Daniel Corkery's Cultural Criticism: Selected Writings

Ireland Reads – Trash!

Now, A. de B. writes a great deal of tosh about Mr. Corkery’s Hidden Ireland. Listen to this: ‘The principles illustrated by quotations from the Munster-men in a single century hold good over a larger scope of time and space, and it remains for other critics to apply these principles in detail to other schools.’6 What in heaven’s name are the principles Mr. Corkery has enunciated? Has he enunciated any? Are we to apply to the lyric poetry of the early centuries the theory that they are mediæval poetry? I hope not, and I would advise any critic who dreams of it to ask himself first whether the Agamemnon7 has not about as much connexion with mediæval thought and imagination as ‘Liadain and Curithir.’8 The truth is that Mr. Corkery’s book is valuable not for its principles but for its enthusiasm. It has restored a historical balance which to us was maddening in its onesidedness: it has enabled us to look at one period of our disastrous history with a serener eye.The unfortunate thing is that it is not being praised for its real merits, but for qualities it does not possess. It does not set up literary standards, but since Irish-Ireland has come to that stage at which it realises its own nakedness, realises that beside the mature art which the Synges and the Russells and the Yeatses have produced, its O’Laoghaires and O’Conaires are the most insignificant scribblers, for this reason it will invent standards, invent anything that will restore its complacency .The Ireland which expressed itself in literature is, I believe, with Seán O’Faoláin, a great Ireland, but I am afraid it is still a hidden Ireland. * * * Ireland Reads – Trash!1 Is Ireland culturally swamped? Of course it isn’t! Whatever may have swamped Ireland, it is not culture, English or any other sort. My friend, Professor Corkery, complains that the booksellers’ windows are a sad sight because only a dozen books in them will have been ‘written for Ireland or about Ireland.’2 I could understand a man complaining that booksellers’ shops were inadequate in comparison to those of foreign countries, that they were so few, that, outside Dublin, they were practically non-existent; that those which do exist sell little but trash. I can not understand the man who would console himself with the thought that the trash was ‘written for Ireland or about Ireland.’I could not do so, nor, I am certain, could Professor Corkery. Part Four. Contemporary Reception 213 The fact of the matter is that good books sell good books. Serious Irish writers get a poor show in their own country, because serious foreign writers are not read.The people who read Chekhov and Turgenev will read Daniel Corkery and Frank O’Connor, and there aren’t, worse luck, enough of them to make it worth their while. Ireland imports eight hundred thousand novels, says Mr. MacManus.That means little or nothing.Three or four good public libraries would circulate as many in a year. Assuming that the average cost is something like two shillings (it is probably less), one can calculate the infinitesimal sum spent per inhabitant on fiction. And of this eight hundred thousand books it would be safe to say that seven hundred and fifty thousand are detective stories, cowboy stories, love stories. They are not novels; they are light entertainment, relaxation, dope. They have as much relation to literature as the cigarette in my fingers.They are not English; they are international. You will find them streaked all over French and Italian bookshops. They might as well be anonymous for all they contain of any culture. And now the Gum is giving them to us – in Irish!3 It is the same with the cinemas, the dramatic societies. They have no cultural existence. Whether the stuff we see originated in Dublin, London or Hollywood doesn’t matter a straw to anybody but economists. What does matter is that we do not see the fine things. Ireland badly needs a cultural swamping. When I was growing up I read everything – English, French, German, Russian, Italian – that I could get from the local library or from my friends. So did Professor Corkery. So did Mr. MacManus. In time we made of them something that was our own. That is how nations, too, develop. A growing organism needs to be fed and better too much...