Sean O'Casey: A Politician who couldn't help being a Writer Paul O'Brien to pull him down and who managed to cre- ate a literature of lasting value. He was never the `guttersnipe play- wright from the slums' that some of his some of his critics dismissed him as. But he gave a voice to those who are rarely heard; the poor, the dispossessed, and the tenement-dweller, whose lives he shaped into a work of art. He was a socialist, a hu- manist and a great writer who put politics at the centre of his work. He sent his blasts and benedictions across the world and he asserted the role of the writer as a trans- formative force in society'. O'Casey was always a fighter, and never suffered from the `cruelty of low ambition'. He was an angry man capable of great rages long be- fore John Osborne and his generation gave birth to the concept in the 1950s: `But his anger was based, not on his dislike for mankind, but on his love for it. When he scourges Ireland, it is because he feels it is betraying the ideals he cherishes for the native land he loves so fiercely’1. Sean O'Casey Perhaps this was the reason why Irish critics were always provisional or uncertain in their attitude to Sean O'Casey. Nev- Sean O'Casey was born in Dublin in ertheless, he lived to witness the birth of 1880 in an area that had seen better days. a new generation of scholars. In the late He was a man of immense contradictions, 1950s what can only be described as an who refused to conform to the image cre- O'Casey industry, based mainly in United ated for him by the literary and political States, came into being. Books, journals, elites. In later life, he experienced rejec- and reviews all flowed at a furious rate. tion, exile, censorship, and a determina- Robert Lowery writing in 1976 believed tion not to surrender any part of his liter- that O'Casey's reputation was `alive and ary soul to the small-minded bigots who well'. Dr. David Krause, friend, biogra- patrolled the corridors of Irish life. We pher and editor of O'Casey's Letters felt get a sense of a writer who rose above the that the publication of the four volumes of naysayers and discredited critics who tried letters `will open up an O'Casey industry 1Richard Watts Jr., New York Post, 7August 1960. 73 in Ireland and among outside scholars, at O'Casey was one of the most political writ- least as great as the Joyce industry'2. ers of his generation, always exploring the Sean O'Casey died in 1984. The fol- frontiers between literature and politics. lowing year the O'Casey Annual, which Like his mentor George Bernard Shaw he had replaced the Sean O'Casey Review in wrote for a purpose, he understood that 1982 ceased publication. Perhaps there `being in the world demands engagement'. was nothing more to say. The O'Casey His life is also the history of the early `industry' withered - a sickly relative of twentieth-century, a period in history that the Joyce `industry'. By the end of the was shaped by two great ideas, nationalism 1980s O'Casey's reputation was in decline, and socialism. History and politics are wo- the Dublin plays fell-out of the repertoire ven into the fabric of his life. His daughter, and the later plays were almost never pro- Shivaun, described him as `a politician who duced. But O'Casey is too good a writer couldn't help being a writer'. to be left languishing in the second division O'Casey is best known for the three for very long. The centenary of the Abbey Dublin plays, but he was one of the most Theatre in 2004 demanded an appraisal of prolific writers of the twentieth-century. his work and his place in the Irish theatre. He left us fourteen full-length plays, nine Shivaun O'Casey's documentary film, Sean one-act plays, six volumes of autobiogra- O'Casey - Under a Coloured Cap (2004) phy, songs and poems, short stories, hun- showed a softer side of O'Casey, the fam- dreds of critical essays, and many thou- ily man, the artist at work. Christopher sands of letters to friends and strangers Murray's 2004 book San O'Casey - Writer across the world. at Work 3 introduced O'Casey to a new generation of theatre goes and will surely stand as the definitive biography for years Words as Weapons to come. The greater the work of art or literature If there were intellectual giants who the more political it is. But, literature can recognised O'Casey's genius, there were only gain importance and political mean- also pygmies who tried to impugn it. This ing by being literary. Great drama or had nothing to do with literary merit or literature is political because it involves historical accuracy, but rather a dislike complexity, contradiction, difficulty, and of his politics and his critical comments beauty. But we must take heed of Wal- on the role of Catholic Church in Ire- ter Benjamin's warning against `having a land. O'Casey was assailed by the nation- message in readiness', and the danger of alists for his critique of nationalism, and being over reductive in linking politics and by right-wing commentators for his atheis- literature. However, a sympathetic read- tic communist politics. ing of O'Casey's drama illustrates the way We do O'Casey no favours by softening in which his concerns with political, so- or dismissing his political beliefs; they go cial, and moral issues were animated by to the heart of the man and writer. The his own life experiences. James Larkin, the emphasis that modern biography places Irish labour leader, had a profound effect on childhood, married life, and so forth, on O'Casey. Larkin who came to Dublin in in most cases displaces, the work, ideas, 1907 on his `divine mission of discontent' and social context of the artist or writer. inspired O'Casey to use words as weapons 2Desmond Rushe, The New York Times, 13 July 1970. 3Christopher Murray, Sean O'Casey: Writer at Work (Gill Macmillan, Dublin, 2004). 74 in the fight against poverty and oppression. world at large continues to give currency The Irish Worker, the weekly newspaper to his prevailing themes. What O'Casey of the Irish Transport and General Work- wrote about war and civil strife in Ire- ers' Union aimed to be the `tribune of the land in the 1920's could be extended to people' and that was the real strength of any field of war in the world today. The Larkin as an editor. He was always pre- Dublin plays of Sean O'Casey and espe- pared to open the pages of the paper at cially Juno and the Paycock have a univer- great length to a worker like O'Casey, who sality that goes beyond the Dublin slums of wanted to tell his story. In many ways the 1920s. O'Casey in his work went from O'Casey learned his trade writing for the a specific people or culture to a universal Irish Worker. His articles were sometimes humanity. He wrote out of the experience over-long, but we get a glimpse a writer of slum dwellers who lived on the Abbey's with a command of detail, allied to irony doorstep but who rarely crossed the door and humour that was sadly lacking in the of the theatre, and in the process, he spoke socialist press of the time. However, it was to the world of their possibilities. his experience as a labourer, underfed and O'Casey rendered with brutal precision exploited that heightened his feelings for the savagery of war, particularly as it af- socialism. O'Casey himself believed that fected the civilian population and in the his participation in the Dublin lockout of midst of oppression and rebellion he found 1913 ranked as his finest moment. nuggets hope and laughter to make the tragedy bearable, and in the process he made an original contribution to the pre- War and Revolution sentation of war in art and literature. The early decades of the twentieth-century were marked by war and revolution and Revisionism O'Casey was an active participant in the 1913 lockout, the events leading up to the O'Casey's drama is also relevant in Ire- 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence. land today because it avoids the idea of His pamphlet, The Story of the Irish Citi- Ireland as a special historical case whose zen Army and his heartfelt broadsheets on history and fate is rooted in historical the death of his friend Thomas Ashe were and political inevitability, or rooted in vi- not only concerned with the politics and olence and irrationality. The upcoming direction of the Irish revolution but were hundredth anniversary of the Easter ris- also critical of the conduct of the Allied ing in 2016 has reopened the debate on the forces in the Great War. Out of this expe- role of the physical force tradition in Irish rience came the Dublin trilogy. He wrote history that has prompted fractures and of war and its horrors, of poverty and in- disputes among historians and politicians equality that deforms human life and is as over the last three decades. David Krause, destructive as war itself. O'Casey's friend and biographer has ar- O'Casey probed the age-old ambiva- gued for many years that O'Casey was lence of humanity towards war and drama- the first revisionist - presenting the Dublin tises society's love affair with violence even plays as studies in pacifism that counter as he satirises this often fatal liaison.