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an irish ‘provincial’1 only for the fact that there was a nationalistic movement in the land when Synge returned to ireland he would never have come to write Riders to the Sea, no matter how often he visited the aran islands, nor how long he stayed in them. His success is testimony to the necessity for such movements in every country situated as ours – that is, unprotected against the overflow of a stronger and richer neighbouring tradition . . . . unless we learn to know ourselves, to stand on our own feet, we shall never achieve self-expression. unless a writer sinks himself in the heart of his own people he will never, let his own gifts be what they may, accomplish work of such a nature as permanently satisfies the human spirit.2 in these words Mr. daniel Corkery closes a study of Synge. Those who are familiar with Mr. Corkery’s Hidden Ireland will be quite prepared for his dismissal of the whole anglo-irish literary movement as a manifestation of ‘provincialism,’ but not even all of these will be in agreement with him.The national movement affected others as it did Synge – there can be little doubt now that the plays of the long list of irish dramatists and playwrights were written primarily for their own people. Whatever may be said about the ‘expatriate’ novelists and poets, who, as it must be agreed, wrote primarily for an external public, the men who wrote plays during the past thirty years in ireland had their eyes on the stage of the abbey Theatre or its forerunners. Most of these playwrights, including Mr. Corkery himself, made their most potent appeal to an irish audience, and, in point of fact, only a very few of them have made any appeal at all to the audiences of other lands. irish plays in english are no more appreciated or understood in england or america than they would be in Scandinavia or Holland, and such a play as Cathleen ni Houlihan moves an irish audience in a manner in which it could not hope to move an audience in any other land.3 it is not ignorance of history only that prevents that play from its utmost emotional appeal outside ireland; it is the fact that yeats created Kathleen out of ‘the heart of his own people.’ ‘anglo-irish literature . . . . as the phrase is understood,’ says Mr. Corkery, ‘is mostly the product of irishmen who neither live at home nor write primarily for their own people . . . . The intention, whether willing or unwilling makes no difference, was not to canalise some share of irish consciousness so that that consciousness would the 192 Daniel Corkery’s Cultural Criticism. Selected Writings better know itself.The intention was rather to discover some easy way, in which strange workings of that consciousness might entertainingly be exhibited to alien eyes.’4 When a writer is faced, as the writer in ireland invariably is faced, with a community which reads very little, and even when it does read, is prepared to have its reading material prescribed because of qualities entirely outside the realms of literary art, what else may he do but appeal to alien eyes and an alien intelligence? irish writers are faced with a triple kind of censorship: first, the censorship of those who do not read at all; second, the ‘reserved list’ of Library Committees; and finally, the Statutory Censorship Board.5 The worst of these, of course, is the first, as it is the absence of a large reading public that compels irish writers to seek readers abroad.The ‘reserved List’ in irish public libraries also would be found enlightening, and one irish author has suffered under the Censorship Board. if we compel our writers to seek their readers in other lands, Mr. Corkery ought not to complain then that they are merely ‘provincial.’ in order that irish literature may be irish, apparently, it will be necessary to have ‘a succession of nationalistic movements, rising and falling, each dissolving into a period of reaction, of provincialism, yet each, for all that, leaving the nation a little more sturdy, a little more normal, a little less provincial than before.’6 to our mind it would seem that the real ‘provincial’ in this matter is Mr. Corkery himself: Synge’s art made his appeal universal, and Mr. Corkery may be thanked for having ranged him with those who exhibited his countrymen entertainingly to alien eyes. * * * Synge and irish...

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