Daniel Corkery's Cultural Criticism: Selected Writings

Correspondence: The Spirit of the Nation

What is wrong is simply this: we are not clear as to what we can and cannot attain in the fight for the revival of irish. We are not at all clear as to our objective: the result has been that our efforts have been aimless, and, as i hope i have shown, for the greater part of no avail. * * * Correspondence: The Spirit of the Nation1 Sir, – i think it well that frank o’Connor has answered Mr. Corkery’s article on the ‘Spirit of the Nation,’2 and well that he chose to answer it passionately, for it would appear that the writer of the article is more likely to respond to an appeal to his heart than to his head. His point seems to be that hard work in the confines of the nation is useless to the nation and to the worker unless ‘breathed on’ by the spirit of the nation: unless, that is (i make bold to translate) the worker realises that there is a national tradition and works in it.3 Mr. Corkery is quite correct in saying that any country is the richer and the more stable for having and recognising its national tradition, but he does not appear to realise that the national tradition of a may not be the national tradition of B; in the meantime, while our national tradition is being definitely formed by the hard work of men like Horace plunkett, and Æ, and the gunmannings of Michael Collins and rory o’Connor, and the visions of W.B. yeats, and the idealism of Mr. de Valera, and the cutting up of ardnacrusha by Siemens-Schuckert,4 and the mild efforts of the Gaelic League, and the publication of a weekly paper in Cork,5 and the quiet efforts of craftsmen of all sorts throughout the country, is it fair of Mr. Corkery to cry from high olympus that all these people can achieve nothing until the five others besides Mr. Corkery himself have put the one-and-only, the real brand of national tradition beyond fear of further breakages? Neither Mr. Corkery nor anyone else of those i named is the custodian of the national tradition: in the first place, as he says rightly, it is not an intact tradition at all, but rather the makings of a tradition and the makings in our hands; and i have sufficient faith in my own generation, which is not Mr. Corkery’s generation, to believe that we shall and in our time make a better tradition for the ireland of our day and future days than has ever entered the type of mind that frank o’Connor has attacked. as a matter of fact i should not be surprised to find that the national tradition as Mr.Corkery sees it and as frank o’Connor and i see it,differs only in that the one having come out of a memory of an ireland of long defeat is a narrow 224 Daniel Corkery’s Cultural Criticism. Selected Writings tradition fearful always for its own safety, and the other coming out of an ireland of fight and conquest is a wide tradition that like the ireland of the middle ages spreads its arms to the ideas of every country in the world. * * * The emancipation of irish Writers1 [. . .] i once heard of a man who wished to found a Society for the emancipation of the irish intellect,and who was asked,‘Whom will you have in your Society for the emancipation of the irish intellect? No doubt,to begin with, you will have George russell?’Whereupon he glared angrily and said, ‘How can i have a man like George russell in a Society for the emancipation of the irish intellect? Why, the man is a – why, he isn’t even a protestant!’2 Now, our friend of the Society for the emancipation of the irish intellect is not so rare a bird as he may seem, nor so foolish as he sounds. He was merely voicing a feeling, common enough among intelligent irishmen of today , that our people are not expressing themselves freely, either in literature or in life, to which is added, or rather, in which is implied, the feeling that these depths left unexpressed in irish literature can only be expressed in a satisfying way after some awakening in the people themselves. it is an attitude, like many such in ireland, which derives its appeal from its...