The Theatre of Marina Carr: a Latin American Reading, Interview, and Translation, by Patricia Novillo-Corvalán

Volume 7 - Number 2 July 2009 IRISH MIGRATION STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICA Society for Irish Latin American Studies Mario Vargas Llosa at the monument inside McKenna's Fort near Banna Strand in Co. Kerry, where Roger Casement was captured on 21 April 1916. (Photo by Angus Mitchell) Volume 7 – Number 2 July 2009 Literature, Art and Culture Guest Editors: Laura Izarra and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán Editor: Claire Healy Associate Editor: Susan Wilkinson ISSN 1661-6065 Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS) Smoorbeg, Kill, Co. Waterford, Ireland This journal is available online at SILAS website: www.irlandeses.org Irish Migration Studies in Latin America CONTENTS Literary Connections between Ireland and Latin America, by Laura P. Z. Izarra and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Guest Editors............................................................................... 133 An interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, by Angus Mitchell ..................................................................... 137 The Theatre of Marina Carr: A Latin American Reading, Interview, and Translation, by Patricia Novillo-Corvalán........................................................................................................................ 145 Interview with Larry O’Loughlin, by Laura P. Z. Izarra ........................................................................... 155 Joycean Aesthetics in Spanish Literature, by Marisol Morales Ladrón ..................................................... 165 Joyce’s Ulysses in Argentine Literature, by Carlos Gamerro...................................................................... 177 Baroque Historiographies: Joyce, Faulkner, and García Márquez, by Diana Pérez García........................ 185 Two Contemporary Medeas, by Zoraide Rodrigues Carrasco de Mesquita ........................................... 195 The Transfiguration of History: Knowledge, Time and Space in Northern Irish Poetry, by Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação .........................................................................................................205 An Exile Guidebook for the Inhabitants: The Reception of William Bulfin’s Rambles in Eirinn in Ireland: 1901-1904, by Rebecca Geraghty and Patrick Geraghty ..................................... 213 Interpreting history in Eduardo Cormick’s Entre gringos y criollos, by Andrés Romera.............................. 223 Henry Sheridan and the beginnings of Argentine art, by Mariano Galazzi ................................................. 231 Una poca de gracia: Irish Music in Latin America, by Edmundo Murray................................................ 239 From Cuyo to the Seaboard: Irish Roots in Popular Argentine Music, by Eduardo Cormick .................... 249 Beneath the Hieroglyph: Recontextualising the Black Diaries of Roger Casement, by Angus Mitchell......... 253 Book Reviews........................................................................................................................................... 267 iii Irish Migration Studies in Latin America Literary Connections between Ireland and Latin America By Laura P. Z. Izarra and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán Guest Editors In his seminal essay ‘The Argentine Writer and engagement with Irish literature with a Tradition’ (1951), Jorge Luis Borges invented a pioneering translation of the last two pages of model of Argentine – and Latin American – Joyce’s revolutionary Ulysses. If an Argentine literature based on the example of the Irish writer had been wandering through the tradition. He declared Ireland a sister nation in labyrinthine streets of Joyce’s urban novel, in view of its peripheral position in relation to the 1940s a young Irish writer, Samuel Beckett, mainland Europe and encouraged Latin was making his own excursions through the American writers to follow the example of the fertile ground of Mexican poetry. Like Borges Irish who, as outsiders, had turned the Western and Joyce, Beckett was a notorious émigré and archive to their own advantage. The an accomplished polyglot: his linguistic innovativeness, irreverence and iconoclasm of repertoire boasted an impressive range of Ireland, claimed Borges, resided in the fact that European languages: English, French, Italian, throughout history the Irish felt entitled to freely German and a reading knowledge of Spanish. recreate Western discourses without any sense of Beckett combined his linguistic dexterity and duty or attachment to them (Borges 1999: 426). poetic sensitivity to superbly render into English an extraordinary anthology of Mexican poetry Borges illustrated his thesis with the names of compiled by Octavio Paz. His translation some of the most illustrious Irishmen: the strategy, moreover, had much in common with eighteenth-century philosopher George the model practiced by Borges’s French writer Berkeley, the satirist Jonathan Swift and the Pierre Menard, in that Beckett sought to playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw. produce a type of translation that is richer, more This list spreads outwards to include Oscar subtle than the original. He translated the poetry Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and of the most eminent Mexican men of letters of prominent contemporary voices such as Seamus the nineteenth and twentieth century, including, Heaney, Brian Friel, Paul Muldoon, and Marina amongst others, Alfonso Reyes, Enrique Carr, to name a few. By re-inventing Latin González Martínez and Ramón López Velarde. American literature through the model of the At the heart of Beckett’s translation of Reyes’s Irish, or by superimposing one tradition upon poem ‘Sol de Monterrey’, lies a lyrical sentiment, another, Borges opens the door to a wide range a fervent desire that seeks to conjure up the of cross-cultural relations. What has been, essence of poetry, an aesthetic impulse shared therefore, the outcome of this complex by Irish and Latin American writers: engagement? Have Latin American artists and writers – as Borges predicted – looked upon the When I with my stick mirror of Irish art to find a secret reciprocity, a and bundle went from home, composite image that reflected their own to my heart I said: creative endeavours? Have the Irish, in turn, Now bear the sun awhile! gazed across the Atlantic Ocean at the vast, It is a hoard – unending, fluid, and intriguing shapes of the Latin unending – that I squander. American landscape? Cuando salí de mi casa con mi bastón y mi hato, If we take as an initial example Borges’s own le dije a mi corazón: literary trajectory, we learn that at the tender age - ¡Ya llevas el sol para rato! of nine, a precocious Borges launched his Es tesoro – y no se acaba: literary career with an impressive Spanish no se me acaba – y lo gasto’ (Reyes 1997: 90). translation of Wilde’s story ‘The Happy Prince’. In 1925 a youthful and avant-gardist Borges The omnipresent warmth and luminosity of the continued and developed his passionate sun of Monterrey stands as a symbol for an ars Laura P. Z. Izarra and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán. ‘Literary Connections between Ireland and Latin America’ 133 Vol. 7, n°2 (July 2009) poetica, an art of writing that fuses the mutually the literary, artistic and cultural interactions complementary Spanish and English discourses between Ireland and Latin America. It remains of Reyes and Beckett. ‘The main thing is to write undeniable that Irish artists, writers and for the joy of it’, whispers the ghost of James philosophers have cast their powerful spell in Joyce to Seamus Heaney in his imaginary the Latin American imagination. Equally encounter with the blind Irish bard in Station significant is the inverse phenomenon, whereby Island (Heaney 1990: 192). In his tributary poem the Irish have looked to Latin America as an to Joyce, a blind and elderly Borges similarly inexhaustible source of inspiration and called forth: enrichment for a wide range of creative projects. I am the others. I am all those The unique interviews with the Peruvian writer whom your obstinate rigor has redeemed. Mario Vargas Llosa and the Irish playwrights I am those you do not know and those you continue Marina Carr and Larry O’Loughlin that open to save. this issue are testament to this continuing ‘Yo soy los otros. Yo soy todos aquellos exchange of ideas. This complex engagement que ha rescatado tu obstinado rigor. has contributed to the creation of a long- Soy los que no conoces y los que salvas. (Borges standing dialogue that has woven the multi- 1999:288-9). faceted figures of a complex tapestry. The historian Angus Mitchell interviewed Vargas The redeeming joy of writing that the phantasm Llosa about his current novel based on the life of Joyce conveyed to both Heaney and Borges of the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement. For from beyond the grave encapsulates the active the first time, Vargas Llosa spoke in detail about dialogue between past, present and future his recent trip to the Democratic Republic of generations, so that the ever-recurring the Congo to conduct vital research on investment between Ireland and Latin America Casement’s human rights mission in 1903, the can continue to be realised. For this reason, it is historical controversy surrounding the important to remember that the otherwise publication of the Black Diaries, as well as the separate literary paths of Borges and Beckett much debated issue of Casement’s sexuality. In eventually converged in 1961, when a jury in her interview with Marina Carr, Patricia Novillo- France jointly awarded them the prestigious Prix Corvalán engaged in a fascinating

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