Padraig ´ ın Riggs and Norman Vance, Irish Prose
Fiction
n. O Conaire’s simple style made ´ his stories immediately accessible to a wide
readership but this ostensible simplicity masked a highly sophisticated treatment
of psychological issues. His one novel, Deoraıocht/Exile ´ (1910), is
purportedly set in London. However, this ‘London’ is not any identifiable
geographical location but simply the obverse of a paradise lost which is the
narrator’s native Galway. Resembling a nightmare scenario rather than a
physical city, O Conaire’s London is synonymous with psychological
alienation. Exile ´ is a dominant theme of the author’s work. The state or place
from which the narrator of Deoraıocht ´ is psychologically exiled, and to
which he cannot return, is Irish-speaking Ireland. This extraordinary novel,
with its surreal setting and cast of grotesque characters, has been subjected to
numerous interpretations but it seems more than plausible to read it as a
metaphor for the trauma that followed the demise of the Irish language and
the imposition, in its place, of English.
I stopped at the park where the poor wretches lying on the grass had
seemed like a diseased giant. They are still there. But this time I do not see
them as black spots on the flesh of the giant. No, they are more like jelly-
fish left on a beach by the tide. As if they had been waiting for a very long
time for the tide to come in again and float them away. But are they really
waiting for a tide? Hardly. They are, if the truth be told, waiting for the
coming of spring, the season of renewal and of hope for the future. Waiting
for the sun to restore warmth to their bones and for the coming of the
season when they can again move freely around the country as independent
as kings
I stood up and went for a walk, hoping to think of some plan of action. In other
large cities, when a person is in dire straits, it will not occur to him that the
objects around him, the houses, the walls, the streets themselves, have any
evil designs on him, but in London such a person would be inclined to think
that the great gloomy houses would knock him down — would fall on him
— crush him, if they could be bothered with a creature so insignificant.
Revivalism
Six months ago, that part of London in which I was now living was, in
itself, a little Irish world. The English used to call it Little Ireland. All the
people were from the province of Munster, except for the odd one.
And the daytime trade of this man who spent his evenings reading history
This small population of exiles in a foreign city kept up the manners and
customs of the people of the ancient Irish nation. The Irish heritage of
language, music and literature which rich people at home had abandoned
in their efforts to imitate the English, who would as soon have seen them at
the bottom of the sea, was kept alive by these people. They understood, in
their own way that a race should guard the culture which
Their grandchildren lost both the language and culture, and seemed to
have retained only the worst of their racial characteristics. And many,
naturally, intermarried with the English. People who breed animals will tell
you that when one breed is crossed with another, the offspring will inherit
the worst characteristics of each.Others, however, take the opposite view.
Andrew Gothard, That Thing on the Shelf: The Book as
Artifact in Novels by Patrick MacGill and Pádraic Ó Conaire
Ó Conaire’s narrator in Exile, the horribly disfigured Michael Mullen,
demonstrates how the book’s symbolic object status allows a small Irish
community in England to preserve its conceptions of identity and history.
Mullen describes this particular community as “Little Ireland,” which Pádraigín
Riggs identifies as “that area of North London encompassing Kilburn,
Cricklewood and Camden Town.”11 According to Mullen, Little Ireland is “a
little Irish world,” where some of the people, almost all of them from
Munster, “had inherited the traditions of bards and poets.”12 In the midst
of this thoroughly Irish, thoroughly working-class community, Mullen also
finds a single book sitting at the center of this community’s sense of Irish
nationality and history: Keating’s History of Ireland. 13
Mullen closes the passage by then identifying this savant as a member of the
working class, who apparently has little or no formal education, certainly none
in the university. His savant status itself also relates to Mullen’s assertion
that the people of Little Ireland were descended from bards and poets; this
character is more influenced by artistic (perhaps even divine) inspiration,
than by cold historical fact. Ó Conaire describes the book not as a tool, but
rather, as an artifact—an object of immense value for the cultural shadow
it casts, which surpasses the intellectual weight it carries.
By symbolically valuing a book and using it as the center point of their small
community, he implies, these exiles manage to maintain a truer and more real
form of Irishness than many of the Irish who still live back at home, even
amidst an unsympathetic English nation.
In Ó Conaire’s fiction, [Riggs] writes, London “is revealed not as a place of
opportunity or of hope, but rather as a realm of nightmare in which the traumas
visited upon the colonized are replayed time and again in all their
grotesque horror.”15As a result, Mullen characterizes Little Ireland as
defending the Irish culture within a hostile English landscape: “They
understood, in their own way that a race should guard the culture which had
come down to them from their ancestors and they guarded it like a
precious jewel” (E 105).
[Ó Conaire] takes up the issue of invention in fiction, where the author
produces stories for characters that do not match their daily existences. In
what seems a direct response to Henry James’s conception of the “House of
Fiction,” Mullen directly addresses his readers, inviting them to look through
the window at a “tall bearded man in the house opposite” (E 120). Philip
O’Leary notes that the symbol of the window serves as a broader theme for Ó
Conaire’s work in general, calling it the author’s “favorite device for
conveying [a] sense of isolation in the midst of company . . . [Mullen]
spends hours at his window watching a world with which he shares no
understanding.”19 As the novel’s narrator, Mullen produces a life for that man
he observes through the window
He is going to work. He won’t be home till two o’clock in the morning.
He is surrounded by his children. He kisses each one tenderly, but gives
two kisses to his wife. . . . [I] have noticed him before, whilst I was
writing this history, and I was jealous. Jealous because of his happy life,
and my unhappy one. When I saw that man, and his wife, and their
children, a hundred pictures would come before my eyes. I would see a
pretty little house on the edge of a wood; a wife and children there, all
full of love and affection for me. How I wished for a life like that enjoyed
by the man who lived opposite. (E 120)
By aligning their versions of the novel with real-life experience, yet still
obviously practicing varying degrees of selectivity themselves, MacGill and Ó
Conaire seek to navigate such contemporary theorizations of how the novel
form transmutes an author’s lived experience. For MacGill and Ó Conaire,
however, the novel’s need to transpose reality, rather than transmute it,
seems almost visceral rather than logical. The result is a novel form that is
dependent upon, but still firmly outside, the grasp of more middleclass
conceptions of the form.
the closer a novel’s relationship to lived or perceived experience, the more
authority it holds as a work of social narrative.
Mullen interact[s] with books as objects—an interaction that actively
emphasizes both the physical nature of the book and its representative status as
a “thing.” In a similar way, the fiction in which he exists finds itself restricted
by the real world that it purports to represent. In this case, restriction
produces meaning, rather than suppressing it.
There was something magical about it. There was something satanic about
that silverhandled pistol which forbade me to leave until I had it safe in my
trousers pocket.
although they were not fairy tales or tales of heroic fiction, but stories of
horror, grief and shame.
A light appeared in the eyes of the children as they listened to me, the light
which is the reward of the storyteller.
Like the Children of Lir, I composed a poem, although its words were my
tears. I wept and wept and wept until the tears were blinding me. I don't
know of anything, apart from laughter, that can do so much to lift a human
heart as weeping, especially when tears come gently and easily, as they
came to me on this blessed morning. My own tears came so gently and
easily that they did me a world of good
Socialism
Who invented right and wrong but people with full stomachs? The law of
God? When a person is hungry he is not subject to any law.
Some of them were full of good humour, and joy and laughter to see the
factory going up in flames. The place had a bad reputation and they had
been greatly exploited while working there. But there were others who
were crestfallen and sad on account of losing their employment. But the
owner of the factory was not half so upset as were his employees. And why
should he be? The fire would not leave him any worse off
he would be recompensed for his loss by the Insurance Company?
And you never saw such happy people as the ones who were laughing with
delight. They were very annoyed with the women who were worried at the
prospect of losing their livelihood.
I was becoming just as excited as the women."The beast who tortured
women is dead!" I shouted. The saying was taken up. The crowd started
shouting it in unison. In the end it became one great roar coming from a
thousand throats."
Angela Bourke, Legless in London: Pádraic Ó Conaire and
Éamon a Búrc
The novel moved decisively away from oral tradition to deal with the
preoccupations of urban life in spare, descriptive language with many
neologisms; even there, however, references to oral stories and songs mark
moments of liberation for his characters.
His first readers were the men and women whom the Gaelic League’s
language classes had made literate in Irish
The Irish Free State, ... would reserve deep distrust for the writers who
carried on Ó Conaire’s socialist vision
When he collects the money from the bank, he insists that it be paid in gold
sovereigns, which he takes back to his room in a yellow bag, like the hero of a
folktale. The text proceeds as awkwardly at this point as its central character-
narrator: although Micil has lost an arm as well as a leg, he can apparently use a
pair of crutches, and also carry the bag of gold; later, when just one half-
sovereign remains, he will toss it from hand to hand. Caring little about such
details, however, his furious narrative moves urgently on, sometimes even in the
present tense, as a diary, or running commentary
Declan Kiberd read Deoraíocht as a critique of the destruction of personality
under capitalism, when the individual becomes divorced from the products
of her/his labor, and wealth is generated through images and illusions.
In her full-length study of Ó Conaire, published in 1994, Riggs developed her
earlier interpretation of Deoraíocht as a reflex of the author’s own psychological
history; she scrupulously traced its literary antecedents, but rejected Kiberd’s
interpretation of Ó Conaire’s fiction as inspired by socialist thought.
Deoraíocht is a poetic articulation of what Ashis Nandy has called the “loss
and recovery of self under colonialism,”
but acquiring agency, becoming in some sense an artist of his disability as
he roars and shakes his heavy brass chains - His hero recovers his lost self,
however, when he refuses to utter the inarticulate roars that have been
assigned to him and finds his voice in his native language.
Signs left on the body, whether by machines out of control or by the fairies of
oral tradition, are examples of stigma in the literal sense. Erving Goffman’s
classic study defines stigma as “the situation of the individual who is
disqualified from full social acceptance.”
The colonized and stigmatized exile (refugee, asylum seeker), finds (i) that her
/ his language is silenced—forbidden, derided, or simply not understood;
(ii) that his / her human-ness has been removed or canceled and (iii) if he is
male, that his masculinity is denied. The individual thus becomes mute, or a
beast, or castrated—or all three, as Micil Ó Maoláin effectively is in
Deoraíocht. The double bind of colonialism required that he go to London in
order to become a man—to make enough money to marry his sweetheart—yet
London has emasculated him and made him inarticulate. When he spoke Irish,
only Big Mag understood him, and his physical blemishes combined with the
unfamiliar sounds he made were enough to convince onlookers that he was
“wild”—a madman, not quite human. The impresario Alf Trott simply
exaggerated these characteristics with props and makeup, and by ordering Micil
to roar, not speak. Returning thus edited to his native Galway, he found that
people talked about him, rather than to him, and fled from him as from a beast.
Metamorphosis and Perception
1. Phenomenology and the Chromatics of Affect
of gold on the table, but rather a golden tablecloth, and the morning
sunlight was turning everything in the room to gold
The alchemy of the drink was turning everything into gold
The whole place was bright and glittering under the little electric bulbs
which were of every colour in the rainbow
Music playing — and not alone did the music machine play of its own
accord, but it showed a variety of pictures as well; the lovely waterfall, the
swift flowing river, the great forest with the moon shining above the trees,
the sea and a sinking ship
I close both my eyes, and try to combine those three blues in one — in one
single shade of blue. And it seems to me that no eye has ever seen such a
lovely colour as this . . .
just said to myself that the sea had an angry colour: I have always thought
that there is a close connection between colour and the emotions that come
over the human heart.
The white is trying to master the blue. They are locked in combat, and the
light is steadily overcoming the darkness. Imperceptibly, the hills, and the
sea, and the trees beside me are changing colour
My head became dizzy. I lay on my back. I saw hundreds of colours mixing
with each other, and making thousands of beautiful multi-coloured
pictures, one picture following another with such speed that my brain was
mesmerised and tired out by them. When I tried to banish them, music
invaded my ears, the sounds of the music changing as rapidly as had the
pictures.
As the flames, which were growing stronger and stronger all the time, came
in contact with any of the chemical products in the factory, they took on
marvellous colours — blood-red, purple, lilac — colours of white, yellow,
blue and green, colours which were reflected on the faces of the people
around as they watched the blazing inferno
2. Change, Desire and Fictionalization
Todd McGowan: Capitalism functions as effectively as it does because it
provides satisfaction for its subjects while at the same time hiding the awareness
of this satisfaction from them. If we recognized that we obtained satisfaction
from the failure to obtain the perfect commodity rather than from a wholly
successful purchase, we would be freed from the psychic appeal of capitalism.
That is not to say that we would never buy another commodity, but just that we
would do so without a psychic investment in the promise of the commodity,
which is already, in some sense, a revolution. This change would eliminate
the barrier to structural changes to our socioeconomic system and would create
a different system. Problems of political organization and struggle are difficult,
but they pale in comparison to the problem of capitalism’s psychic appeal.
Understanding the importance of the psychic investment in the capitalist
economy and the need to break from it is Freud’s legacy for the contemporary
critique of capitalism.
Capitalist subjects cling tightly to their dissatisfaction, and this dissatisfaction is
the main thing holding them to capitalism. No matter how attractive it appears,
there is no commodity that holds the appeal of a lasting dissatisfaction.
....
In the novel:
I had been realising for some time that a great change had come over my
disposition, my heart and my mind; that my mind, in fact, had changed
much more than my body; that hatred and disgust, and depression and
wretchedness, would be my companions for the future; that I should have
gloom for a spouse until the day of my death
It has been a half-year since I last had a drink, and I can feel the alcohol
coursing through my body like a stream of fire, invading every limb
At first I told my tales in English, but before long I changed over to Irish,
without realising it. The public house was full, and everybody there was
amazed to hear the strange language, everybody except the sailor. That
rogue pretended to understand everything that I was saying. I was very
excited, and they all wanted to know what was the matter with me.
He told them that I was a German; that I had been a lunatic during one
period of my life; that I had killed eight men during that period (some of
them drew back from me); that I had been kept in a madhouse for a long
time — until the King of that country was satisfied to have me released. My
sanity had, of course, returned by this time, and what did I do but go on
safari in East Africa, killing lions? "'Exactly," he said, "that is how he
came by his dreadful injuries. It was a fierce old lion that came upon him,
my friend, while he was asleep.
But I do not want pity. I don't want a place to live, either. I really don't
know what I want. I never knew. And aren't there many more in the same
predicament?
But I did not believe I was the victim of an evil destiny. All that had
happened to me had been my own fault.
But it is only a false vision. I have neither wife nor child, nor house nor
land, I have nothing of the sort. All I have are my thoughts; sad, shameful
thoughts, thinking on that part of my life that is spent: thoughts of hope
and joy, imagining how things might have been for me if — yes, if I had
been another person.
my intelligence and my understanding were telling me that success would
follow my journey, they were telling me that I was right to be going there,
to make my way in life, telling me that I should eventually become an
achiever
There was a great life ahead of me : fame and fortune — enough to provide
for me in Ireland in my old age. Go back to my people, as I had been saying
to myself on the train? It would be madness.
A crowd is like an individual person. When the crowd is angry, it seems
that each member of it is angry. It also appears that when the crowd is in
joyous mood, so also is each person in it.
they were not happy thoughts, but bitter depressing ones, morbid gloomy
reflections on the injustice of poverty, and on the inequalities in society,
painful thoughts which cut into a person's heart and change him into a
creature full of resentment and malice. I was hungry that night, with a
hunger that was not only of the body, but of heart and mind and soul
And they heard me say; ''God is strong." There was an old man there who had a
saintly appearance. He would have reminded you of Michelangelo's Moses,
with his long white beard, and his noble features . . . but when he heard my
remark, he began to blaspheme and curse and swear. He swore that Satan had
taken charge of the world. That God had been dead for years. A red rag
would not have angered a bull more than the name of God enraged this
starving whitebearded old man who had such a look of Moses.
Beautiful women who had brought down kingdoms passed across the skies
above me
A kind of merriment came into my heart. I could feel the blood coursing
through my veins. There were a lot of people in the park, but they had no
notion of how happy was the cripple who was singing heartily under the
oak tree.
This poor man was found dead under an oak tree, in the middle of a park, in London,
England. Some of these pages were in his pocket. There was a pistol beside him which
had never been fired. It was only a toy which had failed the man who carried it. Beside
him also was an old knife, an old blunt chipped knife— the knife that had killed
him. . . . And little had my poor friend thought that the pistol bought from the sailor
would fail him — but had not life itselffailed him?
