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The writing on the walls
 MALCOLM
ROGERS goes in search of literary Dublin.
The Irish language is often described as having been in a persistent
vegetative state for the last hundred years or so despite various
efforts at resuscitation.
Attempts have included pumping millions into the Irish language channel
TG4, paying for bilingual signs on the sides of buses, taxis, poster hoardings
etc and encouraging people to order their meals in restaurants in Irish.
But the Irish language remains obstinately comatose.
Douglas Hyde the first president of Ireland made one of
the first attempts at revival through his work with the Gaelic League
in the 1890s.
However it was Hyde’s great ill-fortune to launch his campaign at
a time which coincided with the appearance of a group of Irish writers
Synge, Joyce, O’Casey, Yeats and Shaw all who produced
masterpieces in English.
They subsequently changed the very course of the English language and
of course Irish literature forever.
Ironically Douglas Hyde’s putative attempts at reviving his native
language were doomed by the genius and facility with words of his fellow
countrymen.
Dublin has long been the epicentre of that literary movement and is indeed
regarded by many as the true cradle of English letters since the 17th-century.
This city of over-achievers in the literary field has several museums
dedicated to writing.
However given that much of the inspiration for Dublin’s scribes
came in pint-form, it might be argued that the city contains a thousand
writers’ museums in the form of its pubs.
The ghosts of Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, O’Casey, Beckett and Goldsmith
haunt every time-darkened pub so the obvious way to find out more about
the city’s great literary tradition is to take the Literary Pub
Crawl.
The tour is conducted by a professional actor who expounds on every Dublin
writer from Swift to Roddy Doyle and not forgetting Thomas Moore whose
statue stands in the grounds of Trinity College between the ladies and
gents toilets.
Any connection with his number one song The Meeting Of The Waters, however,
would be regarded as frivolous.
The Literary Pub Crawl’s sideways look at Dublin’s uniquely
Irish aspect of world literature includes visits to pubs such as Davey
Byrne’s, the Duke and the Bailey amongst many others.
 All
have their own story sometimes straying into the tortuous world
of Irish politics.
The Bailey was a regular stopping-off point for Brendan Behan
and emphatically isn’t where he said: “The drink in that pub
isn’t fit for washing hearses.” But it is where Charles Stewart
Parnell once drank to forget or remember his love Kitty
O’Shea.
Brendan was of course called, ‘the writer with a drinking problem’,
who in turn referred to another well-known Dublin quaffer Patrick Kavanagh
as The Ploughboy of the Western World on account of his rural roots in
Monaghan.
Never mind that Patrick wrote just about one of the loveliest love songs
ever penned, Raglan Road; his reputation as a pub-goer preceded him.
During the Literary Crawl you’ll hear Flann O’Brien’s
indisputable and time-honoured philosophy, ‘a pint of plain is your
only man’, and naturally several Oscar-winning lines come to the
fore. Oscar O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, born in Dublin and educated
in Trinity College, had sufficient intellectual authority to state at
the US Customs: “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”
James Joyce, of course, looms large. Although Ulysses is pleasingly devoid
of a plot in the accepted sense of the word, the basic vehicle for the
story is one Leopold Bloom, a Jewish salesman, who wanders round Dublin
on June 16, 1904 capturing a day in the life of Dublin’s more marginalised
and seedy citizens.
You’ll hear how a real life Jewish gentleman happened to become
a hero of a novel which today we regard as the work against which all
other writers, from Tolstoy to Cervantes, are measured.
It seems that in the Bailey in 1904 after a night’s drinking, James
approached a young woman, thinking she was alone. His misapprehension
was corrected by a swift punch from her companion.
Fate at this point produced a Jewish bystander who, it is said, in the
simple act of offering the bespectacled novelist a handkerchief to wipe
the blood off his nose, wrote himself into immortality as Leopold Bloom.
Appropriately enough the Literary Walk begins at George Bernard Shaw’s
birthplace in Synge Street, just as appropriately named after JM Synge
who wrote the Playboy Of The Western World.
If you don’t go too far along the street, in fact a Bridge Too Far,
you’ll come to the birthplace of Cornelius Ryan who wrote the books
from which the films A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day and The Last Battle
were adapted.
The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl tel: 00 353 1 670 5602; mobile: 00 353 1
87 263 0270
www.dublincrawl.com
The Shaw Birthplace not only covers the life of the only man to win a
Nobel Prize and an Oscar (the latter for My Fair Lady, which was an adaptation
of his work Pygmalion) but also gives a wonderful insight into everyday
life in Victorian Dublin.
The Shaw Birthplace, 33 Synge Street, tel: 00 353 1 475 0854
www.visitdublin.com
For more formal appreciation of Ireland’s literary luminaries head
for the Writers’ Museum.
Manuscripts and memorabilia from Goldsmith, Stoker and Swift, as well
as Ireland’s four Nobel Literary prize-winners Yeats, Shaw,
Beckett and Séamus Heaney help bolster Ireland’s
claims to being the fulcrum of the English literary tradition.
Two Irish-born poet laureates of Britain make an appearance, namely Cecil
Day Lewis (father of actor Daniel), and Dublin man Nahum Tate, laureate
way back in the 17th century.
His biggest hit was While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night.
Dublin Writers’ Museum, 18 North Parnell Square, Dublin 1 Tel: 01
872 2077
Open Mon-Sat, 10am-5pm; Sep-May; 10am-6pm Jun Aug, 11am -5pm rest of the
year and public holidays
www.writersmuseum.com
Admission €7. Concession and group prices available. |
