Poetic Mechanicals & bloody Laureates

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

+1

On an abridged version of that theory, I have always thought that O'Nolan's late introduction to English was what gave his language such a joyous twist.

'I'll kick the jaw off your face'

Its got to be transference of Irish thought translated directly into English. I've hardly any Irish now but I know that construction maybe in English but its pure Irish in its arrangement.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Probably mentioned before that I know there was healthy war at Oxford among the literature lads especially when Eagleton was tutoring there over Brian O'Nolan and where he fit in the Joyce/Beckett axis. The English lads there loved O'Nolan's work and it was pretty much regarded as essential reading.

I'd a chat one night in a pub with a lad I know who has a degree from Oxford in English Literature and I put it to him that O'Nolan might be Ireland's one and only Magic Realist rather than Modernist. You could see the cogs turning and I left him with that mischief- he used to love talking of O'Nolan and his work.

[Sam Lord]

from The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the land of the living

The Sea-God's Address to Bran

Then on the morrow Bran went upon the sea. When he had been at sea two days and two nights, he saw a man in a chariot coming towards him over the sea. It was Manannan, the son of Ler, who sang these quatraints to him.

To Bran in his coracle it seems
A marvellous beauty across the clear sea:
To me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain on which he rides.

What is a clear sea
For the prowed skiff in which Bran is,
That to me in my chariot of two wheels
Is a delightful plain with a wealth of flowers.

Bran sees
A mass of waves beating across the clear sea:
I see myself in the Plain of Sports
Red-headed flowers that have no fault.

Sea-horses glisten in summer
As far as Bran can stretch his glance:
Rivers pour forth a stream of honey
In the land of Manannan, son of Ler.

The sheen of the main on which thou art,
The dazzling white of the sea on which thou rowest about -
Yellow and azure are spread out,
It is a light and airy land.

Speckled salmon leap from the womb
Out of the white sea on which thou lookest:
They are calves, they are lambs of fair hue,
With truce, without mutual slaughter.

Though thou seest but one chariot-rider
In the Pleasant Plain of many flowers,
There are many steeds on its surface,
Though them thou seest not

Large is the plain, numerous is the host,
Colours shine with pure glory,
A white stream of silver, stairs of gold
Afford a welcome with all abundance.

An enchanting game, most delicious,
They play over the lucious wine,
Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without transgression,

Along the top of a wood
Thy coracle has swum across ridges,
There is a wood laden with beautiful fruit
Under the prow of thy little skiff.

A wood with blossom and with fruit
On which is the vine's veritable fragrance,
A wood without decay, without defect
On which is a foliage of a golden hue.

We are from the beginning of creation
Without old age, without consummation of clay,
Hence we expect not there might be frailty -
Transgression has not come to us.

Steadily then let Bran row!
It is not far to the Land of Women:
Evna with manifold bounteousness
He will reach before the sun is set.

Kuno Meyer


Sheer magic ... in very way.

[Sam Lord]

Probably mentioned before that I know there was healthy war at Oxford among the literature lads especially when Eagleton was tutoring there over Brian O'Nolan and where he fit in the Joyce/Beckett axis. The English lads there loved O'Nolan's work and it was pretty much regarded as essential reading.

I'd a chat one night in a pub with a lad I know who has a degree from Oxford in English Literature and I put it to him that O'Nolan might be Ireland's one and only Magic Realist rather than Modernist. You could see the cogs turning and I left him with that mischief- he used to love talking of O'Nolan and his work.

In my view Flann O'Brien was decades ahead of his time.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Yup. I'd be inclined to whip him away from comparison with Joyce and Beckett and place him perhaps controversially alongside Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Magical Realism category for At-Swim-Two-Birds.

[Sam Lord]

Yup. I'd be inclined to whip him away from comparison with Joyce and Beckett and place him perhaps controversially alongside Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Magical Realism category for At-Swim-Two-Birds.

What's happenng with the movie? Any news?

[5intheface]

What's happenng with the movie? Any news?

How can that even be possible? It could be the greatest film of all time and still fall miles short of the book.

[Sam Lord]

How can that even be possible? It could be the greatest film of all time and still fall miles short of the book.

Truth.

I can't imagine it at all.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Oh bleddy hell. I think I'd blanked it from my mind. I might avoid it like the plague.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Scheduled for release next year ... cast list http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401097/fullcredits

[5intheface]

I know it's controversial to say it but some of his translations of Sweeny in ASTB are more beautiful and understanding to my ear than Heaney's 'Sweeny Astray' and that comes from someone born and bred within a townland or two of both Heaney and Sweeny.

[5intheface]

Just for the sheer delight of it;

"Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon."


No mere English speaker could come up with that. I do notice a similarity in its frantic style to Behan when the ire would take over, usually on the failures of the RC Church to back the little man.

[Sam Lord]

Yup. I'd be inclined to whip him away from comparison with Joyce and Beckett and place him perhaps controversially alongside Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Magical Realism category for At-Swim-Two-Birds.

If you like Marquez I'd recommend a book called Galore to you by the Canadian writer, Michael Crummy.

[Sam Lord]

"Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon."

[Sam Lord]

If you like Marquez I'd recommend a book called Galore to you by the Canadian writer, Michael Crummy.

He is a newfie so practically Irish.

A sample:

“They'd scaled the whale's back to drive a stake with a maul, hoping to strike some vital organ, and managed to set it bleeding steadily. They saw nothing for it then but to wait for God to do His work and they sat with their splitting knives and fish prongs, with their dip nets and axes and saws and barrels. The wind was razor sharp and Mary Tryphena lost all feeling in her hands and feet and her little arse went dunch on the sand while the whale expired in imperceptible increments. Jabez Trim waded out at intervals to **** at the fat saucer of an eye and report back on God's progress.”