Metaphor and Metamorphosis in the Poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

METAPHOR AND METAMORPHOSIS IN THE POETRY OF NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL CAOIMHÍN MAC GIOLLA LÉITH nuala n dhomhnaill’s “Ceist na Teangan” is the closing poem of the dual-language compilation Pharaoh’s Daughter, published in 1990, which more than any other of her books has contributed to the significant expansion of her readership to embrace a wide range of English-language readers previously unfamiliar with modern literature in Irish.1 The poem is accompanied by an English translation by Paul Muldoon, the most ingenious and assiduous to date of what has been described as Ní Dhomhnaill’s “veritable procession of linguistic suitors.” “Ceist na Teangan” is a condensed allegorical declaration of tentative hope in the efficacy of poetic expression and the future course of the medium of that expression. Ní Dhomhnaill’s hope is figured as the infant Moses who is delicately placed “i mbáidín teangan” (“in a little boat of language”) and set adrift, on the vague chance that this fragile vessel might ultimately bear its charge into the solicitous arms of “Iníon Fhároinn,” “Pharaoh’s Daughter.” CEIST NA TEANGAN Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh i mbáidín teangan faoi mar a leagfá naíonán i gcliabhán a bheadh fite fuaite de dhuilleoga feileastraim is bitiúman agus pic a bheith cuimilte lena thóin METAPHOR IN THE POETRY OF NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL 150 1 This essay is based on a lecture delivered at Harvard University, 23 April 1999. It forms part of a book-length study of the poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, currently in preparation, to be titled The Language Issue. An earlier version of some of this material was also delivered at the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, 17 March 1999. ansan é a leagadh síos i measc na ngiolcach is coigeal na mban sí le taobh na habhann, féachaint n’fheadaraís cá dtabharfadh an sruth é, féachaint, dála Mhaoise, an bhfóirfidh iníon Fhároinn. THE LANGUAGE ISSUE I place my hope on the water in this little boat of the language, the way a body might put an infant in a basket of intertwined iris leaves, its underside proofed with bitumen and pitch, then set the whole thing down amidst the sedge and bulrushes by the edge of a river only to have it borne hither and thither, not knowing where it might end up; in the lap, perhaps, of some Pharaoh’s Daughter.2 Muldoon’s translation of the originally indefinite “báidín teangan” as “this little boat of the language” takes it upon itself to draw attention to the specific problems arising from the contemporary Gaelic writer’s choice of an ostensibly imperiled language as her medium of expression. This gesture of specification on the translator’s part is to an extent underwritten by the poem’s title, “Ceist na Teangan,” literally “The Language Question,” which echoes a hackneyed phrase of Irish-language realpolitik. It contrasts , however, with an opposing impulse evident in Muldoon’s renderMETAPHOR IN THE POETRY OF NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL 151 2 Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Pharaoh’s Daughter (Oldcastle: Gallery Books, 1990), 154–55. ing of the poem’s closing lines, where Ní Dhomhnaill’s overt reference to Moses is elided, and “pharaoh’s daughter” is presented as a type rather than an individual. Muldoon’s translation of the poem’s title nonetheless deftly combines two meanings in the word “issue,” that of “problematic” and “progeny.” It thus effectively denotes the poem’s basic theme while maintaining oblique contact with the otherwise occluded tenor of the extended metaphor by which that theme is expressed—i.e., the infant Moses. I begin with this poem for a number of reasons. First, it is the most explicit instance in Ní Dhomhnaill’s work of the problem of language and linguistic expression being posed as such; here, in the context of the pragmatics of literary reception. Second, it also implicitly presents some contingent problems of literary translation. And, finally, Ní Dhomhnaill’s allegory also displays a certain inherent recalcitrance, insofar as it is amenable to extended interpretations with which the poet herself would surely not...