"It is when night prevails that it is fine to believe in the light." -- Rostand's "Chanticleer."
THE appearance of Ireland as a distinct creative force in English letters is the outstanding literary fact of the post-Victorian age. It is like the sudden, stalwart entry of a giant into a room where none of the company has imagined his existence or been prepared to welcome his society. There is a bit of boldness about it and some resultant dismay. Our admiration is tinged with bewilderment; we succumb to the stranger without feeling quite at home in his presence. And yet, what a glorious stranger he is! "The Celt," says Mr. Shane Leslie, "struck the ancients as the only folk who would lend money on a note due in the next world." This perplexing concreteness of religious belief remains, indeed, with the Irish, but they strike us primarily as a people without money to lend, a people whose voice has, after all, been spared by misery and martyrdom from the trade of the auctioneer. Liberty and fairies are still real things in Ireland, and it is more than a coincidence that a civilization believing in force will have nothing to do with any of them. The insanity of the armies that hounded the peasant patriot to his hovel is a tragic mystery for all who love the virtues and traditions of the English people; but it is no more tragic or mysterious than the gradual disappearance from Britain of familiarity with the elemental things which to the Irishman are like next-door neighbours.
Whatever the future may hold in store, the past has spanned a gulf between the two races. The Britisher fails largely to understand the Celt and Celtic literature because he no longer quite understands himself. He has forgotten about England, his modern books are mostly of the Empire; but all of Irish literature is about an island. The two are separated by the difference between a man who has lost himself in his conquests and a man who has never been conquered; between the hard and greedy sea and the land which it has surrounded but is powerless to engulf. We rediscover in Irish letters as they exist today a surprising, long-lost freshness, tenderness, spirituality; and so we naturally find them unfamiliar. An attempt at appraisal must deal with mysteries and beauties alike, and it has every reason to be modest.
The voice of Ireland in English literature is, to begin with, an anomaly, a heaping-up of coals of fire upon the oppressor's head. This music and message antedate the Saxon and are largely foreign to his nature. That Gaelic is beyond a doubt the natural language of Irishmen becomes more evident as its revival progresses. English rhythm, idiom, and metaphor are alien to this people, and the sources of their fancy and meditation are in no way Anglo-Saxon. The development of Irish expression in English has been contemporaneous with the restoration of the ancient tongue; and it is likely that if Gaelic were rooted out by law or accident, the greater portion of the individuality which makes the writing of Ireland priceless would disappear. There is a mysterious law which decrees that a people's soul and its language are inseparable. Still, we need not believe that Gaelic will ever prevail to the exclusion of English; Anglo-Irish literature will (let us hope) continue to develop, drawing inspiration and originality from the ancient tongue. If not, the future voice of Ireland will be as foreign to Englishmen as Russian.
Another matter that distinguishes the Celtic utterance is strong national feeling, an instinctively emotional protest against bondage. The older Irish authors in English literature frankly adopted the British point of view, even if they did retain their natural gifts. Dean Swift, Edmund Burke, Richard Sheridan, and Oliver Goldsmith had the genius of their exotic ancestry but they were not exiles. They looked upon the world from the windows of London as from a home. During the nineteenth century, however, the Irishman rediscovered his tradition: the legends and history, which the peasant had tenaciously preserved, appeared publicly in Dublin and took possession of art. The picture of Ireland as a nation, as the Black Rose or the radiantly beautiful Kathleen, seemed drawn everywhere on the high walls of the sea. This vision begat a literature that cannot be separated from patriotism in the healthy sense, and is accordingly baffling for even the sympathetic alien. "This 'terrible and splendid trust,' " says Thomas MacDonagh, "this 'heritage of the race of kings,' this service of a nation without a flag, but 'with the lure of God in her eyes' has endowed some of our poetry with meanings that must be lost to all but those baptized in our national faith."
None the less, there is a difference between national feeling and nationalism, between writing that is inspired by indigenous tradition and that dictated by the political policy of the moment. Some of the most highly gifted men in Ireland have failed in art because their duty, as they saw it, was to make propaganda. The misery of the fatherland, the sting of the invaders' lash, memories of famine and destitution, goaded them to frenzy but scarcely to fine frenzy. This almost eighteenth-century concern with abstract ideals, a noble concern but fatal to letters, helps to make the Irish renaissance difficult to set forth. The battle is still too noisy for the tranquil enjoyment of song. Yeats is a great poet but a weak patriot; MacDonagh was a glorious soldier but scarcely a master-poet. The Irish will probably enshrine this soldier and forget this singer; and no appreciation of literature is honest unless it takes into account the attitude of the people directly concerned.
Since we shall limit ourselves here to the literature of the Catholic Spirit, we must confront another great difficulty. What is the nature of that Spirit in Ireland? It is not very essential that there are so and so many Catholics in the island or that the parish priest is a popular figure: the important thing is to learn how far the Celtic mood has been influenced by the traditions of Christendom, and what it has contributed to the establishment and interpretation of these. Everyone knows how gloriously and at what cost the Irish have held aloft the light of the Faith. In the centuries immediately following the arrival of Saint Patrick, scholars and poets from Celtic monasteries carried the gifts of Christian civilization over the northern parts of Europe; great names succeeded one another like emeralds on a gleaming chain -- Alcuin, Columbanus, Dun Scotus. Nevertheless, circumstances conspired to leave Ireland comparatively unaffected by the later triumphant efflorescence of Christendom. She stood of necessity aloof from Rome and romance. The native mythology was probably never fully merged in the symbolism of the Church; art did not rear many magnificent Gothic monuments on the island of saints. Moreover, an even wider separation from the culture of Europe was the result of the modern persecutions under which peasant and priest adhered with miraculous tenacity to the Faith which they could not make social, which was shadowed by the repressive influence of the Puritan invaders. It must be admitted also that the rulers of the Church did not always understand the Irish situation, and from Pope Adrian to Cardinal Cullen there were found ecclesiastics to succumb to English influence.
None of these things can, however, minimize the essential fact that the Catholic Spirit in Ireland has meant as much as even the national impulse. The Celt had beautiful gods when Saint Patrick came and he was converted without the shedding of blood. Since that time, numberless generations have gone the thorny path of faith with full confidence in the sanctity of their martyrdom. Christianity has become so domesticated that it is part of the daily speech, of the "furniture" of life. That the Irish are primarily a nation of peasants, that they lack the artistic sensibility of the modern aesthete and cherish poetic stories about the pagan gods, surely does not diminish the power of the spirit of belief within them. If they have not built edifices like those which are the testament of mediaeval France, or if Dublin is not a city of colour and form and manifold music like Bruges, it is surely retort enough to say that no people has ever created a satisfactory social life while burdened by oppression. The Irish creed will wear beautiful garments when it is given liberty to make them. Our cursory examination of the utterance of the Catholic Spirit in Ireland will show that it is nothing slight or mean, but instead a crown which is the more beautiful and symbolic because it is, in many ways, a crown of thorns.
Thus with a background that is Gaelic, national, partisan, and uniquely Catholic, the Irish literary movement has attained the proportions of a renaissance which impresses the reader by its young robustness, which seems to have linked hands with the morning of the world. It has delved into numerous strange things: the poetry of the Celtic gods, ancient hero-lore, and mysticism of several kinds. The relation existing between this revival and the English tradition was, however, made possible by a group of writers whose inspiration was more conventional but who were sufficiently in the current to merit being called precursors.
One of the most famous of these is the story teller William Carleton, whose slightly pessimistic genius made the common life of his people a matter of literary interest. Although he is known chiefly for many spirited tales, there also stands to his credit a novel of unusual power, "Fardorougha the Miser." Somber, rather Gothic in mood, it is scarcely representative Irish fiction. Of the two Banims, John and Michael, little is remembered today excepting the intriguing "Tales of the O'Hara Family." Here, as in Carleton's stories, the sense of form is lamentably undeveloped, nor is there any outstanding concern with actual life in Ireland.
The most representative early novelist, both as an Irishman and a Catholic, was beyond a doubt Gerald Griffin. He was typically strong in moral character; having come to London in search of literary fame, he lived down extraordinary hardships and temptations without damage to his spirit, although his body broke under the strain. Griffin was strong and serene, a soldier of the soul, even to his modest death as a Christian Brother. These qualities are finely reflected in his only enduring work, "The Collegians," where there are imagination, delicate humour, and loyalty to the ideal. The form is sufficiently good to hold the story over to new generations. Griffin's success was the success of character, a matter which the Irish demand in poet and patriot. They value in their leaders what a primeval people would consider worth while in selecting a king: moral grandeur and a temperament not too mystical to lack the iron upon which the success of causes is wrought.
With Thomas Moore the poetry of modern Ireland begins. And what poetry it is! Hundreds of songs and ballads, the authors of which are unknown or forgotten, bear the unmistakable stamp of Celtic sadness or laughter, belief in or acceptance of life. No people has ever set its imagination so readily to music; and the greatly gifted men and women among them have taken care that the melody should be rich and radiant. Moore, vagabond of many lands and moods, was generally superficial and not very faithful to his own country. Nevertheless, his Irish melodies, caught up here and there and set down in faultless English which manages not to rob them of spontaneous pathos and fancy, are great in spite of the poet's subsequent "Lalla Rookh" and "Epicure." Earliest of Ireland's poets, Moore was also her first aesthete and uncovered a tendency in the Celtic character which modern times have seen develop.
If Tom Moore gave to the genuine Irishman a kind of staginess, in the "Reliques of Father Prout," the stage Irishman very nearly became real; his was the poetry of the sprightly ballad, the jovial jest, and the whimsical reminiscence. It is indicative of this poet's personal character that he should have been a Jesuit who neglected his calling and a native of Cork who died in Paris. "The Bells of Shandon" has become folklore, and other verses of the same sort are known around the world; The mirth of Father Prout is offset by the sad, sensitive spirit of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan, who died young but not before he had discovered the enchantment of the Gaelic saga. In general the poetry of the early Irish writers was a series of experiments that sought to adjust Celtic notes to the English scale. It was a generous struggle, for the victory came of necessity to their inheritors.
Side by side with this fashioning of story and verse the immemorial struggle for the country was revived, and stirring spokesmen pleaded for the treasured cause. Of eloquence and the literary graces which accompany it the Irishman has never stood in need. Verve and beauty of address are his by right of birth, and half the great modern English orators are Celts. Among them all there is none who sums up so majestically the virtues and faults of his race as Daniel O'Connell. He is the only modern conqueror of Ireland, and he subdued her with the loving power of his voice, in which there was tenderness and fear, wit and quiet faith, the noblest kind of patriotism, and yet a blindness to the real position of his country. England beat him to the ground in the end, but Samson-like he shook the walls of her palace in his collapse. Had the rulers of Britain known the future, could they have foreseen the surge of outraged sentiment rising from one end of the Gaelic land to the other, they would have listened to O'Connell. His life was a splendid performance, with the action, sparkle, and pathos of a brilliant play. But the modern Irishman has grown too desperately in earnest for the theater and the curtain has gone down on the glory of the greatest among Celtic orators.
With the foundation of the Nation by Charles Gavan Duffy, in 1842, Irish leaders began to abandon the idea of conciliation with England and to dream of independence. This paper, glowing with enthusiasm for a country "beautiful and sacred," whose history and cause seemed as radiantly attractive as the shores of a rich and undiscovered country, reached everyone from judge to mechanic and gained their hearts. Duffy was himself a poet and the idea of publishing national songs and ballads met with enthusiastic response. It was not poetry in the strict sense, but rather verse of passion and sentiment written by able men and women after the day's work had been done. Chief among the writers of this fervent national hymnody was Thomas Davis, a man who seems to have embodied all the virtues of ideal Irish manhood. As a result he stood, during his short life, as close to the hearts of his people as any man of the time. Davis was first of all a patriot, and his verse lacks the meditativeness of the poet whose only mission is song. One loves him for the stirring ballads of battle, like "Fontenoy" or "The Sack of Baltimore," in which the martial rhythm is quickened by burning emotion and the rhetoric is abundantly redeemed by splendid earnestness. In a few other poems, notably the "Lament for Owen Roe" the inspiration of Gaelic originals is more sensible, and these are considered, therefore, superior by many. In general, Davis' poetry is the revelation of his own spirit rather than the record of a contemplative brooding over life as a whole; its energetic manliness compensates for a manifest unripeness of handling. His influence is visible in the work of other Nation poets such as John O'Hagan, author of the stirring song, "Ourselves Alone," and Ellen Downing, whose religious and patriotic verse has the naturalness and simplicity of bird-song.
In James Clarence Mangan Irish poetry beheld its first authentic genius. Viewing life with an artist's detachment he found the key to ancient Gaelic hymns, to rhythms of exotic loveliness, and to the heart of the modern world. Like Thompson he followed Coleridge and was in turn beloved of Poe. Thus, more than any other poet, he synthesizes the Irish and English traditions. Personally Mangan was a failure, a poor and melancholy man, whose dreams were often clouded by opium and drink; but there was nothing base in his soul. He was, says Miss Guiney, "a solitary young golden-haired figure, rapt and kind" and "his speech was full of sudden witticisms, shy fooling that drew no blood." Forced to his daily labor as a clerk, this poet went arrayed in outlandish clothes that included a small brown cloak and an absurdly large hat. However, the umbrella which he carried constantly, to the great amusement of his companions, was the symbol of the sword he might have borne in an ancient epic contest with the brood of evil. As it was, he made war only upon himself.
Mangan's great poems gleam with the splendour of the past, but it is always a sad or embattled splendour, with scarcely a touch of the gayety with which the Irish have so often gone to death. His best work was done in adaptations from the Gaelic where the old songs lay ready to his hand; alone as he was, little moved him to original work. Yet, though such a poem as "Dark Rosaleen" is almost as old as the Celtic race, the weird beauty of Mangan's English version is the creation of his own genius. What marvelous conformity of emotion with the rhythm of words! The poem opens, plaintive and consoling, deepens its note of tragedy, and stifles pain in tears and vows of devotion; then finally becomes insurgent, facing the pitiless foe with a desperate battle-cry:
"Oh! the Erne shall run red, With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread, And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My dark Rosaleen!"
Who does not know these lines that burst with passion, that are musical but scorn the bonds of traditional verse? It is the master-song, thus far, of Ireland. Nevertheless, Mangan's adaptation of "O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire" is alive with the same reckless emotion and has some of the most haunting lines in English:
"Though he were even a wolf raging the round green woods, Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea, Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he, This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods."
And yet the poet who triumphed thus over the limitations of his art was also the scribbler of second-rate stanzas galore, the victim of rhetorical eloquence and willful rhyming, the counterpart of Father Prout. Mangan's career is, in fact, the index to the artistic development of Catholic Ireland in his time. That Ireland was at once enthusiastic and uncritical; unable to follow the poet when he was a seer, it acclaimed him boisterously when he was a clown. But it is probable that nothing could have saved Mangan; in the end he lost control both of himself and his craft, carrying to a dark tomb the darkness of his dreams, a pathetic king of a land of shadows. The poets nearest to him in sentiment are two who belong to the English tradition -- Lionel Johnson and Aubrey de Vere.
Modern religious poetry in Ireland may be said to have begun with Katherine Tynan (Mrs. Hinkson). The daughter of a robust, intelligent country gentleman, she lived and studied in modest retirement until the appearance of her first volume, "Louise de la Valliere," which, as the title suggests, followed pre-Raphaelite conventions and was enthusiastically received by Ruskin, the Rossettis, and a large share of the general public. Since then new books have been issued frequently, for this poet is almost fatally facile. Two among them are especially noteworthy -- "Shamrocks" and "The Wind in the Trees." Devotedly Irish in spite of more sympathy with the English tradition than most young Irelanders display, Katherine Tynan is a patriotic poet interested in the Gaelic past. Nevertheless, her distinctive quality is a devotional naturalism, a blending of delight in the beauty of the earth with loving, joyous worship of God. No matter how intimate her knowledge of the world may have become, she is firmly Franciscan in spirit. In "The Flowers of Peace" she gathered the best of her devotional poems as a magician might gather sunshine that flits through the windows of a country chapel. Hers is, indeed, a sunlit Irish faith, confident, sad, with none of the bitterness of disillusionment. To such gentle lyrics as "St. Francis to the Birds," "Cor Dulce," and "Sheep and Lambs," the world will turn almost as gladly as to the "Fioretti." Where the same note is in disguise, as in "An Island Fisherman" and "Larks," it is no less effective. Naturally one may object to many of Katherine Tynan's lyrics on the ground that they are scarcely more than fluent stanzas done in a hurry, but the best of her work is the very voice of the Catholic soul of Ireland.
Quite like this poet in sentiment and manner was Rose Kavanagh, a girl poet who died before her genius had been formed. The little book she left is singular in promise and melody, and makes her name a poignant recollection. Sadness of a different kind is evoked by the name of Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter) who died heartbroken after the Eastern Uprising in 1916. She is the poet of neither convention nor laughter, but instead a brooding spirit weary of the bonds of modern life and impassionedly responsive to the primitive call of the Gael. The ballad proved the most successful medium for the expression of her emotions; the ballad fashioned on a Celtic bias, unfamiliar therefore to English ears, but often reminiscent of Continental masterpieces like Goethe's "Erlkönig" or the truest stanzas of Grillparzer. This affinity with a certain type of Teutonic poetry is, surely, very evident in Mrs. Shorter's work and is the more remarkable because she was so completely, sensitively Irish. No woman has ever felt more deeply the tragedy of her race or borne it with greater fortitude. Such ballads as "Cean Duv Deelish," "All Souls' Night," and "The Woman Who Went to Hell" are perfect in form although, unfortunately, the greater portion of Mrs. Shorter's work is marred by inadvertencies of technique. She who cared so much more for the spirit of life than for its conventions, adopted the same point of view in art.
Two other Irish women to write poetry were Moira O'Neill, author of "Songs of the Glens of Antrim," and Ethna Carberry, who is remembered for "The Four Winds of Eirnn." Neither volume has the verve of great poetry or the fresh devotion of Katherine Tynan's best lyrics, but both taste of the country and are the forerunners of that robust peasant song with which the name of Padraic Colum is now so closely identified. Colum, a playwright and the author of "Wild Earth and Other Poems," represents the Irish farmer as a stark primordial man with his hands on the plough. Whereas Dora Sigerson approached the Germans, Colum is almost a brother to the Russians; there is in his poetry very little direct religion and almost no sense of inherited tradition, but one feels the surge of elemental faith, the strength of soul which the Irish peasant really possesses. His verse is rugged, almost uncouth, though its powerful imagery scorns the insinuation of crudity. Very different is another poet of the country who died a British soldier in Flanders. Francis Ledwidge, a boy whose sense of the beauty of nature is akin to that of the "Shropshire Lad," made simple songs that are both wild and sweet, vagabondish in spirit and form. "Songs of Peace" probably contains his best work. Ledwidge remained, however, somewhat aloof from the official central purpose of modern Irish literature, the Gaelic revival so strongly emphasized by men of letters like George Sigerson and Douglas Hyde.
While the true leadership in Celtic poetry passed into the hands of William Butler Yeats, a pure poet who viewed all the traditions of his country as literary materials and employed his own mysticism, the patriotic fervour of his companions, and the ritual of the Church to fashion lyrics, other men reverted more closely to the idea of Davis and placed action before words. Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse, and Joseph Plunkett, shot by order of the British after the Easter Week uprising, bore with mystic, elemental fervour the sword of Ireland's freedom and the shield of her faith. Together they seem three tragic Horatii going down together.
Joseph Plunkett was a young man of distinction and promise rather than a finished poet, but his book, "The Circle and the Sword" seems to foreshadow the approach of Celtic poetry to the inner Catholic world where Francis Thompson lived. Plunkett himself was, enthusiastically, Thompson's disciple in deliberate shunning of the commonplace, in spiritual exaltation, and in sense of form. His sonnets speak confidently of immortality and seem themselves immortal. This boy is no trivial rhymster, but the master of space and time, another poet for the elect:
"You must walk the mountain tops where rode Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, when the stars Fell from their places, and where Satan strode To make his leap. Now bend the crackling spars Athwart the mast of the world -- and five deep scars From that strong Cross call you to their abode."
MacDonagh was a learned, gifted man with a taste for study, but he felt that "it is well that here still that cause which is identified without underthought of commerce, with the cause of God and Right and Freedom, the Cause which has been the great theme of our poetry, may any day call the poets to give their lives in the service." It is enough, perhaps, to say of MacDonagh that he was a poet and that he gave his life. "Songs of Myself" and "Lyrical Poems," his two finished books, are respectable, if not very great.
It is for Padraic Pearse, of the three, that one naturally reserves the highest homage. He was first of all an educator who dealt lovingly with little children and then took up as an apparently natural consequence the spiritual leadership of his folk. Pearse's stories, poems, plays -- diverse in character and done originally in Gaelic -- have almost the gentle sublimity of Plato; he was a man with a halo in a group of unusual men. Irishmen he idealizes as no one else has dared to, idealizes, though, because he is fundamentally a child "trailing clouds of glory." Accordingly most people will find him in the work he did for children -- "Iosogan," "The Roads," and "Eineen of the Birds." A deep admirer has said: "He is a man with the heart of a child. He sees with the eyes of a child and speaks with its lips. His stories are not children's stories, they are stories of children and so they are read with delight by children of all ages. Old Matthew's words to Iosogan, 'among the children it was that I found you' might well be applied to Mr. Pearse himself." But this "child" had also the heart of a man whose martyrdom was previsioned and sternly met, whose high dreams were kingly in a way only kings can understand.
Tom Kettle died for Ireland in a different fashion than the three men just mentioned; he died leading a charge in Flanders, with the uniform of a British officer on his body. He is placed here among the poets because he was able to glorify his death in the lines:
"Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor, But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed, And for the secret Scripture of the poor."
But in reality this man, who felt that his nation must bleed not only for its own freedom but for the liberty of peoples everywhere, was almost, if possible, more than a poet. Only one little book, "The Day's Burden," remains to tell us of Tom Kettle's sanity and remarkable sensitiveness, of his honour and wisdom, but its words are unforgettable. He recalls Sir Thomas More in ever so many ways. Is it too much to say that the attainment of Ireland's independence is not nearly so important as the fact that Tom Kettle lived for it?
We shall conclude this cursory examination of Irish verse with a mention of only one book among several recent ones. In "Arrows," by George Noble Plunkett, there is present once more a high, reverent mysticism and an unusual spiritual serenity; the author does not lack either a noble sense of form or a ready devotion to ideals. There are other poets, but enough has been written to indicate the richness and variety of a body of verse which has appeared in a surprisingly short while. Its many-sidedness is especially noteworthy; there has been no single manner, although lyric and ballad measures predominate, and no monotony of mood. The peasant has spoken, the soldier has answered, the voice of girl and mother has been heard. Here our purpose has been to set forth those who have spoken for the Catholic body; but we have beheld Irishmen always, glowing with enthusiasm for the national idea, gathering round the fount of Celtic tradition. So distinctly individual is this poetry that fondness for it will depend considerably upon one's ability to sympathize with the aspirations of the Irish people. For us their heroes, their gods, their visions are strange and often fantastic, but an honest effort to understand must fulfill Yeats' prophecy that Anglo-Irish verse "will lead many that are sick with theories and with trivial emotion to some sweet well-waters of primeval poetry."
If the modern verse-writers have thus successfully carried out the work of their predecessors, the storytellers have not fallen behind them in diligence. Irish novels, on the whole, are not stormy. The contrasts, the stirring drama, of Irish life have never been adequately set forth, because these things seemed too common-place and men craved idyllic fiction. The success of Canon Sheehan's "My New Curate" was due to the simple charm of the people it talked about. The parish priest is a character to reckon with in Ireland, and his exploits and quandaries have helped to make Canon Sheehan's book thoroughly delightful. "My New Curate" was followed by others, especially "Glenaraar," "Lisheen," and "Luke Delmege." These manifest an ambitious habit to which their author unfortunately became addicted -- the study of queer characters in cultivated society. It was a milieu of which he knew almost nothing, whereas his gift for making realistic sketches of village life was genuine. The man himself was genial, scholarly, and in every way a priest whose life was perhaps as much of an inspiration as his books.
The art of Seumas MacManus is concerned with the kindly, humorous aspects of daily life, the lore and ready fancy that colour the speech of the Irish peasantry. His early work was exaggerated humour that naturally failed to adopt the serious-minded, realistic point of view so much lauded by intellectual critics. "A Lad of the O'Friels," on the other hand, is a novel that is the result of deep brooding and exceptional interpretative sympathy. Knocknogar awakes to life and hides nothing of its soul from the keen if affectionate observer. The greater portion of MacManus' work consists, however, of short stories, two collections of which are especially deserving of attention -- "Yourself and the Neighbours" and "Top O' the Morning." Here and throughout his writings the. author is an intense patriot who loves the traditions and inhabitants of his country so well that he may be inclined to neglect the shadows. While his treatment is much like that of Jane Barlow, he is intimate where she stands aloof. Ethna Carberry (Mrs. MacManus) wrote stories which are preferred by many to those of her husband.
Three women whose novels are attempts to amalgamate the Catholic idea in Ireland with the national principle are M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell), Katherine Tynan, and Rosa Mulholland. All have done good work, although none is even approximately a great novelist. "Dark Rosaleen" is probably Mrs. Blundell's most impressive performance. Two boys who grow up side by side are made to represent, respectively, the tendencies of the North and South of Ireland. The women, really impressive epic figures, symbolize the suffering and the immortal hope of their country. It is with regret that one is forced to admit the technical gaucherie of "Dark Rosaleen": a very poignant story has been turned very nearly into melodrama. Miss Mulholland has grace and sprightliness, but an obviously sentimental mind. Katherine Tynan's fiction is readable, sprightly, and superficial.
Unquestionably the outstanding Catholic master of contemporary Irish narrative is Daniel Corkery, who sums up also the spiritual results of the Rebellion. Corkery is a story-teller, as has been said; he is also a poet and an effective playwright. To perceive the range and quality of this man's genius one may select from his rather ample list of books a volume of short stories, "The Hounds of Banba"; a brief poetic play, "The Yellow Bittern"; and a prose drama, "The Labour Leader." There is prose-poetry in "The Hounds of Banba" of a breathless vitality, combining the fiery idealism of Pearse with the elfish fantasy of James Stephens. Naturally there is no laughter, for Corkery is writing down here, with an awesome sense of definiteness, the soul of the rise of yesterday's young Ireland -- an Ireland whose lips were set sternly and whose heart was high, where the banners breast the winds. Quite amazing is his fairness in the drawing of the picture: his ability to realize the dramatic value of opposition, which must have some human qualities to make the battle worth while. The prose here is the most delicately wrought Irish-English, if one may use the term; there is the eerie rhythm, the strenuous, magic phrase, the semi-barbaric virility of a strange new texture in our letters.
"The Yellow Bittern" is only one of Corkery's poetic plays, but its tenderness would seem to be more acceptable to us than the fierce accents of some of the others. This story of the comfort which the Mother of God brought to a dying culprit has the lovely, sympathetic understanding of a tale done in the Ages of Faith. There are phrases here that catch at the heart and keep it fast, but in addition there is a very much greater thing -- human nature dealt with humanly. If one goes now to "The Labour Leader" it is almost like proceeding from the poetry of Shakespeare to the dramatic action of Shakespeare. Mr. Corkery has not yet learned how to combine the two things, but this play is a noteworthy performance. Davla, the Leader, is a man and a genius who dominates the stage, by reason of his innate reality, as one of the most vital personages in recent dramatic literature. All in all, one is satisfied that Daniel Corkery has not inherited the vision of young Ireland unworthily. He has creative instinct and power, splendid artistry, and delicacy of thought as well as of feeling. Of course, his writing may seem odd and in more ways than one a little savage; but the Irish mind of today is no resting-place for classic decorum.
One is glad to note in many writers not professedly Catholic a kindly appreciation of the dominant religious feeling in Ireland. The folk-lore of Lady Gregory, the older fancies and narratives of Fiona McLeod, the tales of Stephen Gwynn, and the novels of Emily Lawless are splendid tributes, even though they emanate from comparative outsiders. An even more affectionate discernment seems to have guided the hand of Amy Murray, in whose "Father Allan's Island" the soul of western Ireland is caught up with its atmosphere. Miss Murray has not tinkered with her material, and unlike Synge has been unhampered by literary theories. To sum up the matter, one may express admiration for the novels that have come from Ireland without forgetting that their authors have largely lacked a guiding sense of form. The Celtic story-teller must learn to look at his country without tinted glasses and above all he must remember that, since the novel is not a primitive literary medium, failure to conform to its traditions cannot be condoned.
Since we have asserted that the Irish spirit is at bottom Catholic, some mention must be made of the artists who have elected to depart from it. George Moore is a great and gifted writer, but he is also a dead writer. For years he has been issuing successive farewells, in beautiful prose, when his Vale was in fact uttered early in his career. He chose to turn up his nose at the mother country and to follow, with rhythmic ease, the aesthetic dilettantism of the French decadents. As a result he is neither a decadent nor an Irishman; he is simply George Moore who has gone to the devil. It may be interesting to write impressionistic adaptations of the great French naturalists, but readers who find that sort of thing entertaining have scarcely exhausted the originals. Mr. Moore is not, as is often supposed, the living proof of the failure of the Irish literary tree to produce anything better than wild crabs, but instead a perfect demonstration of its fruitful vitality. He is the lovely dead branch.
Moore's indubitable genius has, however, influenced many of his younger countrymen, and not the dullest among them. In "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce has rewritten the youngster's confessions from a lower depth than Moore ever reached -- one of the most wretched depths, in fact, that English literature has as yet revealed. Without doubting the genuineness of the narrative, one may permissibly recall the fact that there have been quite a number of similar confessions from people like Baudelaire, most of whom, grown older and wiser, counseled their friends to write in other strains. But while a great deal of recent Irish fiction is decidedly somber and pessimistic, it cannot be accused simply of imitating the French naturalists. The average Irishman has looked upon himself and his compatriots a little too complacently, perhaps; and a certain type of thinker, studying the facts by the light of alien literatures, has gnashed his teeth and sat down to tell the "truth." Such fiction as Brinsly McNamara's "Valley of the Squinting Windows" and Conal O'Riordan's "Adam of Dublin" -- to mention only two striking books -- are unpleasant, but who shall deny their veracity? Where there is exaltation there is bound to be depression as well; where there is concern with art there is sure to be aesthetics. By a probably wise dispensation of nature not all men are idealists, and some of these break their hearts against the eternal stone of the world. In our emotional age the depression may easily become too deep, and the aesthetics too aesthetic. Something of the kind has manifestly happened to Eimar O'Duffy, whose "Wasted Island" is quite too much of a travesty to mislead anyone. The case of Patrick MacGill, author of "Children of the Dead End" and "The Rat-Pit" is obviously different. He has grown absorbed in the social degeneration, the horrible unfairness, of modern life, and has managed to say certain things we ought to know. Unfortunately he himself has become unfair. It would be easy to select from his books examples of what seem perilously like deliberate falsehoods. In consequence, as MacGill admits, he has been spurned by the Irish and driven to ally himself with a little coterie of English radicals.
The literature of Ireland will be formed by Irishmen as they elect. No pandering to outside preferences will aid the writing of the noble and sincere record of national life which some day will be found complete. Still, though she is a primeval, glowing, individual country, Ireland cannot hope, and should not desire, to stand spiritually alone. Her literature must undergo formative influences; her place is in the world for the world. This has been very keenly appreciated by most writers who, like Synge and Moore, have applied decadent methods and standards to Celtic material; and the danger from similar grafting is not to be brushed aside lightly. Oscar Wilde, too, was a fine Dublin temperament corroded by evil literary affiliations. We feel that for Irishmen nothing is of such very great importance as thoroughgoing alliance with the Catholic tradition of Europe, with the tradition which reared the soul of Ireland as well as the spirit of Western civilization. Tom Kettle had this firmly in mind always. "Ireland," he wrote, "awaits her Goethe who will one day arise to teach her that, while a strong nation has herself for center, she has the universe for circumference. . . . My only counsel to Ireland is that to become deeply Irish she must become European." It is towards the fulfillment of this wish that all lovers of Ireland will look forward hopefully, awaiting the increasingly fascinating revelation of the grandeur and the misery, the sorrow and the song, of the island which is the magnet for hearts in every part of the world. And we shall remember as a pledge that this island has been for centuries the training-ground of saints.
BOOK NOTE
The works mentioned in the text are only an indication of the wealth of modern Anglo-Irish literature, and many more might be added -- Colum's "The Land," MacSwiney's "The Revolutionist," Mrs. Shorter's "The Dark Years" -- were our canvas not already too crowded. Good literary references are: "The Literature of Ireland," by Thomas MacDonagh (an interpretation of the spirit of Irish letters); "The Irish Literary Renaissance" (modern criticism tending to aestheticism) ; "A Literary History of Ireland," by Douglas Hyde (concerned chiefly with early Gaelic writers); "The Celtic Dawn," by F. R. Morris (a study of the revival of Irish tradition); "Studies in Irish Literature and Music," by Alfred P. Graves; and "Nova Hibernia," by Michael Monahan. A study of the Irish mental background may be prefaced by the reading of such books as "The Middle Years" and "The Dark Years," by Katherine Tynan Hinkson; "Celt and Saxon," by Shane Leslie; "Evening Memories," by William O'Brien; "The Soul of Ireland," by William J. Lockington; "Irish Impressions," by G. K. Chesterton; "Ireland," by Francis Hackett; "My Diaries," by Wilfrid Blunt; and "Canon Sheehan of Doneraile," by Alan Heuser. Almost indispensable poetic anthologies are: "Love Songs of Connaught," by Douglas Hyde; "A Treasury of Irish Poetry," by Brooke and Rolleston; and "A Book of Irish Poetry," edited, with a splendid introduction, by Wm. Butler Yeats. Miss L.I. Guiney prefaced her edition of Mangan's poems with an interpretative essay; "Poems," by Joseph Plunkett, has a foreword by Geraldine Plunkett and the poet's own paper on "Obscurity and Poetry"; "The Ways of War," by T.M. Kettle, has a charming "Memoir" by his wife. The periodical literature on the subject of Irish letters is extensive. Note especially, "The Literary Movement in Ireland," by George Birmingham, the Fortnightly Review, Dec., 1907; and "The Irish Literary Movement," by Padraic Colum, the Forum, Jan., 1915.