Saturday, October 21, 2006
i mBaile Atha Cliath
Sorry this post has been so long in coming, but I've been without my internet in my room for most of the week and I've also been trying to finish my paper on Women and the Rising. But I want to revisit my trip to Dublin. I feel like the email I sent wasn't quite enough to accurately depict the city. So I'm going to try to explain my feelings about Dublin. Now, to do so, I'm going to use Joyce's Dubliners and his thoughts about the city. As a teenager, James Joyce would walk and walk for miles and miles around the streets of Dublin, which created the intimate knowledge of the Dublin streets he displays in Dubliners and Ulysses. One of the circumstances of Joyce's life that proved inexplicably formative was that his undergraduate years at University College Dublin coincided with the early years of the Irish Revival, the literary and cultural movement that sought a definition, a fixed identity for the Irish people as more than West Britons or more than a colonized nation. Joyce saw this introspective movement as parochial and narrow-minded.
Some critics argue the characters in Dubliners represent alter-egos, possibilities of who Joyce might have become if he had stayed in Dublin. Whether this is true or not, it is not difficult to see the sort of paralysis that plagues the characters. Dublin is a sort of dull phenomenon, a place of stasis, according to Joyce. In a very real sense, this Dublin paralysis defeats the characters; however, Joyce does not view them as contemptible or failed. Rather, the characters are powerless and trapped.
Upon visiting Dublin, it is easy to feel some manifestation of this paralysis or stasis. As I said earlier, there are very beautiful parts of Dublin: Temple Bar, Trinity College, St. Stephens Green, Merrion Square and Dun Laoghaire, just to name a few. But even along the quays as our bus rode into Dublin, there seems this sense of dejection around many of the buildings. Obviously the low, oppressive clouds and the monotonous, unchanging gray does not alleviate any of this. There is a stark contrast between the life and vitality of O'Connell Street and Temple Bar and the sullen buildings that seem to frown upon the Liffey only a few blocks away.
I don't want it to seem, however, as though I did not like Dublin. There is a sense of culture and definitely a sense of history. How can there not be? How can one not feel a sense of the cultural nationalism of the early 20th century standing in front of the Abbey Theatre (even though it's not the same building at which Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory staged their plays)? Joyce, too, seems to recognize the existence of a cultural vitality in Dublin in his last story The Dead. This story, although it exhibits much of the powerlessness of the other stories, has in it a vibrance that is wholly lacking in the rest of Dubliners. The party, the music, the singing, the dancing, the debates, all of these contribute to a sense of life. The only problem with it is that this life is not seen as Irish. Now, I'm not sure Joyce would see that as a problem at all, since his idea of cultural nationalism was one of Ireland as part of the Continent. But, to Dublin, the fact that this party danced quadrilles, waltzes and lancers instead of reels and jigs is inexcusible. That cultural nationalism demanded an Irish life that could only be inauthentic in Dublin because Dublin could never be and never will be Galway or Connemara.
Some critics argue the characters in Dubliners represent alter-egos, possibilities of who Joyce might have become if he had stayed in Dublin. Whether this is true or not, it is not difficult to see the sort of paralysis that plagues the characters. Dublin is a sort of dull phenomenon, a place of stasis, according to Joyce. In a very real sense, this Dublin paralysis defeats the characters; however, Joyce does not view them as contemptible or failed. Rather, the characters are powerless and trapped.
Upon visiting Dublin, it is easy to feel some manifestation of this paralysis or stasis. As I said earlier, there are very beautiful parts of Dublin: Temple Bar, Trinity College, St. Stephens Green, Merrion Square and Dun Laoghaire, just to name a few. But even along the quays as our bus rode into Dublin, there seems this sense of dejection around many of the buildings. Obviously the low, oppressive clouds and the monotonous, unchanging gray does not alleviate any of this. There is a stark contrast between the life and vitality of O'Connell Street and Temple Bar and the sullen buildings that seem to frown upon the Liffey only a few blocks away.
I don't want it to seem, however, as though I did not like Dublin. There is a sense of culture and definitely a sense of history. How can there not be? How can one not feel a sense of the cultural nationalism of the early 20th century standing in front of the Abbey Theatre (even though it's not the same building at which Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory staged their plays)? Joyce, too, seems to recognize the existence of a cultural vitality in Dublin in his last story The Dead. This story, although it exhibits much of the powerlessness of the other stories, has in it a vibrance that is wholly lacking in the rest of Dubliners. The party, the music, the singing, the dancing, the debates, all of these contribute to a sense of life. The only problem with it is that this life is not seen as Irish. Now, I'm not sure Joyce would see that as a problem at all, since his idea of cultural nationalism was one of Ireland as part of the Continent. But, to Dublin, the fact that this party danced quadrilles, waltzes and lancers instead of reels and jigs is inexcusible. That cultural nationalism demanded an Irish life that could only be inauthentic in Dublin because Dublin could never be and never will be Galway or Connemara.
# posted by Matt Reznicek @ 2:24 AM 
