"The Lass of Aughrim." Lunchtime recitals by John Feeley and Fran O'Rourke with Joyce's recently restored guitar. Newman House, 86 St Stephen's Green:
from James Joyce, "The Dead," from Dubliners (1917)
Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terracotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man's voice singing.
He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.
[...]
She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on:
"Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmother's house in Nuns' Island, packing up,
and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I
couldn't see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back
into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden,
shivering."
"And did you not tell him to go back?" asked Gabriel.
"I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get
his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see
his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where
there was a tree."
"And did he go home?" asked Gabriel.
"Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he
died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the
day I heard that, that he was dead!"
She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung
herself face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her
hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on
her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.
She was fast asleep.
from Rowan Williams, "Why Poetry Matters" (A Review of John Burnside, The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century), New Statesman, October 23, 2019:
Burnside is a consistent champion of difficulty in poetry, the quality that liberates the reader (and writer) from a “prefabricated world” in which nothing is ever new and disorienting. On this basis he has some pretty sharp things to say about how poetry is often taught in schools – as illustrative of subject matter rather than as something that has to be wrestled with first and foremost as speech. Pupils, he says, are likely to go away thinking more about this subject matter than about what has been happening in the words they hear or read. Pushing students into prematurely writing their own poems on the subject further shrinks the challenge of staying with the difficulty and valuing it in its own terms. Yet he also has astringent things to say about “lazy” difficulty. Verbose, self-indulgent poetry, drawing attention to its own ingenuity, labours for surface effect rather than transparency to what the poem directs us to – which is not themes or ideas but the “music” of the givenness of a moment, or a juxtaposition of words, or a collision of sensations.
[...]
Burnside mischievously suggests that our passion to “understand” poetry may derive from “a middle-school confusion of literature and theology”, rooted in the abiding problem of making sense of an opaque scriptural text. But if there is a proper overlap between the two it is surely here, in the way poetry affirms the material, finite world but is always conscious of an unimaginable backdrop, never trying to occupy or contain that elusive perspective.
Full often have I argued out this subject with others. For there are those who say, there is more bad than good in human nature; but I hold a contrary view, that good over bad predominates in man, for if it were not so, we should not exist. He has my praise, whichever god brought us to live by rule from chaos and from brutishness, first by implanting reason, and next by giving us a tongue to declare our thoughts, so as to know the meaning of what is said, and bestowing fruitful crops, and drops of rain from heaven to make them grow, with which to nourish earth's fruits and to water her lap; and more than this, protection from the wintry storm, and means to ward from us the sun-god's scorching heat; the art of sailing over the sea, so that we might exchange with one another whatever our countries lack. And where sight fails us and our knowledge is not sure, the seer foretells by gazing on the flame, by reading signs in folds of entrails, or by divination from the flight of birds. Are we not then too proud, when heaven has made such preparation for our life, not to be content with it? But our presumption seeks to lord it over heaven, and in the pride of our hearts we think we are wiser than the gods.
[...]
There are three ranks of citizens; the rich, a useless set, that ever
crave for more; the poor and destitute, fearful folk, that cherish envy more than is
right, and shoot out grievous stings against the men who have anything,
beguiled as they are by the eloquence of vicious leaders; while the
class that is midmost of the three preserves cities, observing such order as the state ordains.
Hecuba
Ah! there is not in the world a single man free; for he is a slave either to money or to fortune, or else the people
in their thousands or the fear of public prosecution prevents him from
following the dictates of his heart.
Here I close my eyes upon the light, free as yet, and dedicate myself to
Hades. Lead me away, Odysseus, and do your worst,
for I see nothing within my reach to make me hope or expect with any
confidence that I am ever again to be happy. Mother, do not seek to
hinder me by word or deed, but join in my wish for death before I meet
with shameful treatment undeserved.
For whoever is not used to taste of sorrows, though he bears it, yet
it galls him when he puts his neck within the yoke; far happier would he
be dead than alive, for life bereft of honor is toil and trouble.
Talthybius (recounting Polyxena's last words):
O Argives, who have sacked my city! of my free will I die; let no one lay hand on me; for bravely will I yield my neck. By the gods, leave me free; so slay me, that death may find me free; for to be called a slave among the dead fills my royal heart with shame.
