The Seas of Literature
'The seas of literature are full of the wrecks of Irish anthologies.' With this
cheering thought, W. B. Yeats set afloat his own anthology, A Book of Irish
Verse, in 1895. Yeats fervently believed that his book was a genuine contribution
to a tradition of Irish writing in English, as well as a personal record of what
he considered to be the best in Irish verse, but he also realized that the very
word 'Irish' would summon critics with more ardent nationalist sentiments than
his own. His concern was that the image of Ireland that his anthology conveyed
would be regarded as insufficiently patriotic and that the times might demand
a more heroic and more explicitly political representation of national identity.
Any new anthology of Irish writing still runs the risk of censure for what its
selection of material might suggest about Ireland and Irishness. Today, however,
critics are wary of impassioned talk about tradition and identity. Anthologies
are suspect because they are, by their very nature, part of a tradition-making
process and tradition is often invoked as a way of defining and declaring identity.
Anthologies can, of course, also acknowledge diversity and plurality.
Many of the writings in the Irish Writing Anthology are overtly nationalist.
This is hardly surprising, given the historical circumstances in which they
were composed. Political speeches, songs, and memoirs are included, along with
stories, plays, and poems. Questions about national destiny and national identity
are paramount in all of these works, but they do not as a body of writing constitute
some monolithic notion of Ireland or promote some essentialist idea of what
it is to be Irish. What these writings frequently reveal are the startling instabilities
and uncertainties that accompany debates about identity and nationality, especially
in times of violent political conflict and difficult social transition. Images
of Ireland in the writings of Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, J. M. Synge, W.
B. Yeats, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and others are not necessarily flattering
or positive images. One of the strongest dissenting voices towards the end of
the period represented here is that of Louis MacNeice provocatively asking,
'Why should I want to go back | To you, Ireland, my Ireland?'.
This is an anthology of Irish writing in English from the revolutionary era
of the late eighteenth century to the formative years of the Irish Free State
in the early decades of the twentieth century. It spans 150 years of modern
European history, from the French Revolution, which impacted so powerfully on
Irish nationalist aspirations, to the outbreak of the Second World War, in which
the newly independent Irish Free State maintained its neutrality. In that traumatic
century and a half, the struggle for political independence inspired patriotic
speeches, songs, and stories, and these in turn gave fresh inspiration to new
generations of nationalist writers and activists. The voices of Wolfe Tone and
Robert Emmet are heard in the uproar of Easter 1916 and later. Other voices,
of course, are inflected in different ways and not always in support of revolutionary
change. There are voices of loyalist fervour as well as nationalist aspiration,
voices of bewilderment as well as assurance, and voices of lament as well as
celebration. Throughout the writings of this troubled century and a half, there
is an intense preoccupation with Ireland itself: with issues of national identity,
political liberty, sectarian conflict, territorial possession, and linguistic
inheritance. This preoccupation is inflected in different ways in a variety
of literary forms: in travel writing and Gothic fiction as much as in autobiographical
essays and translations of early Irish poems.
Stephen Regan
29/01/2004
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