Gaelically Gaelic
Flann O'Brien: The Poor
Mouth,
Dalkey Archive Press, 128 pp.
First published in 1941, An
Beal Bocht
is the only of Flann O'Brien's handful of novels written in Gaelic. The novel
was finally translated into English and published in 1973 as The Poor Mouth. The title (both Gaelic and English) comes from a Gaelic
expression--"putting on the poor mouth"--which means to exaggerate
the direness of one's situation in order to gain time or favor from
creditors. The direness one finds
here is great indeed, as is the exaggeration. One should read this book because its like will not be there
again.
The action is set in a
fictional village in the Gaeltacht known as Corkadoragha, a place where the
suffering and poverty of the Gaelic people is pure and unmitigated. In first-person narrative, the tale
purports to be the life story of Bonaparte O'Coonassa, a local resident. According to this hilariously
uninformed narrator, the torrential rains of his home village Corkadoragha are are
more torrential, the squalor more squalid, the hopelessness more utterly
hopeless than anywhere else in Ireland.
O'Coonassa is not the only pessimist to be had. The few other characters spend most of
their breath lamenting the cruelty of their "Gaelic fate". Everything disastrous that occurs is
attributed to this national fate, normally evoked as a kind of all-inclusive
doom that both annihilates and somehow ennobles one. Gaelic fate is seen partially in the sky and its constant
downpours--"sky-crucifyings," as one character calls them--and
partially in distinction to the other, better fate presumably enjoyed by "foreigners,"
i.e. the English. The most salient
feature here is a poverty to which one must be resigned: to struggle against it
would be foolish.
The
hardships of life in Corkadoragha have one beneficent effect, however. Because the region is known for its exemplary
destitution and backwardness, it is also judged by patriotic Dublin enthusiasts
to have the very best, the very purest Gaelic. So the muddy hills and flooded fields of Corkadoragha are
periodically visited by culture vultures from the capital, hoping to learn real
Gaelic and get in touch with their supposed roots.
The narrator tells of the
great Gaelic feis organized organized by his grandfather, a man he refers to
usually as "the Old Grey Fellow." A festival of sorts ostensibly organized to celebrate all
things Gaelic (but really organized to enrich the Old Grey Fellow), the feis
brought both
enthusiasts from the capital and many of the long-suffering country folk. Of course from beginning to end the festival-goers
were crucified by the nonstop downpour.
And eight of the locals died because, as we learn, their weakened
constitutions couldn't stand the rigors of the obligatory Gaelic folk dancing:
The dance continued until the
dancers drove their lives out through the soles of their feet and eight died
during the course of the feis. Due
to both the fatigue caused by the revels and the truly Gaelic famine that was
ours always, they could not be succoured when they fell on the rocky dancing
floor and, upon my soul, short was their tarrying on this particular area
because they wended their way to eternity without more ado.
Even though death snatched
many fine people from us, the events of the feis went on sturdily and steadily,
we were ashamed to be considered not strongly in favor of Gaelic while the
[festival] President's eye was upon us.
Various speakers give
speeches "strongly in favor of Gaelic." And here we can see O'Brien aping what he most hated about
the self-proclaimed Gaelic Revivalists: their aggressive provincialism; the
cretinous circularity of their discourse, a way of speech and thought bound to
strangle itself in a noose of its own making. The man elected as president of the festival harangues the
crowd:
Gaels! It delights my Gaelic heart to be here
today speaking Gaelic with you at this Gaelic feis in the centre of the
Gaeltacht. May I state that I am a
Gael. I'm Gaelic from the crown of
my head to the soles of my feet. . . .
If we're truly Gaelic, we must constantly discuss the question of the
Gaelic revival and the question of Gaelicism. There is no use in having Gaelic, if we converse in it on
non-Gaelic topics. He who speaks
Gaelic but fails to discuss the language question is not truly Gaelic in his
heart; such conduct is of no benefit to Gaelicism because he only jeers at
Gaelic and reviles the Gaels.
There is nothing in this life so nice and so Gaelic as truly true Gaelic
Gaels who speak in true Gaelic Gaelic about the truly Gaelic language.
If for the culture vultures being Gaelically Gaelic means speaking
of nothing but revivalism, the true Gaels of Corkadoragha seem to define their
Gaelicism rather by the extent of their hopelessness. The ennobling character of their "Gaelic fate" is
best seen in the narrator's subtle eulogy of Sitric O'Sanassa, a beggar of the
district. O'Sanassa is admired by
both Dubliners and locals:
He possessed the very best
poverty, hunger and distress also.
He was generous and open-handed and he never possessed the smallest
object which he did not share with the neighbours; nevertheless, I can never
remember him during my time possessing the least thing, even the quantity of
little potatoes needful to keep body and soul joined together. In Corkadoragha, where every human
being was sunk in poverty, we always regarded him as a recipient of alms and
compassion. The gentlemen from
Dublin who came in motors to inspect the paupers praised him for his Gaelic
poverty and stated that they never saw anyone who appeared so truly Gaelic. . .
. There was no one in Ireland comparable to O'Sanassa in the excellence of his
poverty; the amount of famine which was delineated in his person.
O'Sanassa lives in a hole
he's dug into the side of a hill.
In the course of the tale he decides to leave the human world altogether
and live the rest of his life in a sea cave with the seals. The others try to get him to quit the
cave, but to no avail. He has his
reasons for staying:
Where he was, he had freedom
from the inclement weather, the famine and the abuse of the world. Seals would constitute his company as
well as his food. . . . It did not
appear that he would desert such a well-built comfortable abode after all he
had experienced of the misery of Corkadoragha. That was definite, he declared.
O'Brien's fictional
Corkadoragha allows the writer to get in his sights both the ridiculous posing
and capering of the revivalists and the pathetic fatalism of the Gaeltacht
peasants. Beggars, politicians,
farmers, literati--they all strut forth in their glorious folly. The Poor Mouth is an example of universal
satire, the kind of literary work the Russian critic Bakhtin has defined and
celebrated as carnivalesque. And in fact there's
something in the novel that reminds one of Rabelais. As with Rabelais, one senses the violence of O'Brien's
satire is not entirely mean-spirited: there's something celebratory in it too. Perhaps this is why, even in the more
nationalist days of the mid-century, O'Brien's novel received much more praise
than condemnation.
O'Brien's Gaelic was
translated into English by Patrick Power.
The translation has gotten much praise, from John Updike among others:
Patrick C. Power has
performed sorcery in translating a work so specific in its allusions and exotic
in its language. Again and again,
so consistently that we come to take it for granted, Mr. Power re-creates
Gaelic music in English.
Whether or not
one can really hear Gaelic music in English I'm not sure (and I doubt Updike
can be sure either) but it's certain that one of the joys of this work is the
quirkiness of the narrator's expression.
There's an infectious rhythm and verbosity in his manner of explaining
things: a wordiness both useless and expressive of a patient despair. Powers establishes this tone and rhythm
on the first page and never loses it.
The style is similar to that of O'Brien's English novels, but there's
something else too, something unique and, I suspect, inimitable. How this style relates to O'Brien's
Gaelic I can only guess. It's definitely
compelling as it stands in the English, which is a credit to the translator.
The Poor Mouth is published by Dalkey
Archive Press and illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The translator has provided useful footnotes to explain
certain allusions and untranslatable puns.
The likes of this book will
certainly never be there again.
Eric Mader-Lin
Order
it direct from Amazon.com.
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