LITERATURE IN IRELAND.* APART from the tragic end of the
writer, this volume of "Studies Irish and Anglo-Irish" claims attention for its intrinsic merit. It is not only written with eloquence and charm of expression, but it is probably the most critical estimate of the Celtic Renaissance in Ireland that has been written, so to speak, from the inside. Mr. MacDonagh was by temperament a poet and in politics an extremist, but as a critio ho had no sympathy with those of his fellow-countrymen who hold that Ireland's prime duty in letters is to divorce herself from all contact with English influences and English traditions. He is all for Irishmen being true to their native genius, and writing for an Irish audience, but he realizes that, in spite of certain drawbacks, their bilingualism is a source of strength rather than weakness ; that the work of Anglo-Irish writers Is a permanent and vital contribution to English literature ; and that it is likely to continue to be so for at least some time to come. His conviction that the English government of Ireland was tyrannous and unjust did not affect his appreciation of English authors from Chaucer down to the present day. Ho was a genuine admirer of so typically English a poet as Wordsworth, and the catholicity of his taste is shown by his references to Burns and Shelley, Keats and Campion, of whom he published an interesting study some years ago. It is also interesting to note that from beginning to end of the book no mention is made of German authors, with the sole exception of the Celtic studies of Professor Kuno Meyer, and that Mr. MacDonagh was a sympathetic student of early French poets—notably Villon and Ronsard—and a great admirer of the beauty of French prose. This independence and detachment are also shown in his deliberate statement that "propaganda has rarely produced a fine poem," his severe comments on the Gaelic League for doing "little to foster the growth of a new literature in Irish," and his no less frank criticism of those modem writers who overlay the genuine mysticism of the Irish character with "a garment borrowed from the grammarians of this science of the saints." With regard to Anglo-Irish literature his definite conclusions are three :— "First, that an Anglo-Irish literature, worthy of a special designation, could come only when English had become the language of the Irish people, mainly of Gaelic stock ; and when the literature was from, by, of, to and for the Irish people. Second, that the ways of life and the ways of thought of the Irish people—the manners, customs, traditions and outlook, religious, social, moral—have important differences from the ways of life and of thought which have found expression in other English literature. Third, that the English language in Ireland has an indi- viduality of its own, and the rhythm of Irish speech a distinct character." As he puts it in another place, his aim is to introduce a movement "im- portant to English literature, because it is in part a revolt from it— because it has gone its own way, independent of it, though using for its language English or a dialect of English." He traces in it certain national characteristics, an emotional and personal sentiment ; the motive of adversity ; the inspiration of patriotism ; and a singular freedom from any preoccupation with sex—" our ideals, national and religious, are powerful and holy." It is a new literature, and English had to be broken and remade in the forgo of living speech to serve its ends. The English language, glorified by Shakespeare, degraded by the stenographer, was good for the English people, but in it the ideas of the Gael did not find easy expression. The best Anglo-Irish lite- rature is sprung from Irish and English : "the dialect at its best is more vigorous, fresh and simple than either of the two languages between which it stands."
The reasons that Mr. MacDonagh gives for his belief are manifold, and they will not convince everybody, but they are consistent with his view of the function of poetry. English literature, he contends, has had some difficulty in getting rid of "the phraseology, the inver- sions, the poetic words, the cumbrous epithets, the mannerisms of its pastoral and genteel days. It has, indeed, not yet got quite rid of thein. The English reading of the early Anglo-Irish writers filled
• Literature in Ireland : Studies Irish and Anglo-Irish. By Thomas BaDonsgh, M.A. London : T. Fisher nwin. Ids. ad.]
their memories with these old stale things ; but the individual Anglo- Irish literature of which I write has no such lumber. It is the record of the speech of the people, the living word—sometimes, no doubt, heightened, to use the old phrase, but of a directness which Words- worth would have adored. Indeed it would seem that the desire of Wordsworth for a literature written only in the common laneuage of the people is best fulfilled in the work produced in Ireland." Again, according to his view, the effect of the thinking that expresses itself in tho Gaelio modes has already affected and must continue to affect expression in English. He attaches special importance to the use in Irish of the con- crete as against the English use of the abstract ; to the richness of Irish in dialects and variant forms which it owes to the fact of its not having been unified, because Irish has "on the whole remained unaffected by things which have very greatly affected all other modem languages —by the printing-press, by modern commerce, by modem science, and the rest." The people "have retained an ease for full expression that English does not know," and he illustrates the difference by translating a passage of De Quincey into Anglo-Irish and literary Irish. Another influence of Irish which makes for elasticity in poetry is the difference in rhythm. "In England the tendency is to hammer the stressed and to slur the unstressed syllables. In Ireland we keep by comparison a uniform stress," and to this fact he attributes the wavering rhythms, "the grace of the wandering, lingering musical voice" in the poems of Callanan, Ferguson, and even Moore, whom he regards as one of the pioneers of tho Irish mode—writers of verse which must not be strictly scanned, and can only be read correctly by following either Irish music or Anglo-Irish prose speech. This close connexion of speech and joy makes for a conversational tone which disallows inversions, quaint words and turns of speech. On this colloquial directness Mr. MacDonagh sets great store, and his chief cause of complaint with Mr. Synge is that he "crammed his language too full of rich phrases." Bravura, rhetoric, embroidery, the pageantry of verso do not enter into Mr. MacDonagh's scheme of poetry or at any rate of Gaelic poetry. "The quality of form that most frequently raises Irish verse to the height of poetry is not beauty of verse-music, but restraint, the severer grace."
While clearly regarding the Anglo-Irish language and literature as more deeply indebted to the Irish strain, Mr. MacDonagh frankly acknowledges, though in general terms, the gain it has derived from its English source. In his treatment of Irish literature, past, present, and future, he disclaims all intention of comparing the ancient Gaelio literature to the Classics. He admits that it is a literature of frag- ments, though noble and inspiring, and also admits; that in many cease the translations have bettered the originals. Recent Gaelic literature he regards as decadent, but he finds great promise in the work of a few contemporary poets and prose writers. He is of opinion that the drama is a fertile field for experiment, though not greatly impressed by the efforts which have been made in this direction, either by Irish or Anglo-Irish writers. Here as always Mr. ILiseDonagh insists that we are still in an age of beginnings :— "The drama of modem Ireland, in English, is in the main poetic) and satiric, It seems indeed not free from the faults of its time, or rather of the time just gone by in some of the continental countries—not free from the faults of impressionism, of quasi-scientific Ibsonism, of unreal gloom and of shallow cynicism. It is its virtue to have shown the way back to the life of the people and back to poetry."
The sum of the matter, in Mr. MacDonagh's view, is expressed in the remarkable pages in which, after justifying the "new arrogance" which the Gaelic revival has given to some of its champions, he con- tinues :— "My race has survived the wiles of the foreigner here. It has refused to yield even to defeat, and emerges strong to-day, full of hope and of love, with new strength in its arms to work its new destiny, with a new song on its lips and the word of the new language, which is the ancient language, still calling from age to age. The adorable delicacy, the shrinking sensibility, the paralyzing diffidence which has its root in charity, the qualities which make for temporary defeat and yet, being of their nature joined with the unwavering conviction of truth and right, for ultimate victory—these live on. Now with them, in the same breasts with them, lives this too : its day is come. This arrogance is a sign of energy, of vitality, and so hero is good. The Gaelic movement is a revival. Though, through changes of methods and modes of advance, the exhaustion of old methods and the need for new movements, it may seem to-day that the central movement has lost force, it still goes forward. Of a tide of thought, drawn by the inspiration of an ancient cause, there is no ebb. This will have a voice, a literature, to-morrow, the voice of a people new to such a way of speech, the literature of a fresh people. To be a poet one must look with fresh oyes on life ; to produce poets a nation must be fresh. Ireland has already produced a great literature of old : the fragments that remain prove that. But, as we are now we are a fresh people, fresh to literature. We have begun to pro- duce a literature in English, a foreign tongue. This will not injure or delay the progress of Gaelic literature, which must be the work of other writers. Most of the Anglo-Irish poets—and it is almost all poetry still— have spent in attaining their knowledge and mastery of their craft all the resources of learning and acquirement in them. the matter of technique—and this is all but supremely necessary in modem poetry— one language only will one poet master. Whether our people go forward In Anglo-Irish literature or not, some of our poets and writers of the next generation will certainly continue the production of a new literature in Irish. As I have said, we are fresh in other senses too—fresh from the natural home of man, the fields and the country. We have not all Frown up in streets amid the artificialities of civilization, with traditional memories of brick and plaster. The influences of Nature will be felt by us as by the true poets of all tongues. Our nature poetry will owe nothing to the botanical observations of city dwellers ; it will be no sham pastoral imitation ; it will be natural and spontaneous, and our own. But above all we are fresh in language, which the most city-hating English lover of Nature cannot be. We are the children of a race that, through need or choice, turned from Irish to English. We have now so well mastered this language of our adoption that we use it with a fresh- ness and power that the English of these days rarely have. But now also we have begun to turn back to the old language, not old to us. The future poets of the country will probably be the sons and daughters of a generation that learned Irish as a strange tongue ; the words and phrases of Irish will have a new wonder for them ; the figures of speech will have all their first poetry."
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepa. It Is curious to compare this view of Young Ireland with the Young Ireland as envisaged by Mr. St. John Ervin°, recently reviewed in these pages, in which there is no room for brooding on the past, no deliberate elimination of those elements which make for material progress. The Gaelic genius, as interpreted by Mr. MacDonagh and for the continuity of which he pleads so eloquently, could never produce a Balzao or a Shakespeare. it may gain some stimulus from outside, but in its austere and primitive detachment it must remain aloof from the mid-current of modern life.
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