Welcome to my weekly blog,  SATURDAY SESSIONS!

In this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its Culture.

If you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie

IRISH LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

OSCAR WILDE (1854 - 1900)

Born near Merrion Square in Dublin, Oscar Wilde was raised in the house which is currently the American College in Merrion Square, directly opposite his famous statue in the park itself.

          At the height of his success as a playwright, Oscar was a household name in Victorian England where he lived most of his life. However, up to the 1960s, the Catholic Irish never dared speak his name - because he was gay!

          All of his satirical plays are still very funny, particularly The Importance of Being Earnest.

          His plays were about 'illegitimate' births, mistaken identities, late revelations and the hypocrisy of Victorian society - but his Victorian audiences loved them! 

          He irritated Victorian society by wearing long hair and having an aesthetic outlook on life: 'I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.' 

          He often wore a green carnation to remind everybody that he was Irish.

          He then shocked society when he published the famous, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1890. This was a Gothic Horror story about a young man who made a Faustian pact that allowed him to keep his youth and live a decadent  life; only the painting would grow old and show the effects of his corruption.

          Wilde was a great essayist and social commentator. In this, he was also ahead of his time, revealing the deep influence of Taoist philosophy in his work.

          Then, one day, Oscar made the tragic mistake of defending himself in court against an accusation relating to his homosexuality.    

          He discovered that he was bisexual later on in life; he had married Constance and they'd had two children. 

          He lost the court case and ended up again in court, this time not as plaintiff, but as defendant.

          Oscar lost the case and was sent to jail to do hard labour for two years. The experience broke his spirit and made him ill. He contracted an untreated infection to his ear-drum in prison which eventually led to meningitis.

          The British public promptly forgot him.  When he was being transferred from a very harsh prison (Pentonville) to Reading Gaol (jail) in London, the people on the railway station platform jeered and spat at him.  That unexpected incident was heart-breaking for him.

          Wilde wrote of his experience of hearing child prisoners crying.  22 children were imprisoned in Reading, including a seven-year-old, sentenced to one month’s imprisonment for setting fire to a hay stack, an 11-year-old who stole a paintbrush, and a 10-year-old who killed a duck. Wilde wanted to commit suicide but the prisoners helped him to stay alive. Indeed, he wrote a famous poem for one of them who was hanged for murder, The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

          After prison, he changed his name, left England and went to France.

(PART TWO NEXT WEEK)

LXXI

dream of the memories

memories of the dream

life

LXXII

(for jj)

in flight with the seagulls

on wheels at the seaside

the baby

LXXIII

the abandon of childhood

in the silence of the night

a playground

FRIDAY FEELINGS

Notes from planet Earth.

Some more nouns from the ET's logbook...

LXVII

a year in the freezer

a month in the crate

pink lady

LXVIII

disbelief in her eyes

acceptance in her bow

the cow

LXIX

the death-count of children

after the news

sports

And the days are not  long enough,

And the nights are not long enough,

And life slips by like a fieldmouse,

Not shaking the grass.

These poignant lines by Ezra Pound will resonate with all of us, young and not so young. 

When we say, "I'm running out of time", what does that mean?  One gets the feeling that I am actually doing the running.  

When we say "I'm running out of energy," or out of money, or out of space, etc. we also subconsciously assume that we are doing the running. 

Let's turn the object into the subject.  

Time is running out.  Money is running out.  Energy is running out.  Space is running out.  It's not the most popular way of expressing the idea  but it's less stress-inducing.

Let time run.  

Let time slip by.

Instead of being swept along with it, let us sit back and watch.

The irony is that time slows down when you sit back and decide that the days are, indeed, long enough. Scarcity eventually gives way to abundance.

The blade of grass comes to life.

Life comes to life.

Welcome to my weekly blog,  SATURDAY SESSIONS!

In this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its Culture.

If you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie

IRISH LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

PART TWO

PRE- TWENTIETH CENTURY SELECTION

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745):

This great writer was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and wrote some classical satires such as Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal.  In the latter, he suggested that the children of the poor Irish should be fattened to provide food for the rich English:

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

Gulliver’s Travels is often seen as a children’s book, particularly Gulliver's voyages to Lilliput -where all the inhabitants are thumb-sized - and Brobdingnag, the land of the giants.

The book is, in fact, a wonderfully written satire.

Swift himself reminded us what satire was:

'Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.'

Even though it was written in the 18th Century, it is still easy enough to read and like all the best books, it doesn't age and is still very funny!

Here are some more quotes from Swift:

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."

"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

"The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman."

"May you live all the days of your life!"

          

An introduction to Irish Writing in English

PRE- TWENTIETH CENTURY SELECTION

LAURENCE STERNE (1713 – 1768): 

Laurence Sterne was born in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. 

He was a Protestant pastor. 

Just as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was the first great novel in England (1719), Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy (1759) could be described as the first great novel in Ireland.

This novel (or anti-novel!) is full of jokes, has no plot (the preface is in volume three!), it doesn't follow the normal time-line of a novel and it's about...nothing at all! 

It can be said to be a reflection of the chaos and absurdity of life itself. It's full of red herrings and non sequiturs.  Before Tristram is even born, the reader has already gone through one third of the book! (It's supposed to be about his life!) 

Influenced by Rabelais, Sterne was greatly admired by  Voltaire and Goethe, who praised him highly for his work.

Is it a novel? Well, yes, sort of, (because it's not a real biography), but there's no story. It is full of novel ideas and madcap literary acrobatics, e.g. when Sterne wants to describe the flourish of his uncle’s walking-stick, what does he do? Does he look up his dictionary or thesaurus to select from a variety of descriptive adjectives? No!  He draws a squiggle on the page!

When an uncle dies, the following page is black, completely black and wordless!  The 'hero' of the novel, Tristram Shandy, is a scatterbrain who can't organize his thoughts and who gets easily distracted.

The book has no beginning and no end. It is certainly the craziest novel in English of the 18th century and probably one of the craziest of all times!  It's mad - but it's wonderful!  When asked about it, Sterne would say, 'It's like life itself!'

Although the book was dismissed at first in England because of its bawdy humour, it is still read with great interest and pleasure three hundred years later. Twentieth century writers like Joyce and Beckett were influenced by it and loved it for its madness and creative genius.

From the ET's Logbook:

Forty years ago Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 left Earth to explore the planets.                                            Voyager 1 has already left our Solar System and has lost contact with us.                                              

Five billion years from now, when the Sun will have expanded and swallowed up the Earth, Voyager 1 will still be travelling through space at a speed of at least 50,000 km per hour.                                                           

It carries with it the Golden Record (a metallic LP) which, among other things, includes greetings in languages from all over the world and a sample of Earth's music.                                                   

It was an amazing achievement, considering that you have more technology in the key-fob in your pocket today than they had in 1977.

Thanks to the astronomer, Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 was programmed to turn its camera around one last time to take a picture.  The astrophysicist who first saw the dark print of the photo with some bands of sunbeams in it, noticed what she thought was a speck of dust. She impulsively wanted to brush it off with her hand but suddenly realised it was Earth, five billion kilometers away!

As the scientists like to say, Think about that for a while!

The 3-minute video below of Carl's commentary on the speck of dust is always worth watching!

Pale Blue Dot