NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 6, 8 February 1923, Page 30

NOTES

Irish Novels Not a few members of the Fine na nGhaedhal, at home and abroad, will agree to differ from some of Maurice Francis Egan’s opinions expressed in an article in America. We can assure Mr. Egan that Lever’s memory is kept green by Charles O’Malley, which is still read eagerly by boys in Ireland and even in New Zealand. Carleton’s Willie Reilly is also a popular book, as we can testify from the great number of demands for it received about a year ago after publishing it as a serial in the New Zealand Tablet . where its success was a surprise to us. Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry is another work of his which we often notice in our bookstores. Banim is indeed forgotten, and few read Griffin nowadays. But Kickham’s Knocknagow is by no means out of the light and it is no rare thing to meet the children of New Zealand parents who discourse lovingly about it. Mr. Egan assumes that the works of the older writers are almost completely neglected and proceeds to assure us that they are greatly superior to the modern Irish fiction. Again, both in his selection of instances and in his criticism, we think he will find few of ns to endorse him. Gerald O’Donovan certainly does not count but is it possible that Mr. Egan has ever read The Crock of Gold I We are by no means alone in thinking that in this book at any rate James Stephens has given us a rare treat, equalled by no older Irish writer in imaginative power and grace of diction. And he has even surpassed himself in his recent volume of Irish Fairy Tales, for which the children of Ireland ought to pray for him for years to come. As for Canon Sheehan, it is true that the ladies and gentlemen in Luke Delmege were “rather sticks” but surely we are not going to accept Mr. Egan’s condemnation as universal. What about Beata Campion ? She was a lady and yet as sweet and charming a girl as any Irish writer ever created.

Before he turned to “the newer people” Mr. Egan ought to have remembered some others who are well worth remembering. Has he read the Wild Birds of Killeevy, and When We Were Boys, and The Wizard’s Knot, and The Dayspring, all delightful novels, and most of them of no inconsiderable literary power ? The first-named still continues to charm young Irish people. We would be inclined to put Dr. Barry’s story of the Famine years very high among modern fiction, Irish or otherwise. And the impression mad© on men like Manning by William O’Brien’s stirring story is surely an indication of its importance in our literature. Without going beyond the novels we have named, it is open to question if they are not on the whole as “greatly superior” to the older fiction as Mr. Egan says the latter is to them. We certainly find in them the intensity and force and truth to life in all of which Mr. Egan imagines they fall short of the novels of a bygone age, and in these very qualities they, in our opinion, surpass the latter. . ; , ; *

/ Mr. Egan is inclined to be dogmatic and general. He tells us that the newer people “ire all sickbed over with a pal© green and yellow light” and that they have the gloom of the Russian novelists, without the excuse of living in a civilisation that was rapidly becoming decivilised.” Perhaps he does not read Gaelic, but if he did he would find his generalisation hopelessly upset by Jimin Mhcdre Thaidhg, or by Canon O’Leary’s Seadna and Niamh. And in English, the novels of Dorothea Conyers are certainly true to a section of Irish life familiar to us in youth, and at the same time extremely good as stories, but they are not sicklied over by anything, and they are no more Russian than American. As novels, not as pur© literature, most Irish readers put them far before the stories of Somerville and Ross, who when all is said and done were a pair of Irish snobs who saw Irish life from “the Garrison” point of view. We do not agree with his wholesale disqualification of such writers, and we believe that we have known many characters in the old land who might have been taken up body and bones and put into George Birmingham’s books. Moreover, he does not write merely to amuse. Northern Iron is as stirring a patriotic story as any Irishman has written, and besides that, which is our favorite among George Birmingham’s novels, there are two or three others which give reliable and interesting, as well as serious, pictures of Irish life during the early years of the Gaelic Revival: of these latter, perhaps the best is Benedict Kavanagh.

O’Donovan for some reason or other seems to have attracted undue notice in American Irish circles, but there is not the least danger that he will be read either in Ireland or in Australasia. And, as for Joyce, his weariness and the cost of his most objectionable book makes consideration of him as an influence unnecessary, George Moore is better as an artist, a greater writer of English prose, more Celtic in temperament, but because of a taint less than that of Joyce he has been ridiculed out of Irish circles, in which, Deo gratios ! there is always a healthy dislike to touch pitch. * Before dismissing Moore, it is only simple justice to say that at his best he is great; when he forgets to pose he has the true Irish note; and there is, among the mass of his literary dredgings, an amount of pure gold for which we thank him. Not many Irish critics would say that any one of the older writers whom Mr. Egan considers as “greatly superior to the very modern school of young Irish writers” is comparable to Moore at his best.

One very modern ’ Irish writer we unhesitatingly put beside Moore in superiority to the ancients of the early nineteenth century. Daniel Corkery has given us one novel that is a masterpiece and a promise of a brilliant future. The Threshold of Quiet is a book that grips an Irishman from first to last, and it is a beautiful story as well as a fine piece of writing. The Hounds of Banha is not a novel, but in it Mr. Corkery has given us intensely vivid pictures of Sinn Fein Ireland which we refuse to regard as “sicklied over with a pal© green light.” And another “very modem” is the author of Adam of Dublin and Adam and Caroline, which are books whose superiority to the large majority of novels in the English language can hardly be denied, however we may be disposed to resent the sordidness of the scenes of Dublin life depicted in the author’s pages. Perhaps, owing to their essential difference m matter and form, there is no room for comparing such books as Moore’s, Corkery’s, and Reardon s with the old-fashioned novels of which Mr. Egan is so fond. In that case we recommend to him Stephen Gwynne, Bodkin, James Murphy, Emily Lawless, Shan Bullock, Brain Stoker, and half a dozen others whose work may not be found much, if at all, inferior to that of older writers of historical Irish stories. The Russian gloom”? For our part we do not find it over Irish novelists. Moore, though not very modern, is French rather than Russian. The author of Adam of Dublin seems to us to be a disciple of Zola with more fancy and wit than his master. Among writers young in years there are traces of Norwegian influence, which may have come to them from the early

writers of the Revival who were often imitators of Ibsen. We have never believed that (apart from Deirdre) there is any real Gaelic inspiration in John Synge’s work, but unless we are mistaken the great Norwegian gave him his gloom and repulsiveness. The only writer we can remember who seems notably influenced by the Russians is Patrick Macgill, who is more Russian than Celt in his brutality and elemental passion.

Having mentioned Macgill, we venture to express our regret that Mr. Egan should have advertised him at all ; and that he should have selected that unpleasant novel, Maureen, for commendation seems still worse. Macgill made a hit with his first novel, Children of the Dead End, which was Russian in its faithful pictures of hardship, poverty, passion, and suffering. He then proceeded to tell the same story several times in several new novels and people grew tired of it. In Maureen he tells it with frills and variations; but Maureen is decidedly inferior to The Children of the Dead End besides being a book for which the author ought to be horsewhipped by every Irishman who ever meets him. It is regrettable that Mr. Egan- should find his way to Patrick Macgill and Gerald o’Donovan when he “goes to Irish novels to find a clue to local or national characteristics” and finds instead “a perverter of known truth like Gerald O’Donovan.” There are,

as we have indicated, scores of modern Irish hooks which do not pervert the truth, Avhich give true pictures of Irish life, are well written, worth reading, and, on the Avhole, a proof that the moderns are great]# superior to the men of Lever’s or Lover’s day. If any apology is needed for expressing at such length our difference of opinion as to Mr. Egan’s criticisms, we can only say that Ave write because Ave are certain that Mr. Egan is not only wrong but unjust to the modern Avriters.