Daniel Corkery's Cultural Criticism: Selected Writings

The Modernisation of Irish poetry

minor writers of people developing the smugness of the official both in their lives and writings – a thing not undreamt of in Ireland. I mention this identity of the russian writer with his people as a sort of hint of my fear that the same thing is not being done in Ireland. Is there not a touch too much of the schoolmaster in our Irish writers? not in all, but in too many. Is there not a certain want of frankness, a fear of being real? Is there not a touch too much of the idyllic? Because of this desire of ours to turn out a side of things which is perfectly blameless (as if the trick cannot be seen through at a glance!) we are not getting up the power or putting forth any of these studies of life which would do more in the end to forward everything Irish than political movements. What would one not give for a passionately real study of Irish life before the famine! or for a study – not idyllic – of life in the Land League days? or for a story which – again predicating passionate reality – would have, say, egan o’rahilly6 or eoghan ruadh7 or pierce Fitzgerald8 or Cathal Buidhe9 for its central figure, grouping up the life of their extraordinary days about them! These are yet to come. If I point out russian literature as a storehouse of models – (and this much good we may credit to the war – that translations of russian writers are now easily to be had)10 – I do so remembering a vast gallery of figures met with in russian pages that may have walked the roads of Ireland itself. and indeed I am not forgetting, too, the fact that one of the most successful pieces of work in modern Irish is obviously coloured with the tints of russia – I mean pádraic Ó Conaire’s Deoraidheacht.11 * * * The Modernisation of Irish poetry1 When I see finicky schemes for the betterment of Irish education I find myself smiling, wanly smiling; for who that knows anything of Irish educational systems does not know the uselessness of tinkering with them at all until about at least four times the present total grant of money is available to put things aright? In somewhat the same way, I suspect, in the problem of modernising Irish verse, there must be some great simple factor, overlooked by outsiders, constantly riding like a nightmare the thoughts of the initiated, sealing their lips in the silence of despair. In this matter I suppose I am like the simple folk who would settle Irish education by clipping programmes here and strengthening them elsewhere – I know 20 Daniel Corkery’s Cultural Criticism. Selected Writings enough to appear impressive to those who know nothing. Well, be it so. If discussion discover to us that grand single factor which I must, through ignorance, overlook just now, so much will have been gained. I will begin by telling how I stand with regard to the subject, enlightening , perhaps, just a little, the professors, whose way it is to get apart from the tents of the tribes. I can read modern Irish verse. I can tolerably well read the verse of the 18th century. perhaps I could, with some study, make out 17th century verse. With the aid of notes I have done some of the poetry of the 16th century. But beyond that is chaos. and, tantalisingly, the farther back one goes the better the verse appears to become. of the very early Irish verse my knowledge is confined to translations, mostly to Kuno Meyer’s translations. I have never met with anyone who ever even saw the originals of the poems in his Ancient Irish Poetry.2 What I wish to inquire is, is there no one to do for Irish verse what Canon peter o’Leary has done for Irish prose?3 or is the thing impossible? (By the way, the only specimen of ancient Irish poetry I have ever seen done into modern Irish came from the same daring pen.) I will give my own simple views on the matter, quietly, timidly, as befits one who does not grasp the whole difficulty. The difficulty, of course, is form. The overweening concision implied in the very verse-structure of old Irish verse is antagonistic to the verse forms in modern Irish, perhaps even antagonistic to the, comparatively speaking, broken-down grammatical structure of modern Irish (it may...