Yeah, there are a lot of translations these days, but even the best are chloroformed butterflies. Much of the ‘meaning’ of a piece of literature is embedded in language itself and its patterns. English can’t ‘do’ some of the things Irish does, mostly for historical reasons, so what you get in translations from Irish is English language literature inspired by Irish. Some butterflies look impressive in a glass case, but meeting a live one flying past in the garden is a different experience.
Irish is the voice of Eire, that 2500 year (or whatever) long mystery. The land in many places still speaks Irish, and I don’t mean place names. Land and language and energy (for lack of a better term) have shaped one another, and to know anything really about that place in all its dimensions, one must know Irish—know Irish in depth. Some people want to reconnect to ‘Eire’, and learn Irish for that reason.
In
the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Irish society underwent a traumatic extended violent break with all
that had gone before. The social structure that resulted in many areas was an
unbalanced neurotic one; communities of survivors and of people who had watched their neighbors go under. Yes, that was long ago, but the
world view and social structures that ‘long ago’ engendered are still with us
in a slightly mutated form. In the silence when the power is switched off,
ghosts still walk. People learn Irish to reconnect to the main line of the development of Irish culture.
Some people like languages, and
Irish is a fairly unique one. Developed on the margins, possessing a long written record, it
demonstrates fascinating developments in morphology, syntax and phonology. It’s
got palatalized consonants, all those prepositional forms, and the weird VSO
sentence structure. Some people learn Irish because it’s fascinating.
Because no state or corporation has ever used it, Irish is unlike most
modern standard languages It is not streamlined, slick and facile. It is not a
medium for consumption and advertisments in Irish seem funny and uncomfortable. It
is not a language that has been formed more by the media than by face-to-face
human interaction. It cannot easily be reduced to sound bites. It has not, until recently cared much about what
went on in schoolrooms or in prescribed grammars.
It’s a complex, apparently
unnecessary language whose logic is not always superficially visible. It’s a
language in which there are deep groves of silent trees still, places into which explorers from Google and Apple
Corp will never come. It’s a language formed by seasons and weather, by the
human mind in face-to-face community, by the necessities of physical existence.
It, and languages like it (if any of
them survive much longer) is part of the Wild; and though it cannot offer
physical refuge to modern people in our headlong rush to wherever it is we're going, it can offer
intellectual, emotional and psychic refuge for a while longer.
(Below: Country parts of Ballaghaderreen were Irish speaking in 1900 still...)
(Below: Country parts of Ballaghaderreen were Irish speaking in 1900 still...)
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was the first language of most people over, say, forty, in the west and much of the south. The 1880s seem to have marked the turning point, as agricultural downturns sent a first wave of emigrants from poorer Irish-speaking places to America, The growing confidence and local power of the 'big farmer' group meant that their ways dominated, and their concern with respectability and profit left no room for old-fashioned things like Irish. The Church wanted as little to do with this language of the backward and the poor as it could. Children were required to go to school where English was the only language and where they'd be beaten for speaking Irish. Newspapers were in English.
Today
only a few very small communities still use Irish as their normal
unmarked language; Tory Island and Magherroarty/Meenaclady/maybe Bealtaine and odd other bits of Cloghaneely and Gweedore in
northwest Donegal; Inisheer Island and Screeb, Rosaveal, maybe Carraroe and Inisheer in Conamara; plus the westernmost few houses in Corca Dhuibhne.
The official Gaeltacht is much bigger, of course, but another linguistic shift happened in the 1970s when government subsidized foreign factories were established in order to stop the flow of emigration that was draining the poor Gaeltacht regions. Factory management was English-speaking, and the whole factory environment was. Momentary prosperity kept Gaeltacht people at home, but it also very often taught them that they could finally stop being second-class citizens, if they only started speaking English. Or if not thet themselves, then their children, if they were raised in English instead of in Irish.
The official Gaeltacht is much bigger, of course, but another linguistic shift happened in the 1970s when government subsidized foreign factories were established in order to stop the flow of emigration that was draining the poor Gaeltacht regions. Factory management was English-speaking, and the whole factory environment was. Momentary prosperity kept Gaeltacht people at home, but it also very often taught them that they could finally stop being second-class citizens, if they only started speaking English. Or if not thet themselves, then their children, if they were raised in English instead of in Irish.
Maybe not. Nothing is permanent. So many people and cultures gone without a memory.
But some of us, cursed or blessed, cannot simply turn away, and let Irish and all it means, die. Not for its sake, but for our own.
poem by Michael Davitt, translated by Paul Muldoon
About those Irish in boats....The greatest writer in any 20th century Celtic language was undoubtedly Somhairle Mac Gill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) from the island of Ratharsair (Raasay), near Skye.
He was a primarilly a poet, though he also published very important articles on Gaelic literature that shifted general critical perspectives, refocusing attention on the incredible songs of the 16th - 18th centuries. As Headmaster at Plockton Secondary School opposite Skye, he spent years working to establish Gaelic as a modern subject at the secondary school level in the Highlands. It had, of course, no place yet as a spoken language, and was generally despised.
Scottish Gaelic poetry had become deeply sentimental and light-weight by 1900, influenced probably by the fact that a large part of the reading and listening public for poetry (songs) were people who'd left the Highlands as young men and women and gone to work in Glasgow and other Lowland cities. They rarely were able to return to the places in which they'd grown up. In place of the clear-eyed passion and intellect of earlier poetry and song, the songs of exile were meant to support a yearning for the past that could not, by definition, be fulfilled. Since the ascendant pervasive British culture which most of these people accepted, saw no value in Gaelic or its culture, this yearning was also, by its nature, a thing not to be taken that seriously by its audience--a matter Saturday nights only.
The book Dain do Eimhear, published in 1943, shattered all this. Theses love poems to an un-named Irish woman, drew both from the older poetry and from international modernist poetry, and Somhairle Mac Gill Eain single-handedly renewed Scottish Gaelic literature .
Look at the Sorley MacLean Trust site, for more information.
In the short video below, he speaks about why he wrote. It's very interesting, and cannot be lured onto this blog in any other form.
http://www.sorleymaclean.org/video/influence_song.wmv
The Gaelic dialect of Raasay and opposite mainland is slow and sonorous, and it comes across in his English. So don't laugh, or else!
An Roghainn (An Rogha in Irish)
Below is one of the few online recordings of Somhairle Mac Gill Eain reading, and the only one of him reading his translation of the poem Hallaig. It concerns what it concerns, but you should know that parts of the island--like so many places in the Highlands--were cleared of people by the landlord in the 19th century. There was also felling of woods. The poem ends at minute 5:04.
The community and the tradition that were so so strong are now almost gone. Perhaps I really should give up on Irish and take an interest in the Kardashians instead.
The film accompanies music intended to complement the poem. The music is by Martyn Bennet, a great piper (and Gaelic-speaker) who died very very young. (Scotland has one of the highest cancer rates in the world.) Whether this music fits the poem is a question for another time.
Elena, a Rion, Elena, Queen,
tabhair duinn do laimhin tais give us your soft hand,
abair nach lomchaite leat tell us our frenetic poems
ar vearsai fraoch. aren't worm or moth-eaten.
Abair
nach ideal aoldaite Say it's
not some clapped-out ideal
do bheal a phogadh, For us to want to kiss your mouth,
lui led thaobh. lie down beside you.
poem by Michael Davitt, translated by Paul Muldoon
About those Irish in boats....The greatest writer in any 20th century Celtic language was undoubtedly Somhairle Mac Gill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) from the island of Ratharsair (Raasay), near Skye.
He was a primarilly a poet, though he also published very important articles on Gaelic literature that shifted general critical perspectives, refocusing attention on the incredible songs of the 16th - 18th centuries. As Headmaster at Plockton Secondary School opposite Skye, he spent years working to establish Gaelic as a modern subject at the secondary school level in the Highlands. It had, of course, no place yet as a spoken language, and was generally despised.
Scottish Gaelic poetry had become deeply sentimental and light-weight by 1900, influenced probably by the fact that a large part of the reading and listening public for poetry (songs) were people who'd left the Highlands as young men and women and gone to work in Glasgow and other Lowland cities. They rarely were able to return to the places in which they'd grown up. In place of the clear-eyed passion and intellect of earlier poetry and song, the songs of exile were meant to support a yearning for the past that could not, by definition, be fulfilled. Since the ascendant pervasive British culture which most of these people accepted, saw no value in Gaelic or its culture, this yearning was also, by its nature, a thing not to be taken that seriously by its audience--a matter Saturday nights only.
The book Dain do Eimhear, published in 1943, shattered all this. Theses love poems to an un-named Irish woman, drew both from the older poetry and from international modernist poetry, and Somhairle Mac Gill Eain single-handedly renewed Scottish Gaelic literature .
Look at the Sorley MacLean Trust site, for more information.
In the short video below, he speaks about why he wrote. It's very interesting, and cannot be lured onto this blog in any other form.
http://www.sorleymaclean.org/video/influence_song.wmv
The Gaelic dialect of Raasay and opposite mainland is slow and sonorous, and it comes across in his English. So don't laugh, or else!
Abhainn Àrois (ie. Abhainn in Irish) in Irish....(mise fe ndeara an mheid seo)
Cha chuimhne leam do bhriathran, Ni chuimhin liom do bhraithran
eadhon nì a thubhairt thu, fiu amhain ni a duirt tu,
ach Abhainn Àrois an àileadh iadhshlait ach Abhainn Arois agus boladh feithleann
is àileadh roid air Suidhisnis. a's boladh roid ar Suidhisnis
eadhon nì a thubhairt thu, fiu amhain ni a duirt tu,
ach Abhainn Àrois an àileadh iadhshlait ach Abhainn Arois agus boladh feithleann
is àileadh roid air Suidhisnis. a's boladh roid ar Suidhisnis
(I
don't remember your words, even any one thing you said; but Aros River
and the scent of honeysuckle; Suidhisnis and the scent of bog myrtle.)
(This
is his own translation. I include it here because neither I nor any one
else could better it. Taken from Reothairt is Contraigh; Taghadh de
Dhain 1932-197, Canongate, 1977, with all respect.
The great Julie Fowlis from North Uist sings it.
I walked with my reason
I followed only a way
that was small, mean, low, dry, lukewarm,
and how then should I meet
the thunderbolt of love?
But if I had the choice again
and stood on that headland,
I would leap from heaven or hell
with a whole spirit and heart.
The great Julie Fowlis from North Uist sings it.
I walked with my reason
out beside the sea.
we were together but it was
keeping a little distance from me.
Then it turned saying:
is it true you heard
that your beautiful white love
is getting married early on Monday?
I checked the heart that was rising
in my torn swift breast
and I said: most likely;
why should I lie about it?
How should I think that I would grab
the radiant golden star,
that I would catch it and put it
prudently in my pocket?
I did not take a cross’s death
in the hard extremity of Spain
and how should I then expect
the one new prize of fate?
we were together but it was
keeping a little distance from me.
Then it turned saying:
is it true you heard
that your beautiful white love
is getting married early on Monday?
I checked the heart that was rising
in my torn swift breast
and I said: most likely;
why should I lie about it?
How should I think that I would grab
the radiant golden star,
that I would catch it and put it
prudently in my pocket?
I did not take a cross’s death
in the hard extremity of Spain
and how should I then expect
the one new prize of fate?
I followed only a way
that was small, mean, low, dry, lukewarm,
and how then should I meet
the thunderbolt of love?
But if I had the choice again
and stood on that headland,
I would leap from heaven or hell
with a whole spirit and heart.
Below is one of the few online recordings of Somhairle Mac Gill Eain reading, and the only one of him reading his translation of the poem Hallaig. It concerns what it concerns, but you should know that parts of the island--like so many places in the Highlands--were cleared of people by the landlord in the 19th century. There was also felling of woods. The poem ends at minute 5:04.
The community and the tradition that were so so strong are now almost gone. Perhaps I really should give up on Irish and take an interest in the Kardashians instead.
The film accompanies music intended to complement the poem. The music is by Martyn Bennet, a great piper (and Gaelic-speaker) who died very very young. (Scotland has one of the highest cancer rates in the world.) Whether this music fits the poem is a question for another time.
No comments:
Post a Comment