was directing the work, his photographs covering the r Merrion Hotel, Dublin u walls as the artist’s workshop became an intimate setting in (bottom). o which their relationship was able to develop and flourish. f e The result was an epiphany for the sculptor. A life-size h t Joyce, cast in bronze, stands proud in the center of a series of eighteen, flat bronze segments, each laboriously 1 1 engraved with a passage from one of the episodes from the book. The resultant RIPPLES OF ULYSSES shows the E I P master surrounded by his genius, enhanced and given S E resonance by a gentle trickling of water beneath the L L I segments. An almost duplicate version of RIPPLES stands G in the garden of the N Merrion Hotel in A W Dublin. Five years later, O Regis commissioned R Rowan to embody the essence of the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is depicted kneeling before God, his poetry an offering. A desktop-sized bronze, THE THREE JOYCES, inspired by RIPPLES and depicting Joyce at three salient stages in his life, was acquired by Brian P. Burns who donated it to Boston College in Massachusetts, the largest member of the Association of twenty-eight American Jesuit Colleges and Universities, in December 2001. The piece was to be displayed in the prestigious John J. Burns Library in the leafy, historic Boston suburb of Chestnut Hill. s e t a e r u a l l e b o n y r a r e Ǡ Hon. John J. Burns, A.B., LL.B., S.J.D., LL.D. t i (1 May 1901 – 11 May 195 7) l Judge Burns was a 1921 alumnus of h s i Boston College. His portrait, painted in r i 1986 by Robert Alexander Anderson, r hangs in the Ford Tower u o of the Burns Library. f e h t 2 E I P S E L L I G N A E G W E L O L O R C N O T S O B , Y R A R B I L S N R U B . J N H O J , I N I R G E L L E P E E L : S E G A M I L L A Ǡ The installation of ‘Burst the Heart Open’, an exhibition of Irish paintings. E G E L L O C N O T S O B , Y R A R B I L s THE HONORABLE JOHN J. BURNS LIBRARY, S e N t BOSTON COLLEGE R U a B e . J r N H he Irish-American business u O J a , T entrepreneur, CEO of San l H C l Francisco-based BF Enterprises, R e U H b C business attorney and philan- o N O n thropist, Brian P. Burns was named as one of the The first four buildings of T į F I y Greatest Irish Americans of the twentieth century by Boston College's Chestnut Hill L C r Irish America magazine in November 1999. campus; St Mary's Hall, Gasson a He is the founder and principal benefactor of the John r Hall, Devlin Hall and Bapst Library. e t J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections, i l housed in the spectacular Bapst building at Chestnut Hill, h s designed in the English Collegiate Gothic style. It has been i r i described as the most beautiful library in America. Renovations during the mid 1980s transformed the entire north wing of the r u building into a state-of-the-art facility. Brian Burns, along with his brother John J. Burns o Jr and sister Alice, dedicated the library in 1986 to their father, the late Honorable John f e J. Burns. Three generations of the family now give financial support to the institution. h t The library is therefore a constantly evolving tribute to Judge John J. Burns; a remarkable man who was born in 1901 and graduated from Boston College in 1921. From 3 mowing the lawns at Harvard in his youth, Judge Burns returned first as a brilliant student with a prodigious intellect and later as a professor of law, who, at twenty-nine, became E I the youngest Superior Court Justice in Massachusetts history. He rose to high office in P S E Washington under the Roosevelt administration and was appointed by Joseph Kennedy L L as first counsel of the newly formed Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (the I G SEC) and thereafter as Special Council for the newly created United States Maritime N Commission before establishing a highly regarded national law practice in Boston and A W New York, becoming William Randolph Hearst’s attorney and executor. Judge Burns died O in 1957. R The former President and now Chancellor of Boston College, Father J. Donald Monan, Ĭ Rowan Gillespie delivers THE SJ, has been the spiritual father and a constant friend to the Burns Library. Father THREE JOYCES to Bob O’Neill at Monan’s brilliant successor, the current President, Father William P. Leahy, SJ, has the Burns Library in 2001. E G continued to provide strong support. Under the directorship of E L L Professor Thomas Hachey of the Center for Irish Programs, O C another true friend of the library, and the inspired librarianship of N O T Dr Robert O’Neill, now celebrating his twenty-sixth year of tenure, S O B , the Burns Library has become one of the world's foremost Y R A research collections. It documents the life, history, music and R B I L culture of the Irish people, boasting over 275,000 volumes, 16 S N million manuscripts, artifacts, maps, paintings, photographs, R U B architectural records and associated ephemera dating from the . J late eighteenth century to the present day. It is also home to rare N H O J books and manuscripts, US Congressional archives, an Irish music , I N center, university archives, Jesuitica, special collections and an I R G extensive digital archive; fast becoming a leading center for digital E L L E scholarship. Its literary collections of Ireland’s greatest writers, P E including the Nobel Literature Laureates George Bernard Shaw, E L , Y R A R B I L S N R U B . J N H O J Seamus Heaney shortly after , s Ǡ E V e I winning the Nobel Prize and, H t C R a A right, his wife Marie, E e G Y E E r L photographed alongside a V L N u O A bronze bust of her in the late C a H N l E I 1980s. From the Bobbie Hanvey O B T l S B e O Archive in the Burns Library. O B B b o n Samuel Beckett, William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney, are ranked among the finest y in the world. Funding for the Irish Collections comes principally from Brian P. Burns and r a his family, the John J.