Études irlandaises

35-2 | 2010 Traduction : pratique et poétique Translation: Praxis and Poetics

Clíona ní Ríordáin (dir.)

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/1935 DOI : 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.1935 ISSN : 2259-8863

Éditeur Presses universitaires de Caen

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 30 décembre 2010 ISBN : 978-2-7535-1246-7 ISSN : 0183-973X

Référence électronique Clíona ní Ríordáin (dir.), Études irlandaises, 35-2 | 2010, « Traduction : pratique et poétique » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2010, consulté le 23 septembre 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/1935 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises. 1935

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 23 septembre 2020.

Études irlandaises est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International. 1

SOMMAIRE

Preface Clíona Ní Ríordáin

An Editorial Comment: Speech Acts and Feidhmchláir Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost

Interview with Michael Cronin Michael Cronin et Clíona Ní Ríordáin

Tiontú an Chultúir: Affaire Dominici agus Maolra Seoighe Stiofán Ó Cadhla

Treonna sean is nua – an fhoclóireacht Nua-Ghaeilge san aonú haois is fiche Liam Mac Amhlaigh

Irish and Translation – the EU Context Seán Ó Riain

Translating National Identity into Music: Representations of “Traditional Ireland” in A. J. Potter’s Television Opera Patrick Patrick Zuk

Poèmes (Dánta) Biddy Jenkinson et Clíona Ní Ríordáin

“Like blossoms on slow water”: the Power of Metaphor in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry and its Translation Elizabeth Pearce

Beckett, Mahon, Carson et Le Bateau ivre:Rythme, prosodie, interprétation* Maryvonne Boisseau

“Through My Dream”: Trevor Joyce’s Translations John Goodby

Critical study

Critical study Clíona Ní Ríordáin

Comptes rendus de lecture

An Autumn Wind Marion Naugrette-Fournier

Going By Water Taffy Martin

Pearse Hutchinson Grace Neville

Choix de poèmes Isabelle Génin

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Carnaval et autres poèmes Clíona Ní Ríordáin

The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian Stephanie Schwerter

Other Edens Susan Schreibman

W.B. Yeats in Context Jacqueline Genet

Fílocht Chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge Clíona Ní Ríordáin

Joyce’s Disciples Disciplined

Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in 20th-century Irish Drama Hélène Lecossois

Huir del laberinto. Stephanie Schwerter

Between the Shadows Fiona McCann

The Fictional Imagination of Neil Jordan Bernard Escarbelt

Music in Irish Cultural History Erick Falc'her-Poyroux

Going to the Well for Water Erick Falc'her-Poyroux

A Quiet Man Miscellany Isabelle Le Corff

The Struggle for Shared Schools in Northern Ireland Michel Savaric

Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts Karin Fischer

Gaelic Games Catherine Maignant

The Fall of the House of Paisley Michel Savaric

Uncommon Valour – 1916 and the Battle for the South Dublin Union Agnès Maillot

In Search of the Promised Land Philippe Cauvet

Irish Birmingham Romain Garbaye

The MacBride Principles Agnès Maillot

Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians Ann-Marie Kilgallon

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Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America Bernard Escarbelt

The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe Karine Bigand

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Preface

Clíona Ní Ríordáin

1 The present volume of Études Irlandaises, Translation: Praxis and Poetics addresses the issue of translation on the island of Ireland in diverse and multiple forms, focussing both on the practical dimension of the translation act – with articles on lexicography, the practical implications of Irish within the EU, the presence of the Irish Language within the chamber of the Northern Irish Assembly, the effects of technology on the practice of translation – and on the poetic dimension to translation, with a range of articles on the translation of poetry1.

2 Études Irlandaises appears at a time when interest in translation is intense, sometimes for very different and conflicting reasons. Under the terms of the Official Languages Act, official texts within the Republic of Ireland have to be made available in both English and Irish2. Irish has also become the 21st language of the European Union and as such translation and interpretation services in Irish are now provided within the European Parliament and Commission3. The enlargement of the European Union at the end of 20044 and Ireland’s decision to open its borders to the citizens of the 2004 accession states has also meant that large language groups from these other states came to Ireland. To the official bilingual signage in Irish and English, unofficial notices in Polish or Estonian in supermarkets or garages were added, “Przed wyjściem zgaś światło” appearing almost as often as “Brúigh” “Push”. The arrival of these new migrants involved a degree of unforeseen logistical implementation at all levels of the public service, from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in schools5, to the provision of interpreters in the courts and hospitals. As the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) outlined in its 2008 report, more needs to be done to improve translation services for migrants6. Their press release, referred to below, follows an extensive piece of research presented in 2007 by Mary Phelan from DCU. Her advocacy paper is available on the website of the Irish Interpreters’ and Translators’ Association7; it stresses the need for a clear framework for interpreters who work in the public service in Ireland and also highlights the need for adequate training programmes. A recent series of articles by Carl O’Brien in the Irish Times illustrate the problems that arise as a result of this lack of training8, and the case

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study published in the same issue enumerates no less than 214 errors made in the translation of a refugee’s statement. The agency responsible has since closed down9.

3 In the present straitened economic circumstances, spending on translation has been decried as wasteful, and frequent articles in the press, both north and south of the border, have aligned themselves with this view10. Most worryingly, the NCCRI itself, which commissioned many challenging reports, was among the first victims of Irish government cutbacks, and ceased to exist in December 200811.

4 The facilitation of the translation process is under attack, so, it is argued, why should anyone spend money on translation when everyone on the island of Ireland speaks English? This monolithic, monolingual form of thought refuses to acknowledge the complexity of language issues in Ireland. Yet, it is only through dialogue, which acknowledges both past diversities and present multiplicities that one can hope to move forward in harmony. As Abdelkebir Khattibi says, “any form of thinking that is not minoritarian, marginal, fragmentary and incomplete, is always a form of ethnocidal thinking12”.

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5 The articles contained within the Praxis section of the volume are devoted to a variety of topics and explore the issue from a range of angles.

6 Liam Mac Amhlaigh examines that most basic of tools for a translator, the dictionary. In his article, he studies the development of lexicography in Ireland throughout the last century. His article highlights the way in which the history of Irish lexicography mirrors the history of the Irish state.

7 Liam Mac Amhlaigh and Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost both underline the impetus of the import of new technology in the facilitation of the task of the translator. Mac Giolla Chríost shows the democratic nature of the translation process as implemented on Facebook. He also draws attention to the introduction of Irish into the chamber of the Northern Assembly and to the act of self-translation required of NIA members who choose to use Irish; the economy of treasury also resulting in a consequent economy of time for the members in question, the time spent in translation divides the time available to the member in two.

8 Seán Ó Riain investigates the use of Irish within another assembly at the heart of Europe and traces the acquisition of the status as an official language of the European Union for the Irish language. He outlines the evolution of terminology, citing precise instances and alerts us to the awareness of the emotional impact that hearing the Irish language within the European sphere can have on an Irish listener. He has included an extensive bibliography on the topic.

9 Stiofáin Ó Cadhla brings his skill as an ethnographer to the case of the Mam Trasna murders. This case relating to the bludgeoning to death of the Joyce family continues to fascinate lovers of true detective stories, and as recently as February 2010 an article was devoted to the affair in the Galway Advertiser13. The affair also preoccupied James Joyce who wrote an article on the event for Il Piccolo della Sera, on September 16, 1907. Joyce highlights the role of the interpreter in the affair: Both the old man and the other accused did not know English. The court had to resort to the services of an interpreter. The interrogation that took, place through this man, was at times comic and at times tragic. On the one hand there was the

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officious interpreter, on the other, the patriarch of the miserable tribe who, unused to civic customs, seemed quite bewildered by all the legal ceremonies14.

10 For Joyce, the whole affair was symbolic of the relationship between Ireland and England: The figure of this bewildered old man, left over from a culture which is not ours, a deaf-mute before his judge, is a symbol of the Irish nation at the bar of public opinion. Like him, Ireland cannot appeal to the modern conscience of England or abroad. The English newspapers act as interpreters between Ireland and the English electorate which, though it lends an ear every so often is finally irritated by the eternal complaints of the Nationalist deputies who, it believes, have come to the House with the aim of upsetting the order and extorting money15.

11 Patrick Zuk draws our attention to another symbolic construct, invoking another medium. The translation of a desired national imago to music, through the opera commissioned from A. J. Potter and Donagh MacDonagh. This fascinating study shows another element of the dialogue between England and Ireland, where one is defined in counterpoint to the other: […] Irishness is largely defined through contrast with negative British stereotypes. Patrick and the Irish labourers are portrayed as decent and peaceable, conditioned by their Catholic faith to be tolerant and live in harmony with immigrants from other countries. The only indigenous Britons that they encounter are Teddy boys, who gained widespread notoriety only a few years before the opera was written through their involvement in race riots in London instigated by ‘Keep Britain White’ mobs16. MacDonagh allows this minority sub-culture to represent British society, or, at any rate, the British working class, in its entirety17.

12 These essays, taken as a whole, make at once an emotional plea and an intellectually stunning case for the continued need for interpreters of language and culture who will heighten understanding on a global level.

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13 The essays on literary topics here all illustrate the intense creative impulse that can emerge from the translation process. It is in essence a dialogical form. Many poets, Lowell and Heaney, to name but two, see translation as a project, a form of exercise, a discipline that will ensure that, for them, writing as an activity must continue. In Heaney’s case, his translation of Buile Suibhne enabled his invention of the mask of Sweeney the birdman. In later years, Heaney has elaborated on his vision of translation referring to it initially as a “raid” (where you raid the text in a predatory fashion for the elements that interest you as a poet) or a “settlement” in which you occupy the source text and so are more respectful of its forms. More recently, in an address made to students in the University of Amsterdam, Heaney has also punned ingeniously on the the term “translation”, talking of trans-lation and trance-lation, where the latter emphasises “the work’s character and entrancement18”.

14 Heaney’s poetry attracted attention in France from an early stage, through the advocacy of academics like Jacqueline Genet and Adolophe Haberer. His work has been translated in a variety of anthologies and most recently by Patrick Hersant, whose translations of Seeing Things (La Lucarne) and The Spirit Level (L’étrange et le connu) appeared in 2005 (Gallimard). Elizabeth Pearce’s article examines different approaches to translations of Heaney’s poem “Casualty”. She examines the density of his metaphorical language and underlines the importance of maintaining this in a

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translated version: “If the metaphoric networks are likewise maintained in the translation, then the translation too will allow the ‘possibility of release’ – allowing migration across cultural and linguistic barriers between the two languages.”

15 Trevor Joyce has also translated Buile Suibhne. Yet, as John Goodby suggests, his translation employs what Laurence Venuti has termed the “foreignizing” mode of translation, associated with avant-garde poetry. For Goodby, Trevor Joyce’s engagement with the Buile Suibhne text prepared the terrain for much of the subsequent output. Goodby also makes the connection to that other master of modernist translation, Ezra Pound, arguing that Pound is a strongly felt presence in Trevor Joyce’s work: […] after 1976, Joyce pursued what can be described as a Poundian course of study in Japanese and Chinese poetry and philosophy, coming to an understanding of the cultural counterweight they represented to eurocentricity and Western binary modes of thinking. Unlike Pound, however, Joyce never uses translation to pass ironic judgement on the present: nor does he succumb to linguistic idealism concerning the ideogram, or the belief that China offered a desirable social model19.

16 In Goodby’s view, translation has helped Trevor Joyce create some of the most remarkable collections of poetry that exist in Irish Literature today.

17 Biddy Jenkinson has also been hailed as a remarkable poet: according to Ciaran Carson she is one of the foremost Irish writers writing in Irish or English. The poems presented here provide an insight into the varied style and preoccupations of the poet. Her lucid use of language, her ability to code-switch moving from French to English to Irish, from the love poem, to the meta-textual realm of the poem “X” and back to the ironic slant on contemporary Ireland give a glimpse of the supreme dexterity of a poet who is at home both within the realities of the present world while also comfortable with the mythological pre-lapsarian Ireland to which she harks back in some of her poems. No wonder that Máire Mhac an tSaoi has suggested that Biddy Jenkinson has been through this life before!

18 Irish poets have long been at home in France and sought inspiration from French literature, in many memorable cases. Maryvonne Boisseau renders homage to this tradition of fruitful interaction in her article on one of the most iconic of French poems, “Le Bateau ivre” and its various incarnations in the work of Irish poets.

19 The interview that Michael Cronin graciously granted to the journal examines many of the issues raised in the essays in both the Praxis and Poetics section of the volume. Addressing on the one hand multicultural, multilingual Ireland and the role of technology in that world, he also turns his attention to the translation of poetry and the implications for instant translation in the composition of poems in Irish.

20 It is hoped that the Translation volume of Etudes Irlandaises will mark another stepping stone in the exploration of the phenomenon of translation within Irish society, acknowledging its importance and signposting the way ahead. In doing so, it will accord fitting recognition to the crucial utterance embedded at the heart of Michael Cronin’s interview : “[…] translation like any other human phenomenon is multiple and contains within it genuinely creative and progressive forces but it also contains within it forces that are limiting and disabling20.” It is my hope that the collective scholarship of this volume will enable us to grasp the dualistic, contradictory nature of the theme of translation and allow us to go forward with a clearer-sighted, enriched

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comprehension of the nature of the treasure trove and minefield of translation on the island of Ireland.

NOTES

1. I would like to acknowledge the help of Carle Bonafous-Murat, Wesley Hutchinson, Angela Hurworth, Máire Ní Chárthaigh, Éamon Ó Cíosáin Aleksandra Parker, Tomás Ó Ríordáin, Christine Raguet and André Topia, who provided information on various aspects of the issues addressed in the preface. 2. See [ http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2003/en/act/pub/0032/index.htm], accessed 15/09/10. 3. See [http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/spotlight/irish_en.html], accessed 14/09/10. 4. See [http://europa.eu/pol/enlarg/index_en.html], accessed 15/09/10. 5. See INTO discussion document on English in the primary school [http://www.into.ie/ ROI/Publications/LanguageInThePrimarySchool.pdf] accessed 14/09/10. The situation has changed since the document was published as teacher pupil ratio has increased, owing to government cutbacks. 6. See press release[http://europa.eu/pol/enlarg/index_en.html], accessed 16/09/10. 7. See [ http://translatorsassociation.ie/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view], accessed 14/09/10. 8. See [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0607/1224272005465.html], and [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0607/1224272004732], accessed 15/09/10. 9. [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0607/1224272004781.html] consulted 14/09/10. 10. See for example in Northern Ireland: [www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2009/05/bbc- news-cost] and [http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/tuv-apologise-for- calling-irish-a-leprechaun-language-14555428.html], accessed 14/09/10. In the Republic of Ireland see articles such as [, accessed 14/09/10. 11. For media reaction to this decision see [http://www.nccri.ie/pdf/ recent_coverage_about_nccri.pdf], accessed 15/09/10. 12. Abdelkebir Khatibi, Le Magreb Pluriel, Paris, Denoël, 2003, p. 18. 13. See the account given recently: [ http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/22145], accessed 10/09/10. 14. James Joyce (translated by Conor Deane) in Kevin Barry (ed.), James Joyce Occasional Critical and Political Writing, Oxford, Oxford World Classics, 2000, p. 145. 15. James Joyce, op. cit., 146. 16. See Alan Travis, “After 44 years secret papers reveal truth about five nights of violence in Notting Hill”, The Guardian, 24 August 2002.

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17. Cf. infra p. 85. 18. See an account of the event [www.student.uva.nl/meng/home.cfm/28B30569-24A4-4D79- A61C815194CBE0C6], consulted 10/09/10. 19. Cf. infra p. 155. 20. Cf. infra p. 31.

AUTHOR

CLÍONA NÍ RÍORDÁIN Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3

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An Editorial Comment: Speech Acts and Feidhmchláir

Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost

1 The study of translation in Ireland has been, and indeed remains, much concerned with two domains of language – literature and public administration. For a minority, or minoritized, language such as Irish, these domains are, of course, extremely important in elevating the status of the language in society. The various papers in this edition rightly reflect this. But, some of the activity that sustains the vitality of any language is a much more prosaic affair. After all, no less an authority on translation in Ireland than Michael Cronin claims that every Irish-speaker is also a translator: “Is aistritheoir gach Gaeilgeoir beo1”. Everyday acts of translation are essential linguistic behaviours, yet rarely do they occasion our serious attention. It seems to me that here may be a number of reasons for this. The first is difficulty in identifying our data. What constitutes the commonplace act of translation? The second is the apparent inaccessibility of the raw material and its relative ephemerality. When and where do these acts occur? A third reason is methodological uncertainty. How might we systematically study these data? A final reason, I would argue, is our lack of confidence in the potential importance of such acts. Might any given datum be in any way significant beyond the act of translation itself? Unfortunately, given the natural limitations of editorial comment, I must restrict myself to doing little more than being provocative and maybe even self-indulgent in responding to my own questions. I trust that the reader will forgive me these transgressions.

2 For the sake of clarity and brevity I will confine my comments to two sets of acts of translation, sets which occur at the extreme ends of the spectrum of the activity, given the limitations of proving “editorial comment”. The first, at the most official, solemn – and symbolic – end of the spectrum is constituted by the self-translation by certain members of the Northern Ireland Assembly [NIA] of their Irish language contributions to debates on the floor of the chamber. Then, in somewhere at the other end of the spectrum – although no value judgement is implied – we have a domain which concerns a much greater public and exists in the cyberspace of internet as social networking, there exists the translation of “Facebook’ from English into Irish.

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3 The protocol of the NIA whereby Members of the Legislative Assembly [MLAs] who wish to speak in Irish are required to immediately provide an English language translation of their contribution has been the object of much comment. Some interest pertains to the potential discriminatory consequence of causing MLAs who wish to use Irish in this manner to suffer a restriction in that they are given no more time than other MLAs who speak only in English. Another concern is that while the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (NI) has put in place mechanisms for managing the translation of various documents into the Irish language, actual practices vary enormously across the different government departments2. Such variations could very well be explained by the institutional culture of said departments, or by the impact of the particular views of the ministerial team responsible for leading certain departments. Such matters merit research from the perspective of language planning and policy, or public administration. But it is the mundane act of self-translation on the floor of the NIA which is the most interesting. For me, this constitutes a performance in translation. By this I mean that it is far more than simply the vocal presentation of material in both Irish and English. Instead, what we have here is, to my mind, a type of speech act3. It is the quality of performativity4 which makes these particular acts of translation worthy of our attention. In these instances, to paraphrase Austin, something is being said and being done through words – the self-translated utterance brings about a substantive transformation in the meaning of the event within which it is occurring. In this context saying is doing. There is some irony at work here as Irish-speaking Irish republicans of the north of Ireland often wheel out an adage when appealing for action – “Don’t say it, do it!” My intuition is that in these acts of self-translation, to paraphrase Austin, “saying is doing” – the word is the action. Clearly, what I have done here is nothing more than to make a bald assertion. This particular set of everyday acts of translation constitutes a fertile area of activity for scholars. Clearly, it relates to language policy and public administration but has implications which, politically and linguistically, raise much wider and weighter questions.

4 My second, totally constrasting, area of enquiry takes us far from the confined floor of the Irish legislators and the administration of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is geographically non-confined, relates to a different class or classes of Irish speakers, of an age group probably much more variable than that of the Assembly and is essentially ludic in nature: I am talking about Facebook. As we all know, this is a social networking site with around half a billion members worldwide. The text on the Screenshot (Screenshot 1) from the Facebook site explains simply the purpose of the site as a means of giving “people the power to share and make the world open and more connected’.

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screenshot 1

5 Facebook began life in 2004. It is a perfect example of the sorts of Websites that now define “Web 2.0”: The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumer) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumer) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies5.

6 From the point of view of translation, the critical feature of Web 2.0 is the explosion of user-generated content. The idea is that the material we see online is the product of ordinary members of the community of users of sites such as Facebook. Initially Facebook was an English language site but has since been translated into several other languages. The launch of the process of translating Facebook into Irish was something of a media event as it was deemed newsworthy by “The Sunday Times6” among many others. While the simple fact of Facebook being available in Irish is interesting in itself, it is the relationship between the culture of the creation of user-generated content and the act of translating Facebook into Irish that is of greatest interest to me. This relationship has the potential to provide a rich set of linguistic data for exploring everday acts of translation in a clearly defined social context. Moreover, given the size of the membership of Facebook and the nature of its use, the significance of Facebook as Gaeilge could be substantial. For example, the process of translation in which different possible Irish language versions of terms such as “poke”, “tag” and “profile” were offered and voted upon by volunteer translators implies a peculiar

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democratisation of translation which, to my mind, merits study. Screenshots 2 and 3 (below) introduce the bald framework of this process.

7 Ellis provides a more detailed overview of the key features of the “architecture” of the Facebook translation process, comprising the development of a “glossary”, the use of the technique of “dynamic explosion”, and application of “linguistic rules7”. Taken together, Ellis describes this as “an innovative approach to web site internationalization”. This raises the question of what it means when the Irish language becomes a tool whereby something like Facebook is internationalised. Moreover, the precise nature of this architecture of translation, and its sociolinguistic implications, merit examination. Some of the end results of this process are not, prima facie, wholly unproblematic. For example, take this Facebook statement which sets out some guidelines to contributing translators: Dydd Mercher, Chwefror 25, 2009 am 3:40yh Prepositions + Article: According to the Official Standard both lenition & nasilisation are acceptable after preposition + article. ie. ar an mbord or an an bhord. In Facebook, the defacto standard has become the more standard Munster/ Connemara way, ie. ar an mbord. Please use this standard in all translations. Please also note that DENTALS apply to nasilisation – an an ndeasc ar an dtraein, etc are NOT correct8.

screenshot 2

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screenshot 3

8 What does “de facto” mean in this context? How was this arrived at? The democratic nature of the process is, in a sense, quite transparent. The community of users can vote for or against particular possible translations (see Screenshot 4), and opinion can be clearly noted but the decision, once taken, seems to be quite absolute and irreversible. Moreover, perhaps some voices in this process are more equal than others.

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screenshot 4

9 Some translators are certainly more active than others. Facebook tracks the numbers of phrases translated, the numbers of words translated and the numbers of votes cast upon the various proposed translations by each of the individual translators. Also, translators can gain awards for their efforts in both voting and translating and Facebook publishes all of these results for the whole community to read (for example Screenshots 5 & 6). To conduct an ethnographic study of such a community of translators seems to me to be a worthwhile exercise.

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screenshot 5

10 It is now ten years since the sociologists Daniel Miller and Don Slater9 invited us to subject the Internet to serious academic scrutiny and it is nine since the linguist David Crystal10 (2001) made his first substantial intervention in this field. Computer-mediated communication has since emerged as an important area of academic study with its own dedicated peer-review journal [http://jcmc.indiana.edu/]. As yet minority languages and their relationship with translation have enjoyed very little attention in this context. It appears to me that cyberspace ought to be the next destination of at least some students of Irish and translation, and I hope the contents of this book will stimulate them “to boldly go” in this direction.

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Screenshot 6

NOTES

1. Michael Cronin, An Ghaeilge san Aois Nua, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life Teoranta, 2005, p. 16. 2. See, for example, the transcript of a fairly recent NIA discussion on this matter [http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/culture/2007mandate/moe/080207_linguistic.htm] accessed 30th September 2010. 3. J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Cambridge, Ma., Harvard University Press, 1962; J. Searle, Speech Acts, 1969, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 4. J. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, 1997, New York, Routledge. 5. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0] accessed 30th August 2010. 6. C. Coyle, “Facebook gets set for an Irish language lesson’ The Sunday Times, January 11, 2009 [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5489404.ece] accessed August 30, 2010. 7. D. Ellis, “Names in translation and social language modeling” [ http:// www.facebook.com/translations/glossary.php?app=1&aloc=ga_IE#!/note.php? note_id=128753848919&id=9445547199&ref=mf] accessed 30th August 2010.

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8. [ http://www.facebook.com/translations/index.php? aloc=ga_IE&app=1&translate&p=20#!/translations/wiki.php?app=1&aloc=ga_IE] accessed 30th August 2010. 9. Daniel Miller, & Don Slater, The Internet. An Ethnographic Approach, 2010, Oxford, Berg. 10. David Crystal, Language and the Internet, 2001, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

AUTHOR

DIARMAIT MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST University of Cardiff

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Interview with Michael Cronin

Michael Cronin and Clíona Ní Ríordáin

1 Michael Cronin (Ph. D. Trinity College, Dublin). Author of the ground-breaking, Translating Ireland, (Routledge 1996) Michael Cronin is the foremost translation scholar working in Ireland today. Cronin established the cultural review Graph with Peter Sirr and Barra Ó Séaghdha in 1986 and was involved in the setting up of the Irish Translators Association and the creation of Ireland Literature Exchange, the body responsible for funding the translation of Irish literature. He took up a teaching position in Dublin City University in the late 1980s and was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at DCU from 2000-2004 and Director of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies from 2001-2008. He has published extensively in the areas of translation studies, tourism, travel writing, language and politics. He is currently co-editor of The Irish Review. Among the awards and honours bestowed on him are Membership of the Royal Irish Academy, Honorary Membership of the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association, Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He is the recipient of the President’s Research Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the CATS Vinay-Darbelnet Prize for the best work published in translation studies and the Prix du Québec. He has held visiting Professorships in the Université de Moncton (New Brunswick, Canada) and the Universidad Ricardo Palma (Lima, Peru).

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2 — In your book Translating Ireland published in 19961 you commented on the relative absence of reflection in the area of translation studies has the situation evolved or developed since then? — There have been changes since I wrote the book in 1996. I’m thinking of the work that has been done by scholars like Maria Tymoczko2, Kathleen Shields3, and the collection of essays that came out a year ago from Queen’s University Press Aistriú Éireann4, looking at translation from Irish. There have been a number of monographs published on translators into and out of Irish. So to some extent, from the point of view of scholarship, and the fact that there are students in various Irish universities working on the question of translation, there has been progress there. What still strikes me however is that one of the most significant features of Irish life, linguistically, culturally and politically is this question of translation, the quite remarkable

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translation of the country from one language and one culture to another. Yet, when you read many Irish works of history, of cultural criticism, of social commentary, it still remains a very marginal fact; it’s still by and large not commented on. Despite the fact that translation, it seems to me, is an extremely interesting way of looking at very fundamental shifts and changes in Irish life, politics and writing, in terms of the languages that are spoken on the island.

3 — You mention the languages that are spoken on the island; with the opening up of the country to the most recent European accession states, the fact is that when you walk around the streets of Ireland today Ireland is increasingly multi-lingual and multi-cultural. Do you think that has made a difference to our appreciation of translation and the necessity for it? Or have people remained deaf to it because of the dominant position of English within the world? — I think the fundamental shift that has happened in Ireland with respect to the arrival of migrants from elsewhere speaking different languages is the shift from what I call extrinsic alterity to intrinsic alterity. What I mean by this is that before people used to think of translation and questions of contact with foreign languages as something to do with when you left the country. When you went elsewhere, you met other people and spoke different languages. You had to, whether you liked it or not, engage in some form of translation. The notion was that difference and alterity were elsewhere. What has happened, not just in Ireland but in many other countries, is the rise of intrinsic alterity, where a lot of quite radical language difference is present in the corner shop, the house next door, the person sitting beside you in the lecture theatre. This is what Stuart Hall has called “vernacular cosmopolitanism”, a kind of cosmopolitanism of the everyday and I think it has become an important feature of contemporary Irish life. The development has two consequences. One is a pragmatic consequence, which is that with the arrival of people from many different parts of the world there is a necessity in the health service, in education, in the legal system for translating and interpreting services to be made available. In other words, there is the emergence of a pragmatic need to deal with linguistic difference. I think there is another difference which is working its way slightly more slowly through the system which is that this linguistic shift tends to relativise the pre-existing translation or language space in Ireland. Whereas before there was very much the idea, in matters of linguistic difference, that when we talked of questions of translation we looked at the English-Irish language pair and fairly often this involved a kind of zero sum game between the two languages. What happens when other languages enter into the picture is that they relativise the position of English and Irish. If you take one example, a North Inner City school, St Mary’s which is just off Dorset Street in Dublin city centre, the children in primary school there are speaking upwards of thirty languages, and one of those languages is Irish. But for the child who is speaking Irish, whereas before he or she would have stood out as anomalous, as different, as strange, now with 29 other languages being spoken, Irish is just another language being spoken, one language among many others. The multilingual reality of the city is beginning to relativise the bilingual question which often surrounded or haunted language debates in Ireland. There is another development that affects the nature of multilingualism and migration and it is to do with the creation of transnational language communities in the country. I think when we talk about anybody being located in a particular place, they, in a sense, bi-locate. One space they occupy is the material, physical space where a person can speak one or several languages but people now also occupy a virtual space, on the Internet, whether they’re Skyping, emailing, texting and so on. You can be physically based in Dublin but

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spend an hour or two Skyping every evening to your sister in Romania, or your brother in Shanghai, or your uncle in Kinshasa. So there is a sense in which the translation space of the city has two dimensions to it. There is the physical dimension of vernacular cosmopolitanism and increasingly, it seems to me, the networked virtual translation dimension located in telecommunications/ informatics networks.

4 — It’s interesting that you should raise the issue of technology. I want to talk to you about technology and translation and in particular machine aided translation. For instance, if you want to use Google, you can do so as Gaeilge and it’s one of a number of languages available. Similarly, with your mobile phone the language that information appears in can be Irish or Romanian or a variety of other languages that you can choose from. Do you think that this technological reality, can also have impact as well on multilingualism and the ability to translate? — I think this has an effect in a number of different ways. In the first place it’s a consequence of globalisation. Responses to globalisation happen in two ways: centripetally and centrifugally. The centripetal response is to be found in a typical Google interface, where for example, you have a text written in English “You’re lucky today” and you have the literal translation in another language, say Irish, “Tá an t-ádh ort inniu”. What this does is to spread a kind of standard Anglophone syntax through these different technologies, so although the messages are translated into other languages, the basic thrust is centripetal, standardising and homogenising. The centrifugal, which is driven by a search for identity in global settings, leads to the demand for technologies and interfaces to be made available in different languages. I think we need to contrast the surface diversity of language substitution with content- driven diversity involving language difference that is facilitated by particular kinds of technologies. In this context, for example, Skype which enables a transnational linguistic community to be constituted seems to me to be a lot more significant than say translating iPhone instructions into whatever languages are spoken by iPhone customers. In the past when Irish emigrants went to the United States the party organised for them was called an American Wake and the chances were that people would never actually see them again. Not only that, but the contact they had with people back home, was also quite limited. So for many Irish speakers when they went to the United States the ability to speak the language disappeared. This has radically changed now. Mother tongue maintenance is greatly strengthened because of these transnational networks in communications; we can see this happening in areas in Western Canada for example with Chinese speakers. A consequence of this development is that translation will be an inescapable fact of life because, with the strengthening of mother tongue maintenance, the encounter between different languages and cultures will become more acute and not less. I see that of course as a potentially creative encounter.

5 — To come back to the issue of thirty languages in a Dublin school, an example of language diversity which would seem to lead to the necessity for language planning as a result. What is the provision for translation services and translation policy in Ireland? How it has evolved? What impact it has had on the training and development of participants, in education, in third level colleges for example. — Well to some extent if you look at the situation with regard to translation programmes the very first undergraduate translation programme was established in the National Institute for Higher Education Dublin, as it was at the time, in 1982. The first Master’s programme was established in what had become DCU, in 1991 and those

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programmes were created very much in response to the translation needs of European Union membership and economic integration. More recently, the Masters programmes established in NUI Galway and in Queen’s University Belfast concentrate mainly on English-Irish translation and are related to the translation needs resulting from the implementation of the Official Languages Act (2007). So to some extent the first group of translation programmes was established in response to the EU and the second group in response to the internal state requirements of the Official Languages Act. The third area of need, however, is the translation requirements of new migrant communities. There is no proper national language policy to deal with this. There is no coherent translating and interpreting policy. If you take for example the legal system, a contract was awarded to a company, Lionbridge, to provide interpreting in the courts and the company receives substantial income from the Irish State to provide these interpreting services. There is absolutely no requirement that these interpreters be properly trained or that they have demonstrable proficiency in any of these languages they purport to master. In recent times, there has been a catalogue of incidents where the interpreters were manifestly unable or unwilling to perform as professionals. The situation is one of a high degree of disorganisation and a marked absence of regulation. Many existing practices are highly unethical, such as having young children interpreting for their parents in maternity hospitals. Ireland is not unique in this respect. The situation in many parts of Europe is not much better but the Irish case is all the more disappointing in that one would have thought that a country which has been bilingual since its inception would display a fair degree of sensitivity to language and translation issues. I think this brings us on to another issue which is the fact that translation was very often not dealt with in Ireland, not spoken about, because it was a kind of psychic wound. In other words, the very dramatic shift from one language to the other, the translation of a people, if you like, involved, it seems to me, a great deal of psychological damage, a psychic wounding. People just did not want to mention it, rather like alcoholism in a family setting, indicative of something that was there but that you didn’t want to talk about. The nervousness, hesitancy, or reluctance around questions to do with language difference in the Irish case is to do in my view with this intense repression of the translation fact.

6 — The repression of the translation fact can also be seen, perhaps, in the campaign of certain newspapers; a number of very virulent articles have been written in certain newspapers in Ireland with regard to the expense of translation as a result of the Official Languages Act. Basically, translation is seen as unnecessary. English is seen as the language of the world and we should get on with it. — The virulence of the arguments and the articles, the venom that you find, is completely out of proportion to their initial cause. The sums spent on translation are paltry when compared to the monies being used to shore up the banking system and the 22 billion euro and counting that has been invested by the tax-payer in the Anglo- Irish Bank. I think that what you are dealing with, in psychoanalytic terms, is a kind of symptom, where the response is radically out of proportion to the actual cause. The wound runs very deep and produces these kinds of excessive, vituperative reactions. The simple fact is that, by and large, despite the work of a number of scholars that I mentioned earlier, translation is still a largely unreported, unacknowledged cultural phenomenon in Ireland.

7 — In the preface to Aistriú Éireann, you talk about translation within an Irish context as being regarded as failure, failure of the revival movement.

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— Yes, well I think that was one of the reasons why translation was simply not dealt with in Irish-language circles for decades after the revival. Translation was not talked about or when it was, it was generally in highly disparaging terms. Many of the writers who went to work as translators, such as Máirtín Ó Cadhain or Seosamh Ó Grianna, were very dismissive of the activity of translation. In Irish departments [in Universities] very little academic attention was devoted to the study of translation, despite the fact that translation was an omnipresent daily fact of the lives of Irish Gaelic speakers. I think that that the taboo came both from the fact that one was speaking a language that was affected by the process of translation and to have to translate was to admit that Irish had not become the dominant vernacular of the country. So, on the one hand there was intense antipathy to anything being translated because it was felt that it was anglicising the Irish language and a legitimate concern was expressed that excessively literal translation from English was damaging its specificity. On the other, there was the sense that if you had to translate from Irish into English or indeed put English alongside Irish this was to admit that the revival project had failed. The utopian myth of Gaelic monolingualism could not admit the translation fact. One of the most damaging consequences of this hostility or indifference was a lack of sociolinguistic realism. If people had been much more aware of the translation fact, then it would have been easier to take more appropriate measures to safeguard, protect and allow for the flourishing of the language, so there was kind of a socio-linguistic deficit. There was also an historical deficit in that the long tradition of translation for example in Irish was ignored for many years despite the fact that Irish often benefited from the contact with other languages through translation.

8 — A number of publishing houses in Ireland are concerned with the work of translation. New Island books commissioned a series of books from well known English language Irish writers and translated them into Irish. There is also a movement which aims to make contemporary Irish language literature available to an Anglophone public as well. This emerged after the publication of Dermot Bolger’s The Bright Wave: An Tonn Gheal in 1986. Somebody like Louis de Paor, for example, has made a conscious decision to publish his poems first in Irish and to leave a gap or a space before bringing them out in an English language version. Other poets have adopted the strategy of self-translation. What seems to be at stake here is the issue of voice, and the tension between the majority language and the minority language. Louis de Paor has talked about translation smothering the original voice and the danger of the minority language being smothered. — When this movement started in the 1980’s with the collection from Raven Arts Press, The Bright Wave: An Tonn Gheal, there was a very real problem for Irish language poets at the time which was that of recognition. They really felt an acute sense of complete invisibility in their own country and elsewhere and one could say that one of the success stories of translation was the way in which it has given a visibility and a presence to Irish language poets like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Louis de Paor, Gabriel Rosenstock and so on. That is the positive side to the story. The negatives, however, relate mainly to the primacy of poetic and linguistic voice. Particularly in the case of self translation the question that needs to be asked is on an island where English is so much the dominant presence and language, is the danger that it is the translation which becomes the original? When we talk about the original copy, the source text and the target text; the target text is the ultimate source text because English is the primary poetic voice. And there is a sense in some cases that even when the poet is writing in Irish, what they’re doing is self translating from English and then producing

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this self-translation into English which in fact is the original text. It’s rather like a post- modernist party piece but I think that it’s a development that is also to be found in Scotland. A great number of poets and writers in Scots Gaelic self-translate and many Scots Gaelic writers have been quite critical of this for the same reasons that in a situation of acute linguistic vulnerability this translation fact can undermine the specificity and otherness of the minority language. This is the most potentially negative or damaging aspect of this phenomenon.

9 — I recall meeting an English language playwright in Paris who was aware that his play was going to be translated. “The idea of the translation,” he said “I had that at the back of my head and I was thinking about it as I was writing”. Critics talk about translation and contact between languages as a source of creativity. Can it also be, in that instance, if you’re thinking about the translatability that it restrains people’s creativity as opposed to giving free reign to something more unbridled? — Absolutely, translation like any other human phenomenon is multiple and contains within it genuinely creative and progressive forces but it also contains within it forces that are limiting and disabling. In translation studies we talk about translation laws which are not really laws in the strictly scientific sense since trying to prove them is profoundly difficult but they are generally observable tendencies in translated texts. One of these ‘laws’ is explicitation, the tendency to spell things out for the reader. There seems to be a tendency when people are translating to want to explain at the same time and not just to write from one language to the other but in many cases to explain and to simplify. The danger is that sense of explication and the simplification can lead to the potential for universal banality. We could say that what characterises particular kinds of Hollywood film productions, what characterises the spread of fast food outlets or Starbucks coffee shops throughout the globe is that they are somehow translatable places because they are simplified into a certain number of elements which can be exported to pretty much any place on the planet. So you get what the French philosopher François Julien calls the pseudo-universality of the familiar, of the homogenous. The perennial danger with a certain notion of translatability is that it invites an approach to language which you find in certain forms of technical writing where you have controlled languages with a restricted syntax and lexicon. The advantage with texts produced in these controlled languages then is that it is much, much easier to translate these texts into lots of different languages. Well that sense of a controlled language, a limited lexicon could spread to other areas as well such as literary expression, a notion that you leave out certain cultural references because it would be too difficult for the readers in the other language. Let’s simplify, in other words, and make the message universally accessible. Underneath every successful MacDo is the fact of translatability and translatedness. This is the shadow side of translation.

10 — But on the plus side, I wonder if translation, as a veil or a layer we have to pass through before going on to something else, is not helpful. I’m thinking in particular of two sets of poems I’ve read recently, a book of poems Robert Welch has written in memory of his son, largely based on translations of Ovid’s Tristia5 and the other the poems based on Rilke that Máire Mhac an tSaoi6 has written in memory of her husband Conor Cruise O’Brien. Does the extra layer that you have to dig through to get to the other side allow these poets to express their grief? Translation in that sense is enabling. — I think of a very old archetype for translation which picks up on the translations you’ve mentioned, which is that of the voyage. If we think of this archetype, it

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generally involves the hero leaving his native land, the journeys outwards. There are all kinds of trials and tribulations and then he eventually returns to the land from which he’s come, to his Ithaca. As he merges back into the community, of course, he becomes aware that he has been unsettled by that wandering and that on his return he is an unsettling presence. When Ulysses returns home a bloodbath ensues as he slaughters the suitors of Penelope and when the prodigal son returns home in the New Testament account he’s a very unsettling presence. In Brian Friel’s Translations, when Owen comes back to Ballybeg, he’s the prodigious son because he can speak the King’s English and Irish but he’s also an unsettling presence because he speaks the language not only of the insiders but of the outsiders. So it seems to me that voyage which takes place when Bob Welch enters into dialogue with Latin or Máire Mhac an tSaoi engages with German, is a kind of voyage outwards. When you bring things back to ‘home’ language through translation, you’re an unsettling presence. This is how people evolve and how wisdom is acquired. It is through trials and tribulations and the journey out that is the journey into the unknown. You bring those unknown things into the community in order to enrich the life of that community but it’s not an easy process like any form of deep travel. And so its seems to me that there is a sense in which translation corresponds to a very profound almost archetypal need in humanity for the voyage outwards, which is accompanied by the return voyage and the recreation of the community from which the traveller has left.

11 Thank you.

NOTES

1. Michael Cronin. Translating Ireland. Translation, Languages, Culture. Cork, Cork University, Press, 1996. 2. Maria Tymoczko, The Irish “Ulysses”, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994; Translation in a Postcolonial Contex, Manchestert St. Jerome Publishing, 1999. 3. Kathleen Shields, Gained in Translation: Language, Poetry and Identity in Twentieth- Century Ireland , Oxford and Bern, Peter Lang, 2000. 4. Charlie Dillion and Ríona Ní Fhrighil, Aistriú Éireann, Belfast, Cló Ollscoil na Ríona, 2009. 5. Robert Welch, Constanza, Belfast, Lagan Press, 2009. 6. Máire Mhac an tSaoi, “In Memoriam Conor Cruise O’Brien”, Irish Pages, Vol 5/1, p. 43-46.

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AUTHORS

CLÍONA NÍ RÍORDÁIN Conducted by Clíona Ní Ríordáin, Dublin, June 2010

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Tiontú an Chultúir: Affaire Dominici agus Maolra Seoighe

Stiofán Ó Cadhla

1 “No doubt about it” a scríobhann Lenaghan, “the Irish have always been very superstitious1”. Tá sí ar aon fhocal le Ivimey a scríobh beagnach dhá chéad bliain roimpi ar “superstitious aborigines of that popish country2”. I gcúrsaí an léinn dhúchais agus an bhéaloidis go háirithe is coitianta an port é go maireann a leithéid seo nó a leithéid siúd de nós nó de nath “fós”. Cuireadh suim sa chultúr agus sa dúchas ach is annamh a cuireadh suim go fiosach sa chultúr dúchais ann féin. Is ag iarraidh iad a scarúint óna chéile, nó iad a cheangail faoi choinníollacha faoi leith, a bhíothas le cúpla céad bliain anuas. Is léir go dtuigtear an cultúr dúchais go minic mar chuid de réamhchultúr na hEorpa nó de bhunchultúr an chine. Tá úsáid á dhéanamh de dhulanna éiginnte i léann an dúchais, an tseanchais, an chultúir, an bhéaloidis, na Gaeilge nó an Bhéarla, na Ceiltise, na litríochta, na seandálaíochta, na staire, agus dámha gaolmhara eile chomh maith ní foláir. Ní haon ábhar mór anbhá iad go léir ach rudaí neamhurchóideacha go minic. Tá taithí ag léitheoirí na seánraí seo ar áibhéal, ar rómánsúlacht, ar rámhaille, ar phatuaire “acadúil” nó ar mhíthuiscintí. Tá cuid acu ann le fada mar chuid de ghnáthaimh an léinn nua-aoisigh; an primitíveachas, an éabhlóideachas sóisialta, an réamhstair, an Victeoiriachas agus an Ceilteachas. Tuairimí ab iad a bhí i gcúnamh don rialóir polaitiúil uaireanta agus a raibh a mbrath, ó aimsir Charles Darwin ar a luíod, ar aicmiú an daonnaí agus a chuid eolais. Cruthaíodh sanasán stairiúil eitneolaíoch a bhfuiltear ag triall air ó shin chun tréithe an duine a chur síos.

2 Tá curtha i leith roinnt de na trópanna seo go bhfuil siad fadhbtach nó díobhálach fiú. Tá a bheag nó a mhór den chiníochas, den choilíneachas, den sheobhaineachas, de impiriúlachas, nó díreach den seanaois, ag séideadh fúthu. Áirítear go ndéantar earra deoranta neamhdhaonna, andúchasach de chuid den chultúr de dheasca na fastaíme seo. Fágann cuid de na tuiscintí fiarán ag daoine lena sinsir féin. Tá scoláirí ann gur cuma leo mar gheall ar an bpobal a dhíolann as gnó an taighde. B’fhéidir ná tuigeann siad meáchaint cheart na tuairime, b’fhéidir go dtuigeann ach go mbíonn siad sásta gan aon cheann a thógaint di nó b’fhéidir go dtagann siad go huile is go hiomlán le meon na fuarchúise. Is cuma an le cultúr na Gaeilge nó an Bhéarla, nó le cultúr dátheangach

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hibrideach nó iltheangach a mbítear ag plé is ábhar suime trácht na céille ó dhuine go duine, ó theanga go teanga agus ó chultúr go cultúr. Tá a lán le foghlaim ón tslí a siocann sí ina n-oidhreachtaí, a gcruann sí ina gcultúir, a ndéantar féiniúlachtaí di nó a mbogann sí ina foinse cruthaitheachta agus iontais. Bíonn an tuiscint, agus an mhíthuiscint, ag brath ar nós imeachta an léinn agus an eolais. Is cuid lárnach de phróiseas an chultúir an t-aistriúchán a scaoileann an Ghaeilge, agus a ngabhann de fhíorais, de fhantasaíocht agus den eitneolaíocht léi, isteach ar an stáitse. Tugann an toradh a bhíonn air siar agus aniar sinn trí chomhthéacsaí éagsúla in ealaín an léinn agus an dúchais araon. Caitheann sé solas ar cheist an dhea-chleachtais agus ar thábhacht an aireachais i ndéanamh an léimh i léann an chultúir agus an dúchais. Sa pháipéar seo tá sé i gceist agam cás Mhaolra Seoighe a phlé, cás a bhí chomh cáiliúil sin lá den saol gur scríobh Seoigheach eile faoi agus é na mílte míle ó Chontae na Gaillimhe3. An cheist atá orm ach conas mar a chuaigh an t-aistriúchán i bhfeidhm ar an gcás cúirte. Déanaim ceangail faoi leith chomh maith idir an cás sin agus cause célèbre eile, an affaire Dominici.

Léann an aistriúcháin agus dearcadh an eitnagrafaí

3 Is fiú dul siar i dtosach ar chuid de na haighnis i léann an aistriúcháin. Is é an míniú bunúsach a thugtar ar an dtiontú ach téacs bunúil a scríobh as an nua i dteanga eile. Is acmhainn dó a bheith cruthaitheach, díobhálach, nuálaíoch nó brúidiúil4. Braitheann sé go minic ar straitéis an tiontaitheora nó ar aidhm an aistriúcháin. Tá tábhacht ag gabháil le ról an tiontaitheora mar mhínitheoir, deir Venuti, “translation is a process by which a chain of signifiers that constitutes the source-language text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the target language which the translator provides on the strength of an interpretation5”. Luíonn Al Shabab ar thábhacht an léimh sa scéal chomh maith, “translation is the interpretation of linguistic/verbal text in a language different from its own6”. Tá a lán ceisteanna curtha mar gheall ar chúrsaí aistriúcháin. Canathaobh go bhfuil gá leis? An amhlaidh go bhfuil fabht ar an chéad leagan? Cé a dhéanann é agus cén chúis atá leis? Conas a roghnaítear an téacs? Cad iad na critéir a bhain leis an rogha? Cén comhthéacs ina ndéantar é? Cá bhfios do chultúr na sprioctheangan go bhfuil a cheart tugtha don téacs? Déanfaidh mé iarracht meabhair a chaitheamh leis na ceisteanna seo i gomhthéacs an aistriúcháin agus an chultúir dhúchais trí chéile7. Ní díreach go mbíonn macasamhail á sholáthar i dteanga amháin d’fhocal i dteanga eile. Is casta ná sin é. Bíonn tuiscint á thiontú ó ghréasán siombal agus solaoidí go chéile. Ceileann neafais an tslaitín draíochta a bhíonn ag an dtiontaitheoir cuid de na beartais:

Translation has to do with authority and legitimacy and, ultimately, with power, which is precisely why it has been and continues to be the subject of so many acrimonious debates. Translation is not just a “window opened on another world”, or some such platitude. Rather, translation is a channel opened, often not without a certain reluctance, through which foreign influences can penetrate the native culture, challenge it, and even contribute to subverting it8.

4 Áirítear gur mó ná comharthaí teangeolaíocha a cuirtear anonn. Is toradh é uaireanta ar chuimilt fhada eitneagrafaíochúil a bhíonn ag cultúir lena chéile. Tagann léamh an chultúir lárnach, déantar cuid de chóras an mhíniúcháin de:

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The entire system by which one culture comes to interpret, to represent, and finally to dominate another. It includes, in other words, the discourse of colonialism as produced in such forms as imaginative literature, journalism, travel writing, ethnographic description, historiography, political speeches, administrative documents, and statutes of law9.

5 Téann cultúir ar imirce, cuirtear thar eolas iad agus nára maith acu agus déanann pobail eile a gcuid féin díobh10.

6 I bhfolach taobh thiar d’aistriúcháin líofa a bhíodh tiontaitheoirí go dtí le déanaí. Aistriúcháin ab ea iad ná raibh aon lorg orthu a sceithfeadh gur aistriúcháin a chuige iad. Níor dhóigh leat orthu gur cuireadh isteach ná amach ar an dtéacs nó go raibh aon rud tar éis tarlú. Déanann réimis pholaitiúla a mbíonn suim acu i bpobail dheoranta modh mínithe den aistriúchán ó am go ham nuair a oireann. Tá sé ar chumas an aistriúcháin an t-athrach mianaigh nó an deorantacht sa chultúr eile a thabhairt chun tíreachais. Is é an toradh a bhíonn ar an aistriúchán líofa ach go mbraitheann an léitheoir sa bhaile i gcónaí. Ní chuirtear thar lear in aon chor é ach aithníonn “his or her own culture in a cultural other, enacting an imperialism that extends the dominion of transparency with other ideological discourses over a different culture11”. Glactar leis gur gá dul amach ar dháileadh agus ar struchtúir na cumhachta sa chultúr trí chéile chun aistriúchán a mheas12. Ní mór aghaidh a thabhairt ar chruthú, ar leathadh agus ar imirthí an eolais agus ar an míniú a tugtar air sa chultúr eile. Tugann an tiontú chomh fada le croílár phróiseas an chultúir tú. Is deacair don duine é a sheachaint fiú amháin taobh istigh de chultúr agus de theanga aonair. Is furasta a thuiscint conas gur iompaigh sé amach ina mheafar don eitneagrafaíocht féin. Is é an t-eitneagrafaí an tiontaitheoir sa chás seo agus é nó í ag iarraidh dearcadh nó déanamh an chultúir eile a chur in iúl i gcomhthéacs nua nó i dteanga nua go minic. In Éirinn ní hann dúinn dá éagmais go minic. Ceistítear cruthú an eolais ó aimsir an iarstruchtúrachais ar a luíod, déantar amach nach gan chúinse a cuirtear ann é nó go mbíonn an claonadh fite fuaite ann ó thosach. Ní bhíonn sé neodrach anaithnid i gcónaí, is féidir daoine faoi leith a aithint a dheachtann é bunaithe ar chlár réime a bhíonn pearsanta, proifisiúnta, eacnamúil nó polaitiúil go minic.

7 Is cuid de chúlra ealaín an léinn le fada an seanchas, an teanga, nósanna agus staid an duine a tharraingt isteach i bpróisis straitéiseacha aitheantais, neamhaitheantais, coimhthíochais agus tíreachais13. Tá tosach slí le tamall maith de bhlianta ag dioscúrsaí institiúdiúla, eolaíochtúla, impiriúla ar sheanchas sa chaoi is go gcoinníonn siad smacht ar mhínithe faoi leith14. Iompaíonn na dioscúrsaí tosaigh seo amach ina “normáltacht”. Brúnn siad gaol ar acmhainní siombalacha an chultúir sprioctha. Déantar cuid dhathannach neafaiseach de féin de uaireanta agus cromann sé ar é a mhíniú don saol mór agus é a chur i láthair ar shlí a oireann dá léamha féin. Bíonn eolas an duine eile ar snámh i ríocht siceolaíochta nó, ar a laghad, ar imeall an réalaíochais a bhíonn faoi réim is faoi mheas ag tráth faoi leith. Tuigtear go mbíonn an seaneolas, an teolas bunaidh nó bunúil, balbh feasta: fo-oibiachtúil, míréalta nó mífholláin fiú. Tugtar le tuiscint gur leagan bocht meata d’fhoirm uilíoch aonair amháin eolais é. Déantar tiontaitheoir den chóilíneoir, den rialóir (den iriseoir, den bhreitheamh, den Ghárda, den scoláire, den léiritheoir), gothaí an bholgchainteora aige, ag cur na bhfocal i mbéal an dúchasaigh. Bíonn sé de bheith sa dúchasach titim ina phleist bhalbh mharbh i

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éagmais an tiontaitheora. Is ceart a mheabhrú gur as Béarla, ag tiontú go Béarla nó ag brath ar aistriúcháin go Béarla atá an léann le fada. Tá gothadh uile an lingua franca ag an mBéarla inniu.

8 Is iad na gnéithe neamhtheangúla den aistriúchán a spreagann an léamh ildhisiplíneach. Admhaítear ó am go ham mar shampla nach foláir don tiontaitheoir eolas eitneagrafaíochtúil a bheith aige15. Ní foláir don eitneagrafaí eolas ar an dtiontú a bheith aige ach oiread. Bíonn sé nó sí i riocht bleachtaire agus aghaidh á thabhairt acu ar “the baffling chaos of cultural artefacts, to discover order in the foreign, and to transfer implicit meanings from one discourse to another16”. Sna dioscúrsaí léannta agus pobaldha is rómhinic gur coincheapa claonta, “easpa tuisceana” agus “anriail” an dúchasaigh mar shampla, a bhíonn mar thoradh ar an dtiontú. Maítear gur féidir lorg an eadarnaí a thabhairt faoi ndeara i bpátrúin reitrice, i solaoidí agus i struchtúir thuisceana an údaráis. Moltar iarracht a dhéanamh gach tabhairt amach a chur i gcomhthéacs dioscúrsach stairiúil faoi leith. Is minic cultúir ina gcéilí comhraic ar stáitsí móra na staire agus bréag á chur ar a chéile acu chun dealramh na fírinne a chur ar a insint féin. Ní mór iarracht a dhéanamh miotas a aithint ó mhítheist. Ní fíor gur teanga mhionlaigh nó teanga nár labhair oiread sin daoine í an Ghaeilge sa naoú céad déag mar shampla. Chaithfí mórtheanga a thabhairt uirthi ach í a bheith gan stádas, gan chumhacht, gan ghradam. B’é an Béarla teanga na cumhachta, an cheannais agus na féiniúlachta cóilíní. Sa chomhthéacs áirithe seo bhí scoláirí dúchasacha ag teacht i dtír ar an éileamh a bhí ann don tiontú ó Ghaeilge. Is ag cur le húdarás an Bhéarla a bhíodar sa mhéid sin ar deireadh agus ag imeallú na Gaeilge17. In Éirinn na haimsire sin ní raibh a mhalairt de thuarastal le fáil ag an scoláire go minic.

9 Ní hamháin gur meafar an tiontú don phróiseas cultúrtha sa naoú céad déag ach is cuid den phróiseas é. Is cuid de chorraíocht dhioscúrsach i bpolaitíocht na féiniúlachta é18. Is tiontú ó Ghaeilge go Béarla a rinneadh don chuid is mó agus is ag dul le tiomáint agus le sceitheadh an chultúir trí chéile a bhí sé sin, “Irish is translated into English, whether it is by surveyors, writers or antiquarians, because the Empire whether British or Anglo- American, is leading the way19”. Nochtann téacs tosca an chaidrimh dhaonna, “the relative submissiveness or superiority of the translator and the authority of the receptor culture vis-à-vis the source 20”. Is toradh an tiontú i gcásanna áirithe ar éagothromaíocht shóisialta, pholaitiúil nó chultúrtha. Bíonn feidhm chumhachta leis, “the colonial Other is translated into terms of the imperial Self, with the net result of alienation for the colonized and a fiction of understanding for the colonizer21”. Tá sé ráite cheana go dtógann léann an chultúir tamall de thrópanna seanbhunaithe seanchaite éiginnte ón ársaíocht nó ón tseandálaíocht. Is é an toradh is feiceálaí a bhí ar a leithéid ach an t-imeartas aimsire a chuir an cultúr dúchais siar ar fad ó leac an dorais go dtí leac na Clochaoise. Tugann McNiven agus Russell antiquation air, “the notion that Australian Aboriginal people, along with some other contemporary Indigenous peoples, represented (and perhaps in some cases continue to represent) “living fossils22”. I gcúrsaí an aistriúcháin samhlaítear teanga bhunúil go minic mar iarmhairt chorr: oidhreacht d’iairiglifí atá neamhchoitianta amach is amach. Fágtar teanga atá beo nua-aoiseach comhaimseartha faoi fhocleolaí nó faoi sheandálaí a scaoilfidh na nodanna doléire doléite don léitheoir dall. Go deimhin ní haon ionadh dá mbeadh trua ag an léitheoir don saineolaí bocht ag iarraidh brí a bhaint as míreanna rúndiamhra na réamhstaire. Cad a dhéantar leis an gcultúr nó leis an dteanga sin, conas a mhínítear iad agus cén chúis?

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10 Le linn don Suirbhé Ordanáis a bheith ag mapú na hÉireann sa naoú céad déag shíl roinnt daoine gurb é an suirbhéir nua-aoiseach a bhí i ndiaidh deiridh. B’ait leo an tóir a bhí aige ar shean-inscríbhinní agus i gcás amháin bhí ainm an naoimh a bhí uaidh ar eolas go fairsing ach amháin nár chuir sé an cheist. B’fhéidir nár thuig sé go mbeadh aon teacht aige go brách i measc na ndaoine timpeall air ar eolas a bhí ársa dar leis féin. Chuirfeadh a leithéid ort a chuimhneamh gurbh iad na daoine a bhí nua-aoiseach fad is a chuir meon aigne an ársaitheora agus compás an tsuirbhéara an tír faoi dhraíocht. Thóg Cronin ceann de thróp seo na seandálaíochta, “the translator like the archaeologist rescues records from oblivion. The ‘site’ of translation is the patient unearthing of the language and literature of ancient civilizations23”. Ba chuid den phróiseas, nó toradh ar an bpróiseas, sibhialtacht ársa a dhéanamh de chultúr nua- aoiseach. Ní clabhsúr an tiontú i gcónaí, is tús é babhtaí. Ligeann sé do dhaoine idir theangacha agus chultúir a ionramháil a thuilleadh i saol eile an aistriúcháin. Is í an teanga chumhachtach a éiríonn ar barr de ghnáth agus scóp aici cur léithi féin. Déantar fotheanga nó foinse den teanga bhunúil i ndioscúrsa na hoidhreachta náisiúnta agus an dúchais. Tá iarracht den chóilíneachas ag gabháil leis an dtróp seo. Deir Cronin, “by positing translation as an act of retrieval, the implication is that the other language and culture is lost to the reader in its original form. They are lost both in the sense of coming from a very remote time and being condemned to the oblivion of obsolescence24 ”. Bíonn an chailliúint mar a bheadh cros os ceann an chine, bíonn an tarrtháil tráthúil laochúil i gcónaí. Maíonn Wolfe nach ann don chailliúint ach amháin i dtéacs an eitneagrafaí, ar theagmháil leis an duine ní hann dó a thuilleadh. Cinneann an loighic i struchtúr an eolais nach suim a cuireadh sa phobal ar mhaithe leo féin go minic ach ar mhaithe leis an solas a chaithfidís ar an seanreacht, ar an gclochaois nó ar na meánaoiseanna. Nuair a chuaigh Flower ar na Blascaodaí d’fhág sé slán “not only to Ireland, but to England and Europe and all the tangled world of to-day25”.

11 Tráchtann Venuti ar an lámh láidir san aistriúchán. Stracann an tiontaitheoir luachanna, creidiúintí agus friotal ón dteanga bhunúil agus cuireann luachanna, creidiúintí agus friotal na teanga sprioctha ina n-áit. Cuireann sé nó sí téacs soléite intuigthe in áit an téacsa deoranta:

[…] translation is the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that will be intelligible to the target-language reader… whatever difference the translation conveys is now imprinted by the target-language culture, assimilated to its positions of intelligibility, its canons and taboos, its codes and ideologies26.

12 Dob fhéidir le rialóir cead cainte agus cead mínithe a chur chuige féin, “translation serves an imperialist appropriation of foreign cultures for domestic agendas, cultural, economic, political27”. Tugann sé le fios, nó ligeann sé air, gur féidir gach pobal, gach teanga, gach cultúr a thuiscint. Cuireann sé air féin gur tarrtháil a bhíonn ann:

[It] effaces its own mark of appropriation by transforming it into the response to a putative appeal on the part of the colonized land and people. This appeal may take the form of chaos that calls for restoration of order, of absence that calls for affirming presence, of natural abundance that awaits the creative hand of technology. Colonialist discourse… appropriates territory, while it also

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appropriates the means by which such acts of appropriation are to be understood28.

13 Is cleachtas liom-leat é uaireanta, tógann sé le linn do leagan, scríobhann sé an fhad is a scriosann sé, molann sé le linn do a bheith ag cáineadh, séanann sé sa tabhairt faoi ndeara féin.

An tiontú mar ábhar tuisceana

14 Miotas a thugann Barthes ar thrédhearcacht na hurlabhra. Daoradh Gaston Dominici, feirmeoir sa La Grand Terre i bProváns sa bhliain 1954. Cuireadh ina leith gur dhúnmharaigh sé triúr turasóirí ón mBreatain. Gearradh téarma príosúnachta air ar deireadh agus fágadh a cheann ar a cholann ach ba dhóbair dó. Scaoil Charles de Gaulle amach ar na grásta é agus fuair sé bás sa bhliain 1965. Ocht mbliana agus ceithre scór a bhí aige. Seachtó a ceathair bliana roimhe sin, i mí na Nollag 1882, crochadh Maolra Seoighe i gcathair na Gaillimhe. Cuireadh ina leith gur mharaigh sé cúigear as aon líon tí amháin, gaolta leis féin. Ó Dhúiche Sheoigheach ar theorainn iarthuaisceart chontae na Gaillimhe ab ea é. Tugtar affaire Dominici ar chás na Fraince. Glactar leis anois ná raibh ceachtar acu ciontach. Scríobh Barthes mar gheall ar affaire Dominici, “literature has just condemned a man to the guillotine29”. An fiú fiafraí cad a chroch an Seoigheach? An le reachta agus le rialacha amháin a bhaineann an dlí nó an coincheap saor ó éiginnteacht, ó thuairimíocht nó ó chlaontaí an chultúir agus an léinn é? Bíonn lucht léinn agus lucht dlí in ainm is a bheith faoi smacht ag modhanna agus ag teoiricí a thugann cothrom na Féinne do gach aon taobh. Ní mar sin díreach don iriseoir, don scríbhneoir, don úrscéalaí, don drámadóir, don bhfile ná don tuairisceoir ach cad mar gheall ar an eitneagrafaí agus ar an mbéaloideasóir? Is cuid de ealaín an tráchtaire an míniú, an múnlú, an tiontú agus an láimhseáil a dhéanann sé nó sí ar thuairim an phobail. Níl an dlí gan a rian féin de chultúr an lae, cultúr an uachtair go minic. Áitíonn Barthes go mbíonn gach alt agus gach ponc den dlí fite le chéile ag snátha éagsúla ón dteanga amach. Chun teacht ar réiteach, ar chinneadh, ar bhreith nó ar thuairim fiú, ní mór léamh fairsing a dhéanamh ar chomhthéacs an cháis. Ní mór dul i muinín an chultúir.

15 Téann ceist Barthes go dtí croí an léinn agus cabhraíonn linn tábhacht an léimh chultúrtha a thuiscint. Ar a shon is go bhfuil gach dealramh ar an scéal go bhfuil an léann tar éis an cheist a sheachaint is léir go bhfuil ábhar mór suime inti. Iarann sé orainn na coincheapa móra a aithint sna dioscúrsaí éagsúla a mhíníonn aon ré stairiúil, sna “cultural assumptions and language of taste30”. Fiafraíonn Brett conas gur tháinig sé de bheart i gcás stair a dhéanamh de choincheapa ealaíonta? Conas a meascadh ealaíontóireacht agus scoláireacht mar a rinneadh sa phictúrthacht, ón Iodáilis pittoresco, agus san alltacht a dtugtar an sublime air31? Bhí oilteacht áirithe tagtha do léann na tíre agus an duine sa naoú céad déag cheana féin, “a smorgasbord of the embryonic genre of evolutionary science blended language agus race to create a colonialist and commoditized English image of Ireland32”. Bhí taithí ag léitheoirí ar seánraí na hársaíochta agus na turasóireachta a thrácht ar Dhúiche na Loch i Sasana, ar Gharbhchríocha na hAlban, ar an mBreatain Bheag nó ar iarthar na hÉireann. Bhí ainm Thomas Crofton Croker in airde, bhí cáil ar Walter Scott, ar James Brewer, ar T. K. Cromwell nó ar G. N. Wright. Dlíodóir ab ea John Carr a chuaigh sé le scríbhneoireacht

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taistil33. Eolaí talmhaíochta agus polaiteoir ab ea J. C. Curwen34. Mac dlíodóra ab ea Henry D. Inglish a scríobh ar na bruíonta: “I do not know any means, by which so much insight is to be obtained into the character of the Irish peasantry, and into the condition of the country, and state of things among the lower classes of society, as by listening to these prosecutions for fair murders35”. Bhí William Makepeace Thackeray, údar The Luck of Barry Lindon, ina iriseoir óg nuair a tháinig sé go hÉireann i dtosach36. D’fhoilsigh Thomas Carlyle Reminiscences sa bhliain 1882, an bhliain a crochadh Maolra Seoighe37. Shíl Carlyle gur mithid muintir na hÉireann a chur ar bhóthar a leasa, é sin nó iad a seilg den saol ar fad38.

16 Bhí blúirí beaga den eolas eitneagrafaíochtúil, agus é sin á thuiscint mar thraidisiún réamh-nua-aoiseach, ag cur leis an íomhá dheoranta de chultúr na tíre. Scríobh H. V. Morton, údar In Search of Ireland (1930), mar gheall ar chailín a casadh air i gConamara: “here, within twenty four hours of London, was a primitive woman39.” Deir Ó Ciosáin, “assumptions about literacy and orality are… not untypical of the primitivism through which western areas of Ireland were perceived… E. M. Forster, in an introduction to the Maurice O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years A-growing, refers to the Blasket islanders as living in a ‘neolithic’ civilisation40”. Glacadh lena leithéid mar chuntas léannta fiú. Níl aon rud le foghlaim as ach an méid a fhoghlaímid mar gheall ar an té a scríobh. I gcúrsaí seandálaíochta nó litríochta níl aon díobháil mhór déanta, mar a mhaígh Barthes, ach nuair a nochtann tuairim mar seo i réimse an dlí is scéal eile ar fad é41. Deir McNiven agus Russell gur rianta den éabhlóideachas sóisialta atá iontu agus go maireann siad i gcónaí inár measc42. Ó foilsíodh On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection sa bhliain 1859, tá éileamh ar leagan áirithe de chultúir na ndaoine. Bhí tuairimí Thomas Huxley, údar Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature (1863) agus John Lubbock, údar Pre-Historic Times: As Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865) á scaipeadh43. Chuir Huxley agus Lubbock seanuirlis ón Chlochaois i gcomparáid le huirlisí nua-aoiseacha na tíre44. Leath tuairimí Edward B. Tylor, údar Researches in the Early History of Mankind (1865) agus Primitive Culture (1871); agus tuairimí Lewis Henry Morgan, údar Ancient Society (1877). Bhí margadh ann d’fhoilseacháin ar chultúr an duine sa naoú céad déag. Scríobh Andrew Lang mar gheall ar obair Tylor go raibh sé “so attractive, so pellucid, that any intelligent child could read it and become a folk-lorist unawares45”. Bhí William Wilde ag caint ar “popular belief and folks-lore” sa bhliain 1849 agus gan ach trí bliana ann ó chun William Thoms an Béarla folk-lore46. Tá raidhse samplaí againn ón bhfichiú haois fiú. Sa bhliain 1957 thug Estyn Evans iarsmaí fiannacha ar chuid d’uirlisí na tíre, agus an tuiscint chéanna ar sheanchas na ndaoine aige, “Ireland is one of the last homes of the oral traditions of prehistoric and medieval Europe47”. D’fhág intinn Tylor séala buan ar léann nua-aoiseach an chultúir. Naoi mbliana éigin i ndiaidh chrochadh Mhaolra Seoighe a tháinig C. R. Browne agus A. C. Haddon go Maigh Eo chun suirbhé eitneagrafaíoch a dhéanamh don saotharlann antraipeolaíochtúil i gColáiste na Tríonóide.

17 Chuir an t-eolas iontas, alltacht agus masmas ar phobal léitheoireachta na gcathracha, na mbailte móra agus na hEorpa. Bhí tóir ar litríocht na hársaíochta, ar nósanna agus ar phiseoga na muintire. Bhí eolas áirithe ar léann an bhéaloidis agus na hantraipeolaíochta ag sceitheadh amach go dioscúrsaí na litríochta, na polaitíochta agus na hiriseoireachta. Chuir sé séala na heolaíochta ar chlaonta creidimh, ciníocha, aicme nó coilíneachta. Ní eolaíocht a bhí ann go minic ach móitíf de chuid ealaín an íomháineachais. Deir Ó Conchubhair “Bhí téamaí na cros-síolrachta, bua na hoiriúnachta, teip na gciníocha laga, agus sainmhíniú idir speicis (teangacha) agus

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típeanna (canúintí) lárnach do theoiric Darwin48”. Tógadh ceann go minic de thithe nó d’iompar na ndaoine. Rinne roinnt tráchtairí amach gur fabht sa chine, comhartha ar mheath an duine a raibh éasc ó dhúchas ann b’fhéidir, a bhí sa ainriocht shóisialta ábhartha seo ach bhí a thuilleadh ag cásamh gur réimeas cam faoi ndeara é49. Scríobh comhfhreagraí amháin mar gheall ar an dtigh inar dúnmharaíodh an cúigear i Mám Trasna, “it would be impossible to imagine anything meaner, or more horrible as the habitation of human beings50”. Chuir gnéithe den chultúr dúchais leis an bpictiúr. Thug an Daily Express cuntas ar “traditional wake”:

During the evening a considerable number of the women living for miles around, with a number of men, gathered on the mountain close to the Joyces’ house and set up a low wailing keen for the dead. Dressed, as the females were in short red petticoats (and shawls) and sitting close together on the short grass of the upland, many of them smoking clay pipes, the sight presented a curious and novel one51.

18 In ainneoin nach rud as an ngnáth a bhí ann in aon chor maíonn an iriseoir go bhfuil neamhchoitiantacht ag gabháil leis na daoine. Tugtar le fios go bhfuil na dúchasaigh traidisiúnta murab ionann agus lucht a mbreithnithe. Baineann siad le ré eile ar fad. Míníonn údar an leabhair féin gur caoineadh an chlann “in the traditional Irish fashion52”. Luann sé féin superstitions go minic agus é ag titim le seanthróp na n- ársaitheoirí, na n-iriseoirí agus na cinsealachta sa naoú céad déag.

19 Maidir le cás Mhaolra Seoighe tugann Waldron le fios nach raibh aon Ghaeilge ag an gcuid is mó de na breithimh, de na dlíodóirí ná den chonstáblacht. Fágann sé sin gur ag tiontú ó Ghaeilge go Béarla agus ó Bhéarla go Gaeilge a bhíothas. Bhí seasamh agus dánacht ag an mBéarla i dtigh na cúirte, rud a cuireadh i bhfeidhm go héifeachtach. Deirtear go raibh dlíodóir na Coróineach ag cur na súl trí na cúisithe sna heatraimh le linn an aistriúcháin, “he used periods of translation to eyeball his victims towards panic53”. Bogadh an triail go dtí cathair Bhaile Átha Cliath sa chaoi is go n-éisteodh giúiré speisialta an cás. Aontachtóirí nó dílseoirí don chuid is mó a bhí rompu ann, ba bheag an lé a bhí acu le “uncouth, Gaelic-speaking, poorly-dressed, peasants54”. Níor thuig formhór na bpríosúnach aon Bhéarla, bhí beirt a raibh cúpla focal Béarla acu ach deirtear go raibh béarlagar na Cúirte agus tuin na ndlíodóirí ag dul os ceann meabhrach orthu siúd. Tiarna Talún, George Orme Malley, a bhí ag feidhmiú thar ceann na bpríosúnach. Nuair a cuireadh ar a shúile don bhreitheamh ná raibh aon Bhéarla ag na príosúnaigh, cheap sé póilín ina fhear teanga. Ní hamháin go raibh seasamh agus dánacht ag an mBéarla ach bhí smacht agus cead a chinn geall leis aige. Bhí na cúisithe ar taispeáint don saol mór sa phríomhchathair mar shamplaí de bhunchruth an duine. Ba é an dá mhar a chéile dóibh é dá molfaí iad nó dá gcáinfí iad. Bhí an tsamhlaíocht liteartha léannta ar ligean. Thrácht an Freeman’s Journal ar “the conventional type of western peasant55”. Mhol an breitheamh “character, education and intelligence” an ghiúiré agus an t-olc a cuireadh ar an domhan sibhialta56. Luaigh an Aturnae Ginearálta an sceimhleadh a cuireadh ar “the Ireland we all knew” agus luaigh dlíodóir na Coróineach gur tháinig “loyal and brave men, as ever maintained the honour of British Arms” ón dúiche chéanna agus gur dóigh leis go dtiocfadh a thuilleadh fós as. Thug sé moladh do na brathadóirí:

[…] three honest peasants from the district… it is some symptom of recovery and of regaining the ancient way, it is some symptom of the

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natural indignation rising up in the minds of our countrymen against crime and outrage, the three honest peasants who had lived their simple and homely lives in faith and honesty in that part of the countryside are now communicating with the police57.

20 Deir Barthes, “the law depicts you as you should be and not as you are58”. Íomhá de thuathánaigh macánta, simplí, piseogach atá ann, tuathánaigh mar ba mhaith leis an impireacht iad a bheith. Crochadh Pádraig Shéamais Ó Cathasaigh nó “Pat Casey” mar a tugadh sa chúirt air. Dúirt sé leis an mbreitheamh nár thuig sé cad a bhí á rá agus, nuair a aistríodh an chaint dó, chuaigh sé ar an gcúis a shéanadh láithreach ach ní raibh aon mhaith dó ann59.

21 An chéad duine eile a glaodh ach Maolra Seoighe nó “Maoilrín” mar a thugtaí le cion air sa cheantar, “John Joyce” as Béarla. Ceaptar ná raibh aon fhocal den Bhéarla in aon chor aige. Deir Waldron “he may as well have been in China, for not one solitary word of the English did he understand60”. Ní raibh fear teanga ann an chuid is mó den am dó, ní raibh cead cainte aige. Tá an diúltú don tiontú chomh tábhachtach céanna leis an dtiontú féin. An choir a cuireadh ina leith ach gur bhatráil sé Máiréad Seoighe, col ceathrair leis féin agus gan na déaga féin slánaithe aici. Sa chuntas ar an Seoigheach tarraingíodh na piseoga anuas arís. Luadh nach mbainfeadh duine le corpán an té a mharaigh sé féin ach thrasnaigh an Aturnae Ginearálta é agus olc an duine shibhialta air, “tell that to distant ages, old gossips and so forth, but don’t tell it to us who know the history of criminals and crime61”. Tugtar le fios go mbíonn stair ag Béarlóirí agus seanchaint ag Gaeilgeoirí. Thiar i nDúiche Sheoigheach bhí tuairiscí ón Freeman’s Journal á n-aistriú thar n-ais go Gaeilge. Is fianaise é seo dar ndóigh go raibh léitheoireacht ag cuid de na daoine ar a laghad ag an am. Chuardaigh an Chúirt cáilíochtaí sibhialta d’aon ghnó. Mhol an breitheamh Máire Seoighe, “that intelligent girl who spoke English62”. Bhí suim faoi leith i meabhair chinn an dúchasaigh, “‘intelligence’ was the mark of advanced races, at home or abroad; it distinguished them from ‘savages’63”. Síleadh go minic go raibh meabhair chinn an duine de réir an chine nó na haicme.

22 Maraíodh Bríd Ní Chléire sa bhliain 1895 i gCluain Meala, trí bliana déag ó crochadh Maolra Seoighe. Ní raibh aon leisce ar an bpaiteolaí tagairt do na Hottentots sa chás áirithe sin, deir Bourke “Coroner Shee’s remark was to be the first in a long series of analogies drawn – or repudiated – between the Irish people and various African civilizations in the weeks that followed64”. D’oibrigh na nuachtánaithe leis na trópanna luatha seandálaíocha, eitneagrafaíocha nó antraipeolaíochta a rinne amach gur cultúr neamhshibhialta, réamh-nua-aoiseach nó primitíveach a bhí sa chultúr dúchais. Cultúr a bhí chun deiridh ar chultúr an Bhéarla mar shampla. Nuair a tugadh na príosúnaigh amach ar sráideanna Chluain Meala, “much of the hissing and groaning was directed at Denis Ganey. His traditional title, ‘fairy doctor’ – uncomfortably close to ‘witch-doctor’ – was enough to single him out for opprobrium, in the modern town of Clonmel65”. Chuadar i muinín “the language of social Darwinism66”, “‘savages’, with high cheekbones, protruding jaws and low morals were to be found not only in Africa, or even in Ireland, but in the white urban underclass of Britain itself67”.

23 Ardán a bhí sa chúirt ar a cuireadh, mar a ceapadh, eiseamláir den primitíveach. D’imigh an giúiré amach ach chasadar ar na sála geall leis, ní raibh ach sé nóiméid caite amuigh acu. Nuair a d’aistrigh an fear teanga breith na cúirte do Mhaolra Seoighe baineadh siar as go mór de réir an fhianaise a mhaireann. Tháinig leathadh ladhar air

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agus chrom sé ar ghuíodóireacht agus ar gholchás. Scríobh iriseoir mar gheall ar “the sonorous sounds of the mountain Gaelic in which he apostrophised68”. Tá sé sáinnithe i ngreim docht na teanga móire faoi fhallaí arda tuisceana. Níl ina ghearán géar déanach féin ach mar a bheadh gliogar srutháin, is amhlaidh a chuireann an glór rómánsúil Ceilteach ó bhruach na sibhialtachta leis an dtaispeántas, “that apparently primitive and remote part of the country69”. Is léir go raibh tuiscintí comhaimseartha ar shibhialtacht agus ar chultúr na tíre á bplé sa chúirt. Labhair Tim Harrington, feisire Parlaiminte:

It may be well for persons of noble sentiment and high mental culture to state that they would face a murderer’s death rather than admit a murder they never committed, but these men are ignorant, poverty-stricken, wretched peasants70.

24 Is ábhar suime go raibh an nuachtán náisiúnaíoch The Freeman’s Journal ar aon fhocal leis an mbreitheamh agus le hiriseoireacht na Breataine. Is faide a chuaigh an iris áfach, chuaigh sí ar chiníochas agus chuir an eachtra i gcomparáid le “traditions of copper- coloured savagery71”. Nuair a loirg abhcóide cosanta trua dóibh ó John Poyntz, Earl Spencer, dúirt sé nár thuigeadar an ceart mar gheall ar “their ignorance of our language, our social civilisation and our laws72”. Is rómhaith a thuigeadar an teanga, an tsibhialtacht agus an dlí sin faoi dheireadh na trialach. Thrácht Spencer leis ar “the ignorant people of the west” mhol sé go gcrochfaí duine amháin ná raibh ciontach ar a laghad díreach chun “ceacht a mhúineadh” dóibh73 (138).

25 Áitíonn Barthes mar gheall ar affaire Dominici go mbuaileann La Figaro le aoire na ngabhar. I gcás Mhaolra Seoighe buaileann The Irish Hudibras le haoire na gcaorach: casann an tsamhlaíocht liteartha léannta leis an réalaíocht eitneagrafaíoch. I gcás Dominici ní ó theanga go teanga a bhíothas ag tiontú fiú ach ó chanúint go canúint ach fós ní ligfeadh fairsinge an domhain eatarthu dóibh teacht ar aon aigne, “syntax, vocabulary, most of the elementary analytical materials of language grope blindly without ever touching74”. Ar chúl na mbreitheamh bhí na húdair, in áit na habhcóide an scéalaí iontach, tagann na póilíní féin isteach ar seánra na tuarascála agus na húrscéalaíochta:

Justice took the mask of Realist literature, of the country tale, while literature itself came to the court-room to gather new “human” documents, and naively to seek from the face of the accused and the suspects the reflection of a psychology which, however, it had been the first to impose on them by the arm of the law75.

26 Bhí na cúisithe, Seoighe agus Dominici, in amharclann na cúirte fad is a cuireadh seánraí liteartha léannta na linne trí chéile. Carachtair ab ea iad geall leis, dramatis personae, pearsna a bhí á gcumadh i ganfhios dóibh féin ar stáitse sleamhain an chultúir ghradamaigh. B’iad na príomhphearsna, eiseamail chríochnaithe den tuathánach tipiciúil, malairt an tsaoránaigh nua-aoisigh shibhialta, “being judged by a power which wants to hear only the language it lends us76”.

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Conclúid

27 I gcúrsaí léann na hÉireann bíonn sé le tuiscint go minic gur aon teanga amháin a bhíonn i gceist “dáiríre”. Níor mhiste teoiric an aistriúcháin a mheabhrú mar chuid de dhea-chleachtas scolártha. Tá sé de bhua aici go gcuireann sé dhá theanga san áireamh ar a laghad. Ní díreach díluchtú ó chultúr amháin go dtí cultúr eile é, bunthróp i léann na tíre trí chéile. Cuireann sé ann don intinn: tugann sé mapa an róid don taighdeoir, líníocht mhín a nochtann taibhse an chultúir. Coinníonn sé an chumarsáide agus an fhiosracht ar siúl. Is gnách leis an dteanga sprioctha, go háirithe an Béarla, an teanga bhunaidh a chur de ar fad agus an nasc a bhriseadh. Tá sé ráite go minic gur téadán an tiontú a thugann isteach i gcathair ghríobháin na brí tú ach tugann sé ar ais chomh maith tú. Idir dhá cheann an aistriúcháin, an teanga bhunúil agus an teanga sprioctha, tá samhlaíocht, hidbrideacht agus cruthaitheacht.

28 An gá is mó a bhíonn le haistriúcháin ó Ghaeilge ná éileamh mór i saol an Bhéarla do eolas ar an dtír a shásamh. Déantar uirlis den léann nó den teanga i gcásanna áirithe chun an t-eolas seo a chur ar fáil i dteangacha agus i gcomhtheascaí eile; comhthéacs Ceilteach nó Éireannach mar shampla. Chítear an téarma Irish Studies i dtosach an fichiú haois i gcéaduair “denoting the philology of the Irish language, what we would today call ‘Celtic Studies’”77. Tuigeann gach mac léinn go mbíonn béim as cuimse ar ghramadach agus ar fhocleolaíocht. Ní ó fhocal go focal a bhíonn téacs (dán, amhrán, scéal, cultúr, gníomh nó saorgán fiú) á thiontú ach ó thuiscint go tuiscint. Ní bheadh aon fháil ag an dteanga sprioctha ar an dtéacs in éagmais an aistriúcháin. Teipeann ar aistriúcháin uaireanta. Ní bhíonn aon chur amach an-mhinic ar an leagan bunúil, níl ann ach an t-aistriúchán. Rud eile, ní gach aon téacs a bhíonn i gceist ach rogha áirithe a mbíonn cúiseanna faoi leith leis (marú, piseog, nós); míreanna slána oiriúnacha a chomhlíonann critéir réamhcheaptha sa chultúr. Bíonn baint ag polaitíocht, ag eacnamaíocht, ag inscne, ag aicme, ag stair, ag creideamh leis an rogha. In éagmais na teanga bunúla ní bhíonn fhios ag tomhaltóir an aistriúcháin (téacs nua, íomhá, tuiscint, cultúr, traidisiún) i gcónaí an leagan muiníneach é in aon chor. Is cuma uaireanta, uaireanta eile ní thuigtear go gcrochfadh tiontú duine is bhfágfadh ina dhiaidh an leagan de a chum agus a cheap sé féin. Asfalt an charrchlóis a cuireadh anuas ar Mhaolra Seoighe ar láthair an tseanphríosúin mar atá Ard-Eaglais chathair na Gaillimhe. Clocha garbha i reilig Chnoc an Teampaill atá ar an líon tí a maraíodh.

NOTES

1. Kim Lenaghan, Irish Superstitions and Lore, Baile Átha Cliath, Appletree Press, 2009, p. 7. 2. Joesph Ivimey, History of the English Baptists: Vol. IV, 1830, Londain, Isaac Taylor Hinton, p. 171.

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3. James Joyce (aistriúcháin de chuid Conor Deane) i Kevin Barry (eag.), James Joyce Occasional Critical and Political Writing, Oxford, Oxford World Classics, 2000, l. 145-7. 4. André Lefevere, Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook, Londain, Routledge, l. XI. 5. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: a History of Translation, Londain, Routledge, 1995, l. 17. 6. Omar S. Al-Shabab, Interpretation and the Language of Translation, Londain, Janus, 1996, l. 8. 7. Brian Friel, Translations, Londain, Faber, 1981, l. 32. 8. André Lefevere, op. cit., l. 2. 9. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration, Londain, 1993, l. 4. 10. Anuradha Dingwaney and Carol Maier (eds), Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-cultural Texts, Pittsburgh, 1995, l. 4. 11. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, op.cit, , l. 5. 12. Román Álvarez and Carmen-África Vidal (eds), “Translating: a political act”, in Román Álvarez and Carmen-África Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion, Clevedon, 1996, l. 1. 13. Ovidio Carbonell, “The exotic space of cultural translation”, in Román Álvarez and Carmen-África Vidal (eds), op. cit. 14. Richard Jacquemond, “Translation and cultural hegemony: the case of French- Arabic translation” in Lawrence Venuti (eag), Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, l. 148. 15. M. Tymoczko, “Translation and Meaning”, in F. Guenthner and M. Guenthner- Reutter (eds), Meaning and Translation: Philosophical and Linguistic Approaches, New York, NYU Press, 1978, l. 29. 16. Gisli Pálsson, Introduction. In G. Pálsson (ed.), Beyond boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthropological discourse, Oxford, Berg, 1993, l. 1. 17. Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland, Cork, Cork University Press, 1996, l. 92. 18. Stiofán Ó Cadhla, Cá bhfuil Éire? Guth an Ghaisce i bprós Sheáin Uí Ríordáin, Baile Átha Cliath, An Clóchomhar, 1998, l. 41. 19. Stiofán Ó Cadhla, Civilising Ireland: Ordnance Survey 1824-1842: Ethnography, Cartography, Translation. Baile Átha Cliath, Irish Academic Press, 2007, l.228. 20. Gisli Pálsson, op. cit., l. 16. 21. Michael Cronin, op. cit., l. 92. 22. Ian J. McNiven agus Lynette Russell, Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology, Lanham, AltaMira Press, 2005, l. 8. 23. Michael Cronin, op. cit., l. 105. 24. Ibid., 1. 107. 25. Robin Flower, The Western Island, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1944, l. 6. 26. Lawrence Venuti, “Translation as cultural politics: regimes of domestication in English”, in Textual Practice 7:2, 1993, l. 209. 27. Ibid.

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28. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration, Londain, Duke University Press, 1993, l. 28. 29. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Nua-Eabhrac, Noonday Press, 1972, l. 43. 30. David Brett, The Construction of Heritage, Corcaigh, Cló Ollscoile Chorcaí, 1996, l. 38. 31. Ibid. 32. Stiofán Ó Cadhla, Civilising Ireland: Ordnance Survey 1824-1842: Ethnography, Cartography, Translation, op. cit., l. 17. 33. John P. Harrington, The English Traveller in Ireland: Accounts of Ireland and the Irish Through Five Centuries, Baile Átha Cliath, Wolfhound Press, 1991, l.199. 34. Ibid., l.211. 35. Ibid., l.228. 36. Ibid., l.243. 37. Ibid., l.255. 38. Ibid. 39. David Brett, op. cit., l. 45. 40. E.M. Forster, “Introduction”, in Maurice O’Sullivan, Twenty Years a Growing, New York, Oxford University Press, 1933, l. 9. 41. Roland Barthes, op. cit., 43. 42. Mc Niven agus Russell, op. cit., l. 51. 43. Ibid., l. 61. 44. Ibid., l. 63. 45. Ibid., l. 76. 46. William Wilde, Irish Popular Superstitions, Baile Átha Cliath, Cló Acadúil na hÉireann, 1979 (1852) l. 11. 47. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways. Londain, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957, l. 3. 48. Brian Ó Conchubhair, Fin de Siécle na Gaeilge: Darwin, an Athbheochan agus Smaointeoireacht na hEorpa, 2009, Indreabhán, Cló Iar-Chonnachta, l. 4. 49. Bell agus Watson, l. 41. 50. Jarleth Waldron, Maamtrasna: The Murders and the Mystery, Baile Átha Cliath, Edmund Burke Publisher, 1992, l. 19. 51. Ibid., l. 25. 52. Ibid., l. 27. 53. Ibid., l. 31. 54. Ibid., l. 54. 55. Ibid., l. 60. 56. Ibid., l. 83. 57. Ibid., l. 103. 58. Roland Barthes, op. cit., l.44. 59. Jarlath Waldron, op. cit., l. 106. 60. Ibid., l. 108. 61. Ibid., l. 118.

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62. Ibid., l. 120. 63. Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story, Londain, Pimlico, 1999, l. 122. 64. Ibid., l. 115. 65. Ibid., l. 119. 66. Ibid., l. 121. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., l. 122. 69. Ibid., l. 123. 70. Ibid., l. 129. 71. Ibid., l. 132. 72. Ibid., l. 133. 73. Ibid., l. 138. 74. Roland Barthes, op. cit., l. 44. 75. Ibid., l. 66. 76. Ibid. 77. James McKillop, “Omnia Hibernica: How ACIS Brought Irish Studies to the Academy”, in Irish Literary Supplement ll. 2010,22, Uimh. 2.l., l. 24.

RÉSUMÉS

Cet article étudie la traduction à travers le prisme de l’ethnographie, afin de mesurer l’apport culturel dans l’acte traductologique. Sur le plan culturel, le transfert se fait non pas d’une langue à une autre mais d’un peuple à un autre, voire d’un idiome à un autre. Cet article tente de démontrer l’importance de la traduction dans l’ethnographie, dans le folklore et dans les études irlandaises à travers l’exemple des meurtres de Mam Trasna, puis établit une brève comparaison avec l’affaire Dominici.

San alt seo pléitear tionchar an aistriúcháin ar an dtuiscint a bhaintear as an gcultúir nó ar an léamh a dhéantar ar an gcultúr ar bhonn eitneagrafaíochtúil. Ar leibhéal an chultúir ní ó theanga go teanga a thiontaítear i gcónaí ach ó thuiscint go tuisicint, ó phobal go pobal nó ó seanrá go seanrá. Maítear gur cuid de dheachleachtas tábhachtach léannta ó thaobh na heitneagrafaíochta, an bhéaloidis nó léann na hÉireann an t-aistriúchán a chur san áireamh. Déantar staidéar faoi leith ar chás Mhaolra Seoighe agus cruthaítear ceagail idir an cás sin agus an affaire Dominici sa bhFrainc.

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INDEX

Keywords : ethnography, folklore, translation, Franco-Irish relations, languages in Ireland - gaelic Mots-clés : ethnographie, relations franco-irlandaises, folklore, langues en Irlande - gaélique, traduction

AUTEUR

STIOFÁN Ó CADHLA Coláiste na hOllcoile, Corcaigh

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Treonna sean is nua – an fhoclóireacht Nua-Ghaeilge san aonú haois is fiche

Liam Mac Amhlaigh

Réamhrá

Cé go bhfuil sé os cionn míle bliain ó tosaíodh ar fhoclóirí Gaeilge a dhéanamh, tá réimsí móra den fhoclóireacht nár saothraíodh ar chor ar bith fós1.

1 Níl duine ar bith a d’fhág a rian níos mó ar an bhfoclóireacht chomhaimseartha ná Tomas de Bhaldraithe agus a chuir in aghaidh na heaspa a shíl sé leis an bhfoclóireacht sa teanga tríocha bliain ó shin. Is é is mó a raibh lámh phraiticiúil san ábhar in Éirinn; is é is mó a d’fhorbair staidéar na foclóireachta mar dhisciplín léinn agus is é is mó a spreag scoláirí eile gort na foclóireachta a threabhadh. Feictear a lámh siúd san éabhlóid mhór a tháinig ar fhoclóireacht na haoise seo caite a fhágann sa chruth ina bhfuil sí anois.

2 Baineann roinnt codanna éagsúla, idir ábhar agus tréimhsí ama, le scéal na foclóireachta ag táirseach na haoise seo. Mar thúsphointe, ní miste cuid de na príomhshaincheisteanna sa réimse seo a lua. Áirítear iontu siúd: • Soláthar fhoclóirí don phobal, idir leaganacha aonteangacha agus dátheangacha; • Pearsantacht agus modhanna oibre na bhfoclóirithe i dtreis ar na foclóirí sin; • Tábhacht na foclóireachta Nua-Ghaeilge i gcur chun cinn na teanga (mar shampla i ngluaiseacht na hathbheochana ag tús an chéid seo caite); • Gaol an Stáit leis an bhfoclóireacht; • Foilsiú na téarmaíochta i bhfoirm fhoclóirí; • Réiteach an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (1958) agus foclóirí foilsithe; • Teicneolaíocht in úsáid chun obair an fhoclóirí a éascú; • Obair institiúideach agus iad ag plé leis na codanna thuas.

3 Is mór an t-athrú a tháinig ar cheird na foclóireachta faoi thús na haoise seo. D’fhás agus chrap an gnó ag uaireanta áirithe. Bhí an disciplín ag brath ar dhaoine aonair

Études irlandaises, 35-2 | 2010 43

seachas ar chórais chríochnúla le tionscadail dhifriúla a cheapadh, a fhorbairt agus a thabhairt chun críche. Ó am go ham, bhí frustrachas ó thaobh an Stáit de faoi chuid den mhoill a shamhlaítear go minic le déantúsaíocht na bhfoclóirí céanna. Tháinig mór- éabhlóid ar ríomhairí agus an cumas a bhain leo an fhoclóireacht a éascú i gcaitheamh an ama. Níl na córais chearta forbartha fós, áfach, chun aghaidh a thabhairt ar sholáthar foclóirithe a chinntiú.

Obair an fhoclóirí

4 Bíonn dhá sprioc go hiondúil ag foclóirí: • focail na teanga a mhíniú ar bhealach simplí; agus/nó • focail teanga amháin a mhíniú i dteanga eile.

5 Baineann obair an fhoclóirí le taifead agus míniú a dhéanamh ar an teanga chruinn litríochta. Ceird agus saothar aonaránach a bhí ann ar feadh na mblianta. Sa lá atá inniu ann, is obair foirne ilghnéitheach atá i gceist le tionscadal foclóireachta. Is gá an obair a bhainistiú i gcodanna ar leith le scileanna ildisciplíneacha. Tá an buntaifead ar bhríonna focal éascaithe ag córais ríomhaireachta seachas bailiú a rinneadh tráth i bhfoirm slipeanna2. Ach an lámh eile, bíonn sainoiliúint de dhíth sna córais chéanna agus bíonn an-dua ar an bhfoclóirí fós eagar a chur ar an mbunábhar. Go comhaimseartha, measann an tOllamh Oftedal ó Ollscoil Oslo gur thasc deacair a bhí i gcruthú foclóra Nua-Ghaeilge:

Compiling a dictionary of contemporary Irish must be one of the most difficult tasks with which a lexicographer can be entrusted. While the English or French lexicographer must content himself with registering the actual use of the modern literary language, his Irish colleague has the unique assignment of codifying an idiom which is regarded by some as a dying language and by others as a language in the making – and which is, for the time being, both3.

6 Is mar sin fós atá ag an bhfoclóirí Nua-Ghaeilge: bíonn cinní áirithe le glacadh i rith na hoibre maidir le focail ar leith a cheadú agus/nó dul i muinín na cumadóireachta le bearnaí a líonadh. Bhí na riachtanais seo i gceist don fhoclóirí Nua-Ghaeilge dar leis: • Eolas cuí ar theanga ársa litríochta na Gaeilge; • Eolas cuí ar an oiread sin canúintí difriúla agus is féidir; • Cur amach ar litríocht nua-aimseartha; agus • Tuiscint ar cé na focail a dtabharfar tús áite dóibh4.

7 Is fíor go bhfuil na riachtanais sin chomh tábhachtach i mbliain scríofa an ailt seo (2010) agus mar a bhí beagnach caoga bliain ó shin. Is díol suntais é an ganntanas foclóirithe atá oilte i scileanna na ceirde agus i dteanga na Gaeilge le tabhairt faoin obair seo go gairmiúil, go héifeachtach agus go slachtmhar; rud a bhí fíor ag tús na haoise chomh maith.

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Na foclóirí reatha: pearsantacht & modhanna a dtiomsaitheoirí

8 Is iad FGB Néill Uí Dhónaill agus EID Thomáis de Bhaldraithe an dá phríomhfhoclóir a bhíonn ar fáil do Ghaeilgeoirí na linne seo. Anuas orthu siúd, baintear leas áirithe as FUD Uí Dhuinnín le saibhreas sa bhreis a thabhairt i gcás na frásaíochta más gá. Is ea is faide a théitear siar is ea is deacra lámh a leagan ar chóip de cheann ar bith de na mórfhoclóirí foilsithe sa Nua-Ghaeilge, ceithre fhoclóir déag in iomlán5. Anuas orthu siúd arís, tá soláthar foclóirí póca ar fáil, cuid acu ón Stát agus cuid acu ó fhoilsitheoirí ar nós Collins agus mionfhoclóirí téarmaíochta ar fáil chomh maith. Sna foclóirí dátheangacha, tá freastal maith déanta ar riachtanais an phobail, ach amháin go bhfuil na príomhfhoclóirí ag imeacht as dáta, go háirithe EID, agus níl siad in oiriúint don teicneolaíocht a bhíonn de dhíth go comhaimseartha.

9 Baineann cuid mhaith den fhoclóireacht sa chéad deireanach le foclóirí a chruthaigh lucht léinn na linne sin. Bhí eolaíocht na foclóireachta in easnamh go mór ar chuid mhaith de luathshaothair an chéid agus ar an gcúis sin is deacair uaireanta an chomparáid is éifeachtaí a dhéanamh eatarthu. De réir mar a chuaigh na tiomsaitheoirí difriúla le modhanna seachtracha na Mór-roinne agus le húsáid na teicneolaíochta, is ea is nua-aimseartha a bhí eolaíocht na foclóireachta le linn an ama sin. Bhí modhanna oibre éagsúla ag an té a bhí ag obair as a stuaim féin, leithéidí Timothy O’Neill Lane (FON) agus an tAthair Pádraig Ó Duinnín mar shampla, agus an foclóirí a bhí níos mó faoi laincisí an Státchórais, ar nós de Bhaldraithe agus Ó Dónaill mar shampla.

10 Ba faoi thionchar an stáit a tosaíodh ar an bhfoclóireacht mar obair foirne, rud a bhí soiléir sna foclóirí is déanaí agus rud a tháinig chun solais fiú chomh fada sin siar leis an dara heagrán de FUD nuair a tugadh liúntas stáit do Cumann na Scríbheann Gaeilge chun an obair a thabhairt chun críche. Ba ghá saothar a d’fhág Liam S. Gogan ina dhiaidh a lorg móide foinsí eile le cur le hobair éachtach an Duinnínigh féin. Dá mhéad é an rogha foinsí nó an rogha soláthróirí, ba mhó an seans go n-athródh treo na hiontrála san fhoclóir.

11 Bhí pearsantachtaí le cur san áireamh chomh maith sna modhanna oibre a bhí in úsáid. Bhí EID de Bhaldraithe ina léiriú ar fhear ina léachtóir acadúil, a thosaigh amach leis an dearcadh gur ag líonadh na mbearnaí sa teanga agus ag forbairt an stóir focal a bhí sé. Ar an iomlán seasann eagar na gceannfhocal amach chun tosaigh in EID. Céim chun tosaigh a bhí ann, go mór mhór i rangú agus i gcur i láthair an eolais. Bíonn sé furasta go maith EID a léamh agus príomhbhríonna gach focail a scagadh agus a úsáid. Déantar gearán fós faoin nua-chumadóireacht, faoin easpa saibhris a shamhlaítear leis, agus faoin dóigh a ndeachaigh an t-ábhar sin as dáta. Bhí roinnt athruithe ag teastáil i rith an fhoclóra, toisc go raibh comhairle nua faoin gCaighdeán Oifigiúil ar fáil. Ar an gcúis sin, tiomsaíodh an t-aguisín, English-Irish Dictionary: Terminological Additions and Corrections (1978). Thar aon ábhar eile, cuireann sé sin ceannfhocail bhreise ar fáil do EID.

12 Go comparáideach, bhain blas an chainteora dúchais, a bhí go mór faoi chomaoin ag Foclóir Lámhbheartaigh Mhic Cionnaith (FMC) roimhe, le hiontrálacha Uí Dhónaill. Bhain saibhreas, agus soiléire agus simplíocht, leis na hiontrálacha sin, ar chaighdeán níos eolaíochtúla ná FUD ach níos doimhne iontu féin ná EID. Níl FUD níos iomláine ná é in aon chor. Bhí an fhoireann is cumasaí a tugadh le chéile san aois ag obair ar an

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bhfoclóir leis an saineolas agus leis an gcomhoibriú ón mbeirt ba thábhachtaí i rith an ama sin. Ceistíodh an gaol idir de Bhaldraithe agus Ó Dónaill go minic sna blianta tar éis don fhoclóir teacht ar an láthair. Ní nach ionadh sin agus aighneas ag de Bhaldraithe leis an Roinn Oideachais nuair nár thoiligh siad a ainm a chur ar chlúdach an fhoclóra i dtosach báire. Ní haon locht a fuair sé ar Niall Ó Dónaill. Ní haon locht a fuair sé ar Ó Dónaill nuair nár thoiligh an Roinn Oideachais stiúir iomlán an tionscadail a bhronnadh air sé bliana déag roimhe sin. Bhí aighneas idir de Bhaldraithe agus an Roinn go seasta agus ba leasc leo orlach ar bith a ghéilleadh dó riamh.

13 Cheadaigh Lane agus Ó Duinnín an méid sin eolais sa bhreis anuas ar a gcuid iontrálacha nach gcuidíonn sé, uaireanta, le freagra glan díreach a bhaint amach ar cheist sa teanga. Ní raibh tiomsaitheoir ar bith níos ábalta cur síos a dhéanamh ar aidiachtaí ná an Duinníneach. Mar fhocal tuarascálach, níor thug foclóirí ar bith an bhrí bheoga chéanna don aidiacht agus a thug an Duinníneach. Ní gá ach na focail ‘glas’ agus ‘milis’ a chuardach sna foclóirí agus a chur i gcomparáid. Bhailigh Lane an-chuid amhábhair sa dá eagrán, bíodh go mbíonn cuid den eolas atá luachmhar báite ag eolas nach bhfuil chomh tábhachtach céanna. Cuireadh an dara heagrán de FON agus de FUD ar fáil aon bhliain déag agus trí bliana fiche tar éis a gcéad fhoilsithe faoi seach. D’imigh na foclóirí eile go léir as dáta tapaidh go leor, rud a thug le fios nach raibh polasaí cuimsitheach ag an Rialtas le comharbaí a aimsiú ar fhoclóirí nó ar fhoclóirithe na Gaeilge.

14 Mar sin, go hachoimir, is féidir a cheapadh, ó thaobh na bhfoclóirithe de: • Go seasann FGB don chainteoir eolasach a bhí fite sa chanúineolaíocht agus sa teangeolaíocht stairiúil, duine a bhí ciúinchainteach go maith nuair a theastaigh sin uaidh; • Go seasann EID don léachtóir acadúil, a raibh cumas láidir riaracháin aige agus a bhí go mór chun tosaigh i gcur chun cinn na Gaeilge go hacadúil; • Go seasann FMC don díograiseoir a bhí ag déanamh gair don teanga agus don rialtas nua trí ghlacadh leis an gcuireadh an chéad fhoclóir sa Stát nua a chur in eagar; • Go seasann FUD don eagarthóir Gaeilge a bhí in ann eagráin agus obair eagarthóireachta a chur de ag ráta tapaidh éifeachtach agus a bhain leas as stór mór eolais litríochta; agus • Go seasann FON don timire teanga, an duine a bhí neamhspleách ar éifeacht an Stáit nó ó éifeacht na bhforsaí láidre poblachtánacha a bhí timpeall air.

15 Tugtar faoi deara gur foclóirí dátheangacha a bhíonn i gceist i bhfoclóireacht na Nua- Ghaeilge den chuid is mó. Ní haon eisceacht í an fichiú haois. Idir Bhéarla-Gaeilge agus Ghaeilge-Béarla sna foclóirí, ní bhíonn fáil ag Gaeilgeoirí ná ag Éireannaigh ar fhoclóir aonteangach a mhíníonn díorthuithe na bhfocal Gaeilge. Tá teoiric ag Crowley6 go léiríonn an nós seo gur tiomsaíodh na foclóirí dátheangacha ar fad i dtéarmaí teangacha eile amháin, go háirithe an Béarla. Ba thríthi a fuair an Ghaeilge a sainmhíniú agus a haitheantas. Tá luach méadaithe leis an ráiteas sin i gcás na bhfoclóirí a tiomsaíodh sna céadta roimh an aois seo caite. Deacracht eile a bhíonn ann ná go nglacann cruthú foclóra aonteangaigh níos mó ama agus airgid ná eiseamláirí dátheangacha. Fágann sé gur dheacair don rialtas cloí fada go leor le tionscnamh mar sin a chur i gcrích. I gcás na Gaeilge, ba ghá treo thionscnamh an fhoclóra aonteangaigh in Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann (FNG) a athrú go hiomlán tar éis fiche bliain a chaitheamh ag ullmhú na chéad litreach.

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An Stát agus foclóirí Nua-Ghaeilge

16 Ar bhealach, tharla na feabhsuithe is cuimsithí i gceird agus i dtábhácht na foclóireachta nuair a chuaigh an Stát i ngleic lena dualgais sa réimse seo ag amanna áirithe i rith na haoise. Chuaigh an Stát i ngleic leis seo nuair a chuireadar gníomhartha ar bun chun foclóir Bearla-Gaeilge a sholáthar ag deireadh na 1920í. Earnán de Blaghd is túisce a bhrúigh an tionscadal sin ar aghaidh. Thóg sé tamall áirithe orthu na paraiméadair chearta a chumadh agus na treoracha is cirte a leagan amach don phríomhfhoclóirí, sa chás seo Láimhbheartach Mac Cionnaith. Ghlacadar cúram ceart i ndiaidh an chogaidh de chomharba FMC, ach níor éirigh leis an gcoiste comhairleach a ceapadh leis an ngnó a stiúradh súil iomlán a choimeád ar de Bhaldraithe nó ar cad é is fearr a bhí de dhíth chun an foclóir a thabhairt chun críche.

17 Is féidir a áitiú go mbíonn dul chun cinn i dtáirgeadh na foclóireachta le sonrú sna tréimhsí nuair a bhíonn an tír féin faoi bhláth. Roimhe sin, bhí foclóireacht na teanga ag brath go minic ar pholaiteoirí a chuirfeadh spéis sa teanga ag uaireanta áirithe. Sa tslí sin, shocraítí go mbeadh codán de chiste an rialtais ar fáil mar thacaíocht. Bhí sé níos éasca sna 1960í nuair a bhí ciste airgid ag an Roinn Airgeadais, caiteachas a cheadú chun FGB a chur le chéile agus foireann bhreá a cheapadh le dul i mbun oibre. Bhí foighne áirithe le tabhairt faoi deara sa Rialtas chomh maith sa tslí ar tugadh beagnach fiche bliain don fhoireann an obair a chríochnú. Ansin, agus géarchéim airgeadais sa tír, tharraing an rialtas siar ó aird ar bith a thabhairt de réir córais ar fhorbairt na foclóireachta. Lean tionscnaimh áirithe sa Ghúm agus in Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann leo, ach ba iarsmaí iad de na hiarrachtaí a cuireadh ar bun sna 1970í.

18 I gcás teanga mionlaigh ar bith, níl airgead le fáil as cló agus díol foclóirí aonteangacha nó dátheangacha. Níl an margadh léitheoireachta ná lucht úsáide idirnáisiúnta ann a d’fhágfadh go mbeadh raidhse ceannaitheoirí ar fáil nó go mbeadh comhlachtaí móra foilsitheoireachta ag obair le dul in iomaíocht le chéile chun a gcéatadán áirithe den mhargadh a bhaint amach. Ar an gcúis sin, le freastal ar chur chun cinn, ar chaomhnú agus ar neartú i gcaighdeáin dhifriúla na Gaeilge, tá dualgais áirithe ar an Stát a chinntiú go mbíonn soláthar foclóirí ar fáil i nGaeilge. Tá an dualgas reachtúil sin curtha i scríbhinn anois ag deireadh an fichiú haois agus is ar an bhForas Teanga trasteorann a bunaíodh faoi chomhaontú Aoine an Chéasta i 1999 san Acht um Chomhaontú na Breataine-na hÉireann, Foras na Gaeilge, a thiteann na dualgais reachtúla chéanna.

An ríomhaireacht agus an teicneolaíocht

19 Sa chúig bliana fiche deireanacha den aois seo caite, tháinig athrú ó bhonn ar obair an ghnáthfhoclóirí toisc na teicnící nua atá ar fáil le ríomhthiomsú a dhéanamh ar fhoclóir clóite nó leictreonach. De bharr na nuatheicneolaíochta, bíonn obair foclóireachta an lae inniu níos áisiúla agus níos críochnúla ná mar a bhí riamh agus is iomaí constaic is féidir a shárú léi. Leathnaíonn agus éascaíonn an teicneolaíocht eagrú agus roghnú an ábhair. Mar shampla, bheadh sé ina laige ar aon fhoclóir nua muna mbeadh sé bunaithe ar eiseamláir Bhéarla nach dtugann a cheart do Bhéarla na hÉireann ná do nathanna nach bhfuil in úsáid lasmuigh den tír. Mheas Nic Pháidín7 go bhféadfaí dúchasú a dhéanamh ar an mBéarla féin trí chuidiú na nuatheicneolaíochta. Is féidir foinsí ar nós Oxford English Dictionary a chuardach de réir na samplaí ‘Éireannacha’. Tá sé níos éasca

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samplaí agus sleachta áirithe a roghnú don fhoclóir de réir minicíochta chomh maith. Ar an gcúis sin, bíonn earra níos iomláine agus níos críochnúla ar fáil.

20 I gcomhthéacs na Nua-Ghaeilge, chuir cuid de na hathruithe ríomhaireachta moill ar chur chun cinn na dtionscadal difriúla toisc an teicneolaíocht a bheith costasach i dtosach ama, mall agus athraitheach. Níor chuidigh sé chomh maith go raibh scoláirí na foclóireachta chomh cleachtaithe sin ar an mbealach sean-fhaiseanta agus cuid mhaith de na saineolaithe sa réimse ag dul in aois, go raibh bac áirithe ar scaipeadh agus seachadadh na teicneolaíochta chomh forleathan agus atá sé i gceist sa lá atá inniu ann. Ó lár na 1970í, bhí leas á bhaint as mór-ríomhaire príomhfhráma leis an bhfoclóireacht a éascú. Ní éasca a bhí sé ceann dá leithéid a cheannach nó foireann, seachas duine amháin, a chur i mbun oibre air. Faoin mbliain 1995, bhí teacht ar ghnáthríomhairí pearsanta d’oibrithe oifige agus bhí an dara sraith cláracha ríomhfhoclóireachta ar fáil. Sa tslí sin, agus tromlach de ghlúin na foclóireachta imithe ar pinsean, glacadh leis an teicneolaíocht go fairsing agus tá sé in úsáid mar ábhar feabhais seachas mar ábhar toirmisc ó shin.

21 I gcomhthéacs na foclóireachta Éireannaí de, is é an rud is nua atá ann le cuidiú le táirgeadh fhoclóirí i nGaeilge ná DANTE. Tá comharba EID le bheith linn i gceann dhá bhliain nó mar sin: NEID – New English-Irish Dictionary de chuid Fhoras na Gaeilge. Chun taobh an Bhéarla den phróiseas sin a éascú, cruthaíodh bunachar léacsach nó foclóireachta leis an ainm DANTE. Cuireann sé taifead ar fáil den tslí a fheidhmíonn breis agus 42,000 ceannfhocal agus 23,000 nathanna ilfhoclacha, le 27,000 frása ina measc. Faoi láthair, is féidir teacht air, ar líne, agus taobh den úsáid thaighde, déanfar é a dhíol le foilsitheoirí gairmiúla de réir ceadúnais. Cruthaíodh an bogearra seo ag Lexicography MasterClass, an comhlacht Sasanach foclóireachta atá ag obair le Foras na Gaeilge chun an foclóir a thabhairt chun foirfeachta.

22 Tá corpas de 1.7 billiún focal i mBéarla ar fáil trí DANTE. Tugann sé cur síos córasach ar na mínithe, gramadach agus tréithe d’fhocail an Bhéarla. Is féidir leis an mbunachar deis a thabhairt d’fhoilsitheoir foclóir Béarla aonteangach nó dátheangach a chruthú (mar a bhí sa chás seo), nó uasdátú a dhéanamh ar leagan, nó foclóir clóite a leagan amach ar líne. Tá na sonraí leagtha amach cosúil le gnáthfhoclóir, ach tá na samplaí úsáide a shíolraíonn ón mbunachar, breis agus leathmhilliún abairt ón gCorpas. Tá córas ríomhdhéantúsaíochta foclóireachta, DPS (cruthaithe ag comhlacht Francach IDM), in úsáid ag Foras na Gaeilge chun an tionscnamh a chríochnú.

Foilsiú na téarmaíochta mar fhoclóirí

23 Mar atá soiléir sa tuairisc seo thuas, d’fhág grúpa fíorbheag oidhreacht i gcás na foclóireachta, grúpa de sheisear nó de sheachtar scoláirí agus is féidir a rá go soiléiríonn sé sin a dheacra a bhí sé don earnáil seo fás thar na blianta. Éagsúil uaidh sin, bhain an-chuid lámh leis an obair a bhain le cruthú agus le foilsiú na téarmaíochta. Thacaigh an Roinn Oideachais in Éirinn go dlúth leis an obair seo. Nuair a bhí deis ag móruaisle na Roinne, a bhí an-bháúil leis an nGaeilge agus le forbairt na teanga an uair sin, tionchar a bheith acu ar chur chun cinn na téarmaíochta, tapaíodh an deis sin.

24 Bhí an obair seo ar siúl ar feadh i bhfad sa Nua-Ghaeilge, agus mar a deir Bhreathnach agus Nic Pháidín: “Le breis mhaith agus mile cúig chéad bliain, tá téarmaí nua á gcruthú ag an nGaeilge agus cuid eile á nglacadh chuici féin aici chun déileáil le

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forbairtí sóisialta, eaglasta agus teicneolaíochta8.” Tháinig méadú leanúnach uirthi de réir córais san aois seo caite, áit ar cuireadh bonn stáit leis an gcúram, go háirithe nuair a bhí riachtanas práinneach i gceist leis ó thaobh dul chun cinn na heolaíochta agus na teicneolaíochta.

25 Thar aon rud eile, chuir an Roinn Oideachais an-bhéim ar fhoilsiú na téarmaíochta (agus a chruthú) nuair ba ghá leis sna heolaíochtaí agus i réimsí teicniúla. Baineadh an- leas as modh na gcoistí a thug saibhreas don ghnó agus a chinntigh go raibh teacht ar réimse leathan comhairle sular faomhadh (nó foilsíodh) téarma ar bith. Tá an modh céanna amhlaidh i gcónaí agus is mór an trua an easpa spreagtha a bhaineann leis an Roinn Oideachais sa chás sin anois. Ar ndóigh ní chruthaítear focal san fhoclóireacht per se, cuirtear eagar san fhoclóir ar na slite is fearr le brí focal/focail a mhíniú i dteanga amháin nó i dteanga eile. Tá sé sin éagsúil go mór i gcás na téarmaíochta nuair a dhéantar iarracht brí a thabhairt do choincheap áirithe sa teanga.

26 Sa ghnáthfhoclóireacht, déantar taifead ar staid na teanga ag am faoi leith ach is é gnó na téarmaíochta lipéid atá cruinn caighdeánach a chur ar choincheapa sainithe, agus ansin iad a thiomsú i mionfhoclóirí9. Bíonn gluaiseanna téarmaíochta á bhfoilsiú sa Ghaeilge faoi láthair. Tugtar leagan Gaeilge ar leagan Béarla (nó a mhalairt), ach ní mhínítear an coincheap i nGaeilge. Leis an gceird seo a fhorbairt go fírinneach, beidh gá le mínithe níos speisialaithe a chur ar fáil agus is maith an seans go mbeidh feidhm de chineál ag foclóirí móra nua Stáit leis seo sa bhfiche bliain eile atá amach romhainn.

27 Is féidir foilsiú na téarmaíochta mar fhoclóirí a roinnt ina seacht gcuid: • 1900-1922: Foilseacháin na hathbheochana agus na n-eagraíochtaí teanga; • 1922-1940: Iarrachtaí foilsithe na gcigirí sa Roinn Oideachais faoin Stát nua; • 1945-1960: Foilsiú English-Irish Dictionary faoi stiúir Thomáis de Bhaldraithe; • 1960-1968: Coistí ad-hoc bunaithe le haghaidh a thabhairt ar théarmaíocht na heolaíochta; • 1968-1985: Bunú, saothair agus foilseacháin an Bhuanchoiste Téarmaíochta sa Roinn Oideachais faoi Thomás Ó Floinn. Is é an cúram atá ar an gCoiste ná téarmaíocht chaighdeánach údarásach a chur ar fáil i nGaeilge; • 1985-1999: Foilseacháin an Bhuanchoiste Téarmaíochta ó 1985 faoi chóras coincheapúil a chuir an Dr Liam Mac Cóil agus Colm Breathnach i bhfeidhm agus ar lean Fidelma Ní Ghallchobhair leis; agus • 1999-2010: Aistriú an Bhuanchoiste Téarmaíochta go dtí Foras na Gaeilge agus fáil ar áiseanna agus foireann dá bharr. Nasc cruthaithe le Foireann na dTionscadal Taighde, Fiontar, Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath a dhéanann tionscnamh áirithe don Bhuanchoiste ar bhonn conartha.

28 Thug agus tugann na coistí téarmaíochta deis don Ghaeilge dul i ngleic leis an ngnáthshaol. Más léir go mbíonn riachtanas do théarmaí in ábhar ar bith, bíonn córas ar fáil chun an t-ábhar a scrúdú agus fochoiste a chur ag obair ar bharraíocht téarmaí a sholáthar10. Cuireann foghlaimeoirí eachtrannacha an cheist go minic, “cé na daoine a shocraíonn téarmaí nua i nGaeilge”, agus is deas leis an údar seo a rá leo go bhfuil córas ann le dul i ngleic le ceisteanna mar seo, córas a tharraingíonn ar réimse leathan saineolais.

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Gaeilge chaighdeánach agus athrú cló i bhfoclóirí na haoise

29 Taobh le taobh le ceisteanna ábhair, agus cruthú téarmaí, leanann díospóireachtaí eile a bhfuil éifeacht acu ar na foclóirí. Bhí dhá mhórdheacracht sa tslí ar chur chun cinn ghramadach na Gaeilge nuair a bunaíodh an Stát: (1) an litriú agus (2) éagsúlacht gramadaí sna canúintí. Níorbh fhéidir tabhairt faoi ghramadach a chinntiú in aon chor go socrófaí ceist an litrithe. Ag an bpointe sin, fiú, bhí leithleachas na gcanúintí le sárú. Dul ar aghaidh mall a rinneadh mar bhí an coimeádachas an-láidir. Agus na leasuithe litrithe déanta, fiú, ba ghá fanacht roinnt blianta go rachfaí ina dtaithí sna scoileanna agus sa litríocht sula rachfaí ag plé le cló ná le gramadach11.

30 Idir bunú an Stáit agus foilsiú EID sa bhliain 1959, lean an díospóireacht agus iarrachtaí rialtais chun an Ghaeilge a chaighdeánú ar bhealach a bhí sásúil go leor d’ionadaithe na gcanúintí go léir. Sa tréimhse chéanna, ní raibh sé éasca ar fhoclóirithe an leagan ceart litrithe den fhocal a roghnú nuair a bhí an il-iomad litrithe difriúla ar fáil ar fhocail éagsúla.

31 Lean an plé seo ar aghaidh go dtí gur ghlac Éamon de Valera cuid den fhreagracht chuige féin, agus cuireadh gluaiseacht Stáit iarchogaidh ar bun le go bhfoilseofaí Gramadach na Gaeilge agus Litriú na Gaeilge: An Caighdeán Oifigiúil (1958). Ba é an chéad fhoclóir eile, FGB, beagnach fiche bliain níos deireanaí, a chuir an chéad éabhlóid eile ar an gcaighdeán agus ag eascairt as seo, tá neamhréireachtaí atá fós le réiteach anois ag Aonad an Aistriúcháín sa Roinn Gnóthaí Pobail, Comhionannais agus Gaeltachta faoi lár na bliana 2011. Cruthóidh sé sin deacrachtaí áirithe d’fhoireann NEID i bhForas na Gaeilge, ar ndóigh.

Treo na foclóireachta sa bhliain 2000 i leith

32 Braitheann an scríbhneoir seo an borradh céanna faoin bhfoclóireacht ag deireadh na haoise seo caite agus a bhí ar fáil don teanga le linn na hathbheochana ag tús an chéid. Tá foghrúpaí áirithe ag obair ar chodanna den fhoclóireacht agus iad ar fad maoinithe ar shlí éigin ag an Stát. Le bunú Fhoras na Gaeilge agus aistriú an Ghúim ón Roinn Oideachais go cúram an Fhorais, agus go cúram na Roinne Gnóthaí Pobail, Comhionnanais agus Gaeltachta, tugadh dualgais an Stáit don fhoclóireacht faoi deara agus tosaíodh ar fhoireann agus struchtúr foclóireachta a chruthú arís sna heagrais Stáit. Tá eagarthóir foclóireachta ceapaithe móide bainisteoir tionscadail don tionscadal foclóir Béarla-Gaeilge nua, NEID, atá á chruthú ag Foras na Gaeilge. Tá eagarthóir cúnta amháin ag obair leo beirt. Anuas air sin, foilsítear dhá shainfhoclóir ar an meán in aghaidh na bliana le téarmaí faomhaithe ag an gCoiste Téarmaíochta agus curtha in eagar ag feidhmeannas an Choiste, idir rúnaí agus téarmeolaithe.

33 In Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann, leantar le tionscnamh FNG le ríomhchartlann foclóireachta don Nua-Ghaeilge a chruthú. Tá foireann foclóireachta an Acadaimh ag obair ar chorpas na Gaeilge ó 1882 – 2000 a chríochnú agus a fhoilsiú. D’fhágfadh sé sin go mbeadh corpas leictreonach don Ghaeilge ó 1600 – 2000 le hamhábhar as a bhféadfaí foclóir aonteangach a dhearadh. Tá beirt eagarthóirí cúnta, agus duine eile ag tabhairt aghaidh ar riaradh an tionscnaimh. Sa Charraig, i dTír Chonaill, tá sraith ionchuradóirí ag obair le téacsanna ón bhfichiú haois a scanáil sa ríomhaire le heagar a chur orthu

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don chorpas. Is deacair a bheith cinnte an leanfaidh an tAcadamh le obair na foclóireachta san fhadtéarma. Maoiníonn an tÚdarás um Ard-Oideachas an tionscnamh i gcónaí.

34 In Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath, déanann foireann na dtionscadal taighde i bhFiontar forbairt leanúnach ar thionscadail ríomhthéarmaíochta agus ríomhlogainmeolaíochta. Bunaíodh www.focal.ie, bunachar comhtháite de nuathéarmaíocht na Gaeilge sa bhliain 2004, i gcomhar le hOllscoil na Breataine Bige, Lampeter. Maoiníodh an tionscadal an uair sin as an gciste Cumarsáid Teicneolaíochta agus Iompair (Tosaíocht 1, Beart 4) faoi INTERREG IIIA Éire / An Bhreatain Bheag agus le páirtmhaoiniú ó Fhoras na Gaeilge. Ba é príomhsprioc ghné na hÉireann ná méadú ar rochtain an ghnáthphobail ar acmhainní theicneolaíocht na faisnéise, sa chás seo acmhainní ardleibhéil i nGaeilge. Díríodh an suíomh ar riachtanais gnó agus cumarsáide, ar earnáil an oideachais, ar thionscal an aistriúcháin agus ar shainúsáideoirí eile. Anois sa dara céim den tionscadal 2008 – 2011 tá suas le dosaen ag obair ar na tionscadail sin, agus i gcás na téarmaíochta, oibríonn siad lámh le lámh le feidhmeannas an Bhuanchoiste Téarmaíochta i bhForas na Gaeilge a fhaomhann na téarmaí a fhoilsítear ar an suíomh. Maoiníonn Foras na Gaeilge an obair seo.

35 In Ollscoil Uladh, déantar obair leanúnach foclóireachta i gcomhairle leis an gcomhlacht foilseacháin Sasanach Collins. Tá siad ag obair leo faoi láthair leis an Collins Concise English-Irish, Irish-English Dictionary a chruthú. Tá an t-oifigeach taighde is deireanaí, Gearóid Ó Diomagáin, ag obair ar an tionscnamh faoi stiúir na nOllamh Séamus Mac Mathúna agus Ailbhe Ó Corráin le maoiniú ó fhoinsí éagsúla. Foclóireacht trí mhodh an aistriúcháin atá inti agus níl an fhoclóireacht chorpasbhunaithe in úsáid sa chás seo go fóill.

36 I dTithe an Oireachtais, bíonn Rannóg an Aistriúcháin ag plé le téarmaíocht dlí agus reachtaíochta le foireann a méadaíodh ó dheireadh an chéid seo caite. Bíodh agus nach bhfuil agus nach raibh páirt shuntasach ag an Rannóg san fhoclóireacht, is fíor go bhfuil obair thábhachtach i gcruthú téarmaí fós ar siúl acu agus gur féidir a rá go bhfuil sainoiliúint ar fhoireann na rannóige.

37 In Éirinn, tá géarghá le traenáil agus sainoiliúint a chur ar fáil ag leibhéal iarchéime ollscoile i bhfoclóireacht na Nua-Ghaeilge le soláthar oilte foclóirithe a réiteach sna blianta atá romhainn. Is beag an bhuíon ar féidir “foclóirithe” Gaeilge a thabhairt orthu i láthair na huaire agus áirítear orthu siúd de bharr taithí a bheith acu sa réimse: an Dr Éamonn Ó hÓgáin, Máire Nic Mhaoláin, an Dr Úna Uí Bheirn, an Dr Diarmuid Ó hAirt, an Dr Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín, an Dr Pádraig Ó Mianáin, an Dr Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair, Máire Ní Icí, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Marion Gunn, Deirdre d’Auria, Muiris Ó Raghallaigh, Úna Bhreathnach agus corrshaineolaí téarmfhoclóireachta, an Dr Liam Mac Cóil, an Dr Gearóid Ó Cléircín, Brian Ó Raghallaigh, Donla uí Bhraonáin, Fidelma Ní Ghallchobhair agus Colm Breathnach ina measc. Is dúshlán mór a bheidh ann don Stát agus don earnáil tríú leibhéal araon feabhas a chur ar sholáthar fhoclóirithe amach anseo.

38 Mhol meitheal oibre a bhí ag obair do Bhord na Gaeilge gur cheart d’údaráis an Stáit cuidiú leis an bpleanáil teanga agus lárionad nó acadamh Stáit amháin a bhunú le bheith freagrach as an teanga, idir fhoclóireacht, théarmaíocht, cheisteanna an Chaighdeáin sa bhliain 199912. Ba chabhair é teach foilsitheoireachta agus rannóg Nua- Ghaeilge ollscoile a cheangail le hacadamh mar seo chomh maith agus an t-acadamh a bheith freagrach do na hAirí Oideachais agus Gnothaí Pobail, Tuaithe agus Gaeltachta

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araon. Go dtí go dtarlaíonn a leithéid, ní féidir a bheith ag súil le foirfeacht nó fiú dul chun cinn i bpleanáil foclóireachta na Gaeilge sa todhchaí.

Conclúid

39 Is iontach an tsuim atá ag Gaeilgeoirí i bhfocail, nathanna cainte, frásaíocht, díorthuithe agus, ar ndóigh, foclóirí. Cosúil leis an tsuim seo, bhí eolas ag teastáil ó phobal Gaeilge na hÉireann, agus tá fós, i dtaobh leithne a dteanga féin, go speisialta san aonú haois is fiche nuair atá meath ag teacht ar líon na gcainteoirí dúchais i gcónaí. Dáiríre, spreagadh foclóirithe na teanga ag a leithéid chéanna de shuim agus de spéis i gcónaí.

40 Áiríodh caomhnú agus méadú na teanga ar na spriocanna ba mhó a bhí ag foclóirithe na Nua-Ghaeilge ó aimsir Uí Chléirigh agus na bProinsiasach sa tseachtú haois déag. Theastaigh ó na foclóirithe seo ar fad, nach mór, pobal na tíre a chumasú sa Ghaeilge. Is deacair a chreidiúint go mbeadh teacht chomh héasca ar úsáid fhairsing na teanga sa lá atá inniu ann gan na háiseanna foghlama a chuireann foclóirí ar fáil. Ó thús na Nua- Ghaeilge, feictear an éabhlóid ó thionchar na hathbheochana go riachtanais an Stáit nua; ó thraidisiún páipéir go ríomhfhoclóireacht; ó chur chun cinn na litearthachta go cruthú na téarmaíochta trí mheán na foclóireachta.

41 San achar ama ó thús na hathbheochana go speisialta, bhí foclóirí cuimsitheacha dátheangacha riachtanach mar chuidiú do na scríbhneoirí nua dul i mbun pinn ar an saol. Cuireadh é sin ar a gcumas ag tús an chéid trí mheán na bhfoclóirí nua, FON, FUD agus FFDA go háirithe. Tá na foclóirithe “príobháideacha” i dteideal an-mholadh as a gcuid iarrachtaí, go háirithe Lane agus Ó Duinnín. Chuireadar an-tacaíocht ar fáil don teanga agus cuireadh a saothair i gcló go caolchúiseach chun na hiarrachtaí suntasacha ón mbunghluaiseacht náisiúnach i rith an ama sin a spreagadh. Céim eile a bhí ann le teanga na tíre a chur chun tosaigh arís, roimh bhunú an Stáit agus ina dhiaidh.

42 Bhí sprioc dhifriúil ag lucht gríosaithe na teanga faoin Stát nua: an Ghaeilge a neartú mar chuid lárnach den chóras oideachais i rith an fichiú haois agus téarmaíocht nua- aimseartha a chumadh inti. Cuireadh tús an-mhaith leis sin le hiarrachtaí i bhfoilsiú foclóirí téarmaíochta chigirí sa Roinn Oideachais sna 1920í agus cinneadh dul ar aghaidh le foclóir Béarla-Gaeilge nua faoi eagarthóireacht Láimhbheartaigh Mhic Cionnaith sa bhliain 1930 (FMC). Faraor, idir athruithe rialtais, easpa tuisceana ar na scileanna agus na riachtanais a bhí ag teastáil agus spriocanna iltreócha sa Roinn idir théarmaí, fhoclóirí agus chaighdeánú na teanga, níor sheas an leagan foilsithe an fód chomh maith le foclóirí eile.

43 Níor éirigh leis an Stát polasaí cuimsitheach foclóireachta a chur le chéile don Ghaeilge riamh, ach tugadh faoi bheartais áirithe aonaracha i lár agus ag deireadh na haoise ar éirigh go maith leo. Faoi lár an chéid, bhí cúrsaí níos fearr agus bhí bonn níos socra faoi bheartas English-Irish Dictionary Thomáis de Bhaldraithe (EID). Faoin am a foilsíodh Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla Néill Uí Dhónaill (FGB), bhí an fhoireann Stáit ab fhearr i bhfoilsiú foclóireachta ar fáil. Bhí airgead agus spéis léirithe i bhfoclóir stairiúil don teanga (FNG) agus bhí córas ceart ann sa Roinn Oideachais chun téarmaí a chruthú agus a fhoilsiú mar fhoclóirí.

44 Ar an drochuair, bhí costas substaintiúil ar na tionscnaimh sin ar fad, airgead nach raibh flúirseach i gciste an rialtais an t-am sin ná anois. Bhí easpa comharbaí ann ar

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leithéidí Uí Dhónaill agus de Bhaldraithe agus níor réitíodh le teicneolaíocht nua an eolais chomh tapaidh sin agus a bhí de dhíth. Tháinig meath ar scéal na foclóireachta Nua-Ghaeilge faoi dheireadh an chéid. Chríochnaigh an tréimhse le dóchas nuair a aithníodh go raibh leaganacha nua ag teastáil ar na mórfhoclóirí dátheangacha Nua- Ghaeilge agus gur ghá an dualgas a bhí ag an Stát sa réimse seo a achtú go dleathúil.

45 Scéal tábhachtach is ea scéal na foclóireachta Nua-Ghaeilge ag tús na haoise seo – scáthán teangeolaíochta ar athruithe na dtréimhsí éagsúla i stair na tíre seo sa chéad seo caite.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

FFDA: FOURNIER D’ALBE, EDMUND E. (eag.), English-Irish Dictionary and Phrase Book, with synonyms, idioms, and the genders and declensions of nouns, Dublin, M. H. Gill & Son, 1903.

FON: O’NEILL LANE, T. (eag.), Lane’s (Larger) English-Irish Dictionary, Compiled from the most. Authentic Sources, Dublin/London, Sealy, Bryers and Walker/David Nutt, 1904.

FUD: DINEEN, P. S. (eag.), Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. An Irish-English Dictionary, being a thesaurus of the words, phrases and idioms of the modern Irish language, Compiled and edited by Rev. Patrick S. Dinneen, Dublin/London, M. H. Gill & Son/David Nutt for The Irish Texts Society, 1904.

Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. An Irish-English Dictionary, being a thesaurus of the words, phrases and idioms of the modern Irish language, Compiled and edited by Rev. Patrick S. Dinneen, Dublin, The Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., for The Irish Texts Society, 1927.

FMC: MAC CIONNAITH, Lámhbheartach (eag.), Foclóir Béarla-Gaedhilge, BAC, Oifig Díolta Foilseacháin Rialtais, 1935.

EID: DE BHALDRAITHE, Tomás (eag.), English-Irish Dictionary, BAC, Oifig an tSoláthair, 1959.

FNG: Foclóir Stairiúil na Nua-Ghaeilge, BAC, Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann.

FGB: Ó Dónaill, Niall (eag.), Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, BAC, Oifig an tSoláthair, 1977.

NOTES

1. Tomás de Bhaldraithe, ‘Foclóirí agus foclóireacht na Gaeilge’, The Maynooth Review 6.1, 1980, l. 3. 2. C. Nic Pháidín, ‘Corpus Planning for Irish – Dictionaries and Terminology in A New View of the Irish language C. Nic Pháidín, agus S. Ó Cearnaigh, (eag.), Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2008, l. 93. 3. M. Oftedal, ‘de Bhaldraithe, Tomás: English-Irish Dictionary’ in Lochlann, a review of Irish Studies, Sommerfelt, A. ed., Oslo, Oslo University Press, 1962, l. 226-228. 4. Ibid., l. 227.

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5. Féach L. Mac Amhlaigh, Foclóirí agus Foclóirithe na Gaeilge, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2008. 6. T. Crowley, ‘Encoding Ireland: dictionaries and politics in Irish history’, Éire-Ireland 40.3+4, 2005, l. 129. 7. C. Nic Pháidín, ‘Foclóireacht’ in Ar thóir na bhfocal, Bord na Gaeilge, Páipéar Ócáideach , 1999, l. 3. 8. U. Breathnach agus C Nic Pháidín, “Téarmaíocht na Gaeilge: turgnamh in vitro”, Taighde agus Teagasc, 6, 2008, l. 1. 9. E. Ó hÓgáin, ‘Téarmaí teicniúla sa Ghaeilge: caighdeánú agus ceapadh le céad bliain anuas’, Teangeolas 17, 1983, l. 27. 10. M. Nic Mheanman, ‘Téarmaíocht’, Comhar, 40.4: 15, 1981, l. 33-35. 11. S. Ó Riain, Pleanáil teanga in Éirinn, Baile Átha Cliath, Carbad, 1985. 12. D. Ó Baoill, ‘An Caighdeán Oifigiúil’ in Ar thóir na bhfocal, Bord na Gaeilge, Páipéar Ócáideach 1, 1999, l. 8.

RÉSUMÉS

Cet article porte sur l’évolution de la lexicographie du gaélique moderne en montrant comme l’histoire de la lexicographie fait écho à l’histoire de l’Irlande pendant le siècle dernier. Tout en rendant compte du développement de la lexicographie en tant que sujet de recherche, il examine le travail de lexicologue en tant que métier. Parmi les sujets évoqués sont l’élaboration de dictionnaires unilingues et bilingues et l’influence de la personnalité et du mode de fonctionnement des lexicologues sur le contenu même des dictionnaires. Le rôle de l’État dans le travail de la lexicographie sera également étudié, notamment à travers la mise en place de la standardisation de la langue gaélique en 1958. Enfin, un regard sera porté sur la technologie et l’appui qu’elle offre au lexicographe moderne.

Is mithid dúinn cíoradh a dhéanamh ar fhorás na foclóireachta Nua-Ghaeilge mar cheird agus mar ábhar léinn ag tús aoise nua ós rud é gur mór an t-athrú a tháinig ar cheird na foclóireachta le céad bliain anuas. Déanfar plé faoi leith ar sholáthar fhoclóirí don phobal, (aonteangacha agus dátheangacha) agus mar a chuaigh pearsantacht agus modhanna oibre na bhfoclóirithe i dtreis ar na foclóirí sin. Scrúdófar tábhacht na foclóireachta Nua-Ghaeilge i gcur chun cinn na teanga agus tabharfar aird faoi leith ar ghaol an Stáit leis an bhfoclóireacht (i réiteach an Chaighdeán Oifigiúil i 1958, mar shampla). I ndeireadh na dála, déanfar iniúchadh ar an teicneolaíocht agus éascú obair an fhoclóirí dá bharr. Taispeánfar gur scéal tábhachtach is ea scéal na foclóireachta Nua- Ghaeilge ag tús na haoise seo – scáthán teangeolaíochta ar athruithe na dtréimhsí éagsúla i stair na tíre seo sa chéad seo caite.

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INDEX

Mots-clés : langues en Irlande - gaélique, linguistique, langues en Irlande - politiques linguistiques, traduction Keywords : languages in Ireland - gaelic, linguistics, languages in Ireland - language policy, translation

AUTEUR

LIAM MAC AMHLAIGH Coláiste Oideachais Froebel, Baile Átha Cliath / Froebel College of Education, Dublin

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Irish and Translation – the EU Context

Seán Ó Riain

EDITOR'S NOTE

All views expressed in this paper are personal to the author.

Introduction

1 The present survey aims to examine briefly the situation of Irish following recent status-related developments, particularly at EU level. To place the EU decision in context, we will evaluate recent developments, consider the complex historical and political background to Ireland’s relationship to its language which influence these developments, and go on to look at current language usage. A recent publication points out the wider implications of the problems and opportunities faced by the Irish language. “As English increasingly encroaches…in higher education right across Europe… many other languages in the EU will soon face to varying degrees the challenges currently confronting Irish1”. Suzanne Romaine thinks that “Irish warrants our gaze for what it may tell us of the fate that globalization portends for the survival of the world’s linguistic diversity2”. For historical reasons3 there is a substantial academic literature relating to language planning in Ireland, and some of the more important material is included in the bibliography below4.

The European Dimension

2 In October 1972, I was travelling by bus from Limerick to Galway to begin my studies at NUIG (National University of Ireland, Galway). Behind me sat two other first-year students, one of whom was intent on studying Irish at university. His colleague convinced him not to do so. His decisive argument: “Europe has not made Irish official,

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therefore it has no future!” It would be difficult to find a clearer example of the effect of macro-level decisions in Brussels on the micro-level of students’ choice of university subjects. Happily, this negative impact of an EU decision on the Irish language has now changed to positive.

3 On 13 June 2005 the EU5 Council of Ministers decided unanimously that the Irish language should become the EU’s 21st official and working language (there are now 23). The decision took effect on 1 January 2007. This was the first time that the EU decided to change its official and working languages regime, apart from adding the official languages of new member states at each enlargement. What led to this unique decision, and what were its consequences? Why are the Irish people so attached to a language that most of them do not speak regularly? Why did Ireland not seek normal status for Irish when it joined the EU in 1973?

4 The EU decision on Irish has already had knock-on effects, both in Ireland and on neighbouring Celtic languages. Domestically, there has been a substantial increase in those studying Irish at university level, e.g. from 2007 to 2009, the number doubled at Maynooth University, and increased from 280 to 380 at NUIG6. The effect on our neighbours has been no less marked: on 15 July 20087, the Council of Ministers granted the status of “co-official language” to Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and any other language recognised by UK legislation. UK Ministers have since spoken both Welsh and Scottish Gaelic at Council meetings, and citizens are able to write to EU institutions and receive a reply in those languages8. Welsh and Scottish Gaelic thus joined Catalan, Basque and Galician, on which co-official status was conferred on 13 June 2005.

What led to full EU status for Irish?

5 When Ireland joined on 1 January 1973, Irish acquired a unique status as a “treaty language”, though not an official and working language, of the EU. This meant that the Irish version of primary legislation, such as the Treaty of Rome and subsequent treaties, and the versions in the official and working languages would, from a legal viewpoint, be equally authentic. During accession negotiations Ireland had sought a status of “official but not working” language for Irish, but this was not agreed, as a number of member states feared that such a decision could have implications for the status of their own languages. However, Ireland’s first representative in the European Court of Justice, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, later President of Ireland, did secure official and working language status for Irish, but only at the Court.

6 A decision to add Irish would have been in line with the handling of the official languages of all other member states, both before and since9. The official reason given by Ireland’s negotiators in 1972 was that its use as a full EU working language would give rise to “certain practical difficulties”. Denmark joined the EU at the same time as Ireland, and it is said that the Danish negotiating team was asked informally if it could follow Ireland’s example by not requesting full working language status for Danish. The Danes replied that they could consider this only if the representatives of all other member states agreed to use a second language at EU meetings. The idea was dropped.

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7 In subsequent years it became increasingly clear in Ireland that the 1972 decision was not satisfactory. It had not taken account of a number of factors: • First, for employment in many EU institutions there has traditionally been a requirement of a knowledge of two other EU languages by applicants, in addition to the mother tongue. The 1972 decision meant that Irish would not count towards this employment condition, despite the Irish state’s own requirement that all children study Irish in all state-funded schools at primary and post-primary level. This contradiction increased Irish unease. • Second, the perception that Irish did not have a role in “Europe” was militating against the language’s status within Ireland. Some peripheral groups were quoting this in support of their efforts to weaken the position of Irish within the educational system. This added to the unease of a large body of opinion, and ran counter to the general strengthening of the language in Ireland north and south over the past 30 years. The latter included an Irish- language TV service, TG4, since 1996; publishing continuing to thrive, the phenomenal growth of Gaelscoileanna, the Irish-medium schools, since 1972; culminating in the enactment of the Official Languages Act, 2003. • Third, the EU enlargement of 2004, with the advent of 10 new member states and nine new official and working languages, was widely perceived in Ireland as an opportunity to review the 1972 decision regarding Irish. The addition of the new languages, some of whose states were much smaller than Ireland and whose literary traditions far shorter than Irish, contributed to making the language question a political issue.

8 This situation fed into a tradition of popular support for Irish and of protest about language matters in Ireland which goes back at least a century. Conradh na Gaeilge, the main Irish language organisation, led and won two major campaigns in the early 20th century to have Irish taught as a core subject in schools, and to have it made an essential subject for entry to the new National University of Ireland10. The latter campaign brought over 100,000 onto the streets of Dublin, and made Irish essential for university entry in 1913, some nine years before Irish independence.

EU Enlargement 2004

9 The period leading up to the 2004 EU enlargement saw a renaissance of this tradition of street protest, following a very effective lobbying campaign by an organisation called Stádas (status), which harnessed support from all political parties and local authorities throughout Ireland. In April 2004 thousands were back on the streets of Dublin bearing placards in all of the then 20 EU official languages calling for “Official Status for Irish Now”. The campaign make wide use of the Internet: a petition containing over 80,000 signatures was presented to the government following the march.

10 On 14 July 2004 the government decided to seek EU official and working language status for Irish. The EU language regime, fixed by Council Regulation 1 of 15 April 1958, is one of the few areas where the right of initiative does not belong to the Commission, but to the Council. The Irish wish for change could build on the EU status which Irish had been given from the beginning. This already had certain practical effects, such as the appearance of Irish on the EU common passport. The unusual, but very real, status of Irish within the EU had been further strengthened by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, which formally gave the right to Irish speakers to write to the EU institutions, and to receive a reply, in Irish.

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11 Among the relevant external political factors were the positions of Spain and France. Spain wished to upgrade the EU status of its regional languages, Catalan, Basque/ Euskera, and Galician. Ireland supported this upgrade, but was careful to keep the two issues separate, as one related to the national language of a Member State, whereas the other related to regional languages within a Member State. France feared that full status for Irish could lead to requests for similar status for all languages used in Member States, but was reassured that a precedent would not be created by the Irish proposal. At an early stage, the United Kingdom gave an undertaking not to oppose the Irish request and Germany offered its support in July 2004. Luxembourg was helpful to Ireland in not pushing for any status change for Lëtzebuergesch. The other EU member states assured Ireland, bilaterally, of their agreement.

Consequences of the new EU Status of Irish for translation/interpretation

12 An early Irish decision was to take a pragmatic approach, by derogating from the complete application of translation and interpretation into and from Irish of all documents, and at all meetings, to a more realistic initial stage of concentrating on regulations for co-decision of the Council and the European Parliament. This derogation is reviewed at five-yearly intervals, beginning during 2010, in line with the practical functioning of the new regime for Irish. The draft Irish Government 20-year Strategy for Irish11 commits the government to “work… so that this derogation can be ended during the lifetime of this Strategy”, i.e. the period 2010-30. The regime in force for Maltese provided a useful guide here, although the Maltese derogation was lifted in 2007, after three years of EU membership. Costs were kept as low as possible, and the eventual agreement foresaw the recruitment of some 30 translators and interpreters, at a cost of some € 3.5 million per year, which amounts to less than one euro cent per EU citizen per year. On 1 January 2007 the nameplates which designate the country at all EU meetings changed from “IRELAND” to “ÉIRE-IRELAND” – the country’s name in its national language comes first.

13 The European Commission and the Council have interpreted the new situation generously, by, for instance, setting up separate Irish language translation units, and the Commission has ensured that an increasing portion of the EUROPA website appears in Irish12. The present author was seconded to Commission in September 2007, with a brief to produce translations for the Commission’s website, and “to contribute to the evolution of language policy”. Some 4,000 website pages now appear in Irish, but this is dwarfed by the total number of pages of the EUROPA website, which come to some 6 million. This experience has given some insights into translation into Irish which may be of interest.

14 The influence of English syntax on translators into Irish, particularly those who do not have fluency in other languages, is real, and can sometimes lead to needless disagreement. Given the ubiquitous influence of English in present-day Ireland, it can also apply to native speakers of Irish. A useful antidote is wide reading in the older classical Irish literature, such as Seathrún Céitinn or Aogán Ó Rathaile, or the literary translations of authors such as Seosamh Mac Grianna. Some specific examples:

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15 a) “European Central Bank System” was translated as “An Córas Eorpach Banc Ceannais”, using a genitive plural of the word “banc” by more traditional translators; and as “An Córas Eorpach Bainc Cheannais” by their more progressive colleagues, leading to long disagreement. A knowledge of the German formulation, “Europäisches System der Zentralbanken”would have led to the more traditionally Irish, and uncontroversial, “ Córas Eorpach na mBanc Ceannais”, with the article placed as in German.

16 b) “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” had been mistranslated in Dublin as “Iar-Phoblacht Iúgslavach na Macadóine”, which means “The Yugoslav Former Republic of Macedonia”. This may have been partly due to French (“Ancienne République yugoslave de Macédoine”) as well as to English influence: it had escaped notice that the Irish hyphenated word “Iar-Phoblacht” is an inseparable unit, meaning “Former Republic”, unlike the two separate French words “Ancienne République”. The formulation has now been corrected to “Poblacht Iar-Iúgslavach na Macadóine”. • Legal translation needs to be very precise, so that terms which had fallen together or were used in different parts of Ireland, such as the southern “tuairim” and the northern “barúil”, both used to mean “opinion”, are technically differentiated in EU texts, with “tuairim” used for “opinion” and “barúil” for “observation”. • Sometimes the problem is a plethora of Irish words in use for one English term, for instance, the word “dialogue” has been translated variously as “comhphlé”, “idirphlé”, “agallamh” or “ comhagallamh”. “Website” appears as both “suíomh gréasáin” and “láithreán gréasáin”, though the former is now more common. • The term “cónaidhm” had been in use for both “federation” and “confederation”, and clearly needed to be differentiated. It is now used for “confederation”, and “feidearálacht” is used for “federation”. • English influence on Irish has been found even in Irish language textbooks, so that one sometimes finds an Irish word carrying an English meaning, as Hiberno-English often attributed Irish meaning to an English word. The Irish word, “clann”, meaning “children” can be found as a translation of the English word “family”, properly “teaghlach” or “lion tí”. The Hiberno-English usage of “family” to mean “children” appears to be fading.

17 In general, the substantially increased use of Irish since the passing of the Official Languages Act in 2003, and the work of eminent translators such as Breandán Ó Doibhlin and others, is causing Irish to regain the precision it had when in wide use as a literary language throughout Ireland and most of Scotland from the 12th to the 17 th centuries. The national terminology database for Irish, [www.focal.ie], was developed by Fiontar, DCU in collaboration with An Coiste Téarmaíochta and Foras na Gaeilge. It now contains over 300,000 terms, is constantly revised and updated in response to needs, and is playing a key role in modernising and streamlining Irish language terminology. A comprehensive revision of written standard Irish, the “Caighdeán Oifigiúil”, is also underway, and is to be completed by June 201113.

18 One of the spin-off effects of EU status has been a marked increase in Irish language activity in the vicinity of EU institutions, such as Brussels or Luxembourg. In Brussels, an Irish language week, or Seachtain na Gaeilge, has been organised during the St. Patrick’s Day period each year since 2008. It comprises lectures, concerts, films, a children’s’ event, an Irish-language mass. A new Irish language journal, Anam Beo14, began to appear in June 2008. Its launch received a surprising amount of media attention in Ireland15. It continues an important tradition of publishing in Irish at the

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Irish College in Leuven since it was established in 1607 (Ó Cléirigh 1985). Anam Beo can be read online on the website of the Commission’s representation in Dublin16.

The wider context – historical background

19 Irish and its offshoots, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, constitute the Gaelic branch of the Celtic languages. Welsh, Cornish and Breton and the now extinct Gaulish form the Brittonic or P-Celtic17 group, and all Celtic languages form part of the Indo-European family of languages. Referring to Irish as “Gaelic”, “gaélique”, “Gälisch“,etc. is perceived by many Irish-speakers as an implicit denial of the language’s constitutional status, as the “national and first official language of Ireland” (Article 8). It also leads to confusion with “Scottish Gaelic”, sometimes called simply “Gaelic”. The abbreviation GA, based on the Irish word for Irish, Gaeilge, may add to the confusion. All EU institutions have now accepted the term “Irish, irlandais, Irisch, irlandés, irlandese, irlandzki język”, but one still sometimes hears colleagues saying “gaélique” and being corrected. Irish is the language from which most Irish place names and surnames derive.

20 There was cultural unity between Ireland and Gaelic Scotland for many centuries. Both were to bear the brunt of an expansionist English monarchy. The first laws against Irish, the Statutes of Kilkenny, were enacted in 136618. While Queen Elizabeth I of England studied Irish19 and financed the translation of the bible into Irish, her successor, James I took a very different attitude : Forasmekle as the kingis Majestie having a speciall care and regaird that… the vulgar Inglish toung be universalie plantit, and the Irishe language, which is one of the cheif and principall causis of the continewance of barbaritie and incivilitie… may be aboleit and removit20…

21 Despite such efforts, Irish arguably remained the language of the majority in Ireland until the mid-19th Century, when a number of factors caused a very rapid decline. Chief among them was the Great Famine of 1845-4721, in which 1-2 million, almost all of them Irish speakers, died of hunger. The flight from the language then accelerated. De Fréine says that it declined about 16 times as rapidly as Scottish Gaelic, leading to the situation recorded by the 1891 census, that a mere 3.5% of pre-school children spoke Irish22. Such a language shift, as de Fréine points out, is “unique in European history”. To make it possible, the traditional Irish esteem for their language, as attested in its literature, and the memory of what it once had been, had to be expunged from the national consciousness.

22 The Irish language had produced the oldest written literature north of the Alps23, and has an unbroken literary tradition of over 14 centuries: the oldest literary text, the Amra Choluim Cille (Lament for St. Colm Cille), was written in 597 A.D. Old Irish literature was extensive, and its high quality has been recognised by non-Irish scholars. The 12-volume Patrimoine littéraire européen edited by Prof. Jean-Claude Polet, an anthology of European literature from the Atlantic to the Urals and from the beginning of written literature to the 20th Century, devotes 4.89% of its content to literature translated from Irish24. Indeed, Quirk et al. attribute to “the influence of Irish” the fact that Old English evolved a vernacular literature some centuries earlier than the other Germanic languages25.

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The use of Irish today

23 Comparisons of Irish with other languages based on numbers of native speakers tend to be misleading. Unlike most languages, the amount of Irish in use has little relation to numbers of native speakers, for which, in any case, there is no official figure. Up to one- third of current home users of Irish had no conversational use of the language, when children, at home or in school26. On the other hand, native speakers of Irish may live in circumstances which give little scope for active use of the language – though the substantial expansion of Irish in the electronic media over the past decade does provide ample opportunity for passive use.

24 The 2006 Census27 showed 1.66 million people (up from 1.54 million in 2002), or 42%, claiming a knowledge of Irish, but only 72,000, less than 2%, speaking it daily outside school. Some 97,000 speak it at least weekly, and it is significant that only 25% of the 1.66m Irish speakers never actually speak it28. According to the 2001 UK Census, 167,000, or 10.4%, of the population in Northern Ireland reported some knowledge of Irish, up from 142,000 in 1991. The total claiming a knowledge of Irish is therefore over 1.8 million, or about one-third of those living on the island of Ireland.

25 Over 85 years of teaching Irish in all state-funded schools has vastly increased ability to speak the language, but has neither had an appreciable effect on frequency of active usage, nor has it helped establish new Irish-speaking communities. The crux of the problem is a failure to appreciate that language usage needs to be planned29, as it is a social and not an individual phenomenon. Admittedly, passive usage has increased – some 86% have tuned in to the Irish language TV channel TG4 at some point, and 800,000 do so daily30. Ó Giollagáin et al.’s core point is stark: The unambiguous conclusion of the survey on young people is that Irish is unlikely to remain the predominant community language in category A Gaeltacht districts for more than another fifteen to twenty years31.

26 A significant development, both in regard to translation and to general use of Irish, was the passing of the Official Languages Act, 200332. The law was enacted to promote the use of Irish through the use of phased language schemes, which public bodies must agree with the minister, to increase incrementally their level of services to the public in both official languages. It also provides for the simultaneous publication of important official documents in both languages, thus vastly increasing translation activity. The language received a considerable political boost with the election of Brian Cowen as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in May 2008, as he placed Irish among his three main political priorities, conducting some 35% of his first press conference in Irish. All political party leaders are now fluent Irish speakers, and this has the potential to increase its use in the Dáil. Other legislation has begun to take account of the linguistic dimension33. For instance, the Planning and Development Act, 2000, imposed, for the first time, a duty on planning authorities to ‘protect the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Gaeltacht’ in future development plans. Duties to promote Irish are also imposed by the Universities Act, 1997, the Education Act, 1998, the Local Government Act, 2001 and the Broadcasting Act, 2001.

27 Following the Belfast Agreement of 1998, the promotion of Irish in the whole island of Ireland is the responsibility of an all-Ireland body, Foras na Gaeilge34. Education and media play a crucial role in the survival of a language. Outside the Gaeltacht, there are now 169 primary schools and 38 secondary schools on the island of Ireland (31 and 2 of

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which, respectively, are in Northern Ireland)35, which teach through Irish. They are attended by over 37,800 pupils. Adding in Gaeltacht schools (some 14,500 pupils36), close to 50,000 pupils are receiving some or all of their education through Irish. Provision for adult learners has been more systematic since Maynooth University introduced an examination and certification system, the Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge (TEG) in 200537.

28 The Irish language television service TG4 [www.tg4.ie] has a share of some 3% of television viewers, and is watched by 800,000 people during peak viewing hours38. Raidió na Gaeltachta (www.rte.ie/rnag) broadcasts nationally, and both Dublin and Belfast have their own Irish language radio services. Some 130 new book titles appear annually, and Nic Eoin describes Irish as “now a sophisticated, versatile and creative medium of literary analysis”39. There are lively internet magazines [www.beo.ie, www.InsideIreland.ie, www.nuacht24.com], and two weekly newspapers.

Conclusion

29 Even Hindley, otherwise pessimistic, acknowledges as “a great achievement… without international parallels except for Hebrew…” the “metamorphosis of Irish from the disparaged and unwritten dialects of an impoverished and remote… peasantry into the modern literary… language of a privileged urban elite40”. The new EU status of Irish coincides with increased support at the top political level in Ireland. A tentative conclusion is that this happy coincidence is enhancing the practical role of Irish. Final agreement by the EU Council of Ministers to grant full official and working status to Irish was seen as a huge victory for the language. It is hard to exaggerate the psychological impact on Irish people of hearing their representatives address the EU Council of Ministers, or a plenary session of the European Parliament, in Irish. A language outlawed as long ago as 1366 has finally come in from the cold. Perhaps it is fitting to give the final word to a Scottish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid: For we ha’e faith in Scotland’s hidden poo’ers, The present’s theirs, but a’ the past and future’s oors41.

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Ó RIAGÁIN, Pádraig, and Ó GLIASÁIN, Micheál, National Survey on Languages 1993, Dublin, ITÉ/ Linguistics Institute of Ireland, 1994.

Ó RIAIN, Seán, Pleanáil Teanga in Éirinn (Language Planning in Ireland) 1919-1985, Baile Átha Cliath/ Dublin, Carbad/Bord na Gaeilge, 1994.

Ó RIAIN, Seán, The EU and the Irish Language: Identity and Linguistic Diversity, Baile Átha Cliath/ Dublin/Corcaigh, Clódhanna Teo, 2001.

Ó RIAIN, Seán, “Sprachplanung in Irland”, in Beiträge der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik 11, Berlin, Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, 2002.

Ó RIAIN, Seán, “Múineadh na Gaeilge: cabhair ó Esperanto?” (The Teaching of Irish: help from Esperanto?) in FEASTA, Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Clódhanna Teoranta, 2009.

Ó RUAIRC, Maolmhaodhóg, Aistrigh Leat (Translate away), Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Cois Life, 2007.

Ó SÉ, Liam, Crannóga (lake dwellings): An Epidemiological Approach to the Gaeltacht. Dublin, Johnswood Press, 2000.

Ó SNODAIGH, Pádraig, Hidden Ulster: Protestants and the Irish Language, Belfast, Lagan Press, 1995.

Ó SÚILLEABHÁIN, Donncha, Cath na Gaeilge sa Chóras Oideachais (The Battle for Irish in the Educational System), Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Conradh na Gaeilge, 1988.

Ó TORNA, Caitríona, Cruthú na Gaeltachta 1893-1922, (The Creation of the Gaeltacht), Baile Átha Cliath, Dublin, Cois Life, 2005.

Ó TUATHAIGH, Gearóid, Ó LAOIRE, Lillis, UA SÚILLEABHÁIN, Seán, Pobal na Gaeltachta (The Gaeltacht People), Indreabhán, Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2000.

Ó TUATHAIL, Séamas, Gaeilge agus Bunreacht (Irish and the Constitution), Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Coiscéim/Institiúid na Héireann, 2002.

O’LEARY, Philip (ed.), Éire-Ireland special issue on translation, Morristown, NJ, The Irish American Cultural Institute, 2000.

POLET, Jean-Claude (ed.), Patrimoine littéraire européen. Anthologie en langue française, 12 volumes. Brussels, De Boeck-Université, 1992.

POLET, JEAN-CLAUDE, « Breandán Ó Doibhlin et le Patrimoine littéraire européen » in Ó DÚSHLÁINE, 1997, p. 337-345.

QUIRK, R., ADAMS, V., DAVY, D., Old English Literature. London, Edward Arnold.

ROMAINE, Suzanne, 2008. “Irish in the Global Context”, in NIC PHÁIDÍN et al., 1975, p. 11-25.

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TITLEY, Alan, An Réabhlóid mar Ghníomh Dínite (Revolution as a Blow for Dignity), Baile Átha Cliath/ Dublin, Coiscéim, 2008.

VOGLER, Benjamin, Irisch und Walisisch im Vergleich – Ein Beitrag zur Lage der Minderheitsprachen in der Europäischen Union, Hildesheim, Universität Hildesheim, 2004.

WALSH, John, Díchoimisiniú Teanga – Coimisiún na Gaeltachta 1926 (Language Decommissioning – the Gaeltacht Commission 1926), Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Cois Life, 2002.

WATSON, Iarfhlaith, Broadcasting in Irish, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2003.

NOTES

1. Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín and Seán,Ó Cearnaigh, eds, A New View of the Irish Language, Baile Átha Cliath/Dublin, Cois Life, 2008, p. X. 2. Suzanne Romaine, “Irish in the Global Context”, in C. Nic Pháidín et al., op. cit., p 13. 3. Some 69% of those active in the struggle of Irish independence came from the language movement. Michael Collins, first chairman of the Provisional Government in 1922, wrote that “Irish history will recognise the birth of the Gaelic League in 1893 as the most important event of the 19th Century” (Collins 1968: 123). 4. With considerable indisciplinary content, the work includes language planning (M. Ó Murchú, Ó hIfearnáin, Ó Riagáin, Ó Huallacháin, Ó Riain 1994, Ó Riagáin et al., Mac Donnacha, Ó Ciosáin, 1988, Mac Carrick, Vogler); translation (Mac Lochlainn, Ní Shéaghdha, Ó Corraidh, Ó Corráin, Ó Doibhlin, Ó Laighin 2010, Ó Ruairc, O’Leary); language policy in general (CILAR, Collins, Ó hUallacháin 2010, Ó Murchú, H., Greene, Ó Cuív 1969, Ó Clérigh, Titley, Ó hUiginn, Mac Murchaidh, Cisło, Kelly, Nic Pháidín et al., Ó Néill); constitutional/legal issues (Ó Máille, Mac Cárthaigh, Ó Laighin, Ó Tuathail); education (Harris); the Gaeltacht/Irish-speaking area (Ó Giollagáin et al., Ó Tuathaigh et al., Ó Cuív 1951, Hindley, Ó Ciosáin 1991, Ó Cinnéide et al., Ó Sé, Ó Torna, Walsh 2002, Nic Craith); culture (de Fréine, Cronin, Ó Doibhlin, Mac Síomóin 2006); history (Ó Cléirigh, Crowley, Ó Súilleabháin, Ó Riain 1994, Mulholland); lessons from other countries (Fishman, Ó Laoire); literary studies (de Fréine 2000, Ó Doibhlin, Ó Dúshláine, Quirk et al.); broadcasting (Watson), psychological aspects (Ó Conchubhair); and Northern Ireland (Mac Póilin, Ó Snodaigh, Maguire, Mac Póilin et al.). 5. For the sake of simplicity, the term “EU” has been used throughout this paper. 6. Personal communications to author. 7. [http://new.wales.gov.uk/news/presreleasearchive/2391611/?lang=en]. 8. At the expense of the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, respectively. 9. Lëtzebuergesch, which became an official language of Luxembourg in 1984 and had previously been considered a Frankish dialect, is only a partial exception, as it did not have official status in Luxembourg when that country joined the EU. 10. See Donncha Ó Súilleabháin, Cath na Gaeilge sa Chóras Oideachais (The Battle for Irish in the Educational System), Baile Átha Cliath Dublin, Conradh na Gaeilge, 1988. 11. [http://www.pobail.ie/ie/AnGhaeilge/file,10094,ie.doc]. 12. [http://ec.europa.eu/index_ga.htm]. 13. [http://www.pobail.ie/en/CentralTranslationUnit/].

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14. Anam Beo means ‘living soul’. The reference is to the motto of the Irish language movement, Conradh na Gaeilge, “Tír gan Teanga, Tír gan Anam” (A country without a language is a country without a soul). 15. The launch was covered by national television, by some 20 radio interviews with national and local radio, both in Irish and in English, and by the national newspapers. 16. [http://ec.europa.eu/ireland/press_office/altanna_nuachta_as_gaeilge/index_en.htm]. 17. From the respective words for ‘head’: Irish ‘ceann’ (which had an initial ‘q’ in Early Irish), Welsh ‘pen’. 18. See text in Tony Crowley, The Politics of Language in Ireland 1366-1922 – a Sourcebook. London/New York, Routledge, 2000, p. 14-16. 19. Máirtín Ó Murchú, The Irish Language., Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin), Government of Ireland (Department of Foreign Affairs and Bord na Gaeilge), 1985, p. 60. 20. Act of the Privy Council – 1616, JVI & I. Quoted in Gwen Mulholland, The Struggle for a Language: Gaelic in Education, Inverness, Rank & File, 1981, p. 7. 21. In 1997, when the 150 th anniversary of the Famine was commemorated, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a crucial contribution to the peace process in Ireland by formally apologising to the Irish people for Britain’s failure to take any effective action (not even banning the export of corn) at that time. 22. Seán de Fréine, The Great Silence – the study of a relationship between language and nationality. Dublin/Cork, Mercier, 1978, p. 7. 23. Seán de Fréine, “Tuiscint ar an nGaeilge” (Understanding of Irish), Dublin, An Aimsir Óg 2, 2000, p. 318. 24. Jean-Claude Polet, « Breandán Ó Doibhlin et le Patrimoine littéraire européen » in Tadhg Ó Dúshláine, ed. Irisleabhar Mhá Nuad – Féilscríbhinn an Doibhlinigh (University of Maynooth Festschrift for Professor Breandán Ó Doibhlin), Maynooth, National University of Ireland/An Sagart, 1997, p. 337. 25. R. Quirk, V. Adams, D. Davy, Old English Literature. London, Edward Arnold, 1975, p. 6. 26. CILAR 1975, p 314, a finding largely confirmed by subsequent research. 27. [ http://www.cso.ie/census/census2006results/volume_9/ volume_9_irish_language_entire_volume.pdf]. 28. Helen Ó Murchú, More Facts about Irish. Dublin: European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages/Irish National Committee, 2008, p. 72, p. 370. 29. Seán Ó Riain, 1994. Pleanáil Teanga in Éirinn (Language Planning in Ireland) 1919-1985, Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin), Carbad/Bord na Gaeilge, 1994, p. 92. 30. Helen Ó Murchú, op. cit., p. 219. 31. C Ó Giollagáin., S. Mac Donnacha, F. Ní Chualáin, A. Ní Shéaghdha., M. O’Brien, Comprehensive Linguistic Study of the Use of Irish in the Gaeltacht/Staidéar Cuimsitheach Teangeolaíoch ar Úsáid na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht, Dublin, Government of Ireland/National University of Ireland, Galway, 2007, p. 27. 32. [ http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2003/a3203.pdf]. Its provisions came into force gradually, with all provisions in force by July 2006. 33. Pádraig Ó Laighin, “Irish and the Legislative Perspective”, in C. Nic Pháidín et al, op. cit., p 254-255. 34. [http://www.gaeilge.ie/].

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35. [http://www.gaelscoileanna.ie/about/statistics/]. 36. [ http://www.cogg.ie/downloads/Gaeltacht%20achoimre2.pdf]. Paradoxically, not all Gaeltacht pupils study through Irish. 37. Anna Ní Ghallachair, “Teaching and Learning Irish Today”, in C. Nic Pháidín et al, op. cit., p 194. 38. [ http://www.tg4.ie/corp/culr.asp]. 39. Máirín Nic Eoin, “Prose Writing in Irish Today” in C. Nic Pháidín et al., op. cit., p 137. 40. Reg Hindley, The Death of the Irish Language, London/New York, Routledge, 1990, p. 42. 41. Hugh MacDiarmid, Selected Poems, London, Penguin, 1992, p. 23. It is interesting to note that this line is most frequently quoted in its English version: For we have faith in Scotland’s hidden powers/The present’s theirs but all the past and future’s ours. In Irish this could be rendrered as: Óir creidimid i gcumhachtaí ceilte na hAlban/Leosan a bhfuil, ach is linne a mbíodh’s a mbeidh.

ABSTRACTS

This survey discusses the broader context of the 2005 decision to include Irish among the EU’s official and working languages, particularly its effects on translation and interpretation. Irish’s new EU status coincides with increased support at the top political level in Ireland, and is enhancing the practical role of Irish. However, the continuing decrease in the use of Irish by young people in the Gaeltacht is worrying, as is the failure of the authorities over many years to appreciate that language use needs to be planned. This may now be changing: recent developments give some grounds for hope.

Cette contribution examine le contexte de la décision de 2005 d’inclure la langue irlandaise parmi les langues de travail officiel de l’UE, et s’intéresse notamment aux effets de cette décision sur la traduction et l’interprétation. L’irlandais se voit conférer un nouveau statut, alors que parallèlement il bénéficie d’un soutien accru au plus haut niveau politique en Irlande, ce qui lui permet de renforcer son rôle pratique. Néanmoins, la baisse constante de l’utilisation de la langue chez les jeunes du Gaeltacht est source d’inquiétude, comme à pu l’être l’incapacité des autorités à comprendre la nécessité de planifier l’utilisation de la langue. Les récents changements constatés à ce sujet sont toutefois encourageants.

INDEX

Mots-clés: langues en Irlande - gaélique, langues en Irlande - politiques linguistiques, Union Européenne / CEE, traduction Keywords: languages in Ireland - gaelic, languages in Ireland - language policy, European Union / EEC, translation

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AUTHOR

SEÁN Ó RIAIN European Commission, Brussels

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Translating National Identity into Music: Representations of “Traditional Ireland” in A. J. Potter’s Television Opera Patrick

Patrick Zuk

1 The period between 1922 and 1965 has aroused highly equivocal responses from historians of Irish culture and society, and will doubtless continue to engender debate. Although early governments of the Irish Free State can be credited with significant positive achievements, not least of which was the rapid restoration of social and political stability after the War of Independence of 1919-1921 and the bitterly divisive Civil War that followed, scholars have tended nonetheless to present this era in a rather negative light. Their reasons for doing so are not difficult to understand. Post- independence Ireland was poor and backward, and confronted social problems of daunting magnitude. Widespread unemployment and hardship caused Irish men and women to emigrate en masse in search of a better life elsewhere: between 1951 and 1961 alone, some 400,000 people left the country1. Commentators also point to the comparative poverty of the country’s intellectual and cultural life at the period, which was exacerbated to no small extent by the peculiarities of Irish Catholicism. For reasons that are readily comprehensible given the country’s troubled history of colonial occupation and religious persecution, the Catholic hierarchy quickly moved to assert its dominance after Independence The influence of religion seemed omnipresent, to the point where the country struck some foreign observers as being virtually a theocracy: the French writer Camille Bourniquel described feeling enveloped in “an atmosphere of militant clericalism” when visiting Ireland2. This triumphalist tendency intensified yet further after the appointment as Archbishop of Dublin in 1940 of the formidable and ultra-conservative John Charles McQuaid, who has been characterised by a recent biographer as being “obsessed with the need to control all aspects of [Irish] public and private life3”.

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2 The mentality characteristic of Irish Catholicism that consolidated around this period combined, in Lawrence MacCaffrey’s pungent formulation, “the worst of two worlds: the sexual obsessions of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and the intellectual bankruptcy and authoritarianism of Latin Catholicism4”. This development was greeted with dismay by many Irish intellectuals, particularly if they had cherished the hope that liberation from colonial rule would stimulate radical cultural renewal. Much of the finest Irish writing of the period – such as the novels and short stories of Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain, or the early plays of Paul Vincent Carroll, Denis Johnston and Mary Manning – exudes intense frustration with the provincial narrowness of outlook prevalent in the country. The discontents that these writers articulated could be safely ignored, however. The bland official image of the country promulgated by its political and clerical establishment excluded all references to the alienation experienced by its intellectuals, as well as the grim material realities of poverty and mass emigration. Instead, it emphasised Ireland’s lofty sense of spiritual mission and the supposedly exceptional piety of its inhabitants, who were steadfast in their adherence to “traditional” Catholic values and resistance to pernicious modern ideas. This authorised self-portrait of “Traditional Ireland” has been described scathingly by the eminent Irish historian J. J. Lee as a “highly selective social construction of reality” sustained by hypocrisy and “self-deception on a heroic scale5”.

3 For obvious reasons, this construct was unlikely to have found any embodiment in the work of the country’s major creative figures. The present article is concerned with an artwork that appears to constitute a unique exception: the opera Patrick (1962), by the composer A. J. Potter (1918-1980) and the poet and playwright Donagh MacDonagh (1912-68), which was commissioned by the Irish national broadcasting station Radio Telefís Éireann in 1961 when it expanded operations to introduce a television service6. Although the work has little intrinsic artistic merit, it is nonetheless of considerable interest to the cultural historian insofar as it reflects many of the dominant preoccupations of Irish society at the period, particularly in matters relating to religion and sexuality, as well as Ireland’s ambivalent relationship with “pagan” Britain. An exploration of the factors which may have led MacDonagh and Potter to write a work of this nature also sheds interesting light on the difficulties arising from censorship and clerical dominance that confronted Irish creative artists at the period.

4 The idea of commissioning an opera originated with the recently-appointed Director- General of RTÉ, Edward J. Roth, who had previously worked for NBC in the United States and was involved in the production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s pioneering television opera Amahl and the Night Visitors in 1951. His choice of Potter and MacDonagh as co- authors was unsurprising, as both men were figures of considerable eminence in an Irish context. MacDonagh enjoyed an international reputation as a poet and playwright, while Potter was generally regarded as one of the most promising Irish composers of his generation. Roth stipulated that the subject matter for the opera had to be “definitively Irish” [sic] and suggested that it should be based on the life of St Patrick, a fifth-century missionary from Roman Britain who became the country’s patron saint. Roth’s concept was prompted by the fact that the putative 1500th anniversary of the death of St Patrick would fall in 19617. As he was undoubtedly aware, the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, had planned a series of grandiose festivities to mark the occasion – including a nine-day Patrician Congress in Dublin to demonstrate the Irish people’s “renewed appreciation of the gift of the One True Faith’

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from the saint8”. Roth evidently envisioned Patrick as the broadcasting station’s major contribution to the celebrations and encouraged MacDonagh to devise a work of suitably epic proportions. The latter acquiesced in Roth’s suggestion, though he baulked at the idea of a historical costume drama9. He chose instead to depict what one might describe as the saint’s twentieth-century avatar: the central character is a young Irishman whose experiences explicitly evoke parallels with his prototype. MacDonagh’s Patrick is also of British birth, but grew up in Ireland. As we learn in the course of the opera, he experienced visions as a young man in which Irish and coloured immigrants in Britain, as well as English people themselves implored him to return there and act as the instrument of their salvation. He concludes that he has been entrusted with a spiritual mission that he cannot refuse: he goes to England and awaits some further intimation of its nature, working as a labourer to support himself.

5 The action opens in a public square in what is evidently a large urban centre in England, with a church to one side. A group of West Indian and Irish immigrant labourers is subjected to a racially motivated attack by a gang of Teddy boys. Patrick appears on the scene and rebukes them for fighting in front of a church. The Teddy boys make to beat Patrick up, but the Irishmen urge them to leave him alone, explaining that he is a kind of holy fool: Don’t touch Patrick, he’s a very good man; He may be mad, but he’s a very good man. He smokes no tobacco, he drinks no drink, He fights no fights and he courts no girls, He does his work and he says his prayers, And he hears voices.

6 The Teddy boys are unimpressed by this explanation, but are distracted by the timely entrance of a bevy of young nurses, whom all the men ogle admiringly. Witnessing this scene, Patrick expresses concern that this encounter may prove an incitement to sin. In a long soliloquy, he reveals his conviction of having been entrusted with a divinely- appointed mission to bring salvation to godless Britain, and particularly to his fellow Irishmen living there. Peace is restored and the Irishmen, West Indians and Teddy boys to repair in amity to the local pub. Patrick hails this turn of events as “a miracle of God’, but declines an offer of a double scotch as he is teetotal.

7 A young Jamaican nurse Bella is intrigued by this rather singular Irishman and invites him back to her flat for tea. During their conversation, Bella experiences a mounting physical attraction and attempts to seduce him. Patrick repulses her advances with disgust, declaring that the Virgin Mary is the only woman who is worthy of his devotion. He makes a precipitate departure, leaving Bella in a state of dejection. Patrick emerges into the street and sees the various groups of men we have previously encountered entertaining the young nurses in the local pub. He proceeds to harangue them with a lengthy sermon on the subject of the seven deadly sins, which meets with a somewhat less than enthusiastic reception from his audience. His admonishments are not entirely without effect, however: the Teddy boys declare that Patrick has taught them the importance of tolerance and that they will henceforth abjure violence. Patrick receives this news with gratification.

8 Bella enters and, in a furious outburst, denounces Patrick as a hypocrite and informs the assembled company that he has just made improper sexual advances to her. The mood of the crowd changes abruptly and the men challenge Patrick to refute her allegations. Patrick replies that Bella has misrepresented his declaration of purely

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platonic, Christian love for her, but the crowd refuses to believe him and threatens him with lynching. In an impassioned monologue, Patrick declares his willingness to accept martyrdom, but appeals to Bella to tell the truth. Unable to withstand the force of his eloquence, Bella breaks down and confesses her lie. Patrick declares that his mission is complete and the time has come for him to continue his holy work elsewhere. He breaks into an exultant setting of the traditional Irish prayer known as St Patrick’s Breastplate, in which all the members of the cast join. The opera concludes with shots of the assembled company processing into the church on the square, dipping their fingers into the holy water font in the porch and making the sign of the cross.

9 As will be evident from this summary of the action, MacDonagh saw the opera as an opportunity to make a major artistic statement about his native country: he aimed to explore the nature of Irish national identity, to portray Ireland and the Irish in their finest aspects and to create a hero who personified the noblest manifestations of the Irish character. He also wished to engage with large issues of relevance to an Irish audience: emigration and the experiences of the Irish in exile; the nature of Irish Catholic spirituality and what this might have to offer the modern world outside of Ireland. The construct of “Irishness” which emerges from the opera is of considerable interest, as it relates very closely to the image of “Traditional Ireland” described by Lee.

10 One immediately striking fact about the opera, in view of Roth’s stipulation that it should deal with an Irish subject, is that it is set in Britain rather than Ireland, and that Irishness is largely defined through contrast with negative British stereotypes. Patrick and the Irish labourers are portrayed as decent and peaceable, conditioned by their Catholic faith to be tolerant and live in harmony with immigrants from other countries. The only indigenous Britons that they encounter are Teddy boys, who gained widespread notoriety only a few years before the opera was written through their involvement in race riots in London instigated by “Keep Britain White” mobs10. MacDonagh allows this minority sub-culture to represent British society, or, at any rate, the British working class, in its entirety. The Irish are thus depicted as social underdogs in a hostile environment, compelled to endure ignominious ill-treatment of the kind which had previously been meted out to their fellow countrymen under colonial occupation. To be fair to MacDonagh, while his depiction of the Irish immigrant community was highly selective in the aspects he chose to emphasise, it was by no means completely unfaithful to reality. In the 1950s it was not unknown for advertisements for jobs or for rented accommodation to include such stipulations as “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and there is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the Irish were subject to discriminatory treatment in Britain during this period11.

11 These considerations notwithstanding, it is also evident that MacDonagh’s portrayal of Britain and the British is coloured by negative stereotypes which had circulated in Ireland for over a century. As Lawrence McCaffrey has observed, an energetic attack on British values formed an intrinsic part of the strategy of many nineteenth-century Irish nationalists from Thomas Davis onwards. In contrast to the “spiritual” Irish, Englishmen were characterised as coarse materialists, indifferent to higher values12. This dichotomy became a commonplace in subsequent discourse. In his celebrated address “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland”, delivered in 1892, the eminent writer and Gaelic scholar Douglas Hyde drew a sharp contrast between the richness of Gaelic culture and the Irish language and the tawdry products of Victorian mass

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culture, such as music-hall songs and “shilling shockers”. Similarly, in an essay of 1901, Yeats described Gaelic culture as a precious remnant of an almost extinct high civilisation which flourished before British rule and the corrupting influence of British materialism, claiming that “where the Gaelic tongue is still spoken […] the people live according to a tradition of life that existed before commercialism, and the vulgarity founded upon it13”. Representations of Britain as a soulless and debasing place also pervaded much literature in Irish at this period. The gifted Pádraic Ó Conaire created highly disturbing evocations of London in his novel Deoraidheacht [Exile] (1910) and in short stories such as “Nóra Mharcuis Bhig”, a stark tale of an Irish girl who is disowned by her father when he learns about the dissipated life she has led in England.

12 These negative stereotypes of the British had originated, of course, in response to stereotypical notions of the Irish prevalent in nineteenth-century Britain, which seemingly justified denying Ireland a greater degree of political autonomy. As Declan Kiberd has aptly observed: Victorian imperialists attributed to the Irish all those emotions and impulses which a harsh mercantile code had led them to suppress in themselves. Thus, if John Bull was industrious and reliable, Paddy was held to be indolent and contrary; if the former was mature and rational, the latter must be unstable and emotional; if the English were adult and manly, the Irish must be childish and feminine. […] The political implications were clear enough […]: the Irishman was incapable of self- government14.

13 Given attitudes of this nature, it was perhaps inevitable that the construct of Irishness invented by Irish cultural and political nationalists was predicated to a considerable extent on a rejection of “materialistic” British traits, and on affirmation of Irish qualities that appeared to have no value in John Bull’s philistine scheme of things.

14 In Ireland, these stereotypes acquired a fresh piquancy after Independence. By this time, a devout, loyal Catholicism had come to be regarded as a quintessential component of Irish national identity15. The deeply spiritual nature of the Gael was a cherished conviction of Irish Catholics at the period: it was widely held that Ireland had an exalted spiritual mission, offering an inspiring example of a people adhering staunchly to the principles of their Catholic faith and thus providing a bulwark of support to the Holy See in its battles with communism, atheism, materialism and the evils of modernism – a heroic mode of national self-imagining that recalls the manner in which nineteenth-century Russian Slavophiles liked to envision the role of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in defending mankind against similar perils. An excellent example of this mythologizing tendency is provided by a radio broadcast made by Éamon de Valera on 6 February 1933, shortly after he acceded to executive power. Its main theme was Irish Catholicism’s world-historical role in “helping to save Western Civilisation” from the evils of materialism. In the turbulent twentieth-century, he claimed, Ireland could render the world “a service as great as that she rendered in the time of Columcille and Columbanus, because the need of our time is no whit less16”.

15 These ideas were a recurrent theme in the public pronouncements of John Charles McQuaid after he became Archbishop of Dublin in 1940. McQuaid’s thinking was dominated by two narrow preoccupations which had a far-reaching influence on the attitudes of Irish Catholics. The first was a profound suspicion of the Protestant Anglo- Irish minorities in Ireland and, by extension, of everything to do with predominantly Protestant Britain. The second was the sinfulness of sex. McQuaid’s spared no efforts to preserve his flock from moral contamination from both sources and safeguard Ireland’s

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spiritual purity. Under his influence, Irish Catholics were actively discouraged by their clergy from associating with Protestants or attending institutions such as Dublin’s oldest university, Trinity College, over which Protestant influence was perceived to be dominant. Britain, because of its predominantly Protestant population, was regarded as a highly dangerous environment for Irish Catholics, not least because of the supposed laxity of its moral standards, with the availability of divorce and contraception. McQuaid and his colleagues displayed much pious concern for the Irish immigrant community in Britain: in a particularly extreme manifestation of Catholic zealotry, the bishops of Dromore and Achonry were moved to write to the Taoiseach Seán Lemass in 1965 urging the introduction of a ban on persons under eighteen years of age emigrating there on the grounds that they were “entirely unprepared for live [sic] in a pagan and amoral environment” and that “emigration in their case could almost be called a proximate occasion of mortal sin17”. McQuaid was instrumental in setting up the Irish Emigrants Chaplaincy Scheme (1957-82), which dispatched Catholic priests to Britain to minister to the needs of the Irish community there. “Africa is an easy apostolate in contrast”, he confided a propos of this scheme to a visiting missionary bishop – a highly revealing comment that indicates the intensity with which his negative views of the country were held18. McQuaid evidently regarded these priests as continuing the work of the so-called “English mission” which had commenced after the Reformation in an effort to regain adherents to the Catholic faith.

16 These modes of envisioning Britain and Ireland unquestionably inform the libretto of Patrick. MacDonagh inverts the habitual misprision of the colonizer for the colonized, presenting Britain and everything British in a deeply negative light. Patrick and his fellow Irish navvies are intended to be perceived as latter-day victims of soulless British materialism, exploited for their cheap labour. The Britain in which they find themselves is a drab and hostile urban wilderness – “a land of fear” Bella calls it – unlike the pastoral idyll of Ireland, which is lovingly recollected by Patrick in his monologues. Its benighted, thuggish inhabitants are completely bereft of any sense of higher moral values until their animality is tamed under Patrick’s “civilising” influence: MacDonagh indulges in the delicious fantasy of allowing the erstwhile colonial victim to succeed at last in vanquishing the colonizer, not through an ignoble recourse to physical force, but solely by virtue of his superior spiritual endowment. Patrick’s divinely appointed mission, it transpires, is nothing less than to perform in reverse the feat accomplished by the historical St Patrick some fifteen centuries previously, and reintroduce the One True Faith, kept alive in Ireland since the Reformation, to modern “pagan” Britain. Although not a priest, Patrick is clearly intended to be perceived as a kind of missionary similar to his historical prototype, and his depiction, I would suggest, is only fully comprehensible in the light of this social context.

17 MacDonagh’s libretto thus conveys a number of unsubtle subtexts. Ireland may be materially poorer than modern Britain, but is immeasurably richer on a spiritual level. Britain is a “pagan and amoral environment”, plagued by the social ills of racial disharmony and violent gang cultures. The solution to these ills can only be found in Catholicism and the Irish have a God-given spiritual mission to assist Britain to this realisation. The Irish, even if poor and downtrodden, need not feel inferior to their former colonizers, but instead should regard them with pity and compassion for being

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deprived of the benefits endowed by Catholicism. Ireland may have been subjugated politically by Britain, but is now in a position to colonize it spiritually.

18 In a letter to a fellow composer Gerard Victory, Potter informed him that Patrick “was supposed to show the world the deeply spiritual side of the Irish people19” – a remark which makes explicit the link between the representation of Irishness in MacDonagh’s libretto and the hallowed notions of Gaelic spirituality that I have described. The opera’s central character is clearly intended to represent the finest flower of this Irish “deep spirituality”. The qualities with which MacDonagh endows him are the typical attributes of “holiness” as envisioned in the Irish popular imagination at the period: his simple, unquestioning faith and special devotion to the Virgin Mary, his unconcealed aspiration to sainthood or martyrdom, his ascetic avoidance of tobacco and alcohol, and above all, his energetic resistance of sexual temptation.

19 The prominence of this last character trait reveals very clearly the extent to which the opera reflects the contemporary social ethos. As has been extensively documented, the preoccupation of the Irish Catholic hierarchy with matters of sexual morality engendered a climate characterised by extreme puritanism20. Patrick’s horror of unchastity faithfully exemplifies an attitude to sexuality which the Irish Catholic hierarchy strove to inculcate in their flock. The result was a mentality that viewed sexual desire with an exaggerated revulsion. When Bella tries to seduce him, Patrick dramatises the perceived threat in the most extreme terms: You are temptation that all saints have known. St Anthony repulsed you with a groan, Augustine lean as Lazarus feared your power And whipped his rebel body for an hour.

20 This scene carries a very high degree of emotional charge and, interestingly, constitutes the dramatic climax of the opera up to this point. It is clear that to Patrick the loss of his virginity represents a far greater threat than the racial attacks of the Teddy boys, of whom he appears quite unafraid. His rejection of Bella is surely also intended to symbolise the Irish Catholic rejection of the debased British sexual mores that the Irish Catholic Church found so abhorrent. MacDonagh intended Patrick’s repulse of Bella to be perceived as a morally exemplary, even heroic act: the chaste Irishman demonstrates his spiritual valour in rejecting the sexual permissiveness prevalent in contemporary “pagan” Britain.

21 As will be clear from the foregoing account, MacDonagh’s libretto for Patrick is deeply problematic from a contemporary standpoint and would probably make it impossible to revive the work. The most fundamental difficulty, perhaps, is that it is so much a product of its time and place: the subject matter of the opera lacks a more universal significance that transcends its setting. The narrow nationalist and religious concerns that were peculiar to Ireland at the period are unlikely to have much resonance for anyone who is not Irish; and MacDonagh’s engagement with them is not only mawkish and sentimental, but his treatment also presents a highly tendentious image of modern Britain. It is unlikely that most viewers could accept the opera’s simplistic message that an old-fashioned Irish-style Catholicism is a panacea for “pagan” Britain’s social ills; and the closing scene, with its implied mass conversion of the British “heathen” to the One True Faith, would strike them not only as frankly incredible, but as a particularly rebarbative piece of Catholic triumphalist propaganda.

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22 There are other difficulties. The first of these concerns MacDonagh’s conception of the opera’s hero. It is a notoriously difficult task for a dramatist to create a credible positive character, let alone one who is supposed to be the living embodiment of a lofty national spirituality and unalloyed goodness. MacDonagh’s Patrick is not a very compelling creation. For Irish audiences, he conjures up a favourite object of ironical amusement, the sanctimonious “holy Joe”, who devotes much energy to ostentatious public shows of piety. Not infrequently, he produces an impression that quite subverts his creator’s conscious intentions, sometimes to inadvertently comic effect – as when he declines the Teddy boys’ offer of alcoholic drink and meekly requests lemonade instead. The other protagonists are little more than crude stereotypes. The rapid transformations of outlook they experience under the influence of Patrick’s “holiness” strain psychological credibility and the manner in which these are portrayed would grate on the sensibilities of most contemporary viewers – especially the closing scene, which shows Bella demurely following Patrick into a church, having been “cured” of her sinful sexual desires, and the reformed Teddy Boys breaking spontaneously into a rousing Irish hymn.

23 The libretto also has serious technical shortcomings. It is composed in verse throughout, like MacDonagh’s poetic dramas. In the more successful of these, such as Happy as Larry (1946), MacDonagh managed to negotiate the difficulties inherent in the genre with considerable success, and although his verse is notably uneven, the work has sufficient vitality to transcend these defects21. The verse in Patrick, however, abounds in instances of clumsy scansion and cacophonous rhymes that not only seem inept, but produce moments of ludicrous bathos. For example, after Patrick succeeds in quelling the opening gang fight, Bella addresses him as follows: And yet you spoke, and there was peace, And without calling the police. Let’s celebrate. You come with me And I will make you coffee or tea. Coffee or tea or a slice of cake, Or bread and butter – which will you take? And you must tell me why you’re here In a foreign land, in a land of fear.

24 These jingling couplets illustrate the extent to which MacDonagh’s critical self- awareness deserted him. As if by some perverse instinct, he almost invariably lapses into hair-raising banalities at precisely those crucial moments of high tension when a more elevated style is demanded by the dramatic context. Patrick’s monologue proclaiming his sense of divine mission includes a jarring reference to the fact that he formerly worked in a bacon factory: MacDonagh presumably intended this as an allusion to the historical Patrick’s work as a swineherd in his youth, but it was surely one that it would have been better to omit. Similarly, few modern directors would be prepared to countenance the doggerel sung by the leader of the Teddy boys when he addresses the assembled Irish and Jamaican immigrants thus: Who asked you to leave your bleeding Isle? Who asked you to make your bleeding pile? Taking our digs, Filling with nigs Every chipper here – Who asked you here? Why can’t you disappear?

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25 By composing the libretto in verse, MacDonagh presumably intended to impart a heightened emotional intensity to the utterances of his characters, in a similar manner to his poetic dramas. The audience’s willingness to accept the theatrical convention of characters speaking in verse is, of course, completely dependent on the quality of the poetry. And while it has often been observed that interesting music can carry undistinguished texts, especially in an operatic context, this is only true up to a point: if they are particularly poor or flatly quotidian, their banality can become intrusive and undermine the composer’s attempts to express exalted feelings – as happens here.

26 This employment of verse also seems to sit uneasily with MacDonagh’s attempted naturalistic treatment of the subject matter. MacDonagh clearly envisioned the opera as a vehicle for serious social comment and criticism. He aimed to depict “real life” of a kind that would be familiar to many Irish viewers – evoking the material hardship and social handicaps experienced by their countrymen in Britain. The Irish immigrants are depicted working, brawling, drinking in a pub and pursuing the opposite sex, and are clearly intended to be perceived by the audience as, if not people exactly like themselves, then at least as types familiar to them from their own experience. MacDonagh’s dramatic strategy in including scenes of this kind may also have been influenced by the fact the opera was being composed for the medium of television, which lends itself readily to the creation of naturalistic illusion. This aim is inconsistently pursued, however. Some scenes of the opera, such as Bella’s attempted seduction of Patrick, or the closing scene in which he is threatened with lynching by the crowd, degenerate into cheap melodrama. The writing here acquires a histrionic shrillness that seems particularly unsuited to television, which requires a more understated style of acting. Any attempt at naturalistic depiction is also abandoned in the large-scale choral dance scene in which the Irish and Jamaican immigrants engage in an elaborate stage fight that was almost certainly inspired by West Side Story.

27 The more incondite features of the libretto present a puzzle. MacDonagh was neither unintelligent nor ungifted, and had considerable experience of writing for the stage. It is difficult to credit that he was unaware of its shortcomings. One also wonders how he regarded the entire project. On the face of it, in accepting the commission for Patrick, he was prepared to acquiesce in devising a dramatic work that amounted to little more than an empty piece of Catholic-nationalist propaganda glorifying “official” Ireland. The libretto betrays not even the faintest hint of critical distance from the subject matter. It is important to emphasise that there is no indication in his correspondence with Potter about the work that any overt pressure was brought to bear on him to compose the text in the way that he did. If he harboured any feelings of dissatisfaction with the project or with the completed opera, he kept them to himself. His letters to Potter also seem to indicate that he set about his task wholly in earnest. When the opera was finally broadcast, he wrote to congratulate Potter in effusive terms, telling him that he thought it “tremendous, especially the music, which I would like to hear several times22”.

28 The fragmentary evidence at our disposal permits of several conflicting explanations. It is possible that the libretto for Patrick was written with complete sincerity as the expression of a devout Catholicism, but, on the whole, this seems unlikely. The scenario that MacDonagh devised several years previously for the ballet Careless Love, his first collaboration with Potter, with its explicit vindication of the artist’s right to sexual freedom and its open condemnation of narrow-minded Irish puritanism, is scarcely

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suggestive of orthodox Irish Catholic attitudes. The most charitable (and perhaps the most persuasive) explanation is that MacDonagh adopted Roth’s proposed subject, even if he found it uncongenial, because he would presumably have been reluctant to turn down such a prestigious commission. He may even have considered it professionally awkward to do so, since he was a popular and frequent broadcaster on Radio Éireann and thus feared that a refusal could have unpleasant repercussions. On the other hand, he probably realised that he would have comparatively little freedom of manoeuvre in treating this subject matter. He must surely have expected that any dramatic work engaging with a religious subject – particularly one launched with as much publicity as Patrick – would almost certainly come under close scrutiny from Catholic officials, if not from McQuaid himself23. It would have been unthinkable to portray the national saint from a critical or ironic perspective, though it could have opened up very interesting dramatic possibilities24: in the social climate in which MacDonagh was writing, this would have been to invite trouble. Strict censorship operated in Ireland until the late 1960s and Catholic vigilante groups took it upon themselves to act as guardians of public morality, lodging formal complaints about books or plays that they considered indecent.

29 Art works with religious themes appear to have been subjected to especially close surveillance by the Catholic Church. Three years after Patrick was broadcast, the bilingual Irish writer Criostóir O’Flynn lost his job as a primary school teacher because of charges of blasphemy and indecency levelled against his play The Order of St Melchizedek. Although this affair had far-reaching and highly unpleasant consequences for O’Flynn, as he recounts it in his autobiography, it was not without a number of farcical aspects25. O’Flynn (who was born in 1927 and is still alive at the time of writing) is a devout Catholic, whose religious beliefs seem impeccably orthodox. His play is a wholly serious attempt to depict the difficult conflicts experienced by practising Christians between the contending claims of faith and rationality. Its ingenious plot portrays the predicament of a Catholic priest serving in a remote parish, who receives an unexpected visitor, a strange young woman, one Christmas night. She confides in him that she is pregnant, but a virgin, and has been sent to him to care for her until the birth. The priest is thus confronted with bizarrely improbably circumstances that explicitly recall the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ and must struggle to make of them what he will.

30 The play was rejected by the reading panel of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin when O’Flynn submitted it for consideration, the anonymous readers’ reports describing it in excoriating terms as “disgusting”, “vulgar” and “obscene”. When he eventually succeeded in getting it produced at the 1967 Dublin Theatre Festival, he not only received hostile letters, but the Dublin newspaper the Evening Herald chose to publish an anonymous missive (signed “Outraged Dubliner”) condemning the play as “a disgrace to Catholic Ireland”. Although one might imagine from these comments that the play was explicitly pornographic or otherwise offensive, it is, in fact, nothing of the kind: a contemporary reader would be entirely perplexed to understand how it could have attracted such opprobrium. Not long afterwards, O’Flynn learned that he was to be let go from his job, ostensibly because student numbers in the school where he worked were declining – a transparent pretext which was blatantly untrue. He was in no doubt that his superior had been instructed to get rid of him by Archbishop McQuaid26. O’Flynn’s experience was not unique. The novelist John McGahern was similarly forced to quit his job as a teacher three years earlier in 1965 when

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controversy erupted over his novel The Dark, which includes a scene portraying the attempted molestation of a young boy by a priest27. These episodes give some idea of the pressures to self-censorship that MacDonagh may have experienced, and if he chose to play safe with Patrick and avoid tampering too much with the subject matter, then he can hardly be blamed for doing so. The foregoing exploration of MacDonagh’s motives is, of course, highly conjectural, and in the absence of firm evidence it is not possible to decide the question one way or the other, but the most generous view would be to regard the libretto as a regrettable production written under unusual circumstances.

31 A libretto of poor literary quality does not necessarily prevent the writing of a successful opera, even if it makes the composer’s task more difficult. Many operas with unsatisfactory libretti have remained in the repertoire because of the vitality and richness of their music. The tendentiousness of MacDonagh’s libretto presents an insurmountable problem, however, and it is difficult to imagine how it could have been overcome satisfactorily. Unfortunately Potter’s score is not sufficiently distinguished to compensate for its shortcomings. It has all the characteristic faults of his weakest works: there are few memorable ideas and it is poorly structured, giving the impression of being largely improvised; the phrase structure is excessively predictable and monotonous, while the harmonic language tends to be rather turgid. One has the sense that his imagination was not engaged by the subject matter, as the music only flickers intermittently into life. Matters were probably not helped by the fact that the score had to be composed at breakneck speed due to MacDonagh’s dilatoriness in finishing the libretto. The only scene in the entire work which is persuasive is Bella’s brief aria “Now sorrow has my heart”, which she sings after Patrick has rejected her. In spite of its extreme simplicity and understatement, the music here is genuinely affecting and gives a tantalising glimpse of what Potter might have been capable under other circumstances.

32 In the context of the present discussion, Potter’s musical characterisation of the protagonists is of considerable interest, as it largely reinforces the racial stereotypes of the libretto. The Irish characters are readily identified as denizens of “Traditional Ireland” by the music that is assigned to them, which employs stylised melodic contours and ornamentation deriving from Irish folk music, a time-honoured means of connoting “naturalness” and “wholesomeness”. The music of the urban British characters, by contrast, refers to various genres of British light music, often in a rather parodic way. The rollicking tunes given to the Teddy boys are obviously descended from music-hall songs, their spiky chromaticism and brashly astringent harmonisations lending them an aggressive edge which is wholly absent from the dignified and lyrical “Irish” music. The contrast between the gentle, peaceable Irish and the uncouth British could scarcely be drawn more sharply. Patrick’s “heroic” and “spiritual” nature is projected through material employing a severe diatonic modality, explicitly reminiscent of plainchant. By contrast, Bella’s sensual and hedonistic personality is portrayed in music of a lush chromaticism. In this manner, Potter establishes a somewhat obvious tension between “chaste Irish” diatonicism and “sinful British” chromaticism which operates throughout the score, the strident bitonal sonorities associated with Patrick in his more fraught moments presumably being intended to symbolise the conflicts he experiences when his diatonic “purity” is threatened with compromise. Much of Bella’s music recalls pre-war styles of British light music, especially the operettas of Ivor Novello and Noel Coward. Both her music

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and, to an even greater extent, that of the Teddy boys is tinged with a deliberate vulgarity. The traditional dichotomy between the “spiritual” Irish and the “material” British is here recreated in musical terms.

33 As in MacDonagh’s case, it is difficult to tell what Potter’s private attitude to the project might have been. To judge from his letters, he regarded organised religion with sceptical indifference (he was nominally a member of the Church of England, but was not notably devout), and was particularly unsympathetic to Catholicism and nationalism in their Irish manifestations. One consequently wonders how he could possibly have found the subject matter of Patrick congenial. He also had little patience with the attitudes towards sexuality promulgated by the various Christian churches and is therefore unlikely to have empathised with the resolutely chaste hero of the MacDonagh’s libretto. If he had reservations about its quality, however, he was in a rather difficult position. For one thing, he may have felt it inadvisable to voice criticisms of its crudely propagandistic features as he was a Protestant. There were also various practical considerations. The project had already run into delays that were not of his making, but Roth nonetheless placed him under great pressure to produce the score on time. He may have considered it infeasible to request that MacDonagh make substantial revisions or revise his basic conception: he needed to get down to work as a matter of urgency if he was to meet his deadline. He may also have been unwilling to risk offending MacDonagh or putting their working relationship under strain. His unpublished correspondence suggests that he regarded himself as the subsidiary partner in the collaboration, and there appears to have been no opportunity to discuss practical issues concerning the libretto’s suitability for operatic setting as it was being written. It would have been unthinkable under the circumstances for him to have withdrawn altogether. For one thing, it would have occasioned much awkwardness to withdraw from such a high-profile project, and he may have feared that if he did so, the opportunity to have an opera performed – an extreme rarity for Irish composers at the period – might never come his way again. He may also have been reluctant to make difficulties because his work as an arranger and broadcaster for RTÉ represented a substantial proportion of his income, and the station afforded Irish composers’ sole access to professional performing groups.

34 Patrick met with a rapturous critical reception on the occasion of its first screening, which of itself affords eloquent testimony concerning the contemporary intellectual climate and the extent to which the authorised self-portrait of “Traditional Ireland” found widespread and uncritical acceptance. The doyen of Irish music critics, Charles Acton declared that the opera represented an act of “courage and national maturity” in its depiction of a modern Irishman with a vocation to pacify racial tensions in Britain. He continued in a similarly effusive vein: There are up to a dozen numbers that could easily become popular outside the opera; they have tunes and individualities that linger in the memory even after a first hearing; especially as they are so apt for the words, and are highly evocative and emotive. In fact this is the first… composition of Dr Potter’s that I admire wholeheartedly, and feel worthy of the largest possible audience. […] I know that I am easily moved, and often enough by the sentimental and the obvious. Perhaps that was why I was in tears by the end. Perhaps not. Either way, this is a major contribution to our culture. It must be repeated several times at least. It must be staged here and elsewhere. It is a real credit to T.E. [Telefís Éireann] and to Dr Potter28.

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35 These accolades notwithstanding, Patrick did not succeed in establishing itself in the repertoire. It was never staged either in Ireland or elsewhere and RTÉ only broadcast it one further time in 1971. It was to be over a decade before Potter had the opportunity to compose another opera, The Wedding, which is far more successful and treated a subject much better suited to his creative gifts. This savagely ironical portrayal of small-town life portrays the inhabitants of “Traditional Ireland” in a thoroughly unflattering light – confirming one’s suspicion that Potter entertained rather different views of his adopted country than those embodied in MacDonagh’s libretto.

NOTES

1. Ultan Crowley, The Men Who Built Britain, Dublin, Wolfhound Press, 2001, p. 139. 2. Camille Bourniquel, Ireland, trans. John Fisher London, Vista Books, 1960, p.134. 3. John Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland, Dublin, O’Brien Press, 1999,p. 327. 4. Lawrence J. MacCaffrey, “Irish Nationalism and Irish Catholicism: A Study in Cultural Identity”, Church History, 42, 4, 1973, p.524-534, p.533. 5. See J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.651-2. 6. For an account of the circumstances surrounding the commission, see Patrick Zuk, “A. J. Potter 1918-1980: The career and creative achievement of an Irish composer in social and cultural context”, PhD dissertation, University of Durham, 2007. 7. The year of Patrick’s death has been the subject of much controversy: see David N. Dumville, Saint Patrick, AD 493-1993 Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1999. 8. John Cooney, op. cit., p.345. 9. RTV Guide, 12 March 1965. 10. See Alan Travis, “After 44 years secret papers reveal truth about five nights of violence in Notting Hill”, The Guardian, 24 August 2002. 11. See Ultan Crowley, op.cit., p. 132-3; Catherine Dunne, An Unconsidered People: The Irish in London Dublin, New lsland Books, 2003, p.11-14. 12. Lawrence J. MacCaffrey, op. cit., p. 533. 13. W. B. Yeats, “Postscript”, in Lady Augusta Gregory ed., Ideals in Ireland, London, At the Unicorn VII Cecil Court, 1901, p. 105. 14. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, London, Jonathan Cape, 1995, p.30. 15. For a discussion, see Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, London, Fontana, 1981, p.27ff. 16. Catholic Bulletin, 23, 3 (1933), p. 241-243.

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17. See Damian Corless, “The secret’s out… it seems we’re all a little bit bonkers”, Irish Independent, 16 December 2004. 18. John Cooney, op. cit, p. 320. 19. Potter to Gerard Victory, 5 February 1963. 20. For a discussion, see J. H. Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1980, p. 24 sqq. 21. For a discussion of the technical shortcomings of MacDonagh’s verse, see Robert Hogan, After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of the Irish Drama since “The Plough and the Stars”, Minneapolis, University of Minesota Press, 1967, p.155. 22. MacDonagh to Potter, 20 August 1964. 23. It was common knowledge that the Archbishop kept the contents of all radio and television programmes under close surveillance with the assistance of a network of informants: see John Cooney, op. cit., p. 327ff. 24. One thinks, for example, of William Golding’s fascinatingly ambiguous portrayal of the character of Dean Jocelyn in his novel The Spire, which leaves the reader constantly unsure whether Jocelyn’s sense of divine mission is authentic or should be attributed to megalomania. 25. The account that follows draws on Criostóir O’Flynn, A Writer’s Life, Dun Laoghaire, Obelisk Books, 2001, p. 4-69. 26. Cristóir O’Flynn, op. cit., p. 62. 27. John McGahern gave an account of this affair in his autobiographical Memoir, London, Faber 2005, p. 249-252. 28. Charles Acton, Irish Times, 19 March 1965.

ABSTRACTS

This article discusses the television opera Patrick by Donagh MacDonagh and A. J. Potter, which was commissioned for the opening of Telefís Éireann in 1961, in relation to the contemporary social context and constructs of Irish national identity prevalent at the period.

Cet article est consacré à l’opéra Patrick (de Donagh MacDonagh et d’A.J. Potter), commandé pour l’ouverture de la chaîne de télévision nationale irlandaise, Telifís Éireann, en 1961. L’opéra est étudié par rapport au contexte social de l’époque et en lien aux conceptions de l’identité nationale qui prévalaient alors.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: musique, MacDonagh Donagh, Potter AJ, histoire des représentations, identité nationale, télévision Keywords: music, MacDonagh Donagh, Potter AJ, history of representations, national identity, television

AUTHOR

PATRICK ZUK University of Durham

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Poèmes (Dánta)

Biddy Jenkinson et Clíona Ní Ríordáin Traduction : Juliette Saumande

Ainm bréige Faux nom

go dtiocfad fíor. Pour dire vrai.

1 Biddy Jenkinson est le nom de plume d’un poète contemporain. Peu importe l’origine de celle qui se cache derrière le masque, ce qui compte pour elle, c’est la liberté que cela lui offre. « Un nom de plume, pour mieux servir ses ailes1 », dit-elle. Alors que certains critiques pensent pouvoir l’asservir à un lieu particulier en Irlande (le Comté de Wicklow ou de Carlow par exemple), elle se réjouit de l’absence de contraintes géographiques : « […] l’écrivain ne veut pas accepter les limites géographiques ou temporelles quand il écrit, en dépit des liens qui pourraient l’accaparer le reste du temps. » a-t-elle déclaré. Inutile de chercher des indices quant à son identité : « C’est comme si on cherchait le Magicien d’Oz. L’action se trouve dans l’écriture. »

2 Elle puise son inspiration à des sources diverses : la mythologie irlandaise, les textes anciens, les courses au supermarché, la vie de Marie-Antoinette. Un de ses poèmes les plus célèbres, « Gleann Maoilúira », relate la vie ordinaire d’un personnage assis dans sa voiture au parking, tenant à la main un texte ancien, le « An Leabhar Branach/Le livre des O’Byrne » ; le poème prend son envol, suit les figures historiques à travers le temps, pour revenir à la fin au parking et au texte d’origine.

3 Comme de nombreux poètes, elle a une relation passionnelle avec les dictionnaires. Pour Biddy Jenkinson, c’est le dictionnaire du père Pádraig Ó Duinín, le plus poétique des dictionnaires irlandais, qui l’inspire le plus. Elle a fait du lexicographe le personnage central d’un recueil de nouvelles où il mène des enquêtes à la manière d’un commissaire Maigret en robe de bure.

4 Biddy Jenkinson pratique également la traduction. Elle fait partie de l’équipe qui a traduit les poèmes de Louis de Paor. L’approche vise à mutualiser les traductions : « Chacun choisit les morceaux qui lui plaisent. Ensuite, l’ensemble est unifié pour ne

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faire qu’une seule voix traductive. Enfin tout le monde lit le produit fini et donne son avis. » Pour sa part, elle préfère ne pas se faire traduire en anglais en Irlande. C’est le sujet de son poème « A Small Rude Gesture ».

5 Lauréate de plusieurs prix (Duais an Oireachais à plusieurs reprises, The Butler Award de l’ Irish American Cultural Institute), la richesse de ses poèmes et la profondeur de ses connaissances de la langue ainsi que des traditions irlandaises ont même fait dire à Máire Mhac an tSaoi que B. Jenkinson est « revenue plusieurs fois sur terre » avant d’arriver à ce niveau d’érudition. Les poèmes que l’on trouvera publiés dans ce numéro, entendent fournir un petit aperçu de son œuvre. Nous la remercions vivement, ainsi que la maison d’édition Coiscéim et la traductrice Juliette Saumande, de nous avoir permis de les reproduire.

6 Clíona Ní Ríordáin

Nom d’un Nom2/Nom d’un nom*

Faux nom Ainm bréige

Pour dire vrai. go dtiocfad fíor.

7 *en français dans le texte

8 Biddy JENKINSON

9 Traduction de Clíona NÍ RÍORDÁIN

A Small Rude Gesture3/ A Small Rude Gesture4

Il y a des jours Leathanta

où j’en ai ma claque nuair a bhíonn lán na beilte agam

des conneries des Anglophones : de bhoighreán Béarlóirí:

…rammed down my neck at school… …rammed down my neck at school…

…such a lovely language… …such a lovely language…

…why don’t you write in English?… …why don’t you write in English?...

…we haven’t got a form in Irish yet… …we haven’t got a form in Irish yet…

…dead language… …dead language…

je fais comme le Daghda5 déanaim mar a dhein an Daghda

quand il a mangé nuair a d’ith sé

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– pour le bien-être de son peuple – ar son oineach a mhuintire,

pour la bonne cause – ar son na cúise –

la bouillie des Formores. leite na bhFomhórach.

Il a bouffé tout une cuve de bouillie Ghlan sé lán coire den leite

– et dans la grosse gamelle il y avait 300 litres de – agus sa choire sin bhí ochtó galúnleamhnachta lait et agus a

autant d’avoine et de graisse ; moutons, cochons, cothrom mine agus geire; caoirigh, muca agus chèvres – gabhair–

engloutis jusqu’à s’en faire péter la sous- go raibh sé ar tí pléasctha. ventrière.

Il passa l’index au fond de la cuve Chrom sé a mhéar ar bhun an choire

pour vérifier que pas une once ne lui avait chun a chinntiú nach raibh graiseamal ar bith échappé. fágtha ann.

Et brandit le doigt pour défier les Formores. Ansin thug sé an mhéar dosna Fosmhóraigh.

10 Biddy JENKINSON,

11 Traduction de Clíona NÍ RÍORDÁIN

Accord avec la muse/Margadh leis an mBé6

J’ai choisi l’humour Roghníos greann

au lieu de l’amour. seachas grá.

Pauvre de moi. Bocht an ní.

Plume pointue Bior ar mo pheann,

encre démoniaque dans mon cœur. diabhal dúigh im chroí.

12 Biddy JENKINSON

13 Traduction de Clíona NÍ RÍORDÁIN

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Conseil du poète à son poème/Comhairle an Scríbhneora don Dán7

14 * en français dans le texte

15 Biddy JENKINSON

16 Traduction de Clíona NÍ RÍORDÁIN

Janvier 1991/Eanáir 19918

C’est janvier, mais Ná póg in aon chor mé an Eanáir seo.

Ní éireoidh aon fhuiseog ar do bhéal- ne m’embrasse pas. bhéim.

Nulle alouette ne s’élèverait du contact de nos bouches. Thitfeadh

Les roitelets de Saint Étienne choiraient morts à nos dreolíní coscartha Stiofáin pieds.

go talamh eadrainn.

Ne prends pas mes mains

dans les tiennes. Ná tóg mo lámh.

Mes doigts se briseraient Thiocfadh na méara díom

tels des glaçons. ´na gcoinlíní reo.

N’essaie pas de m’attendrir. Ná bog mo chroí

Mon cœur fondu exposerait nó pléascfaidh an fluichreo ann

En gelant de nouveau. ar athreo.

Ne me regarde pas dans les yeux, Ná féach im shúile

tu en mourrais nó préachfar thú

de froid. le fuacht.

Ne me dis pas que la vie est en sommeil, Ná habhair liom

que les graines finiront par germer, go bhfuil an saol faoi choim

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que tes baisers printaniers vaudront un vol d’oiseaux. go bpéacfadh síol

go ndéanfadh do phóga earraigh ealta

éan.

Restons ici sans espoir ni baisers Seasaimis gan phóg gan dóchas

ici chez les morts in áit na marbh

sous les bombes sifflantes faoi gach buama a thiteann

et champignons mar fhianaise

que nous ne voulions pas cela. nach dár ndeoin iad.

17 Biddy JENKINSON

18 Traduction de Juliette SAUMANDE

X/X9

(ou pourquoi je ne serai jamais un véritable (nó an chúis nach ndéanfaidh me File ar fónamh riamh) poète)

On ne trouve pas la lettre « X » dans Níl an litir X

le dictionnaire Gaélique/Anglais Ó Duinnín, ag Ó Duinín

mais elle dans le Ó Domhnaill : ach ceadaíonn Ó Dónaill é :

X, x, m. (pl. ~anna). La lettre X. X, x, m. (pl. ~anna). The letter X.

Et je me réjouis de la voir là car Agus is deas liom san mar

X = l’amour en secret, X = grá faoi rún,

= un baiser à la croisée des chemins = póg ag crosaire

= une flèche dans le mille = bior trí lár

= percé jusqu’au fond du cœur, occis = treagadh

= cet excès de félicité que l’on nomme = mire seine ar a dtugtar xtáis extase

= deux êtres qui se croisent un instant = beirt nach raibh orthu ach ala roimh avant la séparation éternelle bhuanscaradh

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= le signe de la croix = comhartha croise

= deux êtres qui se croisent et font une = beirt a thairteáil le chéile ach a chas siar ón croix sur la rencontre gcomhlann

= des amants; deux angles opposes = leannán: dhá uillinn le chéile s’embrassant sans fin… urchomhaireachta ag pógadh a chéile de shíor…

Is anseo a theipeann ar mo dhán.

et c’est ici que mon poème déraille. Feicim –

Je vois – et il n’est pas de bon augure de agus níl sé séanmhar diultiú d’inspioráid, refuser l’inspiration

bien que la légèreté et la « gravité » ne soient cé go mbreagnaíonn giodam gravitas – pas faites pour s’entendre –

X= ménage à quatre* X = ménage à quatre.

19 *En français dans le texte

20 Biddy JENKINSON

21 Traduction Juliette SAUMANDE

Bed and Breakfast/B agus B10

Mé Flúirsín ensuite vacancies, an Irish Moi c’est Flúirsín Cocagne. Welcome I.T.B.

Il me reste des chambres avec salle d’eau. Accueil approved is fáilte is fiche punt an irlandais chloigeann. Níl

certifié par l’Office du tourisme, bienvenue, cent mille lacáiste leanaí fois bienvenue. En fait,

Nous ne faisons pas de réduction pour les enfants, oui actually

Petit-déjeuner, à neuf heures au plus tard Bricfeasta, naoi ar a dheireanaí, that’ll be

alright for ye? seomraí fuara túaillí ça vous ira, beaga… to conserve

Hein ? energy

Pièces froides, petites serviettes, grandes économies see? d’énergie, vous voyez ?

Pour le savon, suffit de demander. Cnag is geobhair gallúnach, b’fhéidir

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Un proverbe irlandais, là devant vous : « Il ne faut pas An Irish Blessing, ar an bhfalla-every road vendre la charrue avant a rising hill

Seamróg freisin for our cultúr. d’avoir tué les bœufs » Leipreachaun for Irish wit

Et un trèfle aussi – c’est qu’on fait dans le culturel ici Maighdean thug Mamó ó Medugorje

Le leprechaun, c’est pour l’humour irlandais. (múchadh ar mhímhoráltacht inscne

Cette sainte vierge – Mémé l’a rapportée de tá dian ar leapacha, faraíor) Medjugorgje-décourage les

Duvet sciotach, peiliúr spuinseach « fréquentations » inconvenantes Woman’s Way

ça conserve la literie. Níl mata, go sciorrfá air, ar mo lino bláith

sa tarraiceáin. Éirigh leid an 40 watt. a Couette maigrelette, oreiller moulliga. mhúcadh

Femme Actuelle local sur la table de chevet. Ceithre chéad crispie I ngach babhla

Vous sortirez du lit pour éteindre le plafonnier, hein ? Uiscealach Mi Wadi úr 40 Watts, mine de rien.

Pas de tapis. ça limite les risques de chute. Mon lino est Bogóg eireoige (size 3), ispín de toute beauté.

-múchadh ocrais amhras aimhe-

400 Rice Krispies par bol (Crapann róchócháil gach ní)

et du jus de fruit coupé à l’eau bien comme il faut. slisín bagúin trédhearcadh patuar

Un œuf de poulette et une saucisse pâlotte agus leath-thráta amh do riar

(ventre affamé ne craint pas le cru ;

Déan mo mholadh sa leabhar sa halla. trop de cuisson ratatine les portions) Irish hospitality

une tranche translucide de bacon tiède We’re great at making you feel welcome

et une demi tomate-Voilà pour vous monsieur. is tá deirfiúr agam I nach ball den tír.

Et n’oubliez pas de vanter nos mérites dans notre livre

d’or

L’hospitalité irlandaise-Nous sommes réputés pour ça

Et j’ai une sœur dans chaque ville.

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22 Biddy JENKINSON

23 Traduction de Juliette SAUMANDE

Berceuse chinoise/Suantrái na Máthar Síní11

Grimpe ici, ma toute petite Ceartaigh a mhaoinigh

Que j’embrasse ton pied dodu go bpógfad do chrúibín

Et que je plie ton orteil, Lúbaim ladhrán is ladhraicín faoi

Voilà le rikiki rangé. Fillim an muicín seo

Fillim an muicín siúd

Laisse-moi border la petite sœur Féach muicín dána ag gobadh aníos

Puis le petit frère

Et voici la mémère Seo seo a thaisce

– oh la vilaine – tá cúram le déanamh

qui sort la tête. Méirín méarán méarachán sí

Allez on rentre ! Igín ar laoidín

Glaicín ar chircín

Chh Chh ! mon trésor Bindealán síoda

Il faut y aller gentiment ar chosa mo chroí

À petits pas, sur la pointe des pieds

Cé gur scréagóigín í

Veau a sa longe siúlfaidh mo chailín

Poule sa corde mar bhambú lá gaoithe

Les pétons de mon cher cœur, mar bhuinneán sailí

Je les banderai de soie. Fillim ordóg, fillim lúidín

Elle a beau être criarde, Lótas athfhillte

Ma beauté marche gach méirín faoi iamh

Avec la grâce du bambou

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Un jour de grand vent. Tá clabhcaí faoi Chlíona

Je rentre le pépère Tá spága faoi Mháire

Et rabats le petit rikiki. Tá Peigí spadchosach

Le lotus est replié ‘s leifteáin faoi Niamh

Ses pétales sont parfaits. Deasaigh a stóirín

mo lámh ar an bhfáiscín

Clíona a les pieds plats mé Maimín do leasa

Et Peggy a des oignons dod chumhnach le cion.

Les pieds de Máire se tournent en dehors

Et ceux de Niamh en dedans.

Patience ma doucette,

Ma main sur les bandelettes,

Maman, qui fait ce qu’il y a de mieux pour toi,

T’enveloppe d’amour.

24 Biddy JENKINSON

25 Traduction Juliette SAUMANDE

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Recueils de poésie

Baiste Ghintlí (Coiscéim 1987).

Uiscí Beatha (Coiscéim 1988).

Dán na hUidhre (Coiscéim 1991).

Amhras Neimhe (Coiscéim 1998).

An Grá Riabhach (Coiscéim 1999).

Rogha Dánta (Cork University Press 2000) (Siobhán Ní Fhoghlú et Seán Ó Tuama eds).

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Mis, (Coiscéim 2001).

Oíche Bhealtaine (Coiscéim 2005).

Nouvelles

An Grá Riabhach (Coiscéim 1999).

An tAthair Pádraig Ó Duinnín – Bleachtaire, (Coiscéim 2008).

Livres pour enfants

Púca Púca (Coiscéim 2005).

An Bhanríon Bess agus Gusaí Gaimbín (Coiscéim 2007).

Pièces de théâtre

Oh Rajerum, Coiscéim 1998.

Mise, Subhó agus Maccó in P. Ó Siadhail (eag.) Gearrdhrámaí an Chéid, Indreabhán, Cló Iar- Chonnachta, 2000, p. 270-299.

Entretiens www.rte.ie/rnag/leitepleite. Agallamh le Mícheál Ó hÚanacháin “I bhFocail an Údair”, Eanáir 2008

Prose

A Letter to the Editor’, Irish Univ. Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 1991), p. 27-34.

Critiques

MHAC AN TSAOI, Máire, “Biddy Jenkinson : Sampla d’Imaistriú Anama”, in E. Ó hAnluain (egg.) Leath na Spéire, BAC, An Clóchomhar, 1992, p. 61-73.

CRONIN, Michael, Translating Ireland : Translations, Languages, Cultures, Cork UP, 1996, p. 176.

NÍ RÍORDÁIN, Órla, Biddy Jenkinson : banfhile beo bíogach bríomhar bastallach, M. Phil non publié, Bibliothèque Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh 1999.

Carson, Ciaran, “Tracking the Words”, Fortnight, May 2008, texte disponible à : http://www.coisceim.ie/ bleachtaire.html (consulté le 19 septembre 2010).

TITLEY, Alan, ag caint le Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Caitríona Ní Chléiricín, RTE Radio 1, 4 April 2008: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/scribhneoiri/1195689.html.

NÍ ANNRACHÁIN, Máire, « Gleann Maoiliúra, Biddy Jenkinson », Irish University Review, September 2009.

DE BÚRCA, Máire, “Biddy Jenkinson”, in Ríona Ní Fhrighil (ed.), Fílocht Chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2010, p. 167-180.

NOTES

1. Toutes les citations du poète viennent d’une correspondance avec l’auteur. 2. Oíche Bealtaine, BAC, Coiscéim, 2005, l. 16. 3. Le titre, que l’on pourrait traduire par « Petit geste obscène » fait référence à une lettre que Biddy Jenkinson a adressée au rédacteur en chef de l’Irish University Review en 1991 où elle dit son refus de se faire traduire en anglais en Irlande : « It is a small rude

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gesture to those who think that everything can be harvested and stored without loss in an English-speaking Ireland. If I were a corncrake I would feel no obligation to have my skin cured, my tarsi injected with formalin so that I could fill a museum shelf in a world that saw no need for my kind. » (Biddy Jenkinson, Irish University Review Vol. 4, No. 2 Spring/Summer 1991, p. 34. 4. Oíche Bhealtaine, BAC, Coiscéim, l. 59. 5. Le Daghda est le dieu le plus important des Tuatha de Danann. Le poème fait référence à un incident qui a eu lieu pendant la Bataille de Maighe Tuireadh, où Daghda, pour sauver son peuple des Formores, a avalé des quantités gargantuesques de nourriture. 6. Oíche Bhealtaine, BAC, Coiscéim, 2005, l.58. 7. Dán na hUidhre, BAC, Coiscéim, 1991, l.42/3. 8. Dán na hUidhre, BAC, Coiscéim, 1991, l.87/8. 9. Oíche Bhealtaine, BAC, Coiscéim, 2005, l. 17. 10. Amhras Neimhe, BAC, Coiscéim, 1997, l. 32. 11. Amhras Neimhe, BAC, Coiscéim, 1997, l. 13/4.

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“Like blossoms on slow water”: the Power of Metaphor in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry and its Translation

Elizabeth Pearce

Rained-on, flower-laden Coffin after coffin Seemed to float from the door Of the packed cathedral Like blossoms on slow water. Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”1

1 In considering the translation of poetry, metaphoric networks in a poet’s body of work are highly significant, reflecting the poet’s essential preoccupations. These networks, within a poem and between poems, also reflect the central aspects of the poet’s philosophy, culture and language – the poet’s “voice”. In terms of the translation of poetry between English and French, it is necessary for the translator to recognise the centrality of these networks, and the transforming nature of their role in the poem: to ignore or omit them, or to embellish them, is to destroy the integrity of the poem, as argued by Paul Bensimon in his article on figurative language and aspects of poetic translation2. Antoine Berman’s range of “deforming tendencies” in translation further reinforces this view3. These metaphoric networks are at times robust, at times delicate and subtle, reliant on links, allusions and associations within and beyond the poem in order to remain coherent, and to maintain their transforming qualities and their impact. In this study it is argued that metaphoric networks in poetry such as that of Seamus Heaney can be shown to create a way out of an apparent impasse in the poetry – to create a “possibility of release” from an apparently insoluble position, or from a predetermined or limiting form of thinking, as Heaney himself suggests: […] if our given experience is a labyrinth, its impassability can still be countered by the poet’s imagining some equivalent of the labyrinth and presenting himself and us with a vivid experience of it4.

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2 If the metaphoric networks are likewise maintained in the translation, then the translation too will allow the “possibility of release” – allowing migration across cultural and linguistic barriers between the two languages.

3 In order to illustrate this claim for poetry and its translation, this study will examine three versions of a section of Seamus Heaney’s poem “Casualty” in French translation, considering closely the power and scope of the metaphoric network of water created in the poem, and in its translation. Heaney’s poetry is particularly appropriate as a means by which to investigate the translation of metaphoric networks in poetry between English and French, as it makes extensive use of original metaphoric language, including newly created words, compound adjectives, original metaphors, re-animated clichés, and unusual combinations of standard words. Heaney’s extensive use of metaphoric language in his prose writings, combined with his interest in translation and experience as a translator, are additional reasons for the choice. The metaphoric networks within his poems resonate also between them, reflecting his concerns. Central metaphoric networks in Heaney’s poetry include notably those based on wood, water and boat. This study however will limit itself to Heaney’s central theme of water.

4 Heaney’s preoccupations are human: contemporary, historic, the domestic and the foreign, the emotional and the intellectual, all crossing unpredictable boundaries, or merging unexpectedly. Themes and images recur throughout his work, creating multiple, intricate layers of allusions; these may include historical and literary allusions tying in to the existing and extensive metaphoric networks, that echo through a single poem or often across his entire body of work, in “une incessante chaîne associative5”. Such is the power of metaphoric networks in Heaney’s poetry, and this essential quality of his work needs to be inherent also in the translation. If not, the essence, “the intensity” of the poetry will be destroyed, in Jean Cohen’s terms, as emphasised by Paul Bensimon in his significant article on the translation of compound adjectives in Palimpsestes 2. Cohen states that: La poésie, c’est l’intensité, ce que le langage produit en polarisant le signifié par élimination du terme neutre6.

5 At times, as Bensimon indicates, it is the tendency of the translator to eliminate from the poem not Cohen’s neutral term, but the intensity that is poetry. Bensimon also refers to another significant assertion often cited against the effective translation of poetry, that of Jean Cassou, that “La poésie, c’est justement ce résidu qui, d’une langue à l’autre, ne passe pas7”. This “residue” is however “the intensity” that is poetry, what is left after the elimination of the neutral. This “intensity” can be translated, as may be demonstrated by many examples of translated poetry –including Heaney’s “Casualty” in French translation, where in the section of the poem studied and also in one of its translations the “possibility of release” from an apparently insoluble or impenetrable position may be envisaged.

6 As well as being immersed in metaphoric language, Heaney’s poetry is notable also for its strategy of disrupting the expected, of making strange the ordinary, creating in the reader a sense of the unpredictability and surprise inherent in the mundane. Heaney constantly creates moments of unease in his poetry for the native reader or listener, where frequent small disruptions to the expected sequence of words interfere with the immediate grasp of meaning. This disruption of the expected is Heaney’s intention: it is a central aspect of his writing, representing his distinctive, subtle, original and creative voice. In his poetry the disruption of predictability is exemplified by his decisions

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regarding for example word order; line breaks; punctuation; disturbing the expectations set up by clichés, “re-animating” them or placing them in unexpected positions or juxtapositions8. It is also exemplified by the creation of original word combinations; creation of new words, including compound adjectives metaphoric in scope; alliteration; unexpected rhythm, or rhythm reflecting the atmosphere or context. In addition, Heaney’s disruption of predictability is demonstrated by unexpected tone, or tone fusing with the emotional intensity of the whole poem; the impact of the visual and the auditory; and the associated resonances of consonants and vowels.

7 It is challenging for a translation to accommodate the range of disruption to language as encountered in Heaney’s poetry, as outlined above. The French language may find it particularly difficult to accommodate certain of these aspects of the English language as used by Heaney, especially the irregular word order, and his original composed adjectives. In the act of translation, Antoine Berman’s “deforming tendencies” may come into play, such as that of “rationalisation”: this may flatten the writer’s intended disruptions to meaning, imposing an order on the created work “whose ‘imperfection’ is a condition of its existence9”, according to Berman. This particularly applies to the translation of Heaney’s poetry: reducing the strength of an intended disruption in a poem’s translation diminishes the impact of the poem on the reader. In addition, the translator may “render clear what does not wish to be clear in the original10”, further reducing the ability of the poem to surprise by the intentional disruption of the reader’s expectations. As Ben Belitt has said, The problem of “ambiguity” is of course a classic one: how to work in a limbo of deliberately enigmatic implications, a crossfire of contexts, and keep ambiguity ambiguous11.

8 This problem of retaining ambiguity in the translation returns to that outlined by Lawrence Venuti: the widely-held expectation that the translation should be smooth and fluent, the translator’s hand invisible12. Thus it would appear that some translators hold themselves responsible for “managing” the challenging or unexpected qualities inherent in the original poem, rather than allowing these qualities to emerge in the translation.

9 The image of water has long been central to Heaney’s preoccupations and his creative metaphoric network. This image is often that of the sea, a place of profound questioning and focus in Heaney, where the dynamism and mystery of conflicting forces is most strongly felt. As he himself recognises, “Poetic form is both the ship and the anchor. It is at once a buoyancy and a holding13”. Here it is possible to venture, but to remain held. It is this balance that Heaney constantly explores in his poetry. It is in the water too that the labyrinth untangles unexpectedly, where transformation takes place. Heaney’s poem “Casualty” is a poem in which water is central, and deeply significant.

Background to Heaney’s poem “Casualty”

10 The poem “Casualty14” is celebrated amongst Heaney’s poems as representative both of his achievement as a poet, and as an elegy to a fisherman blown up by a bomb, a reference to his Irish heritage, to “the Irish question15”. Heaney has been clear about his response to “the Irish question” in his art; not all of his critics have shared his belief

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in his position. Reviewers have on occasion criticised his apparent bypassing of the political, or his apparently tentative approach to it16. This has raised the question of what is an artist’s responsibility in regard to the politics of his homeland17? Heaney has dealt with this question ably in a variety of ways, notably in his essays “Frontiers of Writing18” and “The Government of the Tongue19”, and in his renowned “An Open Letter” to the editors of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, which was a potent verbal demonstration against Heaney as an Irish poet being included as a matter of course under the heading of “British20”. In this letter Heaney defended his right to a clear and Irish “independent heart”. The metaphor of water as used by Heaney in his poetry, in this case “Casualty”, will be shown to create a way out of the labyrinth, both politically and personally. Via water, Heaney imagines a movement out and away, an escape from the existing political and social rigidities, through narrative. This movement will need to be followed by the translator, in order to maintain the poem’s metaphoric network in the translation, and the subsequent release from the restrictions above.

11 “Casualty” reveals the personal connection between two men, one of shared humanity but also of suspicion directed at the educated man by the fisherman, a suspicion of which Heaney is fully aware, noting his “turned observant back”. However, this possible impediment to communication and mutual respect does not in fact impede the connection between them. Here Heaney illustrates and explores his notion that “There is nothing extraordinary about the challenge to be of two minds21.” This is ultimately a poem that reveals Heaney’s ability to explore a complex subject dispassionately. While not polarising the question of culpability, nor shirking it, nor answering it definitively, he opens the question, and leaves it open without judgements: his final statement in “Casualty” is a request to the lost fisherman to “Question me again”. The tone of the poem remains calm and detached, while the reader is shocked by the violence; so too however is the narrator, registering that “That Wednesday/Everybody held/His breath and trembled22”.

12 Heaney in this poem acknowledges the power of the group both to support individuals and to act collectively in response to a threat, to be “braced and bound/Like brothers in a ring”, while hinting at the fisherman’s unique human qualities which were not able to be contained by the group – “he would not be held” – but providing answers of their own: “I tasted freedom with him”, and the solitary pleasure of distance in “[…] smile/As you find a rhythm/Working you, slow mile by mile, / Into your proper haunt/ Somewhere, well out, beyond23…” Here it is water that allows the liberation from the unanswerable: the “rained-on” coffins “Seemed to float from the door/Of the packed cathedral/Like blossoms on slow water”, the coffins becoming floating means of transportation, vehicles, like the fishing boat at the end of the poem where the occupant floating on “indolent fathoms” is worked into his “proper haunt”. Helen Vendler states in reference to “Casualty” that “The problem of elegy is always to revisit death while not forgetting life […]24”. In “Casualty”, however, life is not forgotten; death is transcended, as is any contemplation of a “unitary culture”, by the movement away from the collective to the individual; away from the weight of coffins via water to one’s “proper haunt”.

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Study of the poem “Casualty25” in French Translation

13 This study will examine closely the first 8 lines of section II of the poem “Casualty” in French translation, a central passage26. For this passage there are three translations under consideration: firstly that by Paul Bensimon27; secondly the version by Deirdre McKeown-Laigle28; and finally the example of Anne Bernard Kearney29. Casualty It was a day of cold Raw silence, wind-blown Surplice and soutane: Rained-on, flower-laden Coffin after coffin Seemed to float from the door Of the packed cathedral Like blossoms on slow water.

14 This section of Heaney’s poem “Casualty” sets the scene, the “cold/Raw silence” reflecting the raw unexpressed emotion, perhaps suppressed, of the emerging congregation. Movement has been slowed by grief, as it is traditionally at a funeral, and here it reflects the walking pace of the “dawdling engine” later in the poem. The original compound adjectives, common in Heaney’s poetry, pose a difficulty in French. “Wind-blown” is unusual only in its juxtaposition with the formal, priestly symbols of “surplice and soutane”; it is the “Rained-on, flower-laden” coffins that produce a persistent, slow, compelling rhythm that surprises as these usually heavy coffins “seemed to float from the door/Of the packed cathedral/Like blossoms on slow water”. This is a strange and unexpected juxtaposition of light and heavy, both visually and in weight; the weight of flowers opposes the weight of wood, and the weight of suppressed emotion.

15 The first translation of “Casualty” Part II to be studied is that of Paul Bensimon.

Victime C’était un jour de froid et âpre silence, le vent agitait soutanes et surplis. De pluie mouillés, de fleurs chargés, les cercueils, l’un après l’autre, semblaient flotter depuis la porte de la cathédrale bondée, comme des corolles sur une eau lente.

16 Bensimon’s translation of these 8 lines reflects the rhythm of the original, respecting closely the word order, length of line, punctuation, and observing the intense, significant metaphoric network outlined above, which exists not only within “Casualty” but between this and other Heaney poems. Bensimon is prepared to increase the impact and strangeness of adjectives in his translation by placing them before the noun, not only as a means by which to accentuate and strengthen their impact, but as a method by which to reflect the strange originality of Heaney’s extended metaphors, as well as the existing word order, as in “âpre silence”, “raw silence”. It is usual in English to refer to the cold as “raw”, but “raw” is not habitually used as an adjective for “silence”; Bensimon has reproduced the disruption created by Heaney through this

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unexpected juxtaposition. His inversion of the existing word order of “surplice and soutane”, to “soutanes et surplis”, is presumably in order to reflect at least indirectly the Heaney line endings of “wind-blown” and “soutane” that create an echoing “n” ending, continued in the following line endings by “laden” and “coffin”. Bensimon compensates with – if not a direct reproduction of sound in a consonant – at least a closer sound in a complementing vowel ending: “agitait” is partly reflected in “surplis”, and then is more directly echoed in the following line with “mouillés”, and then “chargés”. Here in Joan Fillmore Hooker’s terms the balancing of the mobile, her striking metaphor for compensation in the translation of poetry between English and French, has been used to advantage: When I wrote of a translation’s sharing the “shape” of the original, I was thinking of a mobile, in which parts move in relationship to one another, yet still preserve the fact of relationship in mutual balancing30.

17 The three sets of compound adjectives referred to earlier, occurring close together, add to the sense of persistent rhythm created by Heaney, and by accumulation render each other more unusual, more strange: “wind-blown”; “rained-on”; “flower-laden”. Bensimon has effectively used the verb “agitait” here, not only to support the compensation described above, but also as an appropriate translation of “wind-blown”; it does not poeticise or make the movement of the priests’ robes graceful, and also has associations of the raw emotion experienced by those witnessing this scene, an apparently simple scene but with great resonance in Heaney’s overall metaphoric network. Further, Bensimon’s solution for “rained-on, flower-laden”, “de pluie mouillés, de fleurs chargés”, ‘with rain wet, with flowers charged’, while not creating composed adjectives directly, retains the rhythm and visual impact, neither ennobling nor flattening the images, nor overly lengthening them. There are no “deforming tendencies” in evidence here, although the choice to drop the capital letters of each new line, their retention a traditional poetic custom maintained in general by Heaney, while initially surprising, does not significantly alter the final version.

18 Bensimon’s translation of the simile “Like blossoms on slow water”, ‘comme des corolles sur une eau lente’ is apt, and balances, or compensates for, the lack of the composed adjectives above with the creation of alliteration: “cathédrale”, “comme”, “ corolles”. This alliteration, while accentuating the rhythm, also reflects that used by Heaney: “cold”, “coffin”, “cathedral”. As a translation of “blossoms”, “corolles” retains the notion of petals, but it is marked, more formal and almost botanical; there is however no direct noun equivalent in French for “blossom”. Yet “blossom” here is a potent symbol against violence. For these reasons, for the rationale outlined above, and given the fact that other alternatives for “blossoms” are less suitable ways by which to disrupt the normal as Heaney has done in this whole passage, “corolles” is an appropriate choice here; and it does unexpectedly reflect the shape and sound of “blossom31”. “Slow water” is another example in this short passage of Heaney disrupting the predictable connection of words: “a slow current” is a term commonly used in English, or “calm water”; “slow water” is a slightly unusual coupling. These lines of Bensimon’s translation resourcefully retain the restrained but raw tone and atmosphere of Heaney’s poem, its register, its degree of unpredictability, all combining to retain its extensive, original metaphoric network. There is no sign of Meschonnic’s tourniquet of “form” and “sense32”: in Bensimon they are indissociable, and balanced.

19 The second translation of “Casualty” Part II to be studied is by Deirdre McKeown-Laigle.

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Victime C’était un jour de silence âpre et froid, De surplis et de soutanes gonflés de vent: Chargés de pluie et de fleurs Cercueil sur cercueil Voguait hors la cathédrale bondée Comme fleurs au fil de l’eau.

20 In this translation of “Casualty”, an ennobling tendency can be detected in the first lines. The “normalising” of the word position, the change of the word order in the first couplet, making a smoother 6 lines of the original 8, loses the originality and slight strangeness created by Heaney. A clear instance of this strangeness is his positioning of “wind-blown” before “surplice and soutane”, which creates a surprise at the disturbance of the usual religious formality associated with these items, especially at a funeral. This surprise is removed by the changed word order of McKeown-Laigle, who creates a more regular and predictable metre in these two lines, and a more predictable, “normal” image of the funeral as a result. This predictable and recognisable metre then is discontinued for the rest of the translated passage, and its partial use distracts the reader, setting up a false expectation of regularity to come. The rhythm of this translation has little in common with the slow, persistent and unusual rhythm of Heaney’s verse. In a short space various “deforming tendencies” as outlined by Berman can be seen, including the destruction of rhythm in terms of the metre; rationalisation in terms of word order and punctuation; and clarification, making apparent what is subtle in the original33. Already these tendencies have interfered with the maintenance of the metaphoric network.

21 The choice of “gonflés de vent”, filled with wind or inflated, further normalises or flattens the strangeness created by Heaney in this movement of robes, as described above. “Chargés de pluie et de fleurs”, “Charged with rain and flowers”, while correct, makes no attempt to consider the significance of the compound adjectives “rained-on, flower-laden”, their visual balance in the line, and their place in the extensive, original metaphoric network created by Heaney. The total abandonment of these compound adjectives completely changes the rhythm, making it much smoother and more “normal”, not slowed down by grief and shock as in Heaney’s poem, nor reflecting the slowness of the funeral procession.

22 In addition, McKeown-Laigle has virtually ignored the simile of coffins that “seemed to float from the door/Of the packed cathedral”, in Bensimon’s own terms “de-figuring34” the poem by omitting it, thus normalising a phrase that in Heaney is the beginning of a highly charged image as already described: in this translation each coffin “Voguait hors la cathédrale bondée”. “Voguait”, drifted or advanced on the water, is a more literary choice than “floated”, designating a higher linguistic register than that of the original, an example of poeticising or ennobling; and “the door” of the cathedral has been omitted. The rich associations with “the door/Of the packed cathedral”, a door being also a surface on which the dead were initially laid in humble households, along with any associations with wooden boat, human vehicle, are lost, omitted entirely in the translation by McKeown-Laigle. The image of “like blossoms on slow water”, “Comme fleurs au fil de l’eau” normalises the slight unexpectedness of Heaney’s original image to an approximation of “like flowers on the current”, a considerably more standard

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phrase. This version also omits the chain of associations implicit in “blossoms”, as detailed earlier. It ignores the fact that Heaney has given this particular image a new and unpredictable strangeness, one that alludes to the slow-moving funeral-goers as “shoaling out of his lane”, and to the “dawdling engine” of the boat to come in the poem, omitting an essential part of the marine network. Here the references to the metaphoric network between Heaney’s poems, such as looking down from a boat, of floating, of being “willable forward35”, of moving from heaviness to lightness, are greatly reduced, to the point at times of non-existence, at least of marked loss of power.

23 In the translation of “Casualty” by Deirdre McKeown-Laigle it is evident that a range of deforming tendencies has intervened in the passage overall. A certain order has been imposed on the poem, and the original qualities of the language have been “rationalised” from 8 lines to 6; the “rough edges” of Heaney are smoothed and “poeticised”, “ennobling” the poem, rendering the whole more recognisable as “poetry”, and thus less recognisable as itself; rhythms have been destroyed, including the alteration or removal of punctuation and re-placement of words, and the “smoothing” of the metre. All of these result in the destruction of significant metaphoric networks, removing important layers of meaning in the text; and all result in homogenisation, unifying in the poem what was originally diverse. Overall, in this translation many of the recognisably “Heaney” qualities of the poem have been removed. In the Bensimon translation they have by contrast been retained.

24 The final translation of “Casualty” Part II to be studied is by Anne Bernard Kearney.

Accident C’était un jour de froid Silence à vif, où le vent Gonflait surplis et soutanes: Chargés de fleurs, ruisselants de pluie, Les cercueils un par un semblaient Sortir en flottant de la porte De la cathédrale bondée, Comme des pétales sur une eau lente.

25 This translation appears immediately to be striving for a smoother and more recognisably “poetic” rhythm than that of the original, a metre more in keeping with a traditional French view of poetry. This smoother effect is largely achieved through the normalising of what Heaney has made strange, by the translator’s elimination of the verbal surprises, the abruptnesses, the de-familiarising of the familiar, all of which intentionally disrupt predictability. These are generally created by Heaney in this passage through word order or word placement on a line.

26 “Silence à vif ”, while retaining the physically acute and intense qualities of “raw”, loses the surprise of the placement of the adjective at the beginning of the line before the word “silence”, achieved in the original poem and also in Bensimon’s version. “Wind- blown/Surplice and soutane” is normalised to “le vent/Gonflait surplis et soutanes”, eliminating the surprising impact created by Heaney’s placement of the subject of “wind-blown” on the new line. This is representative of a general tendency here to normalise the strange, sometimes abrupt and unpredictable qualities of Heaney’s poem, to poeticise: the order of the images “Rained-on, flower-laden” has been reversed to “

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Chargés de fleurs, ruisselants de pluie”, for no apparent purpose it would seem but to “ennoble” the poem through placement of the flowers, a traditionally “poetic” image, in a more prominent position at the start of the line. The choice of “ruisselants de pluie”, “streaming with rain”, appears to be also an ennobling choice for “Rained-on”, a simple description of reality by Heaney, enhanced here by the translator. A further change of word order in the line has again reduced the original force: Heaney’s “Coffin after coffin” on one line increases the impact of the number of coffins (known to be thirteen), as does the repetition; both of these are essential to the subtle gathering force of the metaphoric network; while “semblaient/Sortir en flottant de la porte” reduces the impact of the beginning of this simile, originally appearing strongly on one line, as in Bensimon’s version. “Like blossoms on slow water”, “Comme des pétales sur une eau lente”, does however work towards supporting the metaphoric network established by Heaney: it maintains the slight strangeness of “blossoms”, by avoiding the generalised option of “flowers”; and avoids the standard version of referring to the water’s “current”.

27 Overall however, Heaney’s unique rhythm has been disturbed in this translation of “Casualty”, breaking existing associations and rhythms while creating others: as a result this translation significantly reduces the impact of Heaney’s original images and words, essential to the construction of the recognisable metaphoric network already described. Through the process of poeticising, of subtle ennobling, combined with the general lack of recognition of the importance in Heaney’s poetry of disrupting predictability, homogenisation has occurred. It is interesting to note that Anne Bernard Kearney herself in the introduction to her Heaney translations states that one of the difficulties of translating Heaney into French resides in:

[…] la résistance de cette langue… à rendre avec grâce les images si concrètes, si tactiles de la voix de Heaney, ses sonorités pleines de frictions, de grondements sourds et de douceurs inattendues36.

28 Bernard Kearney makes the presupposition about the nature and function of poetic translation, and thus of poetry, that it is to be rendered “with grace”, a presupposition not shared by Bensimon. From a close examination of a broad range of Heaney’s poetry, including the close reading of “Casualty”, grace is an option for Heaney, not an imperative.

29 It is evident that the French language is indeed resistant to Heaney’s original, innovative language. Bensimon has clearly been aware of and receptive to the varied, subtle poetic properties of Heaney’s text in his translation of the passage from “Casualty”, and as a result has retained the extensive and powerful metaphoric networks created by Heaney. He has used a broader variety of strategies to render Heaney in French, focusing less on the need to “rendre avec grâce” than to maintain the original metaphoric networks, thus avoiding the deforming tendencies encountered elsewhere. In his translation Bensimon has used understated forms of compensation where necessary in order to maintain the delicate balance of Hooker’s mobile, and to achieve an equilibrium reflecting Heaney’s own.

30 The raw intense emotion and tone of “Casualty” is ultimately eased and resolved by the movement towards water, with coffin and boat both serving as vehicles of transcendence. The metaphoric network of the section of the poem studied, especially as symbolised by the coffins seeming to float “Like blossoms on slow water”, reflects

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the references to water and its movement later in the poem. These include references to the mourners following the coffin as “shoaling out of his lane”; references to “the habitual/Slow consolation” of the boat and its engine; and references to the water “purling”, as you “find a rhythm/Working you, slow mile by mile […]”. Ultimately, the movement of water has taken the reader by stages from the complex emotion and politics of death, as represented by the image of “blossoms on slow water”, past “slow consolation” to “I tasted freedom with him”, into one’s “proper haunt”. Further, not only is this metaphoric network of water significant within this poem, “Casualty”; it is also highly significant across a range of Heaney’s poems, from “the deep, still, seeable- down-into water” of the poem “Seeing Things I” to Heaney’s childhood sofa that “achieved flotation” in “A Sofa in the Forties”. It is evident that in Heaney’s poem “Casualty”, and at times in its translation, water can open up a way forward, a way out, of the human and political complexities and unanswered questions of “that bombed offensive place” – to the openness of the end of the poem, including its final line, “Question me again”.

Conclusion

31 In the analysis of this section of “Casualty” it has been demonstrated that these powerful and original metaphoric networks can be maintained in the translation, without damage, at times with considerable resilience and imagination; and alternatively, they can be de-figured, broken or rendered invisible by a range of deforming tendencies. At times the labyrinth and its impassability has been countered by the poet’s, and it can be claimed the translator’s, “imagining some equivalent of the labyrinth and presenting himself and us with a vivid experience of it”, as Heaney claims. Bensimon’s translation has demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of the complex linguistic and figurative aspects of the poem, and also of Heaney’s philosophy and his culture. Bensimon’s translation follows the metaphoric network and significance of water; its flow is not broken.

32 Heaney’s poetry is clearly outside the French poetic tradition; it is firmly planted in his Irish tradition. By not respecting the figurative landscape, and poeticising the language, the translator may tear a poem from its “terreau littéraire natif” and install it “ dans la tradition poétique française”, as highlighted by Bensimon in reference to the translation of a well-known English ballad37. The problem of the French language being resistant to the “Heaney” qualities of the poetry may be a real question for the translator; but the act of ennoblement is not a solution. Paradoxically perhaps, if the poetry is left in its “native literary ground” when translated, with its metaphoric networks intact, then migration across cultural and linguistic boundaries between English and French may be allowed, rather than impeded. In “Casualty”, in two of the three cases studied, the translator’s act of breaking the metaphoric network of water prevents it from flowing across these boundaries.

33 The image of coffins leaving the cathedral “Like blossoms on slow water” is symbolic of Heaney’s ability in this poem to lighten physical and emotional weight and political complexity via water and its floating, liberating qualities. So too may the translation unravel and lighten these weights and complexities, by respecting the metaphoric networks, and avoiding possible “deforming tendencies” that may haul the poem away unnecessarily from its Irish heritage. Heaney himself indicates a way through the

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translation labyrinth via the imagination in another of his poems, suggesting the unexpected power of metaphor to create solutions in poetry, and in its translation: […] whatever is given Can always be reimagined, however four-square, Plank-thick, hull-stupid and out of its time It happens to be38.

NOTES

1. Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”, Field Work, London, Faber and Faber, 1979. 2. Paul Bensimon, “Figure, figuralité, dé-figuration, sur-figuration: aspects de la traduction poétique,” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 12/1, 1999, p. 76. See also George Steiner’s categories of “diminution” and “magnification” in After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 1975, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 422. 3. Antoine Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain, Paris, Le Seuil, 1999, p. 52. Berman outlines no less than thirteen deforming tendencies to be observed in translation; see those of “rationalisation” and “ennoblement” especially. 4. Seamus Heaney, The Redress of Poetry, London, Faber and Faber, 1995, p. 2. 5. Cited by Paul Bensimon, “Ces métaphores vives… La traduction des adjectifs composés métaphoriques,” Palimpsestes 2, 1990, p. 101, in reference to Paul Ricœur, La Métaphore vive, Paris, Le Seuil, 1975. 6. Jean Cohen, “Théorie de la figure”, Communications 16, 1970, p. 14, as cited by Paul Bensimon, “Ces métaphores vives… La traduction des adjectifs composés métaphoriques”, Palimpsestes 2, 1990, p. 88. 7. Jean Cassou as cited by Paul Bensimon, “Présentation”, Palimpsestes 2, 1990, p. 1. 8. For a discussion of re-activated clichés see Isabelle Génin, “Des métaphores pas si mortes. Redynamisation des métaphores figées dans Moby-Dick et ses traductions françaises”, Palimpsestes 13, 2001. 9. Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, The Translation Studies Reader, Lawrence Venuti (ed.), London, Routledge, p. 288. Translated by Venuti from Antoine Berman, “La Traduction comme épreuve de l’étranger”, Texte 4, 1985, p. 67-81. 10. Ibid., p. 289. 11. Ben Belitt, Adam’s Dream: a Preface to Translation, New York, Grove Press, 1978, p. 29. 12. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, London, Routledge, 1995, p. 5. 13. Seamus Heaney, “Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, 1995,” Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, London, Faber and Faber, 1998, p. 466. 14. Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”, Field Work, London, Faber and Faber, 1979. 15. The fisherman was an acquaintance of Heaney (Louis O’Neill), a Northern Catholic who ignored a curfew on the day of the funeral of the thirteen victims of “Bloody Sunday” in 1972, and was destroyed by a bomb set by his own people. 16. According to Richard Kearney, “Heaney has been criticised for refusing to adopt a clear political position, for not nailing his colours to the mast, particularly with regard

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to the ‘national question’ […]. The point is, however, that Heaney is a poet, not a party politician.” Richard Kearney, Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Poetry, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988, p. 102. 17. See Clíona Ní Ríordáin-O’Mahony, “Pour une poétique de la responsabilité: l’œuvre de Seamus Heaney”, Doctorate, Université Lyon 2 Louis-Lumière, 2002, p. 426. Ní Ríordaín claims that the lyricism and intensity of Heaney’s poetry is increased by the tension between his private and public life, producing what she sees as “la phase ultime, l’aboutissement de la poétique de la responsabilité”. 18. Seamus Heaney, “Frontiers of Writing”, The Redress of Poetry, London, Faber and Faber, 1995, pp. 186-203. 19. Seamus Heaney, “The Government of the Tongue”, The Government of the Tongue, London, Faber and Faber, 1988, pp. 91-108. 20. Seamus Heaney, “An Open Letter”, Derry, Field Day Theatre Company, 1983. 21. Seamus Heaney, “The Frontiers of Writing”, The Redress of Poetry, London, Faber and Faber, 1995, p. 202. 22. Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”, end of part 1. 23. Among the last lines of “Casualty”. 24. Helen Vendler, Seamus Heaney, London, Fontana Press, 1999, p. 60. 25. Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”, Field Work, London, Faber and Faber, 1979. 26. While acknowledging the significant debt owed by this study to Paul Bensimon’s article based on the poem “Casualty”, this study will not consider directly the passages referred to in his analysis. See Paul Bensimon, “Traduction des figures de style dans un poème de Seamus Heaney,” Les gens du passage, Christine Pagnoulle (ed.), Liège, Université de Liège, 1992, pp. 103-108. 27. Seamus Heaney, “Victime”, translated by Paul Bensimon, La Poésie Britannique 1970-1984, Études Anglaises, Cahiers et documents no 7, Bernard Brugière (ed.), Paris, Didier Érudition, 1986. 28. Seamus Heaney, “Victime”, translated by Deirdre McKeown-Laigle, Poésies d’Irlande, Denis Rigal (ed.), Marseille, Sud, 1987. 29. Seamus Heaney, “Accident”, translated by Anne Bernard Kearney, Poèmes 1966-1984, traduits par Anne Bernard Kearney et Florence Lafon, Paris, Gallimard, 1988. 30. Joan Fillmore Hooker, T.S. Eliot’s Poems in French Translation: Pierre Leyris and Others, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1983, p. 24. 31. Heaney’s choice of the word “blossoms” here is significant, and has certain connotations. “Flowers” on the coffins are predictable as the formal, generally hot- house flowers laid on coffins, elegant and funereal. “Blossoms” by contrast can be any simple flowers; “blossom” itself appears naturally in spring, symbolising spring, nature, and innocence. There exists also the connotation of “to blossom”, to flourish, adding further weight to Heaney’s extended network. “Petals”, while possessing some of these qualities, are not marked with this broad range of connotations, and tend to be separated from the whole flower. 32. Henri Meschonnic, Poétique du Traduire, Lagrasse, Éditions Verdier, 1999, p. 138. 33. Antoine Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain, Paris, Le Seuil, 1999, Chapter 2.

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34. Paul Bensimon, “Traduction des figures de style dans un poème de Seamus Heaney,” Les gens du passage, Christine Pagnoulle (ed.), Liège, université de Liège, 1992, p. 106. 35. See Seamus Heaney, “The Settle Bed”, Seeing Things, London, Faber and Faber, 1991. In Heaney’s poetry, the image of the boat on occasion moves from the expected immersion in water to its unexpected floating in air, transcending the foreseen. The image of the boat or vehicle can also encompass furniture, as in “The Settle Bed”, and in Heaney’s “A Sofa in the Forties”, The Spirit Level, London, Faber and Faber, 1996. 36. See “Notes de la traductrice”, Seamus Heaney, Poèmes 1966-1984, traduits par Anne Bernard Kearney et Florence Lafon, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 21. 37. Paul Bensimon, “Figure, figuralité, dé-figuration, sur-figuration: aspects de la traduction poétique,” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 12/1, 1999, p. 77. In reference to the translation of Keats’ ballad, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, Bensimon speaks of the translator’s addition of “[…] un marqueur de poéticité, qui contribue à assurer la transmissibilité du poème et sa réception en tant que ‘beau’ poème. Ce marqueur arrache la ballade keatsienne à son terreau littéraire natif et l’installe dans la tradition poétique française, en renvoyant spécialement à l’époque classique”. 38. Seamus Heaney, “The Settle Bed”, Seeing Things, London, Faber and Faber, 1991. Emphasis added.

ABSTRACTS

The translation of poetry between English and French is dependent on the recognition of the centrality of metaphoric networks, not only within a poem but between poems in a poet’s body of work. In order to translate Seamus Heaney as the serious, contemporary Irish poet that he is, it is necessary to have an understanding and appreciation of his philosophy, his culture, his language, and of the metaphoric networks between these levels within his poetry. If for example the metaphor of water can create a way out of an apparent impasse in Heaney’s poetry, so then will this need to be achieved in the translation – the metaphor of water itself migrating across cultural and linguistic boundaries between the two languages.

La traduction de la poésie entre l’anglais et le français dépend de la reconnaissance du rôle capital des réseaux métaphoriques, non seulement dans un poème isolé mais entre les poèmes qui constituent l’œuvre du poète. Afin de traduire Seamus Heaney comme le poète irlandais sérieux et contemporain qu’il est, il faut bien connaître sa philosophie, sa culture, sa langue et les réseaux métaphoriques qui opèrent entre ces niveaux dans sa poésie. Si, par exemple, la métaphore de l’eau peut créer la possibilité de sortir d’une impasse apparente dans la poésie de Heaney, le même phénomène doit se retrouver dans la traduction – la métaphore de l’eau elle- même migrant à travers les frontières culturelles et linguistiques entre les deux langues.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: Heaney Seamus, poésie, linguistique, traduction Keywords: poetry, Heaney Seamus, linguistics, translation

AUTHOR

ELIZABETH PEARCE University of Melbourne

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Beckett, Mahon, Carson et Le Bateau ivre:Rythme, prosodie, interprétation*

Maryvonne Boisseau

1 Grammaire : 1. Ensemble des règles à suivre pour parler et écrire correctement une langue. 2. Ling. étude systématique des éléments constitutifs d’une langue, qui sont réductibles à des règles et relèvent de régularités ; spécialt. Étude des formes et des fonctions. Ensemble des structures et des règles qui permettent de produire tous les énoncés d’une langue et seulement ceux-ci.

2 Prosodie : (empr. au latin, prosodia « accent tonique, quantité de syllabes », pris au grec prosôdia « chant pour accompagner la lyre », « variation dans le niveau de la voix » et « prononciation d’une syllabe accentuée ». Prosôdia est dérivé de prosôdos « ce qu’on chante avec un instrument » et au fig. « ce qui s’accorde avec »)

3 Didact. 1. Caractères quantitatifs (durée…) et mélodiques des sons en tant qu’ils interviennent dans la poésie (surtout à propos du grec et du latin) Voir métrique, versification. les unités de la prosodie sont le mètre et le pied).

4 Rythme : Alternance entre temps fort et temps faible, plein et vide, symétrie et dissymétrie, régularité et irrégularité, une alternance du même et du différent, mêlant indifféremment structure et périodicité1.

5 Ces trois définitions traditionnelles des notions de grammaire, prosodie et rythme, connues, intériorisées par tout lecteur lorsqu’il s’agit d’analyser un texte d’un point de vue linguistique, stylistique ou critique, ont en commun de donner la primauté à la quantité et à la régularité. Elles sont ainsi révélatrices de pratiques d’analyse qui séparent, par habitude et souci pédagogique sans doute, des aspects qui sont pourtant emmêlés dans l’acte d’énonciation, que l’énoncé produit soit considéré comme « poétique » ou comme « ordinaire ». Cependant, prises ensemble, dans leur interaction

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inévitable, elles rassemblent l’écrit (gramma signifie « lettre ») – et donc le « lu » –, le parlé (intensité, timbre, accentuation) – soit aussi l’« entendu » –, le mouvement (balancement, structure et périodicité), – autrement dit le « senti ». Grammaire, prosodie, rythme renvoient ainsi, ensemble, aux caractéristiques externes, objectivables, de l’acte d’énonciation qui serait alors mû par une impulsion rythmique fondamentale transformée en geste expressif, parlé et/ou écrit.

6 C’est cette intuition qui est à l’origine de la formulation de notre hypothèse générale stipulant qu’au fondement de l’énonciation, il y a ce que nous désignons comme une opération de motivation rythmique dont toute l’organisation du discours s’ensuit et dépend. Le terme opération, entendu au sens culiolien d’enchaînement régulé d’opérations prédicatives et énonciatives, implique – c’est désormais bien connu – l’idée de relations et de traces de ces mises en relation, dans le cadre d’une linguistique qui considère qu’un métadiscours « séparateur », commode à bien des égards, la détourne cependant de son objet premier tel que Culioli l’a défini (l’activité de langage à travers les langues naturelles et les textes) et du problème de cette linguistique-là qui est précisément d’« organiser les relations » : J’ai été amené à montrer qu’il n’y avait pas de morphologie sans syntaxe, et pas de syntaxe sans morphologie, pas de syntaxe sans sémantique ni de sémantique sans syntaxe, donc que le problème était d’organiser les relations2.

7 On pourrait « plagier » la formulation et dire qu’il n’y a pas de grammaire sans prosodie, pas de prosodie sans rythme ni de rythme sans prosodie, et que comprendre le rythme comme organisation du discours passe par la saisie des relations entre ces trois éléments. C’est donc le problème de leur interaction qu’une étude contrastive du poème d’Arthur Rimbaud, Le Bateau ivre, et des traductions de Samuel Beckett, Derek Mahon et Ciaran Carson nous permettra d’explorer.

8 Il s’agit en premier lieu de mieux préciser la notion de rythme dans les théories linguistiques puis d’observer comment une configuration récurrente dans le texte original (je + V) est traduite par des auteurs différents suivant l’interprétation propre à chacun des profils rythmiques du poème.

La notion de rythme et les théories linguistiques

9 La Théorie des Opérations Prédicatives et Énonciatives (TOPE) ne s’est que marginalement intéressée à la notion de rythme. Toutefois, aborder le fait linguistique dans sa totalité, comme le suggère la citation ci-dessus, est précisément l’une des raisons qui, dans ce cadre théorique, conduisent à s’interroger sur le caractère éventuellement opératoire de la notion et à s’en préoccuper afin d’en dégager l’importance. Par ailleurs, il serait inexact de dire que cet aspect du langage est totalement absent de l’élaboration théorique : de manière indirecte, la notion affleure à la surface du discours d’A. Culioli dans des textes anciens comme dans des écrits plus récents : C’est que quand nous considérons un énoncé, nous tendons à l’intoner intérieurement, d’où des différences dont nous n’avons pas conscience, à le situer dans des contextes implicites qui entremêlent la plausibilité sémantique (ou pragmatique) et l’acceptabilité grammaticale3. (notre soulignement)

Sur la recherche, deux choses : d’abord j’ai lancé un certain nombre de recherches, sur des langues, dans des domaines où ce n’était pas fait, sur lesquels on ne

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s’interrogeait pas, la syntaxe, la prosodie4… (notre soulignement)

C’était l’époque [celle du structuralisme triomphant] où l’on vous disait : il y a la phonétique, la syntaxe, la sémantique – rien sur la prosodie d’ailleurs… La syntaxe ? en général, après la morphologie il n’y avait plus rien […]5 (notre soulignement)

10 Il y a donc la prosodie. Cependant, la façon dont la prosodie vient presque invariablement s’ajouter à la liste, comme un surplus, comme ce que, dans l’analyse, on oublie souvent, laisse penser que la théorisation du rythme en termes d’opérations est encore à faire, puisqu’elle se cantonne dans le fait prosodique. Culioli n’emploie d’ailleurs pas le mot rythme, il lui substitue justement celui de prosodie ou parfois celui d’intonation sans que soit clairement établie de distinction entre ces deux derniers termes, ou bien encore, en de plus rares occurrences, celui de mouvement6. À ce propos, on pourrait suggérer que la quasi absence de cette notion en tant que telle dans les textes de Culioli vient peut-être du développement, à la même époque, d’une autre théorie du langage, celle d’Henri Meschonnic, et de la nécessité de s’en démarquer puisqu’à l’ancrage, à la fois formel et « réaliste » de l’une (son caractère « scientifique ») s’oppose l’utopie de l’autre (d’une certaine façon sa démesure). Renvoyés du côté de la littérature, les travaux de Meschonnic qui s’appuie, lui aussi, sur une critique du signe, constitueront la seconde référence à l’arrière-plan de notre tentative.

11 Cette entreprise théorique ne s’est jamais présentée comme une linguistique, ni même comme une théorie de la littérature et, en raison de cela, elle reste suspecte aux yeux des linguistes de tout bord comme à ceux des littéraires. Refusant de considérer séparément la littérature (« le poème ») et le langage, elle s’est donnée d’emblée comme une théorie du langage, une théorie inclusive donc, englobant linguistique, littérature et traduction, faisant même de la traduction, ou plus exactement, du « traduire » le paradigme de son éthique. La traduction de la Bible et le statut du rythme dans la Bible sont pour Meschonnic la source même de sa critique. Les résultats n’en sont pas moins généralisables : Mais l’exemple de la Bible, particulier qu’il est et même unique, ne fait que porter à la « dénudation » du procédé, comme disaient les formalistes russes, un fait empirique général, qui est la place du rythme dans une physique du langage7.

12 Nous retenons de cette critique théorique trois éléments : (i) l’idée de continu, qui n’exclut ni le discontinu, ni l’existence de « niveaux » d’analyse du langage. L’enjeu est davantage de donner un statut théorique à l’existence empirique du continu que de nier le discontinu car il y a dans le langage du continu et du discontinu mais ce dernier n’est pas à côté du continu, il est pris dedans ; (ii) l’imbrication du rythme et de la signification constituant ensemble la « signifiance ». Ils ne peuvent en effet être dissociés dans la mesure où le rythme est un principe organisateur ; et (iii) la possibilité que cette entreprise ouvre d’une invention d’une « grammaire du rythme qui rende compte de l’activité de langage que sont les discours, à partir d’autres catégories que celles, traditionnelles, de la langue8 ». Dans la perspective de Meschonnic et Dessons, et la définition large qu’elle suppose, le rythme, loin d’être une notion formaliste, opère la synthèse de ce qui est en jeu dans l’acte d’énonciation : On a parfois assimilé les études de rythme (dans leur réception, comme dans leur émission) à un ensemble d’opérations purement formelles, une sorte d’arithmétique accentuelle sans rapport avec la signification des textes. Or, s’il est légitime de qualifier le rythme de « formel », dans la mesure où, organisant les discours, il leur donne littéralement forme, le rythme n’est pas formaliste, au sens

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où il n’est pas une forme vide, un ensemble schématique qu’il s’agirait de montrer ou non, selon l’humeur. Le rythme en est l’élément fondamental, puisqu’il n’est rythme que d’opérer la synthèse de la syntaxe, de la prosodie et des divers mouvements énonciatifs de ce texte.

13 On lira ici, dans la reprise d’un certain vocabulaire et dans sa négation même (« le rythme n’est pas une forme vide, un ensemble schématique ») une critique à peine voilée de la perspective culiolienne, ou plutôt de ce qui a été, et peut-être demeure, un objectif, à savoir, entre autres choses, la formalisation du langage et la réduction de configurations « prosodico-syntactico-sémantico-pragmatiques9 » à des formes schématiques. Dans la mesure où toute théorie construit sa propre cohérence, on pourrait objecter le risque d’amalgame et la difficulté de s’accommoder de la différence de point de vue que ces deux constructions théoriques manifestent. À vrai dire, c’est l’exploration elle-même qui permettra de répondre à cette objection et, si l’on se réfère à Benveniste, l’idée du rythme comme principe organisateur de tout ce qui est mouvement ne saurait être étrangère à une théorisation de l’énonciation. S’y manifeste, en effet, une activité énonciative qui est celle d’un énonciateur- coénonciateur (selon Culioli), ou celle d’un sujet (selon Benveniste et Meschonnic)10 : dans, et à travers l’acte d’énonciation, se construit une subjectivité qui n’est que mouvement et rythme.

14 La notion de rythme, dans son rapport au langage, est donc double puisqu’elle renvoie d’un côté à un concept épistémologique (« l’organisation du mouvant »), de l’autre à un « marquage » qui est l’inscription d’un sujet-énonciateur dans son discours : Il importe […] de noter que le rythme, comme notion propre à l’épistémologie des « sciences » du langage, et irréductible au modèle du signe, et le rythme comme marquage des moments, des temps forts du discours, sont distincts. Cependant, le dernier point de vue n’est que l’épreuve et la vérification du premier : tous deux ensemble sont une seule et même écoute du langage. Sans quoi la notation du rythme retomberait dans la notion traditionnelle, formelle, et l’entreprise tout entière en redeviendrait dénuée de sens.

15 Très concrètement, s’approprier le rythme d’un texte, s’y glisser, mais surtout l’analyser revient à interpréter ses marques, à différents niveaux. Pour le texte poétique, il s’agira notamment de retrouver ce que la tradition a déjà répertorié, métrique, rimes et autres principes de versification, prosodie, accents et intonation afin de saisir le mouvement énonciatif et l’opération rythmique dont ils sont la trace.

Considérations pratiques

16 Il apparaît d’ores et déjà que l’un des premiers problèmes est, sinon de renouveler la notation du rythme, de s’appuyer sur une notation homogène et cohérente pour que la seule description des marques des « temps forts du discours » ne soit plus une fin en elle-même mais qu’au contraire, ces marques soient bien la trace liant l’énoncé à l’énonciation, autrement dit aux opérations de construction de l’énoncé rythmé. Il importe que cette notation ne soit pas seulement un codage mais devienne une clé pour reconstruire les relations produisant la signifiance du discours. Dans le domaine français, nous retiendrons la proposition de Dessons et Meschonnic (Traité du rythme, 1998) et, pour l’anglais, celle de Derek Attridge (Poetic Rhythm, 1998). Ce dernier sépare poésie et prose et, progressivement, passe d’une notation accentuelle modulée à la mise

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en place d’une représentation de ce qu’il appelle phrasing, le phrasé, qui intègre la syntaxe et la signification :

In our discussion of English verse forms in the foregoing chapters, we have frequently noticed the important part played by syntax and meaning in the movement of poetry. […] We call this dimension of the movement of poetry phrasing, a word which refers both to syntax and to meaning, and which in its form (“phrasing” rather than “phrases”) indicates the dynamic nature of the phenomenon it refers to. […] A poem’s phrasing is an important part of its varying sense of pace and onward impetus, and of its different degrees and types of pause and closure. Like meter and rhythm, phrasing is not something we add to language but something that is already part of what we know and do when we speak and understand a language11.

17 On voit bien que les concepts ne se superposent pas exactement d’une langue à l’autre puisque pour Attridge, rhythm est différent de phrasing alors que pour Meschonnic et Dessons, la notion de rythme comprend le phrasé : il est ce que le sujet fait lorsqu’il parle. L’approche d’Attridge réhabilite les rythmes de la langue parlée (“Poems are made of spoken language”) ; elle est descriptive, pratique et technique :

Rhythm is a patterning of energy simultaneously produced and perceived; a series of alternations of build up and release, movement and counter-movement, tending towards regularity but complicated by constant variations and local inflections.

18 Toutefois, en dépit de ces différences, ces deux approches empiriques se rejoignent dans l’idée d’une « physique du langage » et constituent, à ce tout premier stade de notre investigation, des mises en ordre et des repères concernant notamment la terminologie, les problèmes de scansion et la notation.

19 Replaçant tout cela dans le cadre d’une linguistique contrastive, résumant ce qui précède et anticipant sur les problèmes que posera la comparaison d’un original et de ses traductions, nous pouvons suggérer : • que le rythme est en premier lieu une expérience, celle d’une énergie énonciative qui fait de l’énonciation même un mouvement continu, • qu’il se réalise dans la langue tout en construisant par la synthèse de la prosodie et de la syntaxe une signification du discours qu’il impulse, • que lors du passage d’un système linguistique à l’autre, la question se pose de savoir si l’énonciation traductive intègre, plus ou moins consciemment, des phénomènes d’ordre rythmique récurrents, des rhythmic patterns ou configurations rythmiques, qui appartiendraient à ce que Jacqueline Guillemin-Flescher appelle « l’organisation collective du discours ». Elle-même invite à intégrer cette notion de rythme dans la réflexion théorique sur les processus de traduction lorsqu’elle écrit : Je proposerais comme hypothèse que plus la qualité rythmique d’un texte est marquée plus on pourra aller loin dans le respect de l’original. Ce n’est pas un hasard si la Bible et Shakespeare sont souvent évoqués dans la théorie de la traduction car ils constituent en cela des exemples privilégiés12.

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20 Cette hypothèse ne semble pas avoir été par la suite examinée dans toutes ses implications. Elle n’est pas sans poser de nombreuses questions d’ordre théorique qui débordent le propos de cet article mais elle précise l’enjeu de cette tentative qui est de donner forme à « la qualité de la quantité » ce qui, sans doute, ne se révèle pleinement que dans le contraste des langues.

Profils rythmiques du Bateau ivre

21 Le profil rythmique du poème de Rimbaud, en tant que poème-texte, se caractérise par la rencontre, sinon le conflit, entre ce que Meschonnic appellerait du « continu sémiotique » (expression qui renvoie au régime des signes, la forme et le contenu constituant une polarité sémiotique) et le « continu comme rythme » (expression qui renvoie à l’idée du « corps dans le langage », c’est-à-dire à l’activité de langage faite d’affect, de geste, de mouvement, de parole)13. Cette rencontre est celle de la langue et du discours : de cette rencontre naît le rythme comme organisation du sens.

22 À l’évidence, la longueur du poème (vingt-cinq strophes) est le premier de ses traits marquants. S’y ajoutent la régularité des strophes (quatrains rimés abab) et l’unité métrique, qui est encore l’alexandrin. Ces trois caractéristiques prises ensemble se conjuguent pour suggérer, créer même, un mouvement. La lecture à haute voix confirme ce que l’œil a aperçu : de strophe en strophe, le discours gagne à la fois en vitesse et en intensité par un effet d’entraînement difficile à stopper et pourtant, empêché : l’énonciateur-lecteur, une fois embarqué, bute à partir de la huitième strophe sur la récurrence d’un schéma prédicatif centré sur la première personne pronominale, double repère (prédicatif et constitutif) d’une relation cruciale au cœur du poème. C’est un peu comme si le lecteur était entraîné dans un mouvement giratoire violent, s’amplifiant jusqu’à atteindre un paroxysme (à la strophe 14) pour retomber dans une accalmie, avant de reprendre de l’énergie jusqu’à la vingt et unième strophe dont le dernier vers (« Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets ») annonce la dépression des quatre dernières. Ce mouvement contraire, comme empêché, est clairement manifesté par une dé-régularisation de l’alexandrin : la césure est généralement à l’hémistiche dans les premières strophes (« Comme je descendais des fleuves impassibles » [1], « J’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages » [2]) mais elle est décalée vers le début du vers ou bien vers la fin, à partir de la récurrence du schéma « NP + GV/Je… » qui, si elle s’inscrivait dans un rythme immuable, perdrait la force que lui donne un rythme déstabilisé, et par conséquent surprenant (« Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes/Et les ressacs et les courants […] » [8]/« J’ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries/Hystériques, la houle à l’assaut des récifs » [11]/« Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. » [23]). Et, presque à chaque fois, le rythme de l’alexandrin ainsi déstabilisé, requiert un enjambement pour récupérer le continu du discours.

23 Ce profil est interprété différemment par les trois traducteurs, ce que l’aspect visuel de chaque traduction manifeste. Celle de Beckett (1976) conserve le même nombre de strophes, reproduit, imite et se caractérise par la régularité, le calque et une homogénéisation qui réduisent la part de désorientation inhérente au rythme de l’original. L’impétuosité est comme atténuée. La seconde, chronologiquement, celle de Derek Mahon (1985), frappe par sa régularité mais surtout par sa condensation. Tout ce qui contribue à la perte de repères est effacé : elle ne compte que douze strophes au

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lieu de vingt-cinq et, sémantiquement, s’en tient au minimum, à savoir ce qui dans l’original se ramène à l’idée d’une vie en poésie. L’accumulation des visions est élaguée. La dernière, celle de Ciaran Carson (1993), garde le même nombre de strophes mais travaille le mouvement, à l’oreille et visuellement. Carson choisit un vers long, souple, favorisant la variation et, surtout, la continuation d’un vers à l’autre par l’enjambement. Le second vers est plus court, et le schéma est répété pour les deux derniers vers de chaque quatrain, ce qui réintroduit la régularité d’ensemble. L’absence délibérée de la régularité de l’alexandrin est donc ici interprétée et transposée dans un autre schéma métrique qui fait la part belle à l’enjambement que nous retiendrons comme étant ici le procédé technique le plus récurrent pour traduire le « continu » du rythme. Carson s’écarte du pentamètre iambique classique pour faire correspondre à l’alexandrin « moderne » (ou « fin d’époque ») de Rimbaud, un vers dont le rythme est plus proche de celui de la ballade, faisant rimer le second et le quatrième vers.

24 Les différences marquées entre ces trois réalisations par la traduction du profil apparent du poème pourraient amener à porter un jugement critique en faveur de la traduction de Carson, plus inventive, dans sa forme, que celle de Beckett, plus respectueuse de la totalité du poème que celle de Mahon. Or, la traduction de Mahon fait apparaître un autre profil rythmique sous-jacent, une sorte de matrice à partir de laquelle la double notion d’ivresse et de désenchantement s’est développée : le bateau est entraîné dans l’ivresse d’une navigation libre par la violence d’une rupture ratifiée par des sacrifices humains (première strophe) et rendu à sa petitesse lorsqu’il se métamorphose en frêle bateau de papier fabriqué par un enfant (vingt-quatrième strophe).

La construction du « je »

25 Le jeu induit par le glissement d’un profil rythmique chaotique à ce profil essentiel, au sens où il renvoie au poème dans le poème, est à l’origine d’une tension qui invite à reconsidérer l’identification simple, presque trop évidente du poète et du bateau : je est le bateau ivre est le poète… Le bateau est aussi, et tout autant, dans une relation de différenciation avec le poète. C’est un objet, un petit jouet, et l’accès pérenne de l’enfant-poète14 à la voyance, dont pourtant il jouit un moment, est démenti par l’image – sinon la présence – rémanente de l’enfant-enfant rendu au monde triste qu’il n’ose pas, ou ne peut, quitter encore. Ce sont bien là deux rythmes qui entrent en conflit l’un avec l’autre jusqu’à rendre la poésie à venir impossible parce qu’un « je », qui ne serait pas seulement « un autre » mais aussi « soi-même », échoue à se construire.

26 Cette irrésolution d’un je pourtant omniprésent est construite dans le rythme même de ses occurrences, prosodiquement et syntaxiquement, ainsi que dans les mouvements énonciatifs, contradictoires ou non, du texte. L’enjeu est alors de donner de la force à la forme inaccentuée du pronom personnel je pour qu’apparaissent les deux faces irréconciliables de son référent.

27 Si la récurrence du pronom est un élément non négligeable dans la perception de cet élan qui pousse un sujet « je » à se manifester, ce n’est cependant pas tant le nombre d’occurrences qui compte15 que leur distribution dans le poème tout entier et dans les vers où ils se trouvent. D’un point de vue syntaxique, la structure dans laquelle s’insère le pronom ne présente rien de particulier. Le pronom est à la fois sujet grammatical, repère et repère constitutif de la relation prédicative et énonciative et, dans la

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première partie du poème (strophes 1 à 8), tout comme dans les deux dernières strophes (24 et 25), le pronom je, garde son caractère atone, au sens phonétique d’inaccentué. Il est aussi « atonique » : le sujet qui s’énonce dans ces deux parties inégales ne s’affirme pas comme un sujet « agent » ou « acteur » du monde mais comme un sujet sans volonté propre et, à la toute fin du poème, comme un sujet résigné. En attestent les verbes de perception (« Je ne me sentis plus guidé », vers 2, strophe 1), les prédications de propriétés (« j’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages », vers 1, strophe 2), la forme pronominale (« Je me suis baigné dans le Poème/De la Mer », vers 1 et 2, strophe 6), la forme hypothétique de « Si je désire une eau d’Europe… » (vers 1, strophe 24) et la forme négative (« Je ne puis plus… ») de la dernière strophe du poème. Emporté donc par le rythme euphorique d’une navigation au gré des fleuves et de la mer, il se déprend de tout lien et s’abandonne à l’ivresse du « Poème de la mer » (strophe 6) – avant de basculer dans l’expérience de la voyance (toute la partie médiane du poème) – pour enfin revenir à la réalité. Les deux dernières strophes expriment le désenchantement, la dés-illusion, et la nostalgie de l’enfance.

28 C’est donc l’expérience de la voyance qui transforme un « je » à la dérive en un sujet halluciné qui s’affirme dans la longue partie médiane du poème (strophe 9 à 22). C’est là que s’opère le passage de la forme atone du pronom à son expression accentuée. Le son [ʒ] devient un phonème accentué lorsqu’il se combine avec le son vocalique [e]. Ce glissement de [ʒə] à [ʒe] est amorcé et réalisé dans la strophe 8 : « je sais » ([ʒəse]) est répété deux fois (vers 1 et 2) et se transforme en « j’ai vu » ([ʒevʏ]) au début du dernier vers : « Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir ! » Vision, expérience et connaissance donnent consistance au sujet. Celui qui dit « je » n’existe plus que dans la force de ce rythme d’attaque au début de chacune des cinq strophes suivantes (« J’ai vu », « J’ai rêvé », « J’ai suivi », « J’ai heurté », « J’ai vu »), rythme qui fait la synthèse d’une position de sujet grammatical, d’une position stratégique en début de vers et de strophe, et de la forme verbale aspectuelle de l’accompli. Ce « je » devient ensuite « moi », la forme véritablement accentuée du pronom sujet mais en se dédoublant de « je » à « moi », il ne rencontrera que lui-même, sans jamais trouver l’autre, ce « tu » qui ferait de lui un être engagé dans le langage du poème. Le seul « tu » évoqué est encore son double qui lui échappe de toute façon : « – Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles,/Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ? » (vers 3, strophe 22).

29 Au-delà de l’évidente traduction du pronom je par le pronom I, est-il possible de retrouver dans les trois traductions examinées ici ce jeu prosodique qui met en lumière le double dédoublement d’un sujet d’abord pris par le poème, puis voyant, puis critique ?

30 Suivant l’interprétation par chaque traducteur du profil rythmique du poème tout entier, chacune des traductions construit un sujet inscrit dans ce même rythme. La traduction de Beckett frappe par une quasi conformité à l’original mais également par une utilisation de la langue anglaise qui ne réserve aucune surprise : des déplacements du syntagme verbal (sujet + verbe) sont opérés dans les premières strophes pour retrouver une sorte de logique prédicative propre à l’anglais comme, par exemple, dans la troisième strophe :

Dans les clapotements furieux des marées, Blanker than the brain of a child I fled

Moi, l’autre hiver, plus sourd que les cerveaux Through winter, I scoured the furious jolts of the d’enfants, tides

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Je courus ! Et les péninsules démarrées In an uproar and a chaos of Peninsulas,

N’ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants. Exultant, from their moorings in triumph torn.

31 L’inversion des deux premiers vers rétablit une chronologie qui annule l’effet de précipitation et d’exaltation de l’original même si la position de I fled en fin de vers signale une mise en relief comparable à la position de Je courus au début du troisième vers. De même l’ajout d’une autre prédication permettant la répétition du pronom I a sans doute pour effet de compenser l’absence en anglais de deux formes de pronom sujet, la forme moi assurant en français sans redondance la prééminence du sujet je dans cette strophe. Dans cette même strophe, Mahon efface les pronoms pour évoquer le sujet au moyen d’une métonymie : « my heart rose to a tidal detonation » (vers 2) tandis que Carson révèle l’enjeu poétique de l’expérience à venir, qui n’est autre que la maîtrise du langage, en introduisant une série d’assonances et d’allitérations sur des verbes dont le choix relève d’une interprétation totalement libre :

Through the tug and zip of tides, more brain-deaf than an embryo, I bobbled ; Peninsulas, unmoored and islanded, were envious of my Babel-babble.

32 Il n’y a donc pas ici de jeu prosodique sur le pronom lui-même qui garde sa forme inaccentuée puisque c’est la forme verbale, et le nom, qui reçoivent l’accent sur la première syllabe.

33 Si les traductions sont, pour cette strophe, très différentes l’une de l’autre, ce n’est pas le cas dans la traduction de la forme pronominale (« je me suis baigné dans le Poème/ de la Mer », strophe 6) pour laquelle les trois traducteurs adoptent, naturellement, une forme passive (participe passé ou diathèse passive) :

Thenceforward, fused in the poem…/I coiled (Beckett) And then, I was submerged in a sea-poem (Mahon) I’ve been immersed, since then, in Sea Poetry (Carson)

34 Plus que de traduction, c’est de transposition qu’il s’agit, au sens de Jakobson, dans un rythme lié d’une part à l’opération de prédication qui privilégie le verbe et d’autre part au choix énonciatif d’un discours de type narratif qui raconte plus qu’il ne voit. Là encore, c’est le verbe qui est prosodiquement mis en lumière.

35 La détermination verbale indique alors le mode de relation entre le sujet et le prédicat et a donc une incidence sur le degré d’accentuation du pronom I. Dans la partie médiane du poème, celle où en français le sujet s’accomplit comme « voyant », Beckett conserve, comme on peut s’y attendre, la forme auxiliée de l’accompli sans contracter l’auxiliaire, ce qui ne neutralise le pronom qu’à demi : ce qui est perçu l’est par rapport à ce point de vue (« I have seen », « I have dreamt », « I have followed », « I have fouled », « I have seen » à l’initiale du premier vers des strophes 9 à 13). En revanche, dans la traduction élaguée de Mahon, le sujet I est l’origine d’une perception qui ressortit, dans la logique narrative de Mahon, à un événement (« I saw », « I dreamed », « I heard », à l’initiale des strophes 7, 9 et 10). Lorsque cette perception est celle d’une F0 origine active, le sujet grammatical I est omis (C6 watched). Plus que le sujet lui-même, c’est bien l’événement qui compte de telle sorte qu’il impose son rythme au sujet. De

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façon plus complexe, Carson joue sur le registre d’une narration orale et alterne la forme aspectuelle de l’accompli, en utilisant la forme contractée de l’oral, et la forme simple du passé renvoyant à une occurrence d’événement : « I’ve known », « I’ve seen », strophes 8 et 9, mais « I dreamed », « I followed », « I bumped », « I saw », strophes 10 à 13, et de nouveau « I’ve drifted off », « I’ve whinged », strophes 21 et 23. Ce relevé non exhaustif montre les variations rythmiques possibles internes à la traduction selon la perception et l’interprétation par le traducteur du rôle tenu par le sujet et de sa relation avec le prédicat. Il est clair que le rythme des configurations verbales I have seen, I’ve seen, et I saw n’est pas le même mais il est difficile, en dépit de cette différence, de mesurer le degré d’accentuation du pronom, degré qui dépend aussi d’autres éléments du contexte et de la lecture que chaque lecteur en fait.

36 L’ambivalence chez Beckett est sans doute la marque d’une volonté de traduire l’original au plus près. La simplification chez Mahon est peut-être, paradoxalement, la trace d’une identification au poète-énonciateur. Chez Carson enfin, l’alternance des formes simples et des formes auxiliées contractées relève d’une recherche de connivence et de familiarité ; elle construit le sujet I dans le rythme de l’oral et d’une coénonciation plus affirmée. Elle risque l’accentuation là où les autres ne s’écartent pas de l’ordinaire de la langue, comme dans la juxtaposition des pronoms me et I : « Me, I shivered: fifty leagues away, I heard the bumbling/Behemoths and Scarabs » (strophe 21)16. Tous cependant reviennent à une présence défaite du sujet dans les deux dernières strophes, en conformité avec l’original.

37 L’impact rythmique du pronom personnel, qui n’est donc normalement pas accentué, mais que l’on peut promouvoir au statut de phonème accentué dans certaines conditions, est ainsi déterminant dans la construction de la signifiance du poème et détermine plus ou moins consciemment la lecture qu’on en fait. La façon dont la traduction rend compte de cet impact influe à son tour sur la compréhension du poème par un lecteur étranger mais l’évidence d’une correspondance terme à terme entre le pronom français je et l’anglais I en masque la portée. Les traductions mettent surtout en évidence la singularité de la lecture et de l’interprétation. En effet, les ruptures dans la construction de ce sujet apparaissent moins dramatiques, et donc moins visibles, dans les traductions que dans l’original car on n’y observe pas ce passage d’une forme atone à une forme plus accentuée lorsque s’opère la mutation du poète en voyant, condition nécessaire pour rester Poète, inspiré et critique, pour devenir « le suprême Savant » : « Car il arrive à l’inconnu ! Puisqu’il a cultivé son âme plus qu’aucun ! Il arrive à l’inconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre l’intelligence de ses visions, il les a vues17 ! » À partir de l’interprétation différente du profil rythmique du poème, chaque traducteur a développé une dimension rythmique propre qui n’est plus le rythme de Rimbaud. La traduction de Beckett, la plus proche de l’original, montre l’impossibilité d’une traduction du rythme car l’anglais ne trouve pas son rythme. Celle de Mahon ne rend pas le conflit interne au sujet qui s’énonce ni les souffrances qui accompagnent l’expérience de la voyance. Enfin, le travail de Carson sur le mètre, les marqueurs du rythme que sont l’enjambement, les allitérations et assonances, et la forme du poème laisse penser que des correspondances ne sont pas impossibles d’une langue à l’autre.

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NOTES

1. Adapté du Dictionnaire culturel en langue française, sous la direction d’Alain Rey, Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2005. 2. Antoine Culioli et Claudine Normand, Onze rencontres sur le langage et les langues, Paris/Gap, Ophrys, 2005, p. 56. 3. Antoine Culioli, « La linguistique : de l’empirique au formel » [1987], Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation. Opérations et représentations, t. 1, Gap, Ophrys, 1990, p. 9-46 (17). 4. Culioli/Normand, op. cit., p. 53. 5. Ibid., p. 57. 6. Ce qui s’accorde d’ailleurs avec l’idée d’ajustement et de déformabilité des représentations linguistiques (voir sur ce point Antoine Culioli, Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, t. 2, Paris/Gap, Ophrys, 1999, p. 45). 7. Henri Meschonnic, « Rythme et langage », Dictionnaire Culturel en Langue Française, sous la direction d’Alain Rey, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2005, p. 465-469 (466). 8. Gérard Dessons et Henri Meschonnic, Traité du rythme, des vers et des proses, Paris, Dunod, 1998, p. 7 et, pour les deux citations suivantes, op. cit., p. 6 et p. 74-75. 9. Voir Culioli/Normand, op. cit., p. 95. 10. Il serait cependant imprudent de superposer et d’assimiler trop vite les concepts d’énonciateur-coénonciateur et de sujet qui correspondent à deux façons d’envisager la subjectivité à l’œuvre dans le langage. Par commodité, nous parlerons de sujet- énonciateur. 11. Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm. An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, [1995] 1998, p. 182, et p. 3 pour les deux citations suivantes. 12. Jacqueline Guillemin-Flescher, « Un linguiste devant la traduction », Fabula, n° 7, Traduire, Lille, Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1986, p. 59-68 (66). 13. Voir Henri Meschonnic, « La Force dans le langage », Chiss, J.-L. et Dessons, G., La Force du langage. Rythme, Discours, Traduction. Autour de l’œuvre d’Henri Meschonnic, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2006, p. 16. 14. On se souvient que Rimbaud n’a que 17 ans lorsqu’il écrit Le Bateau ivre au cours de l’été 1871. 15. Vingt-quatre occurrences du pronom je, six occurrences du pronom moi dont une seulement en position complément, et dix occurrences de mon, me, et mes. 16. « Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues/Le rut des Béhémots et les Maelstroms épais ». 17. Rimbaud, Poésies complètes, 1870-1872, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, LGF, 1998, p. 151.

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INDEX

Keywords : poetry - prosody, Carson Ciaran, Rimbaud Arthur, Mahon Derek, translation, Franco- Irish relations Mots-clés : poésie - prosodie, Carson Ciaran, Rimbaud Arthur, relations franco-irlandaises, traduction, Mahon Derek

AUTEUR

MARYVONNE BOISSEAU Université de Strasbourg

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“Through My Dream”: Trevor Joyce’s Translations

John Goodby

1 Translation is a condition of being for anglophone Irish poetry; for over two hundred years Irish poets have been drawn to translation, both internal and external; internally, from the Irish language, in the attempt to establish a relationship with the broken past; externally, from other languages, in order to circumvent English hegemony and a marginal geographical location. But while there is a wide range in the motives (and linguistic abilities) behind translation, most poets translate in the manner of their own original work, which is that of most Irish poetry: namely, in the voice of a singular, coherent lyric “I”, empirically grounded, expressing itself in language which is largely transparent. Stylistic liberties may be taken by this self, but its integrity is never in doubt. Translation studies calls this “naturalised” or “domesticated” translation; the source text is recreated in the target language so that it reads as if it had been written by a native speaker, and with a fluency which elides its translated status1. As against this, however, there is the “literal” or “foreignizing” approach to translation, which foregrounds the otherness of the source text by, for example, carrying non-idiomatic syntactical structures and lexis across into the target language2.

2 This kind of translation is far rarer, and is associated with avant-garde poetry, which was until recently largely marginalised by mainstream poetic discourse. Nevertheless, the “foreignizing” mode is the one in which Irish poetry translation has had some of its most distinctive successes, including as it does Brian Coffey’s inventive rendering of Mallarmé’s « Un Coup de dés n’abolira jamais le hasard/Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance » (1965) and the work of the greatest translator of the nineteenth century, James Clarence Mangan (who invented the “originals” of some of his “translations”). As David Lloyd has argued, Mangan’s translations are “proto-Modernist”, and translation, given a keener edge by the translated Irish condition, is one reason for the strength of Irish Modernism. Translation is central to Modernist poetics more generally, of course3. For Ezra Pound, its chief practitioner, it was not so much a vehicle for personal expression as a way of constructing a transcultural, timeless “tradition”; and, insofar as

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this was Pound’s chief aim as a writer, it was an integral part of his own poetic practice, haunting all his “original” work.

3 Pound’s example informs the translations of the 1930s Irish Modernist poets, one of whom, Samuel Beckett, has been, with Mangan, a major influence on the leading contemporary Irish neo-modernist poet, Trevor Joyce, whose poetic evolution has also been complexly bound up with translation activity4. In what follows I will discuss the role of translation in Joyce’s work, drawing on the distinction between “domesticating” and “foreignising” forms. I begin with his version of the Middle Irish Buile Suibhne/The Songs of Sweeny Peregrine: A Working of the Corrupt Irish text (1976), which I see as a source for his mature practice as a poet. This is first apparent in his collection stone floods (1995), which uses translated Irish, Chinese, and Japanese material. I will then examine Joyce’s use of translated folk materials in Trem Neul/Across Your Dream (1999), and his return to Irish translation in What’s in Store (2007) and Courts of Air and Earth (2008), as well as Central European folk-song in the first of these. Finally I discuss the unpublished work Rome’s Wreck (written 2009), in which Joyce translates from one form of English into another.

Buile Suibhne/The Songs of Sweeny Peregrine

4 Joyce’s own earliest poems, collected in Pentahedron (1972), are dense lyrics owing something to a reading of Trakl and Vallejo, and perhaps to unpublished early translations of Celan; they are set in an inner-city Dublin of constraining walls, river, hoardings, monuments, a milieu replete with death and decay, and articulate an anxiety concerning the ability of language to represent external reality so profound that it became a dead-end. In an essay of 1997, Joyce partly explained his writer’s block and publication hiatus (which also had to do with personal circumstances and a climate hostile to experiment) by pointing out the similarities between his early poems and mainstream Irish “poetry of expression”. This poetry, he argued, suffered from the problems of “representing” the “reality” of twentieth century history, one exacerbated in modern times by the electronic media overload of images of suffering which demanded an “outraged response, but le[ft] that response… without possibility of external effect”. Mainstream poetry tended to reflect this anguished yet passive relationship, able to respond only by guiltily nudging its familiar images of beauty towards “the bulk dead”. It was therefore condemned merely to “[state] forcibly the horror of its own privileged futility”, to risk arrogating suffering to the individual lyric ego, while offering only an archaic beauty as compensation. Thus, to believe that “language and poetic form are ideally neutral vessels into which the poetic sense may be poured, shuttles to bear towards the reader the burden of an already formed meaning” was to reject invention and resistance, and succumb to the dominant discourses of the corporate, government and military spheres5. The difficulty of overcoming the impasse created by these dilemmas may be gauged from the twenty- three year gap between Pentahedron and stone floods.

5 However, Sweeny Peregrine, the composition of which overlapped with that of the lyrics of Pentahedron, shows Joyce discovering poetic strategies which were to eventually him lead out of this dead-end. The Buile Suibhne describes the fate of Sweeny, king of Dal Ariadha; insulting Saint Ronan, he is cursed and becomes a gealt, or bird-man, living in woods and wild places, unable to re-establish social or familial bonds, until he is finally

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killed by a swineherd. The work, in prose interspersed with lyrics, contains several dramatic episodes, although much of its appeal lies in its evocation of the harsh yet beautiful natural world in which Sweeny is forced to subsist. Joyce’s version can be usefully contrasted with Seamus Heaney’s better-known Sweeney Astray (1983), in order to explain its significance for his later work. First, unlike Heaney, Joyce eschews many of the opportunities the original affords for drama. Second, whereas Heaney views Sweeny romantically, as “a figure of the artist, displaced, guilty, assuaging himself by his utterance”, Joyce manages to distance Sweeny’s sufferings6. Joyce’s subtitle, “A Working of the Corrupt Irish Text” indicates the manner in which he does so; namely, by foregrounding the provisionality of his version, and highlighting the irresolveable cruxes, gaps, and interpolations of the original. Joyce treats these as a kind of proto- modernist disjunctiveness, expressive in a manner beyond that of an individual subjectivity – “[the lacunae] have at least the virtue of reinforcing the sense of Sweeny’s stress and distress”, he notes. Some verse from the original becomes prose in Joyce’s version, while some prose mutates to verse. More, in his most radical break with the original, he heightens this quality by separating the prose and Sweeny’s lyrics into two sections, one of prose narrative the second a suite of twenty-two lyrics, dropping some material in the original entirely. The main effect is to make the verse a first- person lament by Sweeny, while the prose purports to be an external and objective account.

6 Following one of Joyce’s favourite authors of the time, Flann O’Brien (whose version of the Buile Suibhne appears in At Swim-Two-Birds), the prose section problematises the narrative in postmodern fashion; for example, Sweeny tells the Man of the Woods his life story, up to and including his own death, “as it is set down hereinafter” – that is, Sweeny foresees and narrates his own fate to a character who is just about to die7. Who, then. is telling the tale we are reading? Even more disorienting is the retrospective moment, at the end of the prose section, when we learn that “it is uncertain” how far the tale’s scribe, Moling, might have “emend[ed] [this] strange and confused history, and how far later “editors and critics [may] have conspired with him”, asking “May we, then, conclude just this: that, after all, we have not here these words which Sweeny, between flight and fall, spoke to the Man of the Wood?” (fd, 16) The resultant narrative seems to exist in a limbo between some originary, pure ur-text, and this denial. Joyce’s lyrics convey Sweeny’s pain and the starkly beautiful landscape as effectively as Heaney does: IX In summertime the blue-grey herons stand rigid above sharp waters. In wintertime the wolfpacks thread the snow-glens with their spoor, and with their moaning they thread the long wind. I hear their snow-blurred howling as I cross the iron lakes and crack the frost from my beard. (fd, 25)

7 But while they are clearly in Sweeny’s voice, coming after the prose they also concentrate the work’s disjunctive effects: “the life God gave/seems somehow dislocated” (fd, 17), as the first poem notes. Since we are told that this is a re-telling of material already worked over, of twice-told, uncertain status, Sweeny’s voice is never grounded in any romantic, lyric way8. The language is often ironically at odds with

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Sweeny’s madness, and he traverses a mutable landscape, in which place names do not signal understanding or belonging, but alienation and loss. Although we relish its beauty, landscape is not presented as compensation for Sweeny’s plight, as in Heaney; indeed, it intensifies it. The environment penetrates Sweeny, and he is taken over by, rather than undertaking, his exile, “lacerat[ed]”, “lanc[ed]”, becoming “a cave of pain” (fd, 22, 31). His plight resembles that of the passive lyric “I” of Pentahedron, which can neither express its selfhood or map the object world adequately in language. However, the form of the translation, with its persona, destabilised and double narrative, and emphasis on emendation, distances the guilt attached to poetry’s aestheticising aspect9. Moreover, the bicameral structure was one Joyce would use again to similar effect – in Syzygy (1998), Trem Neul (1999), and elsewhere. In his note to the poem, he describes the relationship between his version and the original by applying to it James Mangan’s description of his own inventive translations as “the antithesis of plagiarism” (fd, 236): in the “unoriginality” of translation lay the genuine originality of escape from the lyric ego, a potential “route out of the dilemmas of Pentahedron” as Nate Dorward puts it, “via a modernist poetics of translation10”.

Stone floods

8 Yet it would be more accurate to speak not of one, but two Poundian “models” of translation at work in Sweeny. Its back-cover blurb claims: “The model for this exciting and pioneering version is not Synge or Hyde but the Pound of Cathay and The Seafarer11 ”. This is the translation model Pound devised for trying to realise the past within the present by creating the impression of unmediated rapport with the dead, and both “The Seafarer”, and Cathay, in which Pound merges his own voice with that of Li Po, are good examples. Revolutionary in its time, however, this model has now become the standard domesticating translation strategy for mainstream poets. But Pound also used a more radical, and in many ways antithetical, translation model. In Canto 1, The Odyssey is approached through the medium of Andreas Divus” translation of Homer – Pound translating a translation – signalling the fact that a translation is always already mediated by other texts, is always in some sense a betrayal of its original. It is an approach which, being unavoidably “foreignizing”, critiques the notion of direct “rapport” or presence.

9 Sweeny Peregrine clearly resembles the Cathay model in its lyric second section, but its prose section is Poundian in the alternative sense. The dialectical tension between the two modes forestalls complete identification with Sweeny, and some of the problems Joyce had with the lyric “I” in Pentahedron. However, the potential of this “working” for his own poetry were not immediately apparent to him. However, some intuition of it may be discerned in the way that, after 1976, Joyce pursued what can be described as a Poundian course of study in Japanese and Chinese poetry and philosophy, coming to an understanding of the cultural counterweight they represented to eurocentricity and Western binary modes of thinking. Unlike Pound, however, Joyce never uses translation to pass ironic judgement on the present: nor does he succumb to linguistic idealism concerning the ideogram, or the belief that China offered a desirable social model12.

10 stone floods offers a lyric mode which combines the presencing and distancing aspects of these two kinds of translation. The title indicates paradoxical states in which what is

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fixed and solid becomes fluid; it announces the book’s themes of impermeability and porousness, closure and openness, fixity and movement, transgression and control, a concern with purity, dirt and waste, with boundaries and frames. The cover photograph displays a photograph of part of the famous buried terracotta army of Qin Shi Huang Di, the First Emperor of China. It shows, startlingly, the still half-excavated life-size figures apparently borne along in a river of rock, the effect of rock-as-fluid being to undermine the qualities usually associated with both stone and water13. The poems within probe the same paradoxical condition, with translation in the broadest sense playing a central role. Deserts and beaches figure heavily, because sand – a stony substance which flows – embodies the “stone floods” paradox. The themes of these poems stemmed from Joyce’s own thinking through of his poetic dilemmas and some, such as “The Opening” (a “threshold” poem), were written as early as 1983, to be followed by “sand” poems such as “The Turlough” and “Strands”. But the discovery of Beckett’s poetry in 1991-1992, and especially his “je suis ce cours de sable qui glisse”, which brings together several of these paradoxical conditions, or themes, acted as a confirmation and a validation for work in this vein14. This was not simply a question of content: Beckett’s work also makes striking structural use of the doubling and parallelism found in many of the stone floods poems. Sand, of course, is the principal ingredient of that ambiguous solid-liquid substance, glass, while its silicon is also used to capture another kind of flow, that of information, in the silicon chip. In this regard it should be noted that Joyce had been fascinated by information technology since taking a job in the computer section of a Dublin cigarette manufacturer in the mid-1970s; on moving to Cork in 1984, he worked for Apple. References to “circuits and gates” in “The Turlough”, or to software testing in “Golden Master”, flagged up the language of Joyce’s daily grind as a Business Systems Analyst for them, but were also part of a Frankfurt School-informed critique of the way in which electronic media was increasingly shaping the contemporary world.

11 Joyce’s intention was to expunge or twist conventional narrative in many of these poems, placing the burden of conveying temporal change instead on repetition, either incremental or with calculated variation. “My models for this”, he has noted, “were in the refrain structures of folk-song, often mediated through the likes of Yeats or Lorca, and in the interplay of stasis and movement in Chinese parallel verse15”. Stylistically, stone floods “translates” the fixities of Pentahedron into forms which, while repetitive, can be made to embody change – stone floods – overcoming its aesthetic impasse. Thus, while these lyrics often seem intensely personal, they are at the same time non- confessional; they possess a “translationese” quality which hovers somewhere between the verbal densities of, say, Pound or Basil Bunting, Chinese poetry, and folk lyrics. In many, Joyce writes in English as though it is Chinese, without connective particles, using a vocabulary, word-division and minimal punctuation which makes syntax ambiguous, as in “Lines in Fall”, which “take on the voice of the first two Autumn Meditations by Meng Jiao (751-814)” (fd, 237): Bag of bones cant lie down to night timbers settling crack them up right under Orrery Hill … (fd, 103)

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12 Here, for example, the “Bag of bones” can’t “lie down tonight” (that is, can’t get to sleep, or has nowhere to sleep) and/or, more existentially, refuses to succumb “to night”, or “night timbers” – the forest of the night – in the sense of accepting “night” (as oblivion), or wishes to avoid nightmares. There is a similar play between the antithetical pairs “settling/crack” and “up right/under” which multiplies meaning depending on how the reader understands the subjects and objects of the verbs, or what the verb is; “crack”, for example, is intransitive with respect to “timbers” for example and, simultaneously, transitively with respect to “them”. And who are “them”; the “timbers”, or the “bones” of the first line? This kind of fruitful doubleness leads in “The Turlough”, towards a modified version of the Japanese renga, in which each verse takes its cue from the one preceding it, usually written by a collaborator, and reflects back on that verse, changing its meaning. Originally renga took its form from the movement of the seasons and the hours in the day; like the turlough itself, which is a limestone lake prone to flash-flooding, it is a body in a perpetual state of change, a poem defined by Octavio Paz as one “which effaces itself as it is written, a path which is wiped out and has no desire to lead anywhere. Nothing awaits us at its end; there is no end any more than there is a beginning: all is movement16”. Such open-endedness and interconnection are particularly appropriate to Joyce’s desire at this point to find a poetic strategy capable of sustaining the seemingly incommensurable complexities of word and world, of undermining linear narrative, and he developed it further in the poem “Chimaera”, which actually uses the multiple voices of renga proper.

Trem Neul

13 The poems of stone floods are recognizably in traditional free verse lyric forms, despite the radical disruption of narrative through parataxis, condensation, and Chimaera’s limited collaging of texts. In its wake Joyce felt dissatisfaction that these forms did not sufficiently register the “flow” of information in the modern world. As he put it: “I was forced to recognize … [with stone floods], that the ‘lyric’ mode … I practiced was quite as prone to exclude the incoherent world as was the mannered narrative I so distrusted. I had also encountered [John] Cage for second time, and with more understanding of how the play of ambient noise across the receptivity of his spaces might circumvent those exclusions and admit what might otherwise not be acknowledged17.” In a series of poems written soon after stone floods, Joyce attempted, by the use of aleatory sampling and collage techniques to break up the unitary “finish” of his lyric voice, devising forms in which impurity, in the sense of meanings which Joyce himself could not wholly control, could enter his poetry. Several intercut the texts of others – Tom Raworth, Randolph Healy, Michael Smith – with Joyce’s own, and can be read in more than one way. Others use a variety of external structures, such as the shamanic “Summons of the Soul” in the ancient Chinese The Songs of the South, in “Data Shadows”, or a palindromic Medieval musical form, the cancrizan, in the more complex Syzygy (1998). In each case, Joyce tries to create a form in which unforeseen effects can occur within more or less rigorous imposed procedures.

14 Trem Neul (1999) (Irish for “through my dream”) is no exception to this trend. It is a longish, complex collage work in which Joyce finds new ways of using the concept of translation. The poem is bicameral, like Sweeny, but in two columns down each page: on the left hand side a column of prose, on the right a column of free verse. J. C. C. Mays

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has claimed that the two narratives these present “can be read in two ways simultaneously, downward or upward18”. In practice this is difficult, since both columns have their own punctuation schemes and do not encourage “reading across” the gap between them. However, his claim that while the left-hand column is “peopled with named characters who… inhabit a western part (of Ireland?) [and whose] sources are presented in their original form… undigested”, while the right-hand column presents people who “speak… in what seems to be an eastern (Chinese?) landscape”, is a suggestive one. Is Joyce here obliquely aligning his two main translation sources? Both narratives splice together snippets from a host of texts, many of them translations – by R. Luria, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alain Prochiantz among others – as Joyce constructs what he has, perhaps with tongue in cheek, called “an extended auto-biography in prose and verse from which everything personal has been excluded, and whose spaces instead are crowded with the memories and apprehensions of others19”.

15 Sections of the right-hand column read as if they were excerpted from a Teach-Yourself language book, or were being addressed to someone who had just learnt the basics of a language (“What will be the issue/of this?/What will they do / in this matter?/Had we been early/we should have/arrived/by this time.”) (fd, 194). The narratives occasionally touch, glancingly, but shed no consistent light upon each other; they exist separately, although both concern memory and forgetting, loss, change, preservation and destruction. Joyce has argued that his work is “in part, an attempt to recoup part of the history of my world from what Beckett terms ‘the uniform memory of intelligence’ – that is, to test the ways in which narratives construct plausibility, become discourses, and this because of ‘the dominance of contending master-narratives in the interpretation of the Irish past and…my present world20’”. Yet a major source is familial: Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914), the nineteenth century translator from Irish and author of Irish Names of Places and numerous works on Irish history, folklore and music, and a great-uncle of Trevor Joyce. A brief memoir by Joyce in the Catholic Book Bulletin supplies the work’s primary left-hand column narrative, that involving the only named figure in the piece; this concerns a fiddler named Ned Goggin, who was caught in a snowstorm in the winter of 1838, and forced to seek shelter in P.W. Joyce’s home. He heard Goggin perform “The Tuning of the Colours”, but forgot the tune until many years later when the memory passed through him, “trem neul, as the song- writers would say – “through my dream”… and I woke up actually whistling the tune”. The learning and forgetting of the air, and then its retrieval “trem neul”, are crucial to Trem Neul’s concern with memory (and false memory, which it tried to create in the reader) and how the mind works. Again, it seems to me, the poem is about translation, carrying across (from one culture or medium to another), in a metaphorical, broader than usual sense.

Courts of Earth and Air/What’s in Store/Rome’s Wreck

16 Trem Neul has as oblique and opaque a relation to Joyce’s translation-derived poetics as anything he has written. In 2008, however, he published some direct translations, of Irish poetry. Courts of Air and Earth collects the previously-published Sweeny Peregrine and “Cry Help” (a working “from the Irish of Aoghán O Rathaille” from stone floods), but also includes new work: “Love Songs from a Dead Tongue”, a sequence of eighteen Gormlaith poems “Worked from the Late Middle Irish”; the folk song “Sean O’Duibhir of

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the Glen”; and two lyrics from the Dánta Gradha anthology (one, the famous’ I will not die for you’ translated twice). Like the second section of Sweeny, the Gormlaith “workings” are not translations in the usual sense; neither faithful renderings or modern versions, they hover between tradition and modernity. Pungent, concrete, stark and spare in style, they also flag up the corruption of their originals, as in the first part of Sweeny (perhaps since “corruption is fertility”, as Trem Neul claims); thus, the third poem includes the interpolations “[This is doubtful]” and “[This translation is difficult]21”. Overall, the additional translations indicate a wish to fill the gap between Sweeny, which possibly dates to as early as the eighth century, to O Rathaille in the eighteenth, when the Gaelic tradition was at its last gasp.

17 If this was a more or less straightforward use of the mode perfected in Sweeny, however, work in Joyce’s 2007 poetry collection, What’s in Store was anything but. In this case, the material is made more difficult to interpret because of the volume’s complex arrangement and its mixture of original poetry and different types of translation. To complicate matters, all of the Irish poems in Courts of Air and Earth except Sweeny were included in What’s in Store, differently arranged. At the centre of What’s in Store is a longish prose poem, “Stillsman”. On either side are nineteen separate sections of different kinds of poem. The most important of these are thirty-six word poems, original lyrics clustered in nineteen groups of between three and twelve. Most of the other poems are translations, however; “Outcry” (in two parts, on either side of “Stillsman”) is “a working of some of the surviving poems by Juan Chi (210-263), while ‘Capital Accounts’ is ‘worked from’ Ch’ang-an: Ku-i by Lu Chao-lin (635-684)22”. There are also two groups of folk-songs, “Folk Songs from the Finno-Ugric and Turkic Languages” and “Folksongs from the Hungarian23”. One of the first group of folk-songs contains a version of the book’s title and gives a good idea of the brevity and limpid beauty of these pieces: In the dark wood swifts don’t fly. What’s a blue dove doing there?

With no mother, with no father, for you, what lies in store? (Store, 17)

18 Like the Hungarian folk-songs which balance them in the second “half” of the collection, these apparently artless lyrics focus unsentimentally on the brevity of youth, the vulnerability of love, and the inevitability of death. In this sense, they tell of what’s “in store” for everyone. This is a quality they share with the material in Courts of Air and Earth too (there are also stylistic resemblances between the Central European and Irish translations). It is no surprise, therefore, that What’s in Store opens with “Folk Songs from the Finno-Ugric and Turkic Languages” and closes with “Love Songs from a Dead Tongue” (“Folksongs from the Hungarian” and “Anonymous Love Songs from the Irish” also occur at roughly the same points within their respective “halves” of the book). Apart from “Stillsman”, the exceedingly heterogeneous material in the book is not strictly demarcated – some sequences, indeed, have no titles – and Joyce has claimed that “the whole book is constructed like one long poem, with the sort of checks and balances, diversions and obsessive foci one might expect from that24”. A

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major impetus for What’s in Store, and something of its structure, was, again, the work of P. W. Joyce, and also of his brother Robert Dwyer Joyce. R. D. Joyce was best known for Ballads of Irish Chivalry (1872), and it is possible to discern in his adaption of traditional Irish folksongs to produce Fenian propaganda a foreignizing stance on translation, in contrast to his brother’s “domesticating” contextualisation of his own translations, although one would not wish to push this too far25. What is clear is that Joyce is interested in the way that cultures “translate” their concerns by using analogues taken from previous historical periods: 1798 as a way of writing about a hoped-for Fenian rising, for example. As Joyce has explained of the book’s Finno-Ugric and other material: Th[is] comes largely from the same interest as spurred “Tocharian Music” (a poem in stone floods): awareness of how the history of nomadic and “oral” cultures (or those strains within literate cultures) is written from the outside, by the settled, the lettered. Remember the Irish proverb at the start of Rome’s Wreck, which is translated at the very end of the last sonnet. The Irish were seen as vagrant by the English.

19 “Tocharian Music” deals with the fate of the Tocharians, a Central Asian people who were unique in being the only known Indo-European language speaking group to migrate eastwards, rather than westwards, from the Indo-European linguistic source. The poem tells of their rebellion against the Chinese in the sixth century CE: Eleven thousand died in the reprisal and the city laid waste the airs dispersed only the names survive (fd, 108)

20 The Tocharians were dispersed; only fragments of their language now survive. Crucially for Joyce, however, the dispersal of their dancers and musicians, for which they were famed, meant that the Tocharians had a profound influence on the poetry and music of the Golden Age of Chinese T’ang Dynasty culture a century later. What the poem reflects on, in part, is the return of the repressed, the marginal, the impure. As in the traditions of the West, art may be seen both as complicit with power, and definitive of cultural difference from power. Opening and closing What’s in Store as it does, this material exists at the margins of the book (but is give the first and last word in it), and frames the material emanating from “literate cultures”, including Imperial China. This oral culture is “within” the book and “literate cultures” too; it is the dirt, or leaven, depending upon point of view, in all human cultures. The dialectic between nomadic/“oral” and settled / literate, and the dilemmas involved in the latter representing the former, are therefore woven into the book.

21 As Joyce notes, the parallels between the Tocharian language and Irish, a language almost, but not quite, crushed by an imperial centre, are pertinent to these considerations. In his latest work, Rome’s Wreck, another striking use of translation (and a redefinition of it), Joyce performs an act of what Roman Jakobson called an “intralingual translation” – that is, “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language” – on Edmund Spenser’s sonnet sequence Ruines of Rome (1591)26. This work, consisting of thirty-two sonnets, plus an envoi, is itself a translation from the French of Joachim du Bellay, and was a significant contribution to the golden age of the English sonnet. In his “translation” Joyce retains the form’s fourteen-lines, and observes the volta, but changes Spenser’s rhymed iambic pentameters into

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unrhymed hexameters and, more remarkably, irreverently reduces his rich Renaissance language to a series of single vocables. A comparison of the opening lines of the first sonnet gives the general idea: Spenser:

Ye heavenly spirites, whose ashie cinders lie Under deep ruines, with huge walls opprest, But not your praise, the which shall never die Through your faire verses, ne in ashes rest … Joyce:

Hey, you great ghosts, you ash and deep set dust that hefts the weight of walls, your fame lives on in walls that won’t now leave you limp there in the dumps…

22 Joyce’s periphrastic ingenuity matches the many challenges he has set himself, particularly when polysyllabic proper nouns are involved: thus, “Such as the Berecynthian Goddesse bright/In her swift charret…” becomes “Think a she god, quick in her cart/of war”. The object of the exercise, however, is serious enough; to take the language of the imperialist planter Edmund Spenser, possessor of 30,000 confiscated acres at Kilcolman, proponent of the brutal subjugation of the native Irish (and their poets), and strip it bare; to render it alien to itself, just as Ireland was made alien to its own inhabitants by the war and dispossession which accompanied the Plantations. The result is not so much pidgin mockery, however, as a form of Basic Poetic English that has its own gravity and humour. It also resembles, of course, the pared-back language of the “workings” of Irish poetry and the versions of Hungarian, Finno-Ugric and Turkic folksongs. Spenser the settler on the land of others, the first professional print poet in English, has himself been made dispossessed, made nomadic and “oral”, through Joyce’s translation.

23 Spenser’s final sonnet, the thirty-third, is an “Envoy” which is additional to du Bellay’s sequence. In it, Spenser praises du Bellay, and looks to a future in which Rome has been “revived” by du Bellay’s work, as a result of which du Bellay himself enjoys immortality. Joyce, however, does not acknowledge his source, Spenser, in the same way. Instead, he translates the thirty-second sonnet, in which the poet looks to the future and his own possible fame, but alters its final lines. Spenser’s sestet runs: Nath’les my Lute, whom Phoebus deignd to give, Cease not to sound these olde antiquities; For if that time doo let thy glorie live, Well maist thou boast, how ever base thou bee, That thou art first, which of thy Nation song Th’olde honour of the people gowned long.

24 Spenser anticipates a future in which, by praising Rome, his own efforts to raise the dignity of English poetry in the vernacular will be recognised too. This is a basic Protestant humanist aspiration. But, by an irony Spenser could not have foreseen, the empire has retrospectively written back; Joyce’s “translation” of the Ruines of Rome is the future to which Spenser looked, and the English poet’s poem, like his language, has become part of the “Nation song” of Ireland. Joyce has therefore to write himself into the translation. He concludes it with a version of the Irish proverb which provides his work’s epigraph: “Maireann lorg an phinn, ach ní mhaireann an béal a chan”, which

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translates literally as “the mark of the pen lives, but the mouth that sang does not (live)”: I use the tools I’ve got: hard words passed down, passed on, may speak on some days when the live voice breaks. Not all words bear the weight. I mean; but they may not. And these? Pen’s mark lives on, but not the mouth that sang.

25 The anti-imperialist point broadens to a general one concerning art’s melancholy capacity to outlive the artist: Horace’s vitas brevis, ars longa, Keats’s Grecian Urn. It may be that Joyce is also reminding us of another aspect of Spenser, namely his obsession with mutability. The Faerie Queene runs into sand in the Mutability Cantos, in which the Goddess Mutability is silenced, but wins the debate: and to admit to the ceaselessness of change is to acknowledge the ultimate futility of imperial permanence and grandeur. In this sense, Rome’s Wreck is a brilliantly ingenious and yet literal reminder to Spenser of his most profound insights, even as it takes us back to Joyce’s own fascination with translated states, a version of stone that floods, dreams to be travelled through, nomads who become emperors, in writing which translates the idea of translation itself in order to create one of the most remarkable bodies of poetry in contemporary Irish literature.

NOTES

1. Jeremy Munday, Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, London, Routledge, repr. 2007, p. 146-148. 2. As the latest anthology of translations of poetry from the Irish edited by Gregory Schirmer shows, there is still widespread ignorance of, or resistance to, the translation strategy opposed to this one. This contains work by Mangan, but no twentieth century translations that are the products of a foreignizing aesthetic. See, Gregory Schirmer, After the Irish: An Anthology of Poetic Translation, Cork, Cork University Press, 2009. 3. See David Lloyd, Nationalism and Minor Literature: James Clarence Mangan and the Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987. 4. In 1967 Joyce and Mike and Irene Smith co-founded New Writers” Press (NWP); in the decade that followed it published translations of Borges (the first in English), Machado, Quevedo, Vega, Vallejo, the Dánta Gradha, St John of the Cross and Huerga, and carried in its house journal The Lace Curtain (1969-76) a plethora of translated poetry by (among others) Bartusek, Andrade, Jiménez, Colinas, Bachmann, Desnos, Trakl, Neruda and Benn, as well as Irish poetry in translation by Mhac an tSaoi, Ó Direáin, and Mac Síomóin. For an account of these activities see Trevor Joyce, “New Writers” Press: The History of a Project”, in Patricia Coughlan and Alex Davis, eds., Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s, Cork, Cork University Press, 1995, p. 276-306.

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5. Trevor Joyce, “The Point of Innovation in Poetry”, in Harry Gilonis, ed., For the Birds: Proceedings of the First Cork Conference on New and Experimental Irish Poetry, Sutton: Mainstream Poetry/Dublin: hardPressed Poetry, 1998, 18-26. 6. Seamus Heaney, introduction, Sweeney Astray, London: Faber, 1984, n. pag. This articulates Heaney’s own concerns of the time of course, as reflected in Station Island (1984), especially its “Sweeney Redivivus” sequence, and the criticism collected in The Government of the Tongue (1989). 7. Trevor Joyce, with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold, Dublin: New Writers” Press/ Exeter, Shearsman Books, 2001, 13. Hereafter fd. 8. As J.C.C. May claims, he is “the etiolated subject at a second or further remove [who] sings with the kind of lucid detachment achieved by the American Objectivists… Put another way, Joyce is not in control of the persona Sweeny – he identifies and resists identification, by turns – but he is in full control of the lines of poetry and this rescues him from excess”. J.C.C. Mays, 2002, 57-8. 9. It’s relevant here to note that Patrick Crotty’s new Penguin anthology of Irish poetry includes only Sweeny’s final lyric; stripped of context, its references to God and Christ read not as a distantiating palinode and possible pious corruption, as intended, but rather as representing an echt religious conversion. In this way, mainstream poetic discourse misreads and seeks to “domesticate” Joyce’s estranging translation strategy. 10. Nate Dorward, “On Trevor Joyce”, review article on with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold, Chicago Review, 48: 4 (Winter 2002/3), 3. 11. The blurb is probably by Mike Smith, Joyce’s editor, not by Joyce himself. 12. For Pound the deconstructive ambiguities inherent in the Chinese written character, and the lack of logical connectives in Chinese, allowed access to “a prolonged and rich heritage of intensity, precision, objectivity, visual clarity, and complete harmony with nature – all key elements of Modernism itself.” Pound was fascinated by the fact that the Chinese written character eliminates the fixed concepts of agent and agency, its syntax allowing “agents to act as recipients as well, and vice versa”, and this – so he believed – had the potential to undo the binaries that hobbled Western thought and linguistic systems. Through immersion in a non-Western culture, particularly that of China, a measure of linguistic-cultural purity and social order could be accessed: in his words “China is solid”, it is “a new Greece”. 13. For a fuller description of these aspects of the collection, see John Goodby and Marcella Edwards, “glittering silt”: the Poetry of Trevor Joyce and the Myth of Irishness”, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 8:1 (2002), 173-98. 14. je suis ce cours de sable qui glisseentre le galet et la dunela pluie d’été pleut sur ma viesur moi ma vie qui me fuit me poursuitet finira le jour de son commencementcher instant je te voisdans ce rideau de brume qui reculeoù je n’aurai plus à fouler ces longs seuils mouvantset vivrai le temps d’une portequi s’ouvre et se refermeSamuel Beckett, Collected Poems in English and French, London: Calder and Boyars, 1977, p. 56-57. 15. Trevor Joyce, “Why I Write Narrative”, 1999, sent as a personal email to the author; posted on The Narrative Site, online Poetry Center San Francisco State University. 16. Claude Roy, Renga: A Chain of Poems by Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Edoardo Sanguineti and Charles Tomlinson, New York, Braziller, 1971. See also Edwards and Goodby, 2002, p. 190-193.

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17. “Why I Write Narrative”. Cage’s works are noted for their use of aleatory composition techniques and incorporation of ambient noise; in fact, for Cage there is no such thing as “noise” in the sense that any sound, depending on the context in which we listen to it, can give aesthetic pleasure. Trevor Joyce’s later work resembles Cage’s in the sense that it tries to marry extremes of formal constraint with procedures which allow for unforeseen irruptions of material from outside the structure figuring the struggle between the information-saturated lifeworld and the artist’s attempt to create meaningful form. 18. J.C.C. Mays, “Scriptor ignotus, with the fire in him now”, the Dublin Review (Spring 2002), 62-3. 19. Trevor Joyce, dustjacket of with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold. 20. Trevor Joyce, “Why I Write Narrative’. 21. “Love Songs from a Dead Tongue, Worked from the Late Middle-Irish”; the Gormlaith poems, “probably composed around the year 1200, but manuscript copies continued to be made even as late as the nineteenth century.” “They speak in the voice of the famous queen Gormlaith (d. 948 AD), whose three husbands were all kings.” Eleven of the originals were published in Osborn Bergin’s Irish Bardic Poetry (1970), and another six come from a scholarly paper by Anne O’Sullivan, “Triamhuin Ghormlaithe”, published in Ériu in 1952. Joyce observes “As far as I am aware this extended sequence of the Gormlaith poems had not previously been published together… prior to my gathering them into this set.” Trevor Joyce, Courts of Air and Earth, Exeter: Shearsman, 2008, 95. Hereafter Courts. 22. Trevor Joyce, What’s in Store: Poems 2000-2007, Dublin, New Writers’ Press/Toronto, The Gig, 2007, 311-312. Hereafter Store. 23. As Joyce explains in a note, his sources are the lyric sheets supplied with Hungaraton LPs. The Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages in question are: Tatar, Voytak, Cheremis, Mordvinian, Chuvash and Bashkir. 24. From email correspondence with Trevor Joyce, 27/11/2009. 25. What’s in Store also includes (Trevor) Joyce’s version of “Seán O’Duibhir a ‘Ghleanna’” or “John O’Dwyer of the Glen”, another lineal ancestor, hence his translation of the ballad. R.D. Joyce used 1798 as an analogue for the hoped-for Fenian rising of his own day (in, for example, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”); this is echoed for Trevor Joyce in the use of Han Dynasty history to figure Tang Dynasty realities in the source he uses for “Capital Accounts”; thus, part of his process of “translation” is to provide another layer of history (as Pound did in Canto I), applying that retrospective application to his own time, the working being done during the invasion of Iraq. From email correspondence with Trevor Joyce, 23/9/2010). 26. Jeremy Munday, op. cit., p. 5.

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ABSTRACTS

Almost all Irish translators work with what Lawrence Venuti calls a “domesticating” model of recreating a translated poem as if it had been originally written in the target language. However, some of the most important Irish translators of the past, notably James Clarence Mangan and Brian Coffey, have used what Venuti terms a “foreignizing” strategy which, on the contrary, highlights the difficulties and resistances of the source text to transparent re-presentation. The two approaches roughly correspond to two modes of translation evident in the work of the most influential anglophone poetry translator of the early twentieth century, Ezra Pound. In his translation of the Buile Suibhne as the Poems of Sweeny Peregrine (1976), which cites Poundian precedent, the contemporary Irish neo-modernist poet Trevor Joyce (b. 1947) uses both modes to produce a destabilised, postmodern “working” which exploits the original’s gaps, scribal interpolations and narrative contradictions, as well as poignantly rendering its expressivist lyrics. Radical translation strategies can be seen to inform other aspects of Joyce’s work, from his use of Japanese and Chinese forms and materials in Stone Floods (1995), to cut-up and collage in Trem Neul (2000), and from folk-song and poetry from the Finno-Ugric, Hungarian and Irish in What’s in Store (2007) and Courts of Air and Earth (2008) to, most recently, the unpublished Rome’s Wreck, which “translates” Edmund Spenser’s “The Ruines of Rome” (1591) “intralingually”, to use Roman Jakobson’s term, that is, from one form of English into another.

Presque tous les traducteurs irlandais travaillent à partir d’un modèle que Lawrence Venuti appelle « domesticating translation ». Ils tentent de recréer le poème comme s’il avait été écrit dans la langue cible. Cependant, certains parmi les plus grands traducteurs irlandais du passé, notamment James Clarence Mangan et Brian Coffey, ont utilisé une stratégie que Venuti appelle « foreignizing translation » qui, à l’opposé, souligne les difficultés et les résistances que le texte source oppose à une représentation transparente dans le texte cible. Ces deux approches correspondent en gros à deux modes de traduction visibles dans le travail d’Ezra Pound, le poète- traducteur anglophone qui a exercé le plus d’influence au début du XXe siècle. Dans sa traduction de Buile Suibhne, The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine (1976), qui cite le précédent poundien, le poète neo- moderniste irlandais Trevor Joyce (né en 1947) se sert des deux modes pour produire une version déstabilisée et postmoderne du texte source, qui exploite les blancs, les interpolations du scribe et les contradictions narratives, tout en traduisant de manière intense l’expressivisme de l’original. Des stratégies radicales de traduction ont également influencé d’autres aspects du travail de Joyce, de son utilisation de formes et de sources japonaises et chinoises dans Stone Floods (1995) à sa technique du coupé-collé dans Trem Naul (2000), et de son utilisation du chant folklorique et de la poésie d’origine finno-ougrienne, hongroise et irlandaise dans What’s in Store (2007) et Courts of Air and Earth (2008) à son travail récent Rome’s Wreck (non encore publié) qui « traduit » « The Ruines of Rome » (1591) d’Edmund Spenser de façon “intralinguale’ (terminologie de Roman Jakobson), c’est à dire d’une forme de la langue anglaise vers une autre.

INDEX

Mots-clés: folklore, Joyce Trevor, poésie, traduction Keywords: folklore, poetry, translation, Joyce Trevor

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AUTHOR

JOHN GOODBY University of Swansea

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Critical study Étude critique

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Critical study Étude critique

Clíona Ní Ríordáin

REFERENCES

NÍ MHUNGAILE, Lesa (ed.), Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry, Dublin, Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2009, ISBN 978 1 874280 77 4 SCHIRMER, Gregory, (ed.) After the Irish An anthology of poetic translation, Cork, Cork University Press, 2009, ISBN 978 1 85918 438 7 DE PAOR, Louis, agus rud eile de and another thing, Indreabhán, Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2010, ISBN 978 1 905560 54 7 BREANDÁN Ó LAIGHIN, Pádraig (eag), An Catullus Gaelach, BAC, Coiscéim 2010, ISBN 978 0 98652 960 3

1 Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry, initially published at a time of relative equality between English and Irish in Ireland, illustrates the relationship between the diverse, rich poetic traditions of the island of Ireland, and, as such, represents an extraordinary achievement. It is thus particularly appropriate that it should re-appear now, at a time when Irish has become a minoritized language, and when much attention is being paid to the state of translation between Irish and English.

2 Lesa Ní Mhungaile’s edition of the text consists of a long introduction followed by a reproduction of the 1789 edition of Brooke’s volume. Part II is composed of parallel texts displaying the Irish originals of the poems (manuscript and printed sources show the depth and breadth of scholarship involved) alongside new translations proposed by Ní Mhungaile herself. Each translation is followed by extensive notes and commentaries. In her introduction to the work, Ní Mhunghaile discusses the direction followed by Brooke in her translation and her relation to the English muse. She underlines the fact that despite being concerned with the notion of fidelity, her translation should more correctly be termed “imitation” or “paraphrase” (XL). Her discussion pursues exchanges initiated by Robert Welch1, Peter Denman2 and Michael

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Cronin3 on the relative merits of Brooke’s translation and on the relationship between Brooke and Samuel Ferguson In Ní Mhunghaile’s opinion, Ferguson is the better translator as he demonstrates “a greater sensitivity to the Gaelic language” (XL).

3 In this essay and in the commentaries Ní Mhungaile leads us to discover the influence of James Macpherson on Brooke’s work. The aim of the inclusion of the original texts in Gaelic typeface was not primarily, she suggests, to allow readers to compare original and target texts (the texts were not presented in a parallel format) but rather to point to the authenticity of her sources. The essay underlines Brooke’s tendency to “domesticate” the Gaelic original. Ní Mhunghaile believes that this can be explained by Brooke’s preoccupation with her target audience whose tastes were formed by pre- Romantic poetry. Ní Mhunghaile’s translations also underline the modifications carried out by Brooke, the omissions and alterations that are to be found in her texts. For instance, in the translation of the song “Inghean Tais na mBanchíoch is Áilne no Laéige bfuacht” (Gentle White-Breasted Maiden) Ní Mhunghaile demonstrates major restructuring at work: the original poem consists of four stanzas while Brooke’s “translation” is fifteen verses long. Ní Mhunghaile uses this poem to underline Brooke’s method, the image of the lily, to which the subject of the poem is compared, serves as inspiration for a whole extra stanza focused on that image (149). One may wonder, in fact, if the addition made by Brooke, “No foreign graft’s inferior foot has dar’d insult the mighty root”, might not be an ironic commentary on the method she herself employed! With its extensive index, plates which give samples of the original manuscripts, and learned commentary, Lesa Ní Mhunghaile has produced a work of considerable erudition, invaluable for present and future scholars and lovers of Irish poetry.

4 Gregory A. Schirmer in his After the Irish, with its subtitle An anthology of poetic translation, offers a chronological approach to translations of Irish language poetry from 1720 to 2006. His introduction also provides an interesting commentary on the work of Charlotte Brooke. For Schirmer, Brooke was a cultural unionist with assimilationist tendencies. In this respect he does not agree with Lesa Ní Mhungaile’s vision of Brooke. She investigates the shared ownership of the Gaelic texts; in Ní Mhunghaile’s opinion Charlotte Brooke paved the way for the emergence of Anglo-Irish literature. Schirmer’s reading of the process of translation is resolutely post-colonialist, emphasizing translation as conquest, while Ní Mhunghaile’s viewpoint is more nuanced. She stresses the fact that Brooke is writing as an Irishwoman, making use of “an intra-Irish discourse” (XXXIII) but she also recognizes that Brooke has a desire to make Gaelic Ireland available to the English reader.

5 Schirmer’s volume contributes to the study of Irish verse translation in its recognition of the translation itself as an aesthetic artefact. His method involves the printing of the original text with a literal translation on the same page, while the literary translation appears on the facing page. There is much to be admired in this work. It allows the reader to take account of the development of styles, each century’s translation reflecting the literary style of the moment. It also shows how particular poems traverse the centuries and are translated again and again; Merriman’s The Midnight Court for instance has captured the imagination of generations of writers from the unknown Denis Woulfe translating at the end of the 18th century to Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson in contemporary Ireland. The abundance of versions of The Midnight Court nonetheless underlines the absence of Brendan Behan’s version of which only

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fragmentary testimony remains. The inherent fragility of the preservation of Irish language literature is appropriately highlighted by the blank pages which are dotted throughout the book, mute testimony to the disappearance of the original source.

6 The volume of critical essays published in Belfast in 2008, Aistriú Éireann, interacts with many of the preoccupations raised in the two previously mentioned volumes. Indeed, Lesa Ní Mhunghaile has an essay in the volume devoted to a critical appraisal of Charlotte Brooke. The publication of Aistriú Éireann, devoted to Irish language appraisal of translation between Irish and English is ground breaking event, for as Michael Cronin demonstrates through Seamus Ennis’s parable of a coat worn inside out, the translation process is not regarded as a natural one. Moreover translation from Irish to English was regarded as failure for the revivalists, who envisaged translation as something that should be done from other languages into Irish. The essays collected here address a variety of issues from the translation of poetry (Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith), to the English versions of the Blasket autobiographies, to subtitling and dubbing for TG4 the Irish language television channel (Eithne O’Connell and John Walsh), and 17th century translations of sermons (Charlie Dillon), complete with extracts in French and Irish. Two articles deal with multiple versions of celebrated texts. Ríona Ní Fhrighil examines Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghire, and its translation through out the centuries. Unfortunately the book went to press before Vona Groarke’s moving rendering of the work could be included. Liam P. Ó Murchú, on the other hand, examines the versions produced by Frank O’Connor of Cúirt an Mheánoíche, outlining the various revisions undergone by the text.

7 Of particular interest is Alan Titley’s account of the translation of Ulysses into Irish; the translation is a mark of the modernity of the Irish language. Ulysses has been translated into all other major world languages and it also has its place within the realm of Irish language literature. Translating Ulysses into any language is an enormous challenge and Titley tells of the constraints involved in deliberately mistreating the target language as Joyce deliberately misused and abused English in the original text.

8 It is perhaps Louis de Paor who, in the opening essay to the volume, “Cumhacht an Aistriúcháin” [The Power of Translation], has the most to say about the fraught relationship between Irish and English. Referring to the relationship of unequal power between the two languages, de Paor underlines the digestive metaphors to be found at the heart of much post-colonial theory of translation. The minority language is there to be swallowed, cannibalized amorously devoured. De Paor quotes both Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s celebrated essay “Why I Choose to Write in Irish: the Corpse Sits up and Talks Back4”, which refers to cannibalisation, and Biddy Jenkinson’s infamous image of the curing of her skin and the preservation of her tarsi with formalin5. He raises questions of authority and readership and revisits some of the most important translation events in the history of translation between the two languages, among them the translation of Táin Bó Cualigne and An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed. De Paor’s acute awareness of the “amorous devouring” of one language by the other, elsewhere he has spoken of the smothering effect of translation, is necessarily heightened because he is himself an Irish language poet all too familiar with the double-edged sword of the quest for increased audience versus the lack of attention that a single language volume in Irish may elicit.

9 These preoccupations are foremost in de Paor’s modus operandi when it comes to the presentation of his own poetry. The author of multiple collections of Irish language

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poetry published by Coiscéim, de Paor has also published two bilingual anthologies of his poems in Ireland. The second such volume agus rud eile and another thing (the English language title appears in smaller print on the front cover of the volume) appeared from Cló Iar-Chonnachta earlier this year, while Uimhir a Seacht: ón gcroí nach dtuigeann, a new volume of Irish language poems, was also published in 2010 by Coiscéim. As was the case with his previous bilingual anthology, the Irish language versions are put on the facing page, forcing the reader’s eye to look at them before turning to the English versions. The translations have been produced collectively, in a process described by Biddy Jenkinson elsewhere in this journal. In a new departure, agus rud eile is accompanied by a CD featuring Louis de Paor reading 11 of the 28 poems. The poems are accompanied by music. Ronan Browne, the musician and composer involved in the project, provides a short note indicating that his settings are conceived of as responses to the poems: “In fact, the musical setting is effectively a translation into a third language. As with any translation, it reflects the original poem while allowing it to resonate further in another dimension” (103). The readings and musical settings are accomplished haunting recordings, enabling the non Gaelic reader (or the rusty Gaelic reader) to listen to the text while following the translated version in the book. The translation process is also at the heart of the volume. In a poem called “Aithris ar Ghearóid Óg Ó Murchú”/ “Après Gerry Murphy”, de Paor makes reference to another Cork poet, Gerry Murphy. While the poem pays homage to Murphy’s style, addressing political issues which figure in an off-beat ironic fashion in many of Murphy’s poems6, it also refers back to Murphy’s presence in Innti, the magazine of the UCC Irish language poets. De Paor published Murphy’s only Irish language poem “10 words in Irish for Máire Davitt” in Innti 13, a sardonic comment by Murphy on the whole Irish language endeavour (two of the Irish words being Yamaha and Omaha), but it also links the volume to Murphy’s poem “Translation and its Discontents” whose central image, “the brindled cat is chewing/the nightingale’s tongue”, is used by de Paor in an English language essay on the dangers of translation7. This essay explains that de Paor refuses to allow immediate translation of his poetry, making his poems available initially only for their Irish speaking target audience. It is obvious that de Paor’s whole approach in agus rud eile sees translation as facilitating access to the original text, in accordance with a principal he expressed in his earlier anthology, Ag Greadadh Bas sa Reilig Clapping in the Cemetery:

10 In fact the basic principle of translation was that the English should, as far as possible, be sufficiently close to the author’s own voice in English as to allow him to read his work in another language with conviction; in other words, to read his own work in another language without feeling he had become a ventriloquist’s dummy speaking someone else’s words8.

11 In this approach which operates both on the level of the physical apparatus of the book and with regard to the collective identity of the translators (no individual translator’s voice replaces his original, unlike the enterprise at the heart of Schirmer’s book where the translators are viewed as poets in their own right), he attempts to wrest power from the majority language and tilt the balance back in favour of the original Irish text.

12 Louis de Paor is one of the many translators involved in the final volume under review here. Catullus Gaelach, edited by Pádraig Breandán Ó Laighin. This emerged as a reaction to the closure of the classics department in Queen’s University Belfast. The preface, written by Rónán Ó Síothcháin underlines the ancient links between Irish and Latin,

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the Irish translation of the Aeneid , translated by Solamh Ó Droma, Imtheachta Aenesa9, is the first translation of the Aeneid into any vernacular language, it is claimed. The project is the collective undertaking of 49 translators, many of them celebrated scholars and poets in their own right, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Breandán Ó Doibhlin, Gabriel Rosenstock, Colm Breathnach, and Derry O’Sullivan, along with younger poets like Darena Ní Chinnéide and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuaigh. The undertaking seeks to be inclusive of all varieties of Irish, and the translations allow for regional dialectical variations. Translations into Scots Gaelic, Cape Breton Gaelic and Manx are also included. The book is presented in parallel text format and contains an introduction and notes by the editor. The sheer scope of the project is impressive. The collaborative nature of the undertaking leads to a multiplicity of styles and voices, ranging from Seán Ó Lúing’s translation of the celebrated LXXXV “Odi et amo”, which reads like an early Irish lyric in its concision and rhyming scheme, to the more conversational contemporary version of XLIII by Seán Mac Mathúna, with its concluding line that starts “Dhera, éist, an aois seo!” While the poems are artistically successful undertakings in their own right, this is also translation as a form of militancy with the translator taking on the role of écrivain engagé. Ó Laighin himself was one of the leaders of the Stádas movement which was active in gaining recognition for Irish as an official EU language. Here he takes issue with those who stray so far from the concept outlined in John Henry Newman’s essay “The Idea of a University”: for example, administrators who closed a thriving classics department which was renowned for its exceptional Byzantine Greek programme. Michael Longley, who was involved in the inception of this project (there is to be a second book containing English and Ulster Scots translations), has the following to say in a recent interview which appeared in the Irish Times: “The so-called academic planners who would close down Latin and Greek are wiping out a crucial part of the map by which we know ourselves and find the way,” he argued recently. “Have the barbarians arrived? Yes. But worse, they are in charge10.”

13 As well as challenging the barbarians and reclaiming the Latin texts as part of contemporary Irish heritage, this translation also prolongs the efforts of the state translation house An Gúm which was established in 1926 after the founding of the Free State to provide a varied literature in Irish. Coiscéim, Pádraig Ó Snodaigh’s publishing house continues to pursue this objective with vigour, publishing several volumes of poetry from German (Gunter Grass,Elke Schmitter for exemple with translations by Gabriel Rosenstock), DVA an anthology of Slovenian literature, translations from the Catalan and Spanish by Tomás Mac Síomóin, and translations of Petrach by Liam Hodder, to name but a few.

14 As this brief survey has shown, translation as an activity is vibrant and thriving in Ireland, creating bridges, enabling dialogue and contributing to intellectual debate on a variety of fronts. It also illustrates the deep-seated vitality of the Irish language, and its qualitative importance at a time when, quantitatively it has been minoritized. Biddy Jenkinson said in an interview which she gave to Mícheál Ó hUanacháin in 200811 that the familiar poster of Irish Writers always surprised her as it seemed to suggest that Irish writing started with Jonathan Swift. The present volumes are testimony to the written culture that has existed in Ireland since the first millennium AD. It is perhaps time to cast some new, more inclusive models of Irish literature, for Ireland too is “incorrigibly plural”.

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NOTES

1. Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897, London, Colin Smythe, 1988, p. 28-43. 2. Peter Denman, Samuel Fergusson: The Literary Achievement, London, Colin Smythe, 1988. 3. Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland, Cork, Cork University Press, 1996, p. 98-113. 4. Originally published in the New York Times Book Review on 8 January 1995, the essay was reprinted in Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Selected Essays, (Oona Frawley ed.), Dublin, New Island Books, 2005, p. 10-24. 5. “I prefer not to be translated into English in Ireland. It is a small rude gesture to those who thinkthat everything can be harvested and stored without loss in an English-speaking Ireland. If I were a corncrake I would feel no obligation to have my skin cured, my tarsi injected with formalin sothat I could fill a museum shelf in a world that saw no need for my kind”. Biddy Jenkinson, Letter to the Editor, Irish University Review, Spring-Summer 1991, p. 34. 6. The poem being imitated here is “Bang” (Gerry Murphy, New and Selected Poems, Dublin, Dedalus, 2006, p. 84), while Murphy’s poem harks back to Greg Delanty’s “The Unknown Citizens” (Greg Delanty, Collected Poems 1986-2006, London, Carcanet, 2006, p. 24). 7. Louis de Paor, “The Brindled Cat is Chewing the Nightingale’s Tongue”, in The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets Poems and Essays, (ed. Joan McBreen), The Cliffs of Moher, Salmon, 2009. p 40-43. 8. Louis de Paor, Ag Greadadh Bas sa Reilig, Indreabhán Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2006, p. 231. 9. Rev. George Calder (ed.), Imtheachta Aeniasa, The Irish Aeneid, Being a Translation Made before AD 1400, Dublin, Irish Texts Society, 1907. 10. Eileen Battersby interview with Michael Longley, “I wish I could appear more tortured and Byronic”, 27 March 2010, [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ weekend/2010/0327/1224267156158.html] accessed 10/09/10. 11. [www.rte.ie/rnag/leitepleite]. Biddy Jenkinson, Agallamh le Mícheál Ó hÚanacháin “I bhFocail an Údair”, Eanáir 2008, accessed 15/09/10.

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Comptes rendus de lecture Book reviews

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An Autumn Wind

Marion Naugrette-Fournier

RÉFÉRENCE

Derek Mahon, An Autumn Wind, Oldcastle, Gallery Press, 2010, 79 p. ISBN 978-1-85235-486-2

1 « Ma jeunesse ne fut qu’un ténébreux orage,/Traversé çà et là par de brillants soleils ;/ Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage,/Qu’il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils ». Ces vers ne sont pas de Derek Mahon, l’un des plus grands poètes irlandais de notre époque, mais de Charles Baudelaire, l’un des modèles du panthéon mahonien. Cependant, cette méditation sur la fuite du temps, présente chez Baudelaire, est au cœur du dernier recueil de poèmes de Derek Mahon, An Autumn Wind, publié chez Gallery Press en mars 2010. Le temps, à la fois au sens temporel et climatique du terme, se décline sous différentes formes, dans des poèmes comme « Blueprint » (« at shark time in the market »), d’une ironie mordante sur les horaires de Wall Street, ou bien dans « The Thunder Shower », où le temps prend une allure d’apocalypse. Le temps climatique est pour Mahon une métaphore du Zeitgeist, et ses poèmes allient à plusieurs reprises description du temps présent ou à venir (un orage, l’automne qui arrive, la perspective de l’hiver) et réflexion métaphysique sur ces « Temps Modernes » tourmentés que le poète observe au seuil de la vieillesse. Mais quel temps fait-il dans An Autumn Wind ? Il y fait sombre et gris, venté, comme le temps irlandais : il y a beaucoup de nuages chez Mahon. De la pluie, aussi : dans « The Thunder Shower », un des poèmes les plus saisissants du recueil, au ton presque whitmanien, la pluie passe des pizzicati au crescendo, une vraie symphonie :

It rings on exposed tin, a suite for water, wind and bin, plinky Poulenc or strongly groaning rain-strings […].

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2 Mahon le musicien : le poète n’a pas perdu son sens du rythme (on oscille entre Poulenc et la Symphonie Pastorale de Beethoven), ni son sens de la disposition visuelle de ses poèmes, comme ici où les vers semblent littéralement ruisseler les uns sur les autres. Le temps climatique et le temps musical ne font qu’un, bientôt rejoints par le baromètre de l’économie :

Squalor and decadence, the rackety global-franchise rush, oil wars and water wars, the diatonic crescendo of a cascading world economy […].

3 On retrouve ici la critique acerbe de ses contemporains, qui caractérise le style de Mahon dès ses premiers poèmes des années 70, comme dans le célèbre « A Disused Shed in Co.Wexford ». Les recueils les plus récents de Mahon, comme Harbour Lights ou Life on Earth, témoignent également d’une préoccupation croissante du poète vis-à-vis des grands enjeux planétaires, en particulier l’économie et l’environnement, et An Autumn Wind ne fait pas exception. Mais comme pour contrebalancer les ravages causés par ces tempêtes diverses, le poète, depuis sa tanière de Kinsale, cherche parmi les débris une façon de « ré-enchanter le monde », et se tourne vers le silence éloquent de la nature. Il est temps d’écouter le vent d’automne: « time to create a future from the past,/tune out the babbling radio waves/ and listen to the leaves. »

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Going By Water

Taffy Martin

REFERENCES

Michael Coady, Going By Water, Gallery Books, 2009, 166 p, ISBN 978 1 85235 485 5 (Hardback), ISBN 978-1-85235-484 8 (Paperback), 20 euros/13.90 euros

1 The fact that Michael Coady chose F. Scott Fitzgerald’s memorable conclusion to The Great Gatsby – “And so we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past” – as the epigraph for this substantial new collection of poems, not only sets the tone of the book, with its alternate victories and defeats, sorrows and joys, advances and regressions, it also bespeaks the double focus of the volume. Past and present inform one another, prose and poetry alternate provocatively but inexplicably, the written word and photographs either vie for attention or illustrate one another, and Ireland itself is both everyday experience and highly-charged past.

2 Like the rivers that thread their way through Coady’s native Tipperary and that open and close the volume, and like the cots that carry fishermen, young boys and in “Talitha Cumi” a drowned youth, this volume meanders. Individual poems bear epigrams from Charles Wright, Saint Mark, Derek Mahon, Muriel Rukeyser, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Eugène Ionesco and Emily Dickinson. Countless poems are written “after” one author or another. Poems on truncated lives and frustrated dreams span two continents and accord the requisite nods to cultural landmarks, chiefly in Paris. This plethora of references seems to be Coady’s impassioned tribute to his sources, whether personal, communal or artistic, but the volume suffers from it.

3 In a book which moves abruptly between the sentimentalized prose of “Talitha Cumi” and the jive rhythms of “Interview of Main Street,” it is difficult to a perceive a governing principle. The bawdiness of “Old Flame,” addressed to the speaker’s “Uncoy Mistress,” is certainly worthy of Andrew Marvell, but Wordsworth seems oddly absent from the volume’s concluding poem, “Home” in which a “Lesser Celandine” represents enduring return. One wonders further why Coady numbered the “parts” of the volume

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(One to Five) and named them as well – Sister River, Tidings, Another River, Traces and All Waters.

4 Still there are fine poems such as “Sunday Afternoon at Anvers-sur-Oise.” Composed entirely of mercurial triplets, it celebrates the passing of time and the constancy of inspiration. Amidst a swirl of cartwheeling children, crows and “a woman – Japanese – with a white parasol against the blaze of sky” van Gogh’s final creative frenzy lives on.

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Pearse Hutchinson

Grace Neville

REFERENCES

Pádraig Ó Gormaile and Bernard Escarbelt (eds.), Pearse Hutchinson, Poèmes, Lille, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008, 138 p + CD, ISBN 978-2-7574-014-2, 21 euros

1 “Translation is the language of Europe”. Umberto Eco’s bon mot springs to mind when one opens this new translation into French and English of a wide selection of the Irish language poems of Pearse Hutchinson. From the wild Atlantic shores to the carillon- haunted plat pays, from 1920s Glasgow southwards to the sun-soaked stones of Catalonia and Galicia, this trilingual anthology casts its origins far and wide. Acclaimed academics Pádraig Ó Gormaile, Professor of French at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Bernard Escarbelt, Professor Emeritus of English at l’Université de Lille 3, along with a host of collaborators, are to be congratulated on this ambitious enterprise. The reader is rewarded not just with a satisfyingly rich text but also with the poet’s voice reading his poems in their original Irish on the CD that accompanies the translation.

2 The three prefaces, in French, English and Irish, to the translations under analysis here set the tone: rich, informative and often lyrical, they are at all times complementary, not mere echoes of each other. The same is true of the translations: master classes in counterpoint, they travel skilfully and often astutely across three languages. At no point are they mere translation exercises.

3 It would be difficult to summarise the range encompassed in this anthology. Hutchinson’s concerns are as wide as those of Montaigne: “C’est moi-mesmes que je peins. ” Through his poetry, he puts us in touch with our common, shared humanity. His poems sometimes seem suffused with a light shining from a distant Irish past: his Meantán Mór/Great Tit/Mésange charbonnière is surely a cousin of the blackbird of Belfast Lough, first sighted in an eleventh century Irish manuscript, and beloved of Heaney, Montague et al! Irish folklore threads its way through many a poem here:

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Hutchinson’s riff on the soul leaving the body questions the stark medieval body/soul dichotomy, as soul and body here seem happily wedded to each other!

4 One of the editors, Pádraig Ó Gormaile, emphasises: “Pearse Hutchinson speaks against religion but in a manner which suggests that he cannot do without it” (p. 15). His anger in “Maitheamh/Forgiveness/Pardon” recalls powerful non serviam proclamations from three hundred years ago in the work of Kerry poet, Aogán Ó Rathaille. However, most texts see him moving beyond organised religion into a more embracing private spirituality often with strong Eastern overtones. Indeed, his poems sometimes approach a pithiness close to haiku concision, as in “Piotal/ Petal/ Pétale”.

5 The great linguist, Georges Mounin, once remarked that all translation is fundamentally doomed, that even the term “bread” is untranslatable, given its different taste, shape and use in different cultures. The ambitious translation under discussion here would suggest otherwise. Hutchinson’s exploration, through a minority language on the fringes of Europe, of what it means to be European as a way of exploring what it means to be human, has been well served by his editors and translators. Indeed, their composite work reminds us that, although English may have become the lingua franca of commerce, it is only when one moves from monolingualism into multilingualism that (to borrow a recent felicitous phrase from historian Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh) one escapes from mono into glorious stereo.

6 It is fitting that this handsome volume should have seen the light of day in the northern city of Lille, a city that has been so consistent in its support of matters Irish over so many centuries, from the establishment there of the Collège des Irlandais in the seventeenth century, down to the late twentieth century when Patrick Rafroidi set up the ground-breaking Centre d’Etudes Irlandaises at l’Université de Lille 3. This important volume in Eco’s “language of Europe” is proof that this fine tradition is set to continue.

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Choix de poèmes

Isabelle Génin

RÉFÉRENCE

Moya Cannon, Choix de poèmes – édition bilingue, Le Nœud des Miroirs, 2009, 46 p., ISSN 1272-3266, 6 euros

1 Cet ouvrage, publié sous la direction de Taffy Martin et de Jean Pierre Pouzol, propose une sélection de treize poèmes de Moya Cannon accompagnés d’une traduction en français. Trois poèmes sont des inédits et datent de 2009, cinq poèmes sont tirés du recueil Oar et les cinq derniers de The Parchment Boat, comme l’indiquent les remerciements de la page 10. L’ouvrage est court (46 pages) et ne contient pas de paratexte, à part une brève postface intitulée « Repères » qui donne quelques éléments biographiques concernant l’auteur (1 page). La présentation de l’ouvrage est soignée, le papier est beau, donnant au lecteur l’impression d’avoir en main un objet privilégié. Malgré le petit nombre de poèmes sélectionnés et la variété des sources (2 recueils + inédits), la lecture de Choix de poèmes laisse l’impression d’une plongée à la fois cohérente et diversifiée dans l’œuvre de Moya Cannon. Le fil directeur est le lien fort qui unit un quotidien parfois anecdotique, des scènes saisies sur le vif (« Hands/ Mains » ; « Still Life/Nature morte » ; « Wet Doves/Colombes mouillées ») et les thèmes qui parcourent l’oeuvre de ce poète : la mer et la terre, la musique, le substrat historique, l’archéologie, les résonances de la langue : a « tidal […] language » (« Murdering the Language ») pour exprimer « [a life] measured by the tides of the sea » (« Foundations »).

2 Moya Cannon n’était, à ma connaissance, pas publiée en français jusqu’alors. En pionnier, l’ouvrage défriche le terrain et ouvre, de façon convaincante, cette poésie au lectorat francophone. La présentation de l’original en regard de sa traduction invite évidemment à la comparaison ; le lecteur maîtrisant les deux langues sera inévitablement tenté de repérer quelques passages dont la pertinence des écarts de sens lui échappe, mais c’est la loi du genre. Dans l’ensemble, la version en français des poèmes rend justice à la langue de Moya Cannon, à la fois simple (notamment par ses

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choix lexicaux) et puissante, qui fait jaillir une vision poétique singulière. Chaque poème a vraisemblablement été traduit par une personne différente, comme le suggère la longue liste de traducteurs de la page 7 (13 noms), sans que la cohérence de l’ouvrage n’en pâtisse. Les stratégies de traduction sont celles d’une réécriture au plus près du texte d’origine. Les longueurs de vers sont conservées ainsi que, le plus souvent, la place des mots en fin de vers. Chaque poème en français se lit pourtant comme un texte poétique autonome avec, parfois, des réussites sonores remarquables (« témoins muets des faims rassasiées et des soifs assouvies » dans « Tessons », entre autres petits bonheurs de lecture). Ce court recueil est le fruit d’un travail à la fois précis et sensible grâce auquel la voix poétique n’est pas « lost in translation ».

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Carnaval et autres poèmes Feis agus dánta eile

Clíona Ní Ríordáin

RÉFÉRENCE

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Carnaval et autres poèmes/Feis agus dánta eile, (édition bilingue, traduits par AJ Hughes, et Céline Lelong, Gwendal Denis, Yann Bevant), TIR, Rennes, 2010, 179 p., ISBN 978-2-917681-04-6, 12 euros

1 Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill est sans doute le poète gaélophone le plus célèbre au monde aujourd’hui. Il faut saluer l’initiative du CRBC de l’Université de Rennes qui nous présente une traduction française de son troisième recueil, première traduction de l’intégralité d’un recueil (d’autres poèmes ont déjà été publiés en français aux éditions Verdier, dans l’anthologie bilingue de poésie irlandaise, sous la direction de Jean-Yves Masson).

2 Feis, publié en 1991, est un excellent choix de la part des traducteurs car il mène le lecteur francophone au cœur de l’imaginaire de Ní Dhomhnaill. Dans ce volume, il est question d’enfance et des rapports mère-fille, d’amour et de magie, de folklore et de mythologie. Les traducteurs réussissent à rendre la voix de la sensualité qui caractérise la poésie de Ní Dhomhnaill, par exemple dans « Leaba Shíoda » où le poète imagine son amoureux avec sa peau de soie dans un lieu-dit (« Leaba Shíoda » se traduit par « lit de soie »). Ici, comme partout dans le volume, les traducteurs expliquent dans des notes de bas de page les jeux de mots, les références à la mythologie et à l’histoire irlandaises.

3 La traduction est le fruit d’un travail collectif qui a réuni les traducteurs et A.J. Hughes, de l’Université d’Ulster, préfacier du volume. Le travail a été accompli directement à partir du texte gaélique, contrairement à ce qui se passe pour tant d’ouvrages en langue irlandaise. Les poèmes présentés ne sont donc pas passés par le filtre d’une traduction préalable en anglais.

4 La préface situe l’écriture de Ní Dhomhnaill dans le contexte des poètes INNTI, du nom du journal des poètes gaélophones qui étudiaient à Cork sous la direction de Seán Ó

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Tuama. AJ Hughes explique aussi l’évolution de l’édition de la poésie de langue gaélique. Alors que les œuvres de poètes tels que Seán Ó Ríordáin et Máirtín Ó Direáin étaient, de fait, réservées à un lectorat exclusivement gaélophone, à partir de 1986, le paysage éditorial est marqué par une prolifération d’éditions bilingues gaélique- anglais.

5 Il faut encourager le CRBC à poursuivre sa démarche et à faire connaître d’autres poètes gaélophones dans les années à venir.

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The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian

Stephanie Schwerter

REFERENCES

Shane Alcobia-Murphy, Richard Kirkland (eds), The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian, Cork, Cork University Press, 2010, 262 p., ISBN 978-1-85918-465-3

1 In The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian, Shane Alcobia-Murphy and Richard Kirkland assemble eleven articles, covering diverse aspects of McGuckian’s poetic work. In his introduction to the collection, Alcobia-Murphy claims that her oeuvre tends to be overlooked by literary critics. He sees the reason for the insufficient attention devoted to McGuckian’s poetry in the “obliquity” of her poems. Commonly described as obscure and cryptic, McGuckian’s poetry has frequently given rise to heavy criticism. Alcobia- Murphy states that the book follows the aim of rescuing McGuckian from “obscurity” by shedding a new light on her work. The opening chapter by Michaela Schrage-Früh concentrates on the poet’s first four collections. Schrage-Früh convincingly discards the statements made by those critics, who qualify McGuckian’s work as apolitical. She argues that in her early poetry, McGuckian interweaves private and public realms by considering the violence of the Troubles through the lens of the female body. Furthermore, the poet uses elaborate images taken from nature and the domestic sphere in order to explore her own national identity through references to stereotypical tropes and myth.

2 In the following chapter, Catriona Clutterbuck focuses on the same collections as Schrage-Früh but touches upon the question of self-definition of the female artist. Investigating the topic of female poetic agency, Clutterbuck dwells on psychoanalytical theory developed by Julia Kristeva and demonstrates how McGuckian’s early poems generate self-reflexive versions of private life. She argues that the poet’s texts generate an alternative form of logic, based at the same time on conventional logic and anti- logic, which gives rise to a “creative renegotiation of meaning” between the reader and the author. In chapter three, Helen Blakeman establishes an unusual connection between McGuckian and Stéphane Mallarmé. Through a comparative reading of

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Symbolist texts by Mallarmé and poems by McGuckian, Blakeman shows how both poets exploit the possibilities of language, using word-play and sound-play as poetic strategies. She states that in Malarmé’s and McGuckian’s poetry the symbols employed challenge traditional forms of meaning, while simultaneously creating subtle links between disparate concepts in order to provoke a reassessment of language. Referring to Heidegger and Levinas, Elin Holmsten explores McGuckian’s desire to revitalise language. She claims that the poet’s rejection of “restrictive modes of writing” allows a disruption of language, which renders encounters with “otherness” possible.

3 Scott Brewster concentrates on one of the key tropes in McGuckian’s poetry, which is “the house”. According to Brewster, in McGuckian’s work “the house” is initially conceived as a place, which at the same time takes on the form of a shelter and a trap where the speaker struggles for privacy. Gradually, he argues, the “house” turns into a site, in which the meeting with “the other” becomes achievable. In the following chapter, Connor Carville deals with the collection Had I a Thousand Lives and examines the presence and significance of names and naming in McGuckian’s poetry. In this context, he studies the rationale behind commemorative practices employed by the poet, touching upon the criticism uttered in many of the poems regarding the ideology of commemoration within Irish nationalism. Carville’s contribution is followed by Alcobia-Murphy’s article, in which he deals with McGuckian’s poetics in terms of gender. Presenting close-readings of several works, he reveals a number of hidden intertexts. Once uncovered, Alcobia-Murphy argues, these intertexts force the reader to reflect on the role of art in times of violence and the ethics of poetic composition. Richard Kirkland refers to Deleuze’s theory and argues that while McGuckian’s work seems to refuse communication, each text is characterised by its directness of address to a non-identified “you”. According to Kirkland, even if the texts appear “obscure” to the reader as they refuse hegemonic commucational models and reject rigid standards. Thus, McGuckian’s poems become characterised by a perpetual process of change and evolution.

4 In the ninth chapter, Borbálá Faragó investigates McGuckian’s muses which appear in her poetic work in the shape of women, men, angels or readers. Faragó states that they simultaneously embody the pre-Platonic and the post-romantic figure of the muse. Leontia Flynn challenges Alcobia-Murphy’s approach of tracking down the source texts, forming the basis of McGuckian’s poems. Flynn argues that an intertextual approach is not necessarily the best and only way to study McGuckian’s poetry. This very interesting and multifaceted compilation of articles is followed by an illuminating interview with McGuckian, in which the editors interrogate the poet about very diverse aspects of her poetic writing. The book closes with an afterword by Clair Willis, which sumes up the different dimensions of McGuckian’s work. Thanks to its diversity, The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian gives innovative insight into the poet’s writing and offers a variety of original interprÉtative approaches. This well written and well structured study can doubtlessly be considered as a valuable contribution to the study of McGuckian’s poetry.

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Other Edens

Susan Schreibman

REFERENCES

Benjamin Keatinge and Aengus Woods (eds), Other Edens: The Life and Work of Brian Coffey, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 2010, 288 p., ISBN 978-0-7165-2910, 39.95 euros

1 Other Edens is a long overdue retrospective on the life, work, and friendships of the poet and literary critic, Brian Coffey. Within an Irish context, Coffey’s work has typically been evaluated alongside that of his contemporaries, Denis Devlin and Samuel Beckett. Along with the slightly older Thomas MacGreevy, they have been labeled (or as more contemporary critics would have it, mislabeled) the Irish modernists. Keatinge and Woods, in their exemplary introduction, offer several reasons why this perspective no longer serves Coffey obscuring “a more complex reality”.

2 It is this complex reality that Other Edens explores. In 19 chapters written by established literary critics (including Gerald Dawe, JCC Mays, and Thomas Dillon Redshaw), as well as emerging voices (Maria Johnston, Sandra O’Connell, and James Matthew Wilson), poets who knew Coffey (Augustus Young and Billy Mills), and relations (Brian Coffey’s son, John Coffey) a complex and shifting portrait of Coffey, in relation to his writing, to his career, and as a devoted friend, father, and husband, is revealed. Two final chapters, a descriptive checklist of Coffey’s publications by Redshaw and a bibliography by Woods, gather heretofore fragmented bibliographical information.

3 The critical chapters are wide-ranging, exploring a poems and themes too infrequently encountered in Coffey scholarship. There are, of course, chapters on what is arguably his most famous (and probably most accessible) poem, “Missouri Sequence”, but there are chapters exploring other themes and texts: the music of Third Person, Coffey as critic, the philosophic background to his poetry, the heroic, as well as the antiquity in Death of Hektor.

4 This collection is a much welcome addition, not only to Coffey studies, but to the study of Twentieth-Century Irish poetry. Keatinge and Woods were right in embracing a more

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expansive formula for this tribute: part critical, part biographical, part bibliographical. What emerges from so many of these portraits is Coffey’s inherent humanity, the difficulties that emerged as a result of his professional choices, and his ability to persevere as a creative and critical writer. Coffey enjoyed a renaissance late in life, not only as a poet, but as a publisher, creating beautifully-crafted letterpress books in the attic of his house.

5 Coffey’s home in Southampton was always open to the poet or scholar interested in Coffey’s own work or that of his contemporaries. Coffey was generous too, taking a keen interest in the work and lives of the younger poets and critics who sought him out. I was lucky to have met Coffey and his wife Bridget in their big rambling house in Southampton. Reading the many recollections of people who Coffey befriend, reminded me of his generosity to me, of his encouragement, his urgings to persevere, to believe in a path forward, like his own, in which each new twist and turn reveals a new vista.

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W.B. Yeats in Context

Jacqueline Genet

RÉFÉRENCE

David Holdeman et Ben Levitas (eds.), W.B. Yeats in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2010, XIX + 439 p., ISBN 978-0-521-89705-1

1 Cet ouvrage souligne la position de Yeats entre romantisme victorien et modernisme, la richesse de sa production qui couvre tous les genres, sa prodigieuse activité culturelle et politique, producteur et produit de son époque. « Times » propose un panorama chronologique de sa vie avec les courants de pensée auxquels il participa. Si Cormack commence cette exploration en considérant ses premières années à travers événements et écrits, Regan se concentre sur la fin de siècle, le milieu artistique qui refuse le matérialisme anglais. Frazier se penche sur le contexte psychologique entre 1898-1913, lorsque Maud Gonne lui révèle sa relation avec Millevoye. « War 1914-1923 » de Ben Levitas traite des problèmes historiques et politiques. Dans le dernier essai de cette section, Stanfield met l’accent sur la situation politique de 1924 à 1939.

2 Les oeuvres de Yeats se situent en des lieux précis que son écriture transforme souvent en symboles. C’est le thème de la deuxième partie – « Places ». Fitzpatrick explique que les racines du poète à Sligo n’étaient guère profondes ; il estime qu’il atténue l’orangisme de sa famille et insiste sur son intérêt pour la franc-maçonnerie. Ses rapports avec Londres où il prit pleine conscience de sa nationalité font l’objet de l’étude de Webb. Pour Roche, il fut accepté à Londres comme poète irlandais ; à Sligo pour ses liens familiaux ; mais à Dublin, lieu de controverses, il rencontra une opposition à laquelle il fit face en se créant un masque. Allison conclut cette partie en évoquant son attachement pour le comté de Galway à la lumière des poèmes inspirés par Coole Park.

3 Etudier ses amis concerne « Personalities ». Archibald présente J.B.Yeats vu par son fils, un père dont le charme irresponsable contraste avec la mélancolie et la maladie de Susan. Les deux essais suivants traitent des relations du poète et des femmes : Steele évoque les efforts de Maud pour les insérer dans le mouvement nationaliste et les

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représentations que le poète donne de sa bien-aimée ; Hill se penche sur Lady Gregory, mécène, collaboratrice, créatrice. Grene et Paul étudient les relations artistiques de Yeats, le premier avec Synge, son anti-moi, Paul avec Pound dont le « vortex » n’est pas sans similitude avec les « gyres ». Harper met au jour les éléments comiques de A Vision, la parodie de soi, le paradoxe, l’ironie.

4 Les parties 4 et 5 abordent le contexte intellectuel. « Themes » rappelle que l’opposition est pour ce disciple de Blake au coeur de sa création ; les critiques prennent partie dans cette joute dialectique. Childs éclaire les facettes des identités politiques de Yeats, tandis que Lloyd, à partir des études de Said et de Deane, se penche sur les rapports nationalisme-- postcolonialisme. Mahaffey se concentre sur les poèmes où le poète adopte des masques féminins, voire se projette dans un corps de femme. L’esthétique passe au premier plan avec Pethica qui expose le processus de raffinement des idées sur l’art héritées du XIXe siècle et de sources antérieures. Foster s’attaque à la question controversée de l’implication de Yeats dans le mouvement fasciste et conclut que son idée de ce qu’il appelait parfois « Fashism » était aussi inexacte que son orthographe.

5 « Philosophies » explore les systèmes de pensée qui l’ont attiré. Allen examine les événements qui expliquent son hésitation entre hérésie ou orthodoxie. Pour Materer le poète est « un mystique avec un penchant pour le scepticisme ». Mattar reprend le passage: « Folklore is at once the Bible, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer, and well-nigh all the great poets have lived by its light » et évoque ses publications dans ce domaine. Sikka étudie sa collaboration avec Shri Purohit Swami, sa découverte de similitudes entre sa propre symbolique de la lune et certains états de conscience des Upanishad. Moses insiste sur l’influence de La Naissance de la tragédie de Nietzsche ; Gibson sur les emprunts à la philosophie classique, à Héraclite, Empédocle, Plotin… Holdridge revient à l’Irlande de Berkeley, Burke, Swift et Goldsmith.

6 Les parties 6 et 7 explorent les traditions littéraires et pratiques artistiques qui marquent Yeats, l’histoire de la production de son oeuvre et sa réception. Dans « Arts », Marcus et Campbell considèrent les influences littéraires du XIXe siècle. Longenbach souligne qu’en cette époque où paraissent The Waste Land et Ulysses, Yeats, libérant son style de sa langueur rêveuse, représente ce passage du romantisme au modernisme. Si Cave évoque son théâtre, Loizeaux se penche sur les arts visuels qui façonnent le contexte et qu’il façonne à son tour. Selon Shovlin, « les romans que Yeats ne lut pas nous en disent plus sur lui en tant qu’artiste que ceux qu’il a lus ».

7 Holdeman débute la section « Reception » par l’étude de manuscrits, les révisions, le processus de création post-romantique utilisant le masque plutôt que l’expression de soi. Bornstein s’intéresse aux éditeurs. Longley scrute la période 1939-1970, les commentaires des critiques-poètes – Auden, MacNeice, Eliot –, des Irlandais – Kavanagh, Clarke, Henn –, des nouveaux critiques américains, et s’attarde sur l’essai d’O’Brien, véritable bombe littéraire. Doggett se focalise sur la politique, la théorie post-coloniale, les « gender studies », la présentation des textes, les conditions socio- historiques de leur publication de 1970 à 2006. Higgins termine avec les citations exactes ou déformées véhiculés par la culture populaire récente.

8 Les différentes sections s’éclairent l’une l’autre ; l’étude sur Yeats et Pound renvoie ainsi aux essais historiques et biographiques et annonce ceux qui traitent de l’esthétique, du fascisme, des controverses critiques. Parce qu’il dresse une cartographie de la critique contemporaine, tout en ouvrant de nouvelles pistes de recherche, cet ouvrage sera pour les yeatsiens un instrument essentiel.

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Fílocht Chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge

Clíona Ní Ríordáin

RÉFÉRENCE

Ríona Ní Fhrighil (ed.), Fílocht Chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2010, 313 p., ISBN 978-9-011764-21-7, 20 euros

1 This volume of essays published by Cois Life provides an excellent overview of the work of contemporary Irish language poets. As Ríona Ní Fhrighil points out in her introduction to the volume, the poets under scrutiny have now been welcomed into the academy and figure on the syllabi of most Irish departments in universities in Ireland and abroad. Nonetheless, the fragmentary nature of the critical response to the work continues to be problematic. This collection of essays attempts to remedy the situation.

2 As an introductory text, aimed mainly at students of Irish literature, the essays on the whole follow the same format; a short biographical note and a critical commentary on the work of the poet in question. In general, the essays are devoted to individual poets and are presented in chronological order; thus Bríona Nic Dhiarmada’s essay on Máire Mhac an tSaoi (b. 1922) opens the volume, while Ríona Ní Fhríghíl and Róisín Ní Ghairbhí’s essay on the state of Irish language poetry today, making reference to poets like Aifric Mac Aodha (b. 1979), constitutes the final chapter of the book. Particular attention is paid to the poets of the INNTI generation, entire chapters are given over to Michael Davitt (Tadhg Ó Dúsháine), Liam Ó Muirthile (Pádraigín Riggs), Gabriel Rosenstock (Ailbhe Ní Ghearrbhuigh), Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (Ríona Ní Fhrighíl) and Louis de Paor (Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith). Colm Breathnach (Máirín Nic Eoin), while younger than the INNTI generation, is clearly seen by Nic Eoin as being their spiritual heir.

3 Essays are also devoted to important poets like Cathal Ó Searcaigh (Caitríona Ní Chléirchín) and Biddy Jenkinson (Máire de Búrca), who are not identifiably part of any particular movement. Fionntán de Brún’s essay on Gearóid Mac Lochlainn situates the Belfast poet both poetically and politically. He establishes connections between MacLochlainn and Michael Hartnett (to whom an essay is also devoted, written by

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Róisín Ní Ghairbhí). De Brún highlights Mac Lochlainn’s preoccupation with bilingualism and translation.

4 Lillis Ó Laoire’s essay looks at two Connemara, poets Seán Ó Curraoin and Mícheál Ó Cuaig, comparing their work to the stereotypes of the representation of Connemara in literature. Ciarán Mac Murchaidh underlines the lonely poetic road taken by Greagóir Ó Dúill.

5 One quibble with the book is the fact that Ríona Ní Fhríghil’s name appears on the top of the facing page of each essay and for ease of movement within the book the name of the individual author would prove more practical for the reader interested in rapid access to one particular essay.

6 The essays are complimented by extensive bibliographies, giving a list of both primary and secondary sources for each poet. There is also a short suggested reading list at the end of the book. It will prove an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike.

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Joyce’s Disciples Disciplined

RÉFÉRENCE

Tim Conley (ed.), Joyce’s Disciples Disciplined, A Re-Exagmination of the ‘Exagmination’ of ‘Work in Progress’, Dublin, UCD Press, 2010, 185 p., ISBN 978-1-906359-46-1

1 En 1929 paraissait chez Sylvia Beach, l’éditrice de Ulysses, Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. Orchestré par Joyce lui-même, cet ouvrage au titre énigmatique se composait de douze essais, assortis de deux lettres de protestation. Le tout rassemblait, à quelques modifications près, des articles parus dans la revue moderniste transition entre 1927 et 1929. Précédant de dix ans la publication de Finnegans Wake (jusqu’à sa parution intitulé Work in Progress), « Our Exagmination… » constituait une première exégèse, ou une première introduction au dernier opus joycien, mélange de critique et de publicité qui aujourd’hui représente à la fois une référence indispensable pour tout lecteur du Wake et une analyse quelque peu datée. Les auteurs des articles initiaux avaient pour noms Samuel Beckett, Eugene Jolas, Stuart Gilbert, William Carlos Williams, Thomas McGreevy… Quant au titre, c’était une citation à peine remaniée d’une phrase elle-même tirée du Wake.

2 Quatre-vingts ans plus tard, Tim Conley rassemble une série d’essais signés des joyciens actuels les plus éminents : Jean-Michel Rabaté, Fritz Senn, Sam Slote, Vicky Mahaffy, etc. L’ensemble se compose de quatorze essais ou, à l’image de la première « exagmination », douze articles et deux « lettres de protestation», soit douze « lettres d’apôtres » et deux « apostasies ». Car il y avait à l’époque une forme d’hagiographie dans l’entreprise, et il fallait bien un peu d’iconoclasme pour (prétendre) rétablir l’équilibre. L’un des mérites de l’ouvrage dirigé par T. Conley est précisément de faire le point sur le degré d’assujettissement des disciples à la parole du maître (Joyce en effet avait commandé, orienté, remanié, voire récrit la plupart des articles). Les premières exégèses du Wake sont donc ainsi « revisitées », à la lumière de la critique génétique, ou de la lecture philosophique, ou historiciste…

3 Etablir ou rétablir les fondements des analyses d’un Budgen (qui mettait en avant les liens formels de Finnegans Wake avec Beowulf), revenir sur les « gloses exemplaires » de Stuart Gilbert, remettre en question voire mettre en doute le credo de la « révolution

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joycienne du mot » d’Eugène Jolas : cette réévaluation d’ensemble, qui questionne la doxa joycienne, est à saluer. A la fois pour son érudition et son humour, à l’image de celui de Fritz Senn qui dans l’une des deux brèves lettres finales apporte la preuve définitive de la paternité de Joyce dans l’une des deux pseudos apostasies initiales. La plus indispensable contribution toutefois est celle de J-M. Rabaté, qui reprend l’essai le plus célèbre de Our Exagmination – le seul aussi qui ait vraiment survécu – : celui par lequel Beckett établissait une généalogie de la littérature, de Dante à Joyce.

4 Si le collectif initial constitue toujours l’une des meilleures introductions qui soient au Wake, le recueil de Tim Conley en représente fort utilement la dernière – indispensable – « mise à jour ».

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Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in 20th-century Irish Drama

Hélène Lecossois

RÉFÉRENCE

Scot Boltwood (ed.), Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in 20th-century Irish Drama, Ulster Editions and Monographs : 15, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, Colin Smythe Limited, 2009, 211 p., ISBN 978-0-86140-464-3

1 Le volume, composé d’une introduction, dix articles, une bibliographie générale et un index, explore le rapport souvent ambivalent des principaux dramaturges irlandais du XXe siècle avec l’idéologie nationaliste qui a présidé à la naissance de l’État Libre d’Irlande, puis de la République. Il s’articule autour de deux axes recouvrant chacun une moitié du XXe siècle : « Colonialism and the Free State » d’une part, « The Republic and the North » d’autre part. Le premier regroupe quatre articles qui lisent dans l’œuvre de J. M. Synge, S. O’Kelly, W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory et S. O’Casey l’échec annoncé de l’idéologie nationaliste. Les six articles du second axe examinent le théâtre de S. Beckett, B. Friel, T. Kilroy, F. McGuiness, A. Devlin, C. Reid, M. Jones, M. McDonagh, M. Carr et C. McPherson. Ils s’intéressent aux réponses esthétiques et politiques apportées à l’échec de l’idéologie nationaliste et proposent de nouvelles définitions de l’identité irlandaise.

2 Les articles sont de qualité inégale et l’on regrette le lien ténu, voire inexistant, que certains d’entre eux entretiennent avec le thème du recueil. On regrette surtout que l’introduction n’aide ni à poser, ni à déconstruire le concept de nationalisme et ne fasse pas l’état de la question au motif que les études critiques sur ce sujet sont trop nombreuses. Néanmoins, certains articles nous proposent des analyses très fines et des réflexions passionnantes. Ainsi Susan Cannon Harris propose-t-elle une brillante lecture des deux versions de la pièce de F. McGuinness Carthaginians (1988 et 1996),

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qu’elle passe au prisme des théories féministes pour montrer en quoi la deuxième est une version édulcorée de la première, beaucoup plus radicale dans sa critique de l’usage politique du sacrifice en Irlande du Nord. Paul Davies, revendiquant une certaine interdisciplinarité, adopte une grille de lecture fondée sur l’écologie et le Bouddhisme, pour nous offrir une analyse stimulante du vide chez Beckett dans « Earthing the Void : Beckett, bio-regionalism and eco-poetics ». Le parcours du théâtre de Friel que nous propose Shaun Richards est informé par la pensée de Nietzsche (« On the uses and disadvantages of history for life »). Shaun Richards s’applique à montrer en quoi chaque pièce de Friel représente une Irlande en perpétuelle mutation, aux prises tant avec son passé qu’avec son avenir. Paul A. Cantor lit, quant à lui, Juno and the Paycock à la lumière des théories du postcolonialisme et voit la pièce d’O’Casey comme le reflet d’une nation s’efforçant d’accepter son héritage colonial complexe. Dans « “I kept silence for good or evil”: Lady Gregory’s Cloon Plays and Home Rule », Scott Boltwood s’appuie sur ce que Lady Gregory passe sous silence dans ses journaux pour souligner son ambivalence politique et pour mettre au jour les traces de cette ambivalence dans les farces qui ont Cloon pour cadre.

3 Dans son ensemble, le recueil est de belle tenue et offre des éclairages intéressants sur les rapports complexes que les dramaturges entretiennent, des deux côtés de la frontière, avec l’épineuse question du nationalisme.

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Huir del laberinto.

Stephanie Schwerter

REFERENCES

Esther Aliaga Rodrigo, Huir del laberinto. Crecer en Irlanda del Norte. Una mirada literaria, La Coroña, Netbiblo, 2009, 338 p., ISBN 978-84-9745-268-7

1 In Huir del laberinto Esther Aliaga offers an innovative view on the Northern Irish conflict as she engages with four contemporary novels written from the perspective of children and young adults. Analysing Robert McLiam Wilson’s Ripley Bogle, Frances Molloy’s No Mate for the Magpie, Glenn Patterson’s Burning Your Own and Julie Mitchell’s Sunday Afternoons, she engages with a dimension of the so-called Troubles novel which has almost entirely been neglected by literary critics. Through her careful choice of novels, Aliaga manages to render a balanced picture of Northern Irish society. Whereas the male protagonist of Ripley Bogle belongs to the Catholic community, the central figure of Burning Your Own is a Protestant boy. In contrast to No Mate for the Magpie, where the action develops around the Catholic Ann McGlone, the main character of Sunday Afternoons Protestant is a girl. Exploring not only the literary voices of both communities but also of both genders, Aliaga avoids giving a one sided view of the Troubles. As the four novels are regarded by the author as Bildungsroman, she opens her study with an illuminating account of the literary genre’s relevance to the Northern Irish conflict. Aliaga sees the popularity of the Bildungsroman in Northern Irish fiction as rooted in its thematic focus on the construction of identity. She argues that the protagonists’ attempt to position themselves in the power structures of a divided society echoes Northern Ireland’s quest for a national identity. The subsequent chapter is dedicated to an overview on Northern Irish Troubles fiction in which she convincingly outlines the development of the genre and its various subcategories, such as the Love- across-the-barricades novel, the Troubles Thriller and Women’s fiction.

2 Creating a socio-political basis for the analysis of the four novels, Aliaga discusses themes central to the literary and political discourse of the Northern Irish conflict. In particular, she points out the significance of space and territoriality in a Northern Irish

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context and takes Belfast and Derry as cases in point. She engages with different urban theories and underscores the central role of territorial boundary markers in the creation of a segregated society. Aliaga further touches on the importance of the family nucleus in the development of youngsters growing up in politically troubled Northern Ireland. In this context, she argues that from an early age on children in the region are manipulated through their social environment in their perception of their ethno- religious counterparts.

3 In her literary analysis, the author follows the thematic lines exposed in the first part of her book, which in each case receive a different colour. According to Aliaga, McLiam Wilson’s Ripley Bogle stands out due to the subversive use of dark humour through which traumatising events are depicted in a comic way. While humour and irony are still important stylistic elements in No Mate for the Magpie, this particular novel strikes through the consistent use of vernacular language. Aliaga sees the salient feature of Burning Your Own in the parallel which Patterson creates between the development of the main character’s private history and the history of Northern Ireland. In this way, Patterson establishes a link between the personal changes in the life of the protagonist and the political development of the region. Julie Mitchell’s novel Sunday Afternoons receives a special position among the novels chosen through a particular focus on the role that religion plays in the construction of a personal identity within the context of the Northern Irish Troubles.

4 In her well written study, Aliaga manages to communicate the uniqueness of the four novels, which lies in their capacity to reflect the influence of political violence on the life of children and their development in a society marked by sectarianism and prejudice. Through the tale of stories taken out of every day life, the atrocities of political violence become exposed in a very clear light. This well written book can be seen not only as a valuable contribution to the study of Northern Irish prose but also as an illuminating sociological account of Northern Irish society, revealing aspects which too often have been ignored. The book also contains a useful glossary and a chronology of the Troubles, which are especially useful for those readers unfamiliar with the complexity of the Northern Irish situation. One hopes that the book will be translated into English so that it can reach the broad audience it deserves.

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Between the Shadows

Fiona McCann

REFERENCES

John Wilson Foster, Between the Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture, Dublin & Portland, OR, Irish Academic Press, 2009, XII + 257 p., ISBN 978-0-7165-3005-3

1 The essays contained in John Wilson Foster’s latest publication, most of which are slightly revised versions of papers, talks and previously published articles, cover a period of almost fifteen years. This time span is not unproblematic, especially given the significant political evolution which has taken place in the north over that period. In the preface, however, Foster pre-empts any criticism of his decision to let the articles stand in their original form by claiming that despite their potential inaccuracy from a 2010 standpoint, they capture the spirit of the times and are evidence of the fluctuating nature of politics. More footnotes could, however, have been used to avoid misreadings, such as when Foster berates the Field Day Anthology editors for largely avoiding women writers and does not stipulate that volumes IV and V have long since rectified this unacceptable omission.

2 Perhaps the greatest strength of this work is also its weakness: Foster covers a wide range of writers, from major canonical poets such as Yeats and Heaney, to more recent talented playwrights Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, to much lesser known writers, such as Joseph Tomelty and Tim Robinson. Although the inclusion of writers who have received less critical interest alongside major authors is to be welcomed in so far as it contributes to the creation of ‘more elbow-room than before, a broadening of the syllabus’ (viii), it is regrettable that Foster contents himself in most cases with an enumeration of themes and/or a demonstration of how the author in question regards or disregards northern Unionism.

3 As Edna Longley points out in her foreword, Foster “writes Irish literary and cultural history from a neglected northern angle” (xii), and while this approach is certainly to be welcomed, “the cultural anxiety and partisanship” (vii) which pervades this collection of essays, and which Foster is fully aware of, is its most irritating feature and

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it borders on the disingenuous at times. In the essay “Guests of the Nation”, in which he focuses on the state of politics in the North in 1998 (when the talk was delivered), he refers to “a presumably tongue-in-cheek reference in the Agreement to the ‘Ulster- Scots’ language which, having been duly noted, can be quietly shown the door.” (156) Although a footnote subsequently rectifies this fallacious suggestion, clarifying that Assembly documents are translated into both Irish and Ulster-Scots, Foster cannot help but indulge in conjecture, imagining that the reference “might have been included with rolled eyes”. (172) His partisanship is also moralistic in places, as when he refers in passing to literature by Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Danny Morrison and to the “badness” in these authors, instead perhaps of remarking on the relative merit (or absence thereof) of the texts under scrutiny.

4 Foster also takes to task recent literary and cultural critics as eminent as Declan Kiberd and Seamus Deane for their tendency, as he sees it, to “revert to an old nationalism in new bottles” (172). Instead, however, of focusing in depth on their critical work, Foster relies on psychological remarks about the critics themselves to make his point: “I detect in Deane the chronic and romantic disappointment of Northern nationalism in Southern Nationalism.” (187) Although he positions himself as championing ‘latitudinarianism’, he curiously (indeed paradoxically) takes issue with a number of contemporary critical perspectives through which to tackle Yeats and, more generally, Irish studies. Among these are the well-established critical schools of Feminism, Postcolonial Studies, Deconstruction and Gay and Lesbian Studies, all of which, according to Foster, give cover to “ideologues” who are placing the subject “under a barrage of attack” (193). It is hard to see how the “elbow-room” he argues in favour of and his outright rejection of these critical approaches are compatible.

5 These reservations aside, this collection of essays is nevertheless an entertaining read, if only because of the diverse authors and themes Foster tackles. The new perspectives he offers on Irish perspectives on the Great War and an Ulster literary scene largely ignored before Heaney will be of interest to specialists of Irish literature and culture and the general public alike.

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The Fictional Imagination of Neil Jordan

Bernard Escarbelt

RÉFÉRENCE

Marguerite Pernot-Deschamps, The Fictional Imagination of Neil Jordan, Irish Novelist and Film Maker, Lewiston USA, Queenston Canada, Lampeter UK, The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009, VI + 150 p., ISBN 978-0-7734-4761-5

1 Un mot rapide d’abord au sujet de la fabrication très soignée de ce livre qui n’est plus très courante aujourd’hui : l’exemplaire soumis à compte rendu se présente sous forte couverture cartonnée et entoilée, à dos cousu et tranchefile, avec photo de l’écrivain- cinéaste en première et de l’auteur de l’étude en quatrième de couverture.

2 Neil Jordan est actuellement plus présent sur nos écrans de cinéma que sur les rayons des librairies : son film le plus récent, Ondine, est à l’affiche. L’étude de Marguerite Pernot-Deschamps rappelle d’emblée dans le titre la double activité de Jordan, double activité qui occupe une place centrale dans le cinquième et dernier chapitre de ce travail rédigé dans un anglais de belle facture. Les quatre premiers portent prioritairement sur les romans et nouvelles (six volumes à ce jour), l’activité cinématographique n’y étant traitée que de manière indirecte et allusive. C’est d’ailleurs ce que suggère le sous-titre qui figure en page intérieure et non sur la couverture : « A Study of Literary Style ». Dans son avant-propos, Desmond Fennell souligne la volonté de Marguerite Pernot-Deschamps de mettre en avant, derrière l’irlandité de l’œuvre, la description de la condition humaine : « He [Jordan] presented [himself ?] to her simply as a writer of fictions exploring, like many such writers, the human condition – “the complexity of individuals and their relationships” as she calls it in various phrasings – who happens to be Irish. » C’est en effet la ligne directrice du travail. L’œuvre littéraire de Jordan – Paddy No More, Night in Tunisia, The Past, The Dream of a Beast, Sunrise with Sea Monster, Shade – est passée au crible de cette approche ; l’intérêt porte sur de devenir individuel des personnages dans le contexte plus ou moins présent de l’Irlande. L’exemple le plus probant en est sans doute – c’est l’objet du premier chapitre – la présence côte à côte de la Grande Histoire – l’histoire événementielle, les

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personnages historiques, « the big picture » dans l’étude – et, plus important, les individus, les personnages qui, petitement souvent, « vivent » cette histoire, la subissent et/ou contribuent à la faire, ou à la défaire. La religion et l’Église sont soumises au même régime dans le chapitre suivant, puis, au fil des chapitres, l’espace- temps et le pouvoir de la parole, avant le dernier chapitre, déjà mentionné plus haut, sur la narration, qui traite en partie de la rencontre et de l’interaction, chez Jordan, de la littérature et du cinéma. Peut-être ce dernier aspect aurait-il pu déjà être évoqué plus explicitement à propos du traitement de l’art, et singulièrement – et à des degrés divers – de la peinture, de la musique, de la photographie et du théâtre dans le quatrième chapitre. La conclusion est d’une brièveté lapidaire pour parler d’un talent hybride. Le volume comprend un bibliographie et un index des noms propres et des œuvres mentionnées. Le lecteur français regrettera peut-être que la bibliographie ne mentionne pas de traductions, mais le cadre linguistique choisi n’appelait sans doute pas un tel ajout. Cette minutieuse « lecture » de Jordan – très pédagogique, pointilliste parfois, dans ses nombreuses références relevées de « my emphasis » – étoffera une critique somme toute encore relativement peu fournie.

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Music in Irish Cultural History

Erick Falc'her-Poyroux

RÉFÉRENCE

Gerry Smyth, Music in Irish Cultural History, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, XIX + 196 p., 2009, ISBN 978-0-7165-2984-2

1 Gerry Smyth, de l’Université John Moores de Liverpool est l’un des rares chercheurs en Europe à s’intéresser à la musique irlandaise, non pas en tant que musicologue ou que critique littéraire, mais en tant qu’historien de la culture.

2 Cet ouvrage, recueil d’une dizaine d’essais (dont cinq précédemment publiés) sur des thèmes très variés autour du fait musical irlandais, ouvre un certain nombre de débats particulièrement pertinents : il insiste notamment et en premier lieu sur la nécessité de reconsidérer entièrement notre conception théorique de la production musicale dans le contexte irlandais, ainsi que sur les limites actuelles de la musicologie comme source d’interprétation. Plusieurs chapitres démontrent par ailleurs l’importance de la politisation de la musique traditionnelle irlandaise, de Thomas Moore à Bernard Mac Laverty en passant par Christy Moore.

3 Le chapitre sur la musique celtique en particulier attire l’attention sur les problématiques de centre et de périphérie, arguant que le « modèle spatial » d’analyse de la production culturelle utilisé jusqu’à présent ne peut plus être considéré comme valide. Il n’est cependant pas clairement expliqué par quel nouveau modèle il s’agira de le remplacer.

4 On pourra également regretter quelques affirmations plus que discutables dans certains domaines musicaux (« drummers […] tend to be a much rarer animal on the local music scene because of the expense of their instrument and the relative difficulty of acquiring competence” p. 69, “the chance to record […] only comes after an extended live career” p. 72), ainsi qu’un style affecté à l’extrême.

5 Malgré ces quelques réserves, les qualités d’un tel ouvrage sont évidentes et l’on appréciera en particulier l’approche multidisciplinaire qui convoque tant la littérature

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et l’histoire, que la politique, la philosophie, la psychologie, la sociologie, la condition féminine et l’analyse filmique. Cet ouvrage a été récompensé en 2010 par le prix Michael J. Durkan de l’ACIS.

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Going to the Well for Water

Erick Falc'her-Poyroux

RÉFÉRENCE

Rionach Uí Ógáin (ed.), Going to the Well for Water: The Seamus Ennis Field Diary 1942-1946, Cork, Cork University Press, 2009, XVIII + 595 p., ISBN 978-1-85918-437-0

1 Né en 1919, Séamus Ennis est généralement considéré comme le plus grand joueur d’ uilleann pipes du XXe siècle, et sans doute comme l’un des hommes de radio les plus éminents de sa génération. On sait moins qu’il débuta véritablement sa carrière professionnelle comme collecteur itinérant entre 1942 et 1947 pour le compte de l’Irish Folklore Commission, qui tentait de préserver le patrimoine musical irlandais.

2 Cet ouvrage, premier du genre, comporte la quasi intégralité du journal de bord que Séamus Ennis était tenu de rédiger au jour le jour pour son employeur, ainsi qu’un index des personnes auprès de qui il collecta dans plusieurs Gaeltachtaí de l’ouest de l’Irlande, pour l’essentiel dans le Connemara et le Donegal, mais également dans les comtés de Clare, Mayo et Cavan. Initialement publié en 2007 grâce à Rionach Uí Ógáin, de University College Dublin, dans sa version originale en gaélique sous le titre Mise an Fear Ceoil ( I am the Music Man), il est désormais disponible en anglais, dans une traduction de Rionach Uí Ógáin, qui signe également le texte introductif.

3 N’ayant pas été conçu pour être publié, ce compte-rendu pourra au premier abord paraître répétitif, mais c’est précisément au fil des pages et de ces descriptions quotidiennes que l’on saisira le mieux l’environnement culturel et historique dans lequel il a été réalisé, ainsi que le soin et la passion avec lesquels Ennis accomplissait son travail. C’est d’ailleurs à vélo qu’il parcouru la campagne irlandaise durant la plupart de ses tournées de collectage, durant une période particulièrement propice à l’introspection culturelle irlandaise : on se rappellera ainsi du journal The Bell de Seán O’Faolain qui recensa les activités culturelles irlandaises durant cette même période où il était impossible de mentionner l’intérêt culturel d’un ouvrage ou d’un film en provenance d’un des pays en guerre, pour cause de neutralité.

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4 Uilleann piper, mais également violoniste, conteur et chanteur, Séamus Ennis démontre ici la facilité avec laquelle il pouvait entrer en contact et sympathiser avec de parfaits inconnus, au bord d’une route, dans un champ ou au coin d’une cheminée, puis les convaincre de chanter ou de jouer pendant qu’il prenait des notes sur son petit carnet. À lui seul, Colm Ó Caodhain de Carna lui fournira ainsi 213 chansons, systématiquement retranscrites, vérifiées et transmises à l’Irish Folklore Commission ! Plus largement, sa rigueur et ses connaissances quasiment encyclopédiques sont également mises en avant, notamment par son souhait de ne retenir que le patrimoine oral et local, écartant de fait toute chanson ou musique apprise dans un livre.

5 Même si l’on pourra regretter le choix guère justifié d’une traduction dans un anglais plus formel que son original en gaélique, il s’agit assurément d’un ouvrage passionnant et indispensable pour comprendre l’Irlande du milieu du XXe siècle.

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A Quiet Man Miscellany

Isabelle Le Corff

RÉFÉRENCE

Des MacHale, A Quiet Man Miscellany, Cork University Press, 2009, 206 p., ISBN 978-0-955261-7-5, 25 euros

1 A Quiet Man Miscellany est le dernier opus de la trilogie de Des MacHale, faisant suite à The Complete Guide To The Quiet Man (Appletree Press, 2000) et à Picture The Quiet Man (Appletree Press, 2004). Enseignant de mathématiques à l’université de Cork, MacHale est un auteur prolifique qui a publié 14 ouvrages sur des sujets très variés.

2 Par sa présentation (grand format, couverture cartonnée, reproductions de photos sur papier glacé), l’ouvrage s’apparente à un livre de collection. Les 10 chapitres sont déterminés par les recueils de données sur ou autour du film, et sont d’importance inégale, sans liens entre eux.

3 Un premier chapitre est par exemple consacré à Meta Sterne qui fut l’assistante de John Ford sur ce tournage. Il se compose d’extraits de lettres écrites à son mari resté à Los Angeles pendant le tournage. Mais sa correspondance ne contient pas de révélations majeures.

4 Le chapitre 3 intitulé « Richard Llewellyn » présente l’intérêt de revenir sur le scénario du film et de créditer le romancier auteur de How Green was my Valley dont le nom n’apparaît pas au générique de The Quiet Man bien qu’il y ait contribué de façon significative. MacHale liste les répliques et dialogues que Nugent a conservés de la version de Llewellyn. Ce chapitre est incontestablement important pour l’historien du cinéma. Chaque partie est agrémentée de photographies en noir et blanc. Si certaines photographies sont tirées du film, d’autres sont des photographies de plateau, et d’autres encore, avaient été prises pendant le tournage par des figurants irlandais, mais aucune d’entre elles n’est précisément référencée, ce qui est incontestablement regrettable dans un ouvrage dont l’objectif affiché est de livrer une matière première sur le film. Les chapitres 6 à 8 fonctionnent comme un recueil dans le recueil, où co-

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existent quelques informations sur la famille d’acteurs de Maureen O’Hara, une lettre de John Ford à un irlandais de Chicago, ou les erreurs contenues dans la collection DVD John Wayne par DeAgostini/Universal sortie en 2006. MacHale nous donne aussi bien l’adresse internet du dramaturge irlando-américain Frank Mahon, qu’une chronique nécrologique des participants du film. Le chapitre 9 fait le lien avec la recherche en études cinématographiques. Des MacHale y relate le programme du colloque consacré à The Quiet Man à la Huston School of Film & Digital Media de Galway en 2005 et renvoie le lecteur à l’ouvrage issu de l’événement, The Quiet Man… and Beyond, 2009.

5 On voit bien à la lecture de cet ouvrage qu’il s’agit du travail d’un collectionneur passionné par tout ce qui a à voir avec le film, et le questionnaire proposé en annexe nous prouve s’il en est besoin que l’ouvrage s’adresse davantage aux fans du film qu’aux experts spécialistes de cinéma.

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The Struggle for Shared Schools in Northern Ireland

Michel Savaric

RÉFÉRENCE

Jonathan Bardon, The Struggle for Shared Schools in Northern Ireland : The History of All Children Together, Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2009, 322 p., ISBN 978-1-903688-87-8

1 Depuis une trentaine d’années, le secteur de l’éducation intégrée en Irlande du Nord connaît un succès soutenu. Ainsi, à la rentrée 2010, la demande était sans précédent et bien supérieure à la capacité d’accueil. Une majorité des établissements secondaires intégrés, dont Lagan College à Belfast et Slemish Integrated à Ballymena, se voyaient contraints de refuser des inscriptions. En juillet 2010, le premier ministre d’Irlande du Nord, Peter Robinson, affirmait au News Letter que les écoles ségréguées engendrent la division et fixait le développement de l’enseignement intégré comme l’une de ses priorités.

2 Pourtant, Jonathan Bardon nous rappelle dans son ouvrage qu’en mai 1981, le même Peter Robinson, élu à la tête de Castlereagh District Council, s’était opposé à la création de Lagan College ; ce qui pourrait corroborer l’adage populaire selon lequel seuls les imbéciles ne changent pas d’avis… Bardon nous montre, précisément, que le parcours du mouvement pour l’éducation intégrée, qui reposait sur l’idée simple qu’il fallait éduquer ensemble les enfants catholiques et les enfants protestants, a été long et semé d’embûches. L’historien évoque tout d’abord l’échec des premières tentatives d’intégration scolaire aux dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles : la création d’un système national d’éducation pour l’Irlande en 1830 se heurta à l’opposition des presbytériens, puis des épiscopaliens et des catholiques, de même qu’une nouvelle tentative en Irlande du Nord sous l’égide de Lord Londonderry en 1923. Une autre tentative eut lieu en 1974, sous l’impulsion de Basil McIvor (qui devint plus tard un soutien important du

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mouvement), alors ministre dans le gouvernement issu des accords de Sunningdale, dont l’existence fut brutalement avortée comme on sait.

3 Puis, il se consacre à l’histoire du mouvement All Children Together. Ce mouvement est parti, en fait, de quelques parents catholiques qui envoyaient leurs enfants dans les écoles « d’État ». Ces parents étaient confrontés au problème très concret de l’instruction religieuse de leurs enfants, en particulier de la préparation à la première communion et à la confirmation qui était faite dans les écoles catholiques mais pas en dehors. Il s’est posé, en outre, le problème des évêques qui refusaient ces sacrements aux enfants non scolarisés dans des écoles catholiques. En fait, l’opposition résolue de l’Église catholique a été une constante pendant toute l’histoire du mouvement pour l’intégration.

4 Comme Tony Spencer, lui-même acteur majeur du mouvement, l’avait perçu, l’histoire d’All Children Together peut se résumer en quatre phases. Dans un premier temps, entre 1974 et 1976, l’association tenta de convaincre l’État de créer des établissements intégrés. Devant l’absence de résultats, il se tourna vers les Églises : l’action du mouvement entraîna, en 1978, l’adoption d’une loi sur l’éducation en Irlande du Nord permettant aux Églises de créer des établissements intégrés si elles le désiraient. Bien entendu, rien ne se produisit. Le mouvement décida alors de prendre l’initiative en créant un fonds. Ceci le conduisit à la dernière phase, celle qui fut couronnée de succès : le soutien aux parents d’élèves désireux de créer des établissements scolaires intégrés.

5 Ces premiers établissements furent Lagan College (un établissement secondaire sur le modèle des comprehensive schools anglaises) et Forge Integrated Primary School. Bardon nous narre dans le détail les difficultés considérables auxquelles le mouvement a été confronté pour financer et faire fonctionner ces écoles jusqu’à leur prise en charge par l’État. Le récit s’arrête en 2003, lorsque l’association a décidé de se dissoudre pour laisser la place à des structures plus officielles. L’ouvrage de Bardon est extrêmement détaillé ; il nous donne accès à une masse considérable de documents primaires : affiches et bulletins d’All Children Together, procès-verbaux des assemblées générales, photographies, ainsi que des rapports (croustillants !) d’entrevues entre membres du clergé et ministres.

6 Bardon dresse également un portrait précis des principaux « piliers » du mouvement qui ont porté cette lutte pendant plus de 30 ans. Tous, qu’ils soient catholiques ou protestants, étaient animés d’une profonde foi chrétienne et l’auteur montre bien que le caractère œcuménique du mouvement All Children Together était très marqué. À l’heure où l’Irlande du Nord s’ouvre (un peu) à des influences d’autres parties du monde, on peut s’interroger sur la capacité des établissements intégrés à accueillir ceux qui ne sont pas chrétiens, ainsi qu’à ceux qui n’accordent pas une place centrale à la religion dans leur vie.

7 Quoi qu’il en soit, cet ouvrage nous donne un aperçu d’un mouvement très populaire mais peu connu à l’extérieur de l’Irlande du Nord, une lutte pacifique et exemplaire menée avec ténacité pendant plusieurs décennies dans un contexte extraordinairement peu propice. Le succès actuel de l’enseignement intégré aujourd’hui est riche de paradoxes. Alors que la demande ne cesse de croître, la ségrégation résidentielle ne cesse de s’intensifier. De même, les tentatives de la ministre Caitriona Ruane (Sinn Féin) pour abolir la sélection des élèves à l’âge d’onze ans ont échoué face à la résistance acharnée des grammar schools. Or, la demande pour les établissements intégrés, qui

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proposent un modèle comprehensive depuis 1981, est telle qu’ils sont devenus parmi les établissements les plus sélectifs d’Irlande du Nord ! L’histoire d’All Children Together rédigée par Jonathan Bardon sera d’un grand intérêt pour tout chercheur désireux d’approfondir ces questions.

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Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts

Karin Fischer

RÉFÉRENCE

Gerry Jeffers et Una O’Connor (dir.), Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts, Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, 2008, 216 p., ISBN 978-1-904541-77-6

1 L’ouvrage collectif dirigé par Gerry Jeffers et Una O’Connor sort un peu des sentiers battus strictement « universitaires », dans la mesure où il fait ressortir les liens entre théorie et pratique éducative, nombre de ses contributeurs étant directement engagés dans les initiatives pédagogiques qu’ils décrivent. Cette publication a vu le jour grâce au soutien de la Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS), une plateforme d’organisations qui regroupe la plupart des centres ou départements de l’île impliqués dans la formation des enseignants. Cette plateforme, créée en 2003, est hébergée et soutenue par le Centre for Cross-Border Studies à Armagh.

2 Les différents auteurs donnent à voir plusieurs facettes du sujet qui les préoccupe, grâce notamment à diverses études de terrain, dans un contexte particulièrement mouvant en Irlande ces dernières années, avec l’introduction de la nouvelle matière Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) dans les écoles secondaires de la République d’Irlande, matière obligatoire à l’examen du Junior Certificate à partir de 1999, et l’introduction plus récente en Irlande du Nord d’une matière intitulée Local and Global Citizenship (officialisée en 2007). L’attention portée au terrain et à l’expérience apparaît très révélatrice des mécanismes à l’œuvre qui rendent difficile l’épanouissement de ces nouvelles matières, et n’empêche pas les différents contributeurs de faire des rapprochements fructueux avec la réflexion théorique et pour certains avec la dimension internationale du sujet.

3 À la lecture de de cet ouvrage, on est frappé par l’engagement des auteurs pour une certaine vision de l’éducation, qui fait le lien entre l’école et la société et entre éducation formelle et informelle, qui donne véritablement la parole aux enfants et aux

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adolescents, premiers acteurs de l’école, qui porte une conception exigeante de la démocratie et de la vie sociale. Ils donnent à voir une situation très contrastée, voire contradictoire, en République d’Irlande, l’introduction d’un programme ambitieux d’éducation civique, politique et sociale dans les écoles irlandaises se heurtant dans la réalisation de ses objectifs à un contexte éducatif et social très peu propice par ailleurs à son développement, car dominé par l’importance accordée à la « réussite » scolaire en termes purement académiques et individuels, et marqué par ce que Denis O’Sullivan appelle le « paradigme mercantile ». Pour que l’éducation à la citoyenneté cesse d’être marginalisée et pour qu’elle prenne toute sa place au cœur de l’entreprise éducative, les auteurs insistent sur une nécessité première, celle de revoir les structures et le fonctionnement mêmes des écoles. Des questions à la fois très proches et spécifiques se posent en Irlande du Nord, dans un contexte où la ségrégation scolaire reste la norme et où le concept de citoyenneté nationale lui-même est matière à controverse, et reste partiellement, mais assez logiquement, évacué de l’éducation à la citoyenneté.

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Gaelic Games

Catherine Maignant

RÉFÉRENCE

Paul Darby, Gaelic Games, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora, Dublin, UCD Press, 2009, 256 p., ISBN 978-1-906359-23-2

1 Paul Darby, chercheur en sciences du sport, propose dans Gaelic Games, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora une histoire des sports gaéliques, et plus particulièrement du GAA, aux États-Unis des origines à nos jours. L’orientation choisie est celle d’une étude de cas, celui de quatre villes ciblées pour leur pertinence dans le double contexte de l’histoire de la diaspora irlandaise et du développement sportif : Boston, New York, Chicago et San Francisco. La structure de l’ouvrage, essentiellement chronologique, laisse ainsi systématiquement la place à une étude particulière de ces villes dans une perspective à la fois illustrative et comparative. D’un point de vue thématique, une place importante est réservée aux liens entre nationalisme et implication sportive, là encore dans le cadre chronologique et spatial précédemment défini.

2 L’objectif de l’auteur est de combler les lacunes de la recherche universitaire dans le domaine de l’impact psychologique, politique et culturel des sports gaéliques sur la diaspora irlandaise aux États-Unis. La méthode choisie est à la fois historique et ethnographique. C’est aussi le témoignage de première main d’un praticien actif du football gaélique, qui a fait l’expérience de l’émigration et comprend intimement la contribution du sport à la refondation identitaire d’un Irlandais en exil. Passion et sens du vécu habitent donc cet ouvrage aussi vivant que documenté.

3 Pour ce qui est du détail de l’histoire locale du hurling et du football gaélique, l’ouvrage recèle une mine d’informations. Le lecteur découvre des personnages hauts en couleur et suit avec beaucoup d’intérêt les heurs et malheurs des clubs étudiés. Il devient également familier des joueurs, de leurs supporters et partage des moments de vie de la diaspora ainsi que son enthousiasme pour les joueurs irlandais en tournée. Etant donné le parti-pris de la juxtaposition des expériences locales, les redites sont inévitables, et elles sont nombreuses, tant au niveau de la description des événements que de l’analyse

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des phénomènes. Le récit détaillé permet toutefois d’établir des schémas distinctifs pour les différents cas étudiés et des nuances dans les tendances générales. La précision présente ainsi des mérites indiscutables.

4 Néanmoins, les grandes lignes de la démonstration se résument en peu de mots et sortent rarement de ce que le lecteur averti attendait. L’étude de Paul Darby confirme ainsi le lien entre les fortunes des sports gaéliques aux États-Unis et les fluctuations dans le nombre des migrants irlandais. Elle met en évidence le lien entre sport et affirmation de soi, intégration et perte d’intérêt pour les jeux irlandais. Elle analyse également le choix du hurling ou du football gaélique comme la marque d’un engagement nationaliste, souvent de tendance républicaine. De même, elle souligne l’importance du contexte tant américain qu’irlandais dans l’évolution du GAA Outre- Atlantique.

5 En dernier ressort, le lecteur ne peut qu’être frappé par le caractère secondaire du goût pour les sports en question et l’importance capitale du facteur ethnique dans le succès du GAA. Il ne peut s’empêcher, en conclusion, de partager les interrogations de l’auteur quant à l’avenir des sports gaéliques. Il semble en effet que l’évolution de la politique américaine en matière d’immigration suite à l’attentat du 11 septembre 2001 ne limite de façon durable l’apport irlandais et ne menace, du même coup, la survie des sports gaéliques aux États-Unis. La nouvelle stratégie des associations, qui visent un nouveau public, risque de couper ces sports de leur berceau identitaire et de les dénaturer. Une autre phase de l’histoire se dessine et l’ouvrage de Paul Darby se clôt sur l’annonce d’une nouvelle piste d’exploration tout à fait novatrice.

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The Fall of the House of Paisley

Michel Savaric

RÉFÉRENCE

David Gordon, The Fall of the House of Paisley, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 2009, Revised edition 2010, 267 p., ISBN 978-0-7171-4830-1

1 Pour tous les observateurs de l’époque, lorsqu’il est apparu sur la scène politique d’Irlande du Nord en 1964, Ian Paisley faisait figure d’anachronisme. Sa rhétorique antipapiste semblait surgir tout droit du dix-septième siècle (ou peut-être, plus proche de nous, du renouveau évangélique protestant du milieu du dix-neuvième siècle). Ian Paisley était un outsider, il ne faisait pas partie de l’establishment unioniste et, à ce titre, il prétendait incarner les intérêts et les revendications de la classe ouvrière loyaliste. En mai 2010, âgé de 84 ans, il est devenu Lord. Pendant plus de 40 ans, il a incarné l’intransigeance et la rectitude protestantes. Il est entré dans le folklore populaire (voir les fameuses Paisley jokes par exemple). Celui qui avait dit « never, never, never, never » à Margaret Thatcher après la signature de l’Accord anglo-irlandais affirmait encore, le 12 juillet 2006, que le Sinn Féin entrerait au gouvernement « over our dead bodies ». Huit mois plus tard, il apparaissait, tout sourire, en compagnie de Gerry Adams pour une conférence de presse. En mai 2007, il gouvernait l’Irlande du Nord en compagnie de Martin McGuinness, ancien chef d’État-major de l’IRA entre 1978 et 1982 !

2 Cet ouvrage de David Gordon, journaliste au Belfast Telegraph, est consacré à cet invraisemblable revirement. De nombreux commentateurs ont choisi de célébrer la transformation de l’intraitable puritain Ian Paisley en « homme de paix ». Telle n’est pas l’option choisie par David Gordon. Son regard est plutôt un regard critique, teinté d’ironie, sur la consécration, puis la chute, de Paisley père et fils, installés aux commandes de l’Irlande du Nord de mai 2007 à février et mars 2008. Au passage, l’ouvrage dresse une chronique de la vie politique de l’Irlande du Nord pendant ces quelques mois.

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3 Il détaille les réactions des fidèles de Paisley lorsqu’ils le virent riant à gorge déployée avec son acolyte du Sinn Féin : choc, incrédulité, sentiment d’avoir été trahi par celui-là même qui ne cessait de mettre en garde contre les « Lundies », les traîtres. Les dissensions au sein de son Église presbytérienne libre conduisirent Ian Paisley à laisser sa place de « Moderator ». À la tête du gouvernement, les « affaires » se sont accumulées. Celles-ci concernaient avant tout les liens entre la famille Paisley et un promoteur immobilier de la côte nord d’Antrim du nom de Seymour Sweeney, lui-même membre du DUP. En particulier, Ian Paisley Jr a tout fait pour favoriser l’adoption d’un projet pharaonique de centre touristique sur le site de la célèbre Chaussée des Géants. Encourant l’ire du National Trust et de l’UNESCO, les tentatives de Paisley Jr ne pouvaient aboutir. Néanmoins, il n’a pas ménagé ses efforts et son temps pour les faire aboutir.

4 D’autres affaires ont émergé grâce à Gordon lui-même, notamment la location de bureaux somptueux et immenses par le DUP dans le centre de Ballymena. Le loyer payé par l’État, grossièrement surévalué s’élevait à £62 000 et le propriétaire s’avérait être nul autre que Sweeney ! Ces scandales à répétition ont eu un effet dévastateur pour le DUP. En février 2008, alors qu’il s’attendait à remporter sans effort l’élection partielle de Dromore, le parti connut une humiliante défaite. Quelques jours plus tard, Ian Jr a annoncé sa démission ; personne au sein de son parti n’a cherché à prendre sa défense. Le père et le fils fonctionnant en tandem, Ian senior a annoncé son départ à la retraite le mois suivant alors qu’il jurait quelques semaines plus tôt de son désir de mener son mandat jusqu’à son terme.

5 Malgré quelques répétitions, l’ouvrage de David Gordon est écrit sur un ton dynamique tout en détaillant bien les questions qu’il traite. En refermant le livre, on ne peut s’empêcher de partager les interrogations de David Trimble sur Paisley, citées par Gordon : « Dr Paisley hasn’t made it clear why Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness is his number two – a man with a terrorist past – yet he criticised me for working alongside people like constitutional nationalist Seamus Mallon, my extremely able Deputy First Minister. It has been suggested that Ian Paisley and his colleagues found themselves in power after 40 years on the sidelines, and embraced it with both arms. Perhaps he always wanted to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at whatever cost – I pose the question which only he can answer. »

6 La fin de la carrière politique de Paisley soulève bien des questions sur toute la période des Troubles pendant laquelle il a joué un rôle prépondérant. Le sujet est loin d’être épuisé et la question posée par Trimble pourrait aussi très certainement s’appliquer à Gerry Adams et Martin McGuinness.

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Uncommon Valour – 1916 and the Battle for the South Dublin Union

Agnès Maillot

RÉFÉRENCE

Paul O’Brien, Uncommon Valour – 1916 and the Battle for the South Dublin Union, Cork, Mercier Press, 2010, 167 p. ISBN 978-1-856356-54-1

1 Dans Uncommon Valour, Paul O’Brien se livre à une description minutieuse de la bataille menée par les hommes de Eamonn Ceannt pendant l’Insurrection de Pâques 1916. Jour après jour, heure après heure, il suit l’évolution de cette semaine fatidique dans ses moindres détails. Rien n’a échappé à l’attention de ce passionné de 1916, qui s’efforce de reconstituer le plus fidèlement possible l’ambiance et le décor de ce vaste hôpital. On suit avec intérêt les mouvements des Volontaires et des troupes britanniques, le long des longs couloirs et allées labyrinthiques et au travers de ses salles encore occupées par des patients qui deviennent à leur insu spectateurs de l’histoire puisque « the work of the institution continued, despite the chaos » (26). O’Brien s’attache à décrire les états d’âme des différents protagonistes, voire meme leurs repas (« The Volunteers received the first respite of the day, a meal of corned beef and tea. » (63) Dans une langue souvent colorée, qui donne au récit une intensité parfois dramatique (« The skyline had turned a blood red as flames relentlessly consumed the metropolis », 84), O’Brien nous raconte comment ces hommes, lâchés au dernier moment par Eoin O’Neill dont le contrordre a, selon lui, sévèrement diminué les chances de réussite de l’insurrection, tiennent bon grâce à la stratégie déployée par Ceannt et Brugha, mais aussi grâce à leur courage, que même l’ennemi leur reconnaît (Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, qui envoie des renforts à la demande du Lieutenant Colonel Oates, écrira par la suite : « I am sorry for our poor fellows who were killed. They fought splendidly. So did the enemy. » 106) Le livre se clôt par une analyse de la tactique de guérilla urbaine déployée lors de cette semaine et qui, selon l’auteur, deviendra une référence militaire (« Today many military forces utilise

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the tactics and strategies that were deployed by both sides during the 1916 Rising » 101). Un livre qui ravira les férus d’histoire militaire et les passionnés de 1916.

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In Search of the Promised Land

Philippe Cauvet

RÉFÉRENCE

Gary Murphy, In Search of the Promised Land, The Politics of Post-War Ireland 1945-1961, Mercier Press, 2009, 352 p., ISBN 978-1-85635-638-1, 29,99 euros

1 Dans cet ouvrage, la thèse de Gary Murphy est la suivante: contrairement à la représentation qu’en ont fait de nombreux historiens, comme Tom Garvin par exemple, la période qui s’ouvre à la fin de la guerre n’est pas uniquement une période de chaos et d’échec des vieilles idées et des vieilles institutions irlandaises. Pour Murphy, c’est aussi, et surtout, le moment où ces mêmes institutions (hauts fonctionnaires, leaders politiques et spirituels, intellectuels reconnus…) se sont ouvertes au changement, malgré des résistances, ce qui, d’après lui, aurait permis et préparé le changement de la fin des années 1950. Ce tournant ne serait donc pas la grande rupture qu’on a bien voulu montrer.

2 La thèse est osée tant la période qui s’ouvre en 1957 est quasi-unanimement considérée comme un point de rupture dans l’histoire de l’Irlande. Pourtant, la démonstration n’est pas complètement convaincante. Il ressort notamment une volonté, peut-être un peu trop systématique, de minimiser le rôle du duo Whitaker/Lemass en essayant de montrer que ni l’un ni l’autre n’avait à l’époque, le monopole des idées qu’il défendait. Or, l’on se doute bien que l’idée du libre-échange, de la planification, de l’incitation des investissements étrangers, de l’adhésion européenne, existait dans de nombreux esprits, et en particulier de l’autre côté de l’échiquier politique, depuis déjà longtemps. L’on savait déjà que T. K. Whitaker était en place quand le Fianna Fáil revint au pouvoir en 1957 et que c’est un ministre Fine Gael qui en fit le haut-fonctionnaire que l’on connaît. En déduire que Sean Lemass ne doit pas être représenté comme « le sauveur de l’Irlande » ne fait donc pas nécessairement avancer la connaissance historique de la période.

3 Certes Lemass a su jouer avec les circonstances, reprendre à son compte les idées des autres et pas seulement dans le domaine économique : sa politique nord-irlandaise

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devait beaucoup aussi au Fine Gael. Doit-on pour autant en conclure qu’il n’a pas été essentiel dans le changement qui intervint à partir de 1957 ? Certes, à cette date, il choisit de défaire les lois protectionnistes qu’il avait lui-même conçues et mises en œuvre après 1932, mais ne doit-on pas, aussi, lui reconnaître un certain courage politique ? Si, comme le démontre Murphy lui-même, les milieux proches du Fianna Fáil n’étaient pas à l’origine d’une nouvelle vision économique et politique en Irlande, force est alors de reconnaître que Sean Lemass a été celui qui a réussi à la faire accepter aux héritiers de De Valera et à la mettre en œuvre. En d’autres mots, pour contrebalancer l’impression d’une thèse un peu trop ‘à charge’, il aurait été enrichissant d’étudier aussi la façon dont Lemass et ses proches ont réussi à renverser la tendance au sein de la sphère Fianna Fáil.

4 En fait, la qualité principale du travail de Gary Murphy n’est peut-être pas dans l’interprétation de ses sources mais dans les sources elles-mêmes. Dans cet ouvrage, il s’appuie sur une somme considérable de sources premières dont la diversité et la richesse (archives privées et publiques, entretiens, publications des scientifiques impliqués dans les débats de l’époque, presse…) sont étonnantes. C’est un travail de fouille historique que l’on ne peut que saluer. Il en résulte en particulier un portrait tout à fait édifiant des dissensions et de la concurrence entre les différents ministères et les hauts-fonctionnaires de l’époque. Le parallèle que, parfois, au détour d’une page, Murphy fait avec la situation actuelle n’en est que plus inquiétant.

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Irish Birmingham

Romain Garbaye

RÉFÉRENCE

James Moran, Irish Birmingham, a History, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2010, 278 p., ISBN 978-1-84631-475-9

1 Avec son Irish Birmingham, a History, James Moran, qui enseigne le théâtre à l’université de Nottingham, livre une histoire des Irlandais de Birmingham depuis le début du XIXe siècle richement documentée et finement argumentée. Il s’agit de combler une lacune de l’historiographie de la diaspora irlandaise en Grande-Bretagne : alors que la ville a accueilli les migrants irlandais et leurs descendants en nombres significatifs tout au long de la période étudiée (avec des pics à 4 % en 1851 et plus de 5,5 % en 1971), cet aspect de son histoire a été jusqu’à présent peu traité, à part quelques exceptions notables comme les travaux de l’historien Carl Chinn de l’université de Birmingham. Ce relatif manque d’intérêt contraste avec le traitement abondant de cas plus connus comme celui des Irlandais de Liverpool, de Manchester, et bien entendu de Londres. Pourtant, Birmingham a elle aussi joué un rôle notable dans l’histoire des Irlandais de Grande-Bretagne et des relations anglo-irlandaises, en particulier au moment du mouvement pour l’extension du droit de vote au début des années 1830, plus tard dans le siècle sous Joseph Chamberlain, puis plus récemment au moment des pub bombings de 1974 et de l’emprisonnement des Birmingham Six.

2 Moran se propose de combler ce manque à travers une approche très interdisciplinaire qui mêle histoire politique, histoire sociale et histoire culturelle et qui porte aussi une attention particulière à l’histoire du théâtre. Ce travail prolonge ainsi une approche déjà développée par l’auteur dans son livre de 2006 Staging the Easter Rising : 1916 as Theatre, qui porte sur la théatralisation de la politique à l’œuvre dans les stratégies des leaders du mouvement, ainsi que sur ses représentations théatrales, dont celles de Yeats. Dans Irish Birmingham, Moran convoque Foucault et Erving Goffman pour conceptualiser le théâtre comme une « hétérotopie », c’est-à-dire un « site qui parle d’autres sites ». Il construit ainsi une histoire des contributions des hommes de théâtre

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irlandais installés à Birmingham à la scène de leur ville et de leur pays d’adoption, ainsi qu’une histoire des représentations de l’Irlande et des Irlandais en Angleterre. Plus largement, le livre est aussi une histoire des populations irlandaises de la ville, de leurs souffrances et leurs combats politiques, souvent reflétés par le théâtre. Moran mobilise un vaste éventail de sources historiques pour dresser un portrait riche et nuancé des conditions sociales de cette population, de ses évolutions politiques au fil des décennies et du rôle des hommes d’Église dans ces évolutions. Le livre est construit de manière chronologique, chaque étape partant d’un épisode marquant de l’histoire du théâtre local pour le replacer dans son contexte culturel, social et politique plus large, avant de déboucher sur des récits détaillés des diverses marches, émeutes, meetings qui ont rythmé l’histoire des Irlandais de Birmingham.

3 Le chapitre d’ouverture nous montre comment, pendant les guerres napoléoniennes, l’acteur puis directeur du Theatre Royal de New Street William McCready a su construire une alternative positive aux stéréotypes de la paresse et de la bêtise auxquels étaient alors cantonnés les personnages irlandais, et comment il a par ailleurs réussi à faire connaître Birmingham comme une ville de théâtre en Angleterre grâce à ses qualités de gestionnaire. Plus loin, Moran s’étend à nouveau longuement sur le théâtre à propos de la période qui suit immédiatement la première guerre mondiale, lorsque, sur fonds de tensions politiques en Irlande, des émeutiers irlandais locaux se rassemblent au Birmingham Repertory Theatre pour perturber la représentation de la pièce The Tinker’s Wedding de J. M. Synge, jugée anti-irlandaise.

4 Dans les chapitres très riches consacrés au milieu du XIXe siècle, le livre rapporte en détail les attitudes hostiles et les actes de violences commis contre les Irlandais par la population anglaise locale, dans le contexte d’un afflux rapide d’une nouvelle vague de migrants irlandais consécutive aux famines des années 1840. Ces violences culminent en 1867 avec les Murphy Riots du nom du prêcheur William Murphy dont une série de discours violemment anticatholiques avait directement provoqué l’émeute. Moran montre comment ces évènements, présentés par la presse locale d’alors comme des violences commises par les Irlandais contre la foule anglaise rassemblée autour du prêcheur, ont en fait surtout consisté en une véritable mise à sac du quartier irlandais, situé en plein cœur de la ville, commis par des émeutiers anglais avec le soutien des forces de l’ordre. De manière générale, le ressentiment de beaucoup d’Irlandais de la ville face à l’ambiance d’hostilité et de rejet dont ils sont victimes dans cette période débouchera sur l’adhésion de beaucoup à la cause nationale irlandaise. Dans les années 1860, les Fenians s’implantent dans la population irlandaise locale et cherchent à bénéficier du formidable potentiel d’armement de la ville, alors productrice des armes à feu de l’Empire – les autorités saisiront ainsi des cargaisons de fusil à destination de l’Irlande. C’est pour canaliser les énergies de ses ouailles vers des sentiments plus pacifiques que le clergé catholique de la ville organise un rassemblement annuel pour la St Patrick à partir des années 1860.

5 Moran montre aussi que la ville a été au départ l’un des bastions du mouvement pour le Home Rule en Angleterre. Il semble donc cohérent que Joseph Chamberlain en tant que maire d’une ville dont encore 2,5 % de sa population était née en Irlande en 1871 (et donc, selon toute vraissemblance dont un nombre aux moins deux fois plus élevé était d’origine irlandaise), ait d’abord été un soutien enthousiaste du Home Rule (dans une version assez édulcorée, il est vrai). En entamant sa conversion à l’unionisme et à l’impérialisme, Chamberlain a réussi grâce à son immense popularité de maire, à

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transformer sa ville en une place forte liberal-unionist, apportant l’ensemble des sièges de députés de la ville à son camp dans les années 1880 et 1890 et contribuant à l’échec final des campagnes pour le Home Rule de Gladstone. Moran rapport cette pique de James Joyce sur le déclin de l’Empire dans Ulysses, placée dans la bouche d’un Irlandais nationaliste : « The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagen England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel. »

6 Le livre comporte enfin un récit détaillé des fortunes fluctuantes des Irlandais arrivés pendant et après la seconde guerre mondiale (la population irlandaise passe d’environ 6 000 en 1931 à plus de 58 000 en 1961), entre affirmation identitaire dans les années 1950 et 1960 et autocensure et repli sur soi après les attentats commis par la Provisional IRA contre deux pubs de la ville en 1974, qui étaient alors les attaques terroristes les plus meurtrières commises en Angleterre. Ce n’est qu’après la libération en 1991 des Birmingham Six, condamnés et emprisonnés à tort pour ces attentats en 1975, qu’un nouveau mouvement d’affirmation culturelle se dessine autour du renouveau du défilé de la Saint-Patrick (30 000 participants en 1998), dans un contexte de dynamisme économique à la fois en Irlande et dans la ville, et sur fond de multiculturalisme. Comme le dit la blague rapportée par Moran : « I’m Birmingham through and through, I wear a shamrock in my turban. »

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The MacBride Principles

Agnès Maillot

RÉFÉRENCE

Kevin McNamara, The MacBride Principles: Irish America Strikes Back, Liverpool University Press, 2009, 301 p., ISBN 978-1-84631-217-5

1 Kevin MacNamara, ancien député travailliste, retrace l’histoire de la lutte des différents groupes de pression américains pour instaurer des pratiques d’emploi équitable en Irlande du Nord. Fort d’une longue expérience politique, puisque l’auteur a été pendant quelques années membre du Shadow Cabinet en tant que Secrétaire d’État à l’Irlande du Nord, MacNamara analyse minutieusement le long chemin parcouru par les défenseurs d’une politique de « Fair Employment » quelques années après la création du Fair Employment Agency en 1976. Dans un récit clairement structuré et abondamment référencé, il nous livre les origines de l’idée même de ces principes, le Code Sullivan de 1977 qui visait à lutter contre le régime de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Les MacBride Principles cherchaient donc à mettre fin à la discrimination dans les pratiques d’emploi des entreprises nord-américaines installées en Irlande du Nord.

2 S’appuyant sur l’analyse de nombreuses sources primaires et secondaires, MacNamara se livre à une reconstitution méticuleuse tant de la genèse de ces principes que de leurs réception aux États-Unis, mais aussi en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. La campagne acharnée et souvent passionnée des défenseurs et des détracteurs des principes est relatée dans ses moindres détails. Les prises de position des administrations américaines successives, les ambivalences des politiciens britanniques et nord-irlandais et leurs hésitations face à une politique qui risquait, pour certains, de porter atteinte aux investissement américains en Irlande du Nord, tous les arguments des uns et des autres sont passés au crible. Car si personne ne contestait la nécessité d’assurer des politiques d’emploi équitables, certains étaient gênés par l’activisme de Noraid dans la campagne notamment dans les premières années. John Hume, lui, regrettait le fait que ces principes avaient été élaborés sans concertation avec les représentants politiques nord-irlandais et craignait que de tels principes n’entrainent le retrait des entreprises

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nord-américaines et une aggravation du chômage. Les Britanniques, quant à eux, estimaient que de tels principes risquaient de saper le travail de la Fair Employment Agency (« The FEA had the sanction of law, and the MacBride Principles proposed the sanction of disinvestment, which was its most damaging aspect », p. 89). Le gouvernement irlandais se trouvait dans une situation délicate, ne voulant ni s’aliéner le gouvernement britannique à une époque où il cherchait à assurer une collaboration active entre Dublin et Londres – dans les années précédant et suivant la signature de l’Accord anglo- irlandais – mais ne pouvant non plus se permettre de ne pas endosser les principes.

3 Ce livre dépasse cependant largement son sujet, puisqu’il brosse également un tableau du rôle fondamental des États-Unis et des différents groupes de pression américains en Irlande du Nord bien avant l’arrivée de Clinton et l’avènement du processus de paix. Il analyse en outre les complexités de ce type de principes, dont la mise en pratique peut s’avérer contreproductive. Un récit passionnant, ponctué de témoignages et de rappels historiques qui rend la lecture d’autant plus vivante.

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Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians

Ann-Marie Kilgallon

REFERENCES

C. J. Woods, Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2009, 248 p, ISBN 978 1 84682 131 8 (hardback); 978-1-84682-132-5 (paperback), 50/24,95 euros

1 Walking, touring and journeying over les chemins d’Irlande, the Saxon and other travellers have offered up gleanings, impressions, sketches or letters about Paddy and his country over several centuries. C. J. Woods’s Travellers’ Accounts is a select repertory of 209 travel accounts of Ireland (accessible in published or manuscript form) spanning the period 1635 to 1950.

2 This innovative guide compels attention to travel writing as a source for Irish history, and thus sets a research agenda. Primarily addressed to local historians, it will also interest social and cultural historians, and ethnology, geography and literary specialists.

3 Historians are presented here with an annotated corpus of travel accounts, including biographical information on the traveller, details of the trip, indicative content of the account, in addition to a scholarly Introduction.

4 Dr. Woods’s annotations stress the rich detail in the accounts on Irish local life while the book’s Introduction cautions the need to situate the author, his purpose and the differing degrees of authority of the accounts.

5 The guide is particularly rich in nineteenth century narratives, especially for the 1830s and 1840s. Only travels with itineraries are listed, facilitating local history studies of particular geographical places.

6 Travellers writing about Ireland were from varied origins – about one third of those listed were British while others were Irish, French, German, Dutch, American, even

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Indian, and from diverse social positions, professions and religions. Narratives were penned by booksellers, American Quaker merchants, Jansenist religious persons, agriculturalists and more than one army surgeon.

7 Thirty accounts of French travellers are annotated by Dr. Woods, with peaks in the periods 1780-1800, 1830-1845, and later 1880s. During the French July Monarchy, Charles de Montalembert, Jules Michelet and Alexis de Tocqueville commented on Irish poverty, social issues, national identity and Catholicism at a moment of social importance in both countries.

8 However, in view of certain epistemological challenges posed by the literary genre of travel writing as a source of information for what was really there, how will historians use these texts?

9 Local historians will have to use the sources examined in this book with discrimination, care, and even in some cases, with scepticism. Cultural historians will be able to undertake studies into perception, representations of poverty, references to home and so on.

10 A point which may be added to the Introduction is that readers should be aware of the nature of the travel-writing genre, its advantages and particularly its pitfalls, before using it as a source. Engagement with interdisciplinary work, especially by literary specialists, will be important.

11 Dr. Woods’s valuable, meticulously researched guide draws attention to the large number of these fascinating texts and significantly enhances knowledge about them. Here’s Ireland, travellers say. Let us investigate more!

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Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America

Bernard Escarbelt

RÉFÉRENCE

Richard K. MacMaster, Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2009, XII + 324 p., ISBN 978-1-903688-78-6

1 La couverture de cette publication – vue de la ville de Philadelphie, « dans la province de Pennsylvanie, c.1754 – est une bonne illustration du contexte de cet ouvrage, l’Amérique coloniale au XVIIIe siècle – bâtiments, disposition de la ville et, au premier plan, navires de commerce, qui pouvaient, comme l’indique la quatrième de couverture, faire le coup de feu. Moins identifiable cependant est l’élément Scoto- irlandais, et moins encore ce qui constitue le point de départ de cette étude géopolitique et socio-économique abondamment documentée : la production et le commerce du lin (graines et fibres) dans les échanges transatlantiques en direction de l’Ulster, où l’industrie linière se développe, et l’émigration des Ulsteriens vers l’Amérique. Les émigrants, en effet, trouvaient place sur les bateaux qui avaient apporté la matière première en Ulster et trouvaient à s’employer comme personnel à tout faire, très demandé dans la région de la Philadelphie : « Flaxseed and emigrants were two sides of the same commercial coin by 1735-6 »(p. 40). L’étude s’attarde sur la montée en puissance des grands négociants, la place qu’occupent Philadelphie, New York, entre autres, dans les rotations transatlantiques ; elle suit la progression des Scoto-irlandais sur la ‘frontière’ en s’arrêtant sur des points névralgiques (Carlisle/Amérique) et l’extension de la colonisation à mesure que des villes nouvelles se créent, jusqu’à atteindre les Carolines en fonction de l’arrivée de nouveaux immigrants venus d’Ulster, le poids politique croissant des grands négociants – souvent natifs d’Ulster, désormais bien établis dans les principales villes d’Amérique du Nord ; majoritairement presbytériens, ils se posent maintenant la question de leur identité : sont-ils irlandais, britanniques, américains ou scoto-irlandais (p. 171). Un chapitre entier est consacré à

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leur rôle dans la prospérité grandissante de Baltimore, à mesure que se développe la production et le commerce des céréales ; deux autres sont consacrés aux vagues d’immigrants affluant dans les différentes villes. L’activité économique et la prospérité semblent avoir culminé vers 1771, après quoi, sur fond de « Stamp Act » et de « Boston Tea-Party » s’amorce le déclin : en janvier 1775, les derniers bateaux transportant du lin quittent pour Newry et Londonderry, marquant le terme de ce commerce transatlantique. L’ouvrage rappelle tout au long – mais assez discrètement au total – les enjeux nationaux et internationaux de l’époque – les guerres entre l’Angleterre et l’Espagne, les discussions au Parlement de Westminster, la question de la levée des impôts directs et indirects dans les colonies américaines, mais le cheminement vers l’indépendance n’est pas central. L’ouvrage est surtout remarquable pour la microhistoire que trace l’auteur en s’appuyant sur un travail considérable mettant en jeu des documents d’époque que l’on retrouve autant dans les abondantes notes de fin de chapitre que dans la longue bibliographie et dans un index de dix pages, en petits caractères sur trois colonnes par page.

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The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe

Karine Bigand

REFERENCES

Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe. Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600-1800, Dublin, Four Courts Press in association with The Pontifical Irish College, Rome, 2010, XV + 404 p., ISBN 978-1-84682-185-1

1 Recent years have seen an increasing trend in Irish historical studies, away from the strictly national context to a wider European frame. In particular, the “Irish in Europe project”, led by Thomas O’Connor (NUI Maynooth) and Mary Ann Lyons (Saint Patrick’s College, Drumcondra), has resulted in an important exhibition (Strangers to Citizens: the Irish in Europe, 1600-1800) in Dublin, the compilation of databases of Irish soldiers and students in Europe, as well as conferences and publications exploring the experiences of Irish migrants in the early modern period. The fourth volume of the Four Courts Press “Irish in Europe” series follows a conference organized in the Irish Pontifical College in Rome on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Flight of the Ulster Earls in 1607. It contains a selection of the papers given then, as well as additional material. The focus is naturally upon Rome and Spain, with insights into Louvain, Prague, Germany and Scandinavia.

2 The title of the volume is somewhat misleading, as the book offers relatively limited attention to the earls themselves or to the practical organisation of the Irish exiles on the continent after 1607. “Baroque Europe” is used more to define a period than a specific politically coherent entity. The subtitle “Refashioning Irish Identities” is more relevant to the contents of the book. The plural is necessary here because of the heterogeneity of people (clergymen, students, merchants, soldiers, travellers), and the motives and outcomes (not all were permanently exiled) of Irish experiences in Europe.

3 One dominant argument of the book is to show how religion often came to dominate ethnicity in defining Irishness. The early seventeenth century context of the confessionalization of Europe, combined with the need for patronage, led the Irish earls and their followers to self-fashion themselves as Catholic champions in the hope of

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obtaining help from Rome and Spain. This was to no political avail since none of the Catholic powers wanted to undermine the newly found peace with England. Instead Ireland became a tool in the Counter-Reformation movement, while local political interests were brushed aside. Baroque imagination embraced the pragmatically fashioned Catholic identity of the Irish, often to the detriment of its ethnic dimension. This in turn forced the Irish émigrés to refashion their identity by weaving Irish history into classical or mythical traditions and stressing the importance of saints, language and poetry.

4 The book also explores the tension between self-perceived and ascribed identities. The presence of several articles about the Scottish presence in Europe is revealing of the importance of denomination in fashioning identities. For instance, competition for patronage and influence in Rome implied strong rivalry between Irish and Scottish communities, both claiming as their own the saints of the old ‘Scotia’, with diverging understandings of the term. Similar blurring between self-perceived and ascribed identities is to be found with Catholic Highlanders or Irish-born mercenaries of Scottish Protestant settler descent, all referred to as ‘Irish’ but claiming very different Irish identities, if any. The capacity and willingness of Irish émigrés, in particular soldiers, to retain any Irish identity are tackled in several chapters.

5 Ciaran Brady, in the concluding chapter of the book, notes that the ‘flight of the earls’ is an ambiguous “commemorative model”, “an abstract conception whose very amorphousness has enabled it to absorb and sustain different and frequently conflicting interprÉtative meanings over time” (367). The material gathered here shows that the same can be said of the idea of Irishness in Baroque Europe, with the Irish themselves taking active part in redefining the term.

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