France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives
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Technological University Dublin ARROW@TU Dublin AFIS (Association of Franco-Irish Studies) Books Publications 2015 France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives Una Hunt Technological University Dublin, [email protected] Mary Pierse Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/afisbo Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Hunt, Una and Pierse, Mary, "France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives" (2015). Books. 8. https://arrow.tudublin.ie/afisbo/8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the AFIS (Association of Franco-Irish Studies) Publications at ARROW@TU Dublin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Books by an authorized administrator of ARROW@TU Dublin. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License France and Ireland Reimagining Ireland Volume 66 Edited by Dr Eamon Maher Institute of Technology, Tallaght PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien Una Hunt and Mary Pierse (eds) FRANCE AND IRELAND Notes and Narratives PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939710 ISSN 1662-9094 ISBN 978-3-0343-1914-0 (print) ISBN 978-3-0353-0743-6 (eBook) Cover image: Mike Stilkey, ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’, 2010. Acrylic on discarded books, courtesy of the artist: mikestilkey.com. © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2015 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. Printed in Germany Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I Centre Stage 13 Una Hunt George Alexander Osborne, Paris and the Pluie de Perles 15 Joanne Burns The Influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Thomas Moore 39 David Mooney ‘De la musique avant toute chose’: Poldowski’s Settings of Verlaine’s Poetry 53 Part II Operatic Engagements 63 Eamon Maher Kate O’Brien’s As Music and Splendour: When Words and Music Chime 65 Axel Klein Gilbert Bécaud’s L’Opéra d’Aran (1962) – A Rapprochement 79 vi Laura Watson Ireland in the Musical Imagination of Third Republic France 91 Part III Fruitful Encounters 111 Maguy Pernot-Deschamps Assuaging Loss: Artistic Approaches by Neil Jordan and Françoise Lefèvre 113 Mary Pierse Silent Pictures in Mind and Memory: Irish Poets and a Proustian Madeleine? 127 Brian Murphy Wine and Music: An Emerging Cultural Relationship 143 Benjamin Keatinge France, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause in Richard Murphy’s The Battle of Aughrim 159 Arun Rao ‘Claude de France’: Debussy’s Great War of 1915 177 Part IV Dublin à la française? 197 Joe Kehoe Maestro, Magician, Midwife: Jean Martinon in Dublin 199 vii Cathy McGlynn ‘Play it in the original’: Music, Language and Difference in James Joyce’s ‘Sirens’ 217 Sarah Balen ‘The music you’re carrying in your head’: Reading Hélène Cixous in the ‘Breath’ of Paula Meehan’s Poetry 231 Notes on Contributors 247 Index 251 Acknowledgments The editors are grateful to all who inspired and enabled the orchestration of France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives. Particular thanks are due to the contributors, to our colleagues for their expertise and careful reading, and to the publishers for kind assistance and efficiency. We wish also to acknowledge the generous publication grants from AFIS and from DIT. Cork & Dublin, April 2015 Introduction This collection of essays presents a beguiling selection of themes and vari- ations, all unfolding through multiple notes and narratives. The notes are musical, literary, historical and sensory; the narratives progress through music, picture, prose, poetry and good wine. The wide variety of topic and treatment delivers unusual nuggets and affords insights and opportu- nities for enhanced appreciation and understanding of art and life, both French and Irish. A feature of the volume is that reciprocal influences are recognised in contributions to literary accounts, musical composition and performance, to social mores and the psychology of consumption. There is an underlying purpose to the approach: rather than embrace Brunelleschi’s perspectiva artificialis1 with the inherent deficiencies that arise from con- centrated focus on a narrow field, these chapters seek to furnish multi- dimensional pictures wherein Cartesian certainty and limits are rejected in favour of expanded horizons and productive linkages. The intention here is to introduce external disciplinary interpretation into topics, and to highlight the effects, thereby revealing how this results in additional layers of understanding, gives meaningful colour and texture, and avoids the limitations of frozen portraiture and fixed-angle viewpoints. While examples of ‘correspondences’ between the arts were reflected in the titles of nineteenth-century paintings such as ‘Symphony in White No.3’, 2 in Théophile Gautier’s 1852 poem ‘Symphonie en blanc majeur’, and 1 Filippo Brunelleschi’s identification of linear perspective in 1425 was given the name of perspectiva artificialis by Leon Battista Alberti a decade later. 2 This painting and others with titles in similar vein in the 1860s and 1870s were by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). Gautier could be said to be the nine- teenth-century trailblazer of this fashion. Oscar Wilde’s poem ‘Impression du Matin’ (1880), with its foregrounding of colour and shade, transposes back into poetry the colour of Whistler paintings such as Nocturne in Blue and Gold and Harmony in Grey. 2 Introduction in the musicality of Stéphane Mallarmé’s avant-garde poem L’après-midi d’un faune3 such associations have sometimes been regarded merely as inter- esting engagements typical of a specific period rather than as intrinsic to any comprehensive understanding of work, time and place. To re-emphasise the riches, and even the essential nature of synaesthetic insights – and particularly where Franco-Irish connections are involved – the chapters of this book feature diverse portraiture of people, places and situations in a live demonstration of the New Historicist dictum that literary and non- literary texts circulate inseparably. As is evident in this volume, words, music and art are never divorced from reality, and the manner of their bonding, intersections and relationships supplies both intriguing inside stories and a key to necessary expansion of interpretative approaches to music, literature and history. Music, art and creative writing embody vital elements of the rich associations between Ireland and France. Moreover, the links can involve significant interaction and reciprocal influences, either within a single art form, or from one to another. Whether viewed as creative or purely imita- tive, whether serious or frivolous, almost all furnish insights into the social, political and cultural environment of the time. Some constitute a reaction to contemporary developments; others represent a determined interven- tion for change. Many cast new light on the circumstances contributing to ephemeral trends or notable events. In the chapters of this book, a variety of cause and effect emerges and the diversity has prompted a grouping of the essays under the headings of ‘Centre Stage’, ‘Operatic Engagements’, ‘Fruitful Encounters’ and ‘Dublin à la française’. Although those divisions may be arbitrary and sometimes interchangeable, they hint at the impor- tance of certain ingredients and participants, both French and Irish, at home and abroad. Their contents can inform, startle and intrigue. 3 The poem was in composition between 1865 and its publication in 1876. In turn, it inspired Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) to which music Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed his ballet (1912).The cover illustration for the first publication of Mallarmé’s poem was by Édouard Manet. Introduction 3 Centre Stage Centre stage in Paris is one place where one would not be surprised to encoun- ter the illustrious name of Fréderic Chopin. The son of a Frenchman, Chopin is certainly present in Paris in the 1830s but he is definitely more in the wings and playing second fiddle to Limerick-born George Alexander Osborne. The tale of George Osborne, attractively presented by Una Hunt (in ‘George Alexander Osborne, Paris and the Pluie de Perles’), delivers dramatic proof of changing views, tastes, and interpretations and how they can reflect an age, how they feed into and explain historical events and movements. This is true not just in the field of music composition and performance but is also valid and pertinent in every sphere of human activity. As Osborne may have briefly eclipsed Chopin, so time and reception history has reversed that order. While telling the story of this Irish pianist-composer and his links with William of Orange, Hector Berlioz, Harriet Smithson, Maréchal MacMahon, Charles Hallé, Thomas Moore and so many other luminaries of the artistic world in several countries, Hunt remarks that nineteenth-century musicians sometimes led very exciting lives. It seems an understatement in the case of Osborne whose adventures and achievements would translate well into vivid filmic form – just as some of his compositions might be appropriate as background music for more romantic scenarios. In the informative picture that Hunt paints of ‘the piano’s golden age in Paris’, it is very apparent how national beliefs and prejudices influence presentation and reception, both positively and negatively.