Irish Literature

[Stewart]

When I think of Irish literature the names that come to mind are the likes of John Banville, William Trevor, and Colm T?ib?n. But they all write in English. As did, going further back, James Joyce.

I guess my first question is are there writers out there publishing works in Irish? And anothers would be are there classic works of Irish literature written in Irish? If so, what are they?

[saliotthomas]

I would like to add Roddy Doyle to the list,even if he does not write in gaelic,his books are some of the most representative of the Irish spirit.

Gaelic was,for the time of the English occupation,a forbiden language.Beeing caught using it meant having your tongue cut of.(according to my Irish wife!)So i guess there would have been few work of importance,maybe a some political pamflets.
As for todays writers,the main language been English,i guess they would feel more at ease using a language they use in their daily life,gaelic would sound a bit folkloric.I'm afraid books in Irish would be writen by some old hippies writing about celtic legend.The use of the language been a genre in itself
All this is a guess and i may be completely wrong.

[Stewart]

Since posting this I found a Wikipedia page called Modern Literature in Irish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_literature_in_Irish) that cites a few contemporary names. Those it lists, as fiction writers, include P?draic Breathnach, Miche?l ? Conghaile, and P?draig ? C?obh?in. A quick check on Amazon shows that they have, to some degree, been translated into English.

[Vince(nt)]

Ciaran Carson writes peotry (some of the best around) in English, but he reads, and sometimes writes, in Irish ("Gaelic" being, I suppose, less P.C.). He has recently translated The Tain, a classic Irish epic.

[Morten]

John Banville must be the greatest living Irish novelist. A real master and a foremost stylist of our time. His Booker Prize winning novel The Sea is profoundly good.

[pontalba]

So are the rest of Banville's books, he is a great pleasure to read. I've only read, um...six and a half of his so far, and that is counting his two Blacks. I have to count him as one of the top authors I've read.

[Eric]

I would also love to know the answer to the question that Stewart asked in the initial posting on this thread: who writes literature in Irish Gaelic?

I often ask the following question, unanswered as yet:

Why is it that the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, who have suffered five or six hundred years of occupation and subjugation by Russians, Germans, Swedes, Danes and Poles, have not only rescued their respective languages, but actually do everyday business and social things in them (e.g. banking, parliament, quarrels, trade, literature, university education)? While the Irish have all but given up their original language, except for in the Gaeltacht. The Balts are making a remarkable recovery since 1991, and have never let their languages dwindle. While in Ireland, where there is also an economic upturn, there can be no more than about 40,000 people who have Irish Gaelic as their mother tongue and are, for the most, bilingual. Nowadays, there are probably more people with Polish as their native tongue in Ireland than Irish Gaelic.

Why has British language imperialism been more successful than Russian language imperialism? India and many African countries still retain English as a lingua franca, while the Balts (though not the CIS countries, as discussed elsewhere) have more or less dumped Russian as soon as they could.

I have met one author that writes poetry in Irish Gaelic. This is Nuala N? Dhomhnail, whom I met over a decade ago at a poetry festival in Leuven, Belgium. We both supped beer out of plastic mugs. She was born in England, is married to a Turk, and is still one of the leading Irish Gaelic poets. See:

http://www.wfu.edu/~wfupress/qc/?p=productsList&sWord=Dhomhnail

Actually, Estonian and Irish Gaelic poets have had meetings and workshops, to translate one another's poetry, via English.

Notice one important fact about translation, when you look at Nuala N? Dhomhnail's books in English: bilingual poets don't automatically translate their own works into the more "dominant" language, English in this case. They let other bilinguals do it. This situation occurs in, for instance, Finland, Belgium, South Africa, Spain and other countries where several languages are used.

[Stewart]

Well I'm off to Ireland in the morning so hope to get to a book shop and find a book or two written in Irish. Will report back on my return.

[Eric]

Fine, Stewart. Looking forward to hear what you discover.

[Stewart]

Looking forward to hear what you discover.
Absolutely nothing. :o

I didn't get much of a chance to visit book shops due to a schedule of driving around the country, mostly through rural villages and coastal towns. But I did stop in Galway and get a browse in a branch of Easons, which had an Irish fiction section. Nothing particularly jumped out and the more Irish names, when picked up, were in their original language. And the rest were all familiar names (Banville, Kealy, McGahern, McCabe, Enright, etc.). Another browse in Belfast turned up nothing, and then a last minute check in Dublin airport offered up some authors I'd never heard of, but none translated.

The search continues...no doubt on Amazon and The Book Depository.

[Eric]

So, Stewart: nothing at all, at all. Pity. But maybe a reader of this website from the Gaeltacht may turn up and be able to explain how it works with translation of Irish Gaelic literature into other languages.

You know that I'm always singing the praises of Estonian literature. But as I said above, the connection between Irish and Estonian literature is not mythical. On 15th December 2005, Nuala N? Dhomnaill and Medbh McGuckian were reading at Tartu University. You will have to take my word for the contents of the webpage, but you can see the names:

http://www.tlu.ee/?CatID=845&LangID=1&action=ShowEvents&NewsID=305

[John Self]

Why has British language imperialism been more successful than Russian language imperialism?

The answer is probably that it left them with English, which has since become a world language - through the pervasive influence of American culture - and is therefore probably seen by them as pretty useful to hang on to. Maybe if the Baltic states had been British ruled they would be the same, or if Ireland had been Russian ruled it would have returned to Irish.

[Sybarite]

When I think of Irish literature the names that come to mind are the likes of John Banville, William Trevor, and Colm T?ib?n. But they all write in English. As did, going further back, James Joyce.

I guess my first question is are there writers out there publishing works in Irish? And anothers would be are there classic works of Irish literature written in Irish? If so, what are they?

I'd add John McGahern to that list.

I don't know how much it reflects what's going on, but in Colm T?ib?n's 1999 novel, The Blackwater Lightship, the central character's husband runs an Irish Gaelic school in Dublin, that he has founded only a few years earlier. The novel begins with a party where a substantial number of the guests talk and perform songs in Gaelic.

Presumably such efforts to revive the language are occurring and are not a figment of T?ib?n's imagination ? just as they are occurring in Wales, Scotland and even in Cornwall.

[nnyhav]

McGahern was added in #10. But there was no mention of nobelaureate Seamus Heaney, or the Belfast poets ...

For Gaelic lit, Flann O'Brien's An B?al Bocht/The Poor Mouth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poor_Mouth) deserves attention.

As for the language, Gaelic revival goes back to 19c, figured into independence movement, and re-establishment was well on its way in late 20c, culminating in recognition as official EU language a couple of years ago.

[nnyhav]

And so I was reminded (thx!) to finally get around to reading The Poor Mouth (http://www.necessaryprose.com/poormouth.htm) (after Heaney's Electric Light). The first half is *****, then falls off precipitously before regaining ground by the end, so I'll settle on ****0. Parody and pastiche of Gaelic lit govern, which may explain the trajectory, and complicates things for the English reader, but its dealing in the expropriation of Gaelic itself is brilliant. No doubt the tracking of sources has become an academic exercise in itself, which is even funnier.

[David J]

Two works by Irish authors which deal with the loss of the Irish language are Padraig Colum's poem, "A Poor Scholar of the Forties" and Brian Friel's play, "Translations". There is also an excellent work of History and Literary criticism called "Inventing Ireland" by Declan Kiberd, which keeps returning to the loss of the language and how traumatic it was for Irish culture and Identity. As for authors writing in the Irish language, I would recommend Aogan O' Rathaille, an 18th cent bard, who mourns the loss of the Gaelic aristocracy as it has left him wandering the country without a job. James Clarence Mangan, 19th cent, is also good for interpretations of Irish poems.

[kateuic]

Hi Stewart,
M?s mall is mithid - better late than never. You'll never find a good array of Irish language books in Easons - too mainstream. Waterstones is a better bet. Charlie Byrnes in Galway is a good option too. Online litriocht.com has a wide array of contemporary writing in Irish. The first novels in Irish were published in the early 20th century, in an attempt to revive the language. Native speakers were usually only literate in English (Irish being forbidden in schools) and there was, and still is a problem coaxing people to read in Irish. An G?m was a publishing house set up by the government to rectify the dearth of reading material in Irish, and early publications tended to be easy readers or translations from other languages. Today Irish literature is generally classified as prose, poetry or biography - it is rarely sorted into more specific genres, although they do exist. One of the writers you came across on Amazon, P?draig ? C?obh?in is my husband, and is in the process of publishing his 12th book (and has already started No.13) Contrary to many of your posters thinking that all literature in Irish must be old-fashioned drivel, he counts Saramago, Eco, Mar?as, Steiner, Jung, Perez Reverte and indeed our own McGahern among his favourites (note his own reluctance to read in Irish! He reads mainly literary criticism...) I could keep waffling on, but I'll leave it to you guys to ask specific questions. I promise not to feed you any bs. If I haven't got the facts, I'll know where to find them.

[kateuic]

Stewart, you might also like to check out goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5077635/The-novel-in-Irish-since.html

[Stewart]

The first novels in Irish were published in the early 20th century, in an attempt to revive the language. Native speakers were usually only literate in English (Irish being forbidden in schools) and there was, and still is a problem coaxing people to read in Irish.
Peter Owen Publishers (http://www.peterowen.com/) recently sent me an Irish novel in translation which I'm looking to read shortly. As you say about the first novels, it's one from the early 20th Century (1910, precisely) by P?draic ? Conaire. The original title is Deoraidheacht and while his Wikipedia article calls it Diaspora, this edition is title Exile.

[kateuic]

You might pass that information on to Mattterhorn, Stewart. This is the first translation of ? Conaire's Deoraidheacht (spelt deora?ocht these days), and I didn't include him. Irish-English translation is a funny situation. There's the Irish Literature Exchange which facilitates and funds translations of Irish literature (both English and Irish-language) into other languages, but it won't pay for Irish to English translations (800 years blah-de-blah). This makes it difficult for Irish authors (particularly high calibre writers) to get translated into other languages, as very few foreign-language translators will have the level of Irish required to translate some of the better writers. So, unless they've been translated into English first, they've very little chance of reaching a world audience.

[Ailill]

When I think of Irish literature the names that come to mind are the likes of John Banville, William Trevor, and Colm T?ib?n. But they all write in English. As did, going further back, James Joyce.

I guess my first question is are there writers out there publishing works in Irish? And anothers would be are there classic works of Irish literature written in Irish? If so, what are they?


I would like to add Joseph Campbell to your list of Irish writers... James Joyce has written works in Irish and so has Joseph Cambell. Ciaran Carson also has written in Irish. In fact if I remember correctly they all have, but have since been translated into English as well.

As for classic works, I know that T?in B? C?ailnge was published in Irish. I had to read it in the Irish when I took an Irish Literature class.

[Liam]

Nuala Ní Chonchúir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuala_Ní_Chonchúir) (1970-), not to be confused with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuala_Ní_Dhomhnaill) (1952-)--both gals are poets--will release her first volume of poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Juno-Charm-Nuala-Ni-Chonchuir/dp/1907056645/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325635527&sr=1-4) in the United States later this year. I think it's already out in Ireland and the UK, but I haven't checked. Seems interesting but as always with young poets, some of her themes (sex, the brutality of sex, the brutality of heterosexual relationships) are rather unpoetic and belong, in my humble opinion, in the memoir section of your local bookstore. Will try to check her out if I have time, regardless.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GxjNGa%2BEL._SS500_.jpg

[Liam]

The Last of the High Kings, a coming-of-age novel by Ferdia MacAnna, is to be reprinted (http://www.amazon.com/Last-Kings-Modern-Irish-Classics/dp/184840106X/ref=sr_1_324?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326309037&sr=1-324)in a new edition:


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41d24mXZhEL._SS500_.jpg

[Liam]

Paddy Crosbie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Crosbie)'s (1913-1982) wonderful memoir Your Dinner's Poured Out is being reprinted (http://www.amazon.com/Your-Dinners-Poured-Paddy-Crosbie/dp/1847173047/ref=sr_1_666?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329594747&sr=1-666):


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lZUF3mT8L._SS500_.jpg

Dublin, ca. 1915-1930: "a tumultuous and exciting time in the city's history. Paddy Crosbie catches that tumult and conveys that excitement in this childhood memoir of city life. A cast of brilliant characters surround the young Crosbie, all vividly etched into hilarious life."