- \n
- Counterpoints<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
30 May, 2019<\/p>\n
Born before it even existed, Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) knew all about Ireland\u2019s hard border. \u201cO stony grey soil of Monaghan,\u201d he wrote, \u201cyou burgled the bank of my youth!\u201d <\/p>\n
The son of a farmer-cum-cobbler, Kavanagh shook the border clods of Monaghan from his boots to become one of his country\u2019s greatest poets and a brooding, acerbic presence on the Dublin literary scene. One young poet complained to him that publishers and critics were secretly uniting to thwart his career. He gave Kavanagh some work of his to read and later asked for his advice on what to do about the conspiracy. \u201cJoin it!\u201d was the answer. <\/p>\n
Kavanagh wrote some beautiful poems about Dublin, but he also returned again and again in his writing to the rural heartlands of his youth. He was no bucolic nostalgist: \u201cYou perfumed my clothes with weasel itch \/ You fed me on swinish food\u201d are not words you are ever likely to find in the tourist brochures. Kavanagh captured like no one else the agonies suffered by the Irish peasantry as a result of poverty and sexual frustration. <\/p>\n
Monaghan, he railed, \u201cflung a ditch on my vision \/ Of beauty, love and truth\u201d. \u201cInniskeen Road: July Evening\u201d finds him alone on the night of a dance, cursing the plight of having \u201cwhat every poet hates in spite \/ Of all the solemn talk of contemplation\u201d: he is alone, a king of \u201cbanks and stones and every blooming thing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet Kavanagh could also write with great tenderness about rural Ireland, and even about the beauty and consolation that the Catholic faith sprinkled across otherwise harsh lives. In his new book My Father Left Me Ireland<\/i> (Sentinel, \u00a320), American journalist Michael Brendan Dougherty movingly contemplates lines Kavanagh wrote about farmers who prayed for help with the necessities of life, but came away with something greater: \u201cIt was love, love, love they found: \/ Love that is Christ green walking from the summer headlands \/ To His scarecrow cross in the turnip-ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what about that border? Many years before his country joined the EU, Kavanagh wrote about an Ireland that \u201cfroze for want of Europe\u201d. Clearly, he didn\u2019t have in mind customs unions, but was thinking of an Ireland that history, had removed from the mainstream of European culture. But, if Kavanagh were around today, it might not be Brexit that would be preoccupying him, but the social revolution in Ireland signalled by referendums such as those on equal marriage and abortion. Before the 1950s were out, he had already written a parodic poem entitled \u201cHouse Party to Celebrate the Destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, when talking about Kavanagh and borders, one must eventually come around to another wonderful sonnet, \u201cEpic\u201d. The poem concerns a 1930s land dispute between two Monaghan farming families. Kavanagh handles the whole affair with masterful irony and the concluding sestet\u2014well, as people seem to like to say on Twitter, I\u2019ll just leave this here.<\/p>\n
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
\nWas more important? I inclined
\nTo lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
\nTill Homer\u2019s ghost came whispering to my mind
\nHe said: I made the Iliad from such
\nA local row. Gods make their own importance. <\/p>\n<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
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Letters: Priceless plans; Marxist pedagogy; Tibet and China; The name game<\/a>
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A mental balm<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
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\nLetters: Priceless plans; Marxist pedagogy; Tibet and China; The name game<\/a>
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