{"id":79666,"date":"2004-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/so-very-irish\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T08:30:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T12:30:30","slug":"so-very-irish","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/so-very-irish\/","title":{"rendered":"So very Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/font>hat Benedict Kiely is not a well-known name in this country is a sign either of American provincialism or Irish provincialism\u2014probably both. Kiely, now in his eighties, has long been one of Ireland’s best writers. The first of his nine novels was published in 1946, the most recent in 1985; he has also written seven nonfiction books on Ireland and four volumes of short stories. In 1996 he was named Saoi of Aosdana, the highest honor given by the Arts Council of Ireland. Considered by many of his compatriots to be comparable to the likes of Edna O’Brien and William Trevor, Kiely has remained a specialized taste on this side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Maybe this is because his work is so very Irish: Kiely is deeply rooted in the rural and small-town culture of his youth, so that his work and the world he creates (or re-creates) has sometimes been compared with that of Faulkner. It is not, I think, a good comparison. Kiely’s vision is infinitely lighter and brighter than the American’s; though he deals with two world wars and the seemingly endless and endlessly suppurating wound caused by the partition of Ireland, and while he is obsessed with the twin tragedies of mutability and loss, his essential sunniness nearly always sheds a softening light on these somber themes and events. His voice and his point of view are consummately humane, and in a country rent apart by political and religious prejudice he is notable for a mellow and apparently all-encompassing tolerance.<\/p>\n

Take “The Dogs in the Great Glen”\u2014not Kiely’s best story, nor his most memorable, but certainly one of his most characteristic. It deals with an American college professor who has come to Ireland, like so many, to search for his roots. He has lost the address of his father’s relatives, to whom he has written about his imminent arrival; all he can remember is the name of a place, the great Glen of Kanareen. He and the narrator, a local who has offered to help him, wend their way across the country, the American regaling the local with his father’s memories of his grandfather’s exploits: “My father told me . . . that one night coming home from the card-playing my grandfather slipped down fifteen feet of rock and the only damage done was the ruin of one of two bottles of whisky he had in the tail-pockets of his greatcoat. The second bottle was unharmed.”<\/p>\n

Finally, they approach what they believe to be the Glen. “Another fifty yards and we would be on top of the ridge,” recalls the narrator. “We kept our eyes on the ground, fearful of the moment of vision and, for good or ill, revelation. Beyond the ridge there might be nothing but a void to prove that his grandfather had been a dreamer or a liar.” But as they mount the ridge it is all there just as described: “It gathered the sunshine into a gigantic coloured bowl.” The two travelers descend into a cloud-bedecked, primeval beauty. They are greeted by growling dogs, a troupe of shy children, and a tall old man who immediately recognizes the voyager: “I knew you from the top of the Glen. You have the same gait my brother had, the heavens be his bed. My brother that was your grandfather.” The narrator, standing back, gathers his impressions of the reunion.<\/p>\n

It was moonlight, I thought, not sunlight, over the great Glen. From house to house, the dogs were barking, not baying the moon, but to welcome home the young men from the card-playing over the mountain. The edges of rock glistened like quartz. The tall young gambler came laughing down the Glen, greatcoat swinging open, waving in his hand the one bottle of whisky that hadn’t been broken when he tumbled down the spink. The ghosts of his own dogs laughed and leaped and frolicked at his heels. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exile; return; an almost supernatural interdependence of past and present: all these are hallmarks of Kiely’s work. “The Dogs in the Great Glen” is a simple story, in which the author’s customary themes are presented quietly and with great beauty. Other stories take the same themes and weave them into superbly complex, technically virtuosic patterns.<\/p>\n

T<\/font>he David R. Godine Press in Boston has now published The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely<\/em> in a single volume. At 762 pages it makes a rather cumbersome book, but it is good to have all this fine material in one place: Kiely’s four story collections (A Journey to the Seven Streams<\/em> [1963], A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly<\/em> [1973], A Cow in the House<\/em> [1978], and A Letter to Peachtree<\/em> [1987]), as well as his classic novella, Proxopera<\/em> (1977).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kiely was born in the village of Dromore in County Tyrone (Northern Ireland) and brought up in the larger town of Omagh. The pastoral scenes of his childhood and youth are recalled throughout his work with an almost Dylan Thomas-esque lyricism heightened by a perfect ear for the song and rhyme that lie at the bottom of Irish speech. Here is a characteristic example (from “A Journey to the Seven Streams”):<\/p>\n

[W]ith every evidence of jubilation, we were once again under way; and a day it was, made by the good God for jubilation. The fields, all the colours of all the crops, danced towards us and away from us and around us; and the lambs on the green hills, my father sang, were gazing at me and many a strawberry grows by the salt sea, and many a ship sails the ocean. The roadside trees bowed down and then gracefully swung their arms up and made music over our heads and there were more birds and white cottages and fuchsia hedges in the world than you would readily imagine. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kiely mixes dialogue, thought, and scraps of song and poetry into a brew that is not quite stream-of-consciousness and not quite conventional narrative. He has developed this idiolect by making use (like James Joyce, to whom he, like so many Irish writers, is perhaps too deeply in debt) of the French system of punctuation, using a dash instead of quotation marks, with no indication of where the speech ends. This makes for imprecise writing\u2014the English system divides speech and narrative much more exactly\u2014but suits Kiely’s purpose, which is to blend speech almost imperceptibly into thought. At its most extreme this can become an irritating affectation, tempting the reader to think Joyce’s influence not so much an inspiration to his younger compatriots as a sort of curse that has condemned them forever to imitate him without ever quite catching up. At its best, though, when Kiely is really in the flow state, the result is not Joyce or imitation Joyce but pure Kiely, something entirely personal (here, from Proxopera<\/em>):<\/p>\n

The pistol, really touching his head, pushes him towards the car. His son stands silent, chained in the market-place amid the gathering multitude that shrank to hear his name, men without hands, girls without legs in restaurants in Belfast, images of Ireland Gaelic and free, never till the latest day shall the memory pass away of the gallant lives thus given for our land. . . . These mad dogs have made outrage a way of life. To the wheel, to the wheel, time’s ticking away, in the town the churchbells are ringing, Catholic Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, all calling people away from each other to get them in the end by various routes, variis itineribus to the home in the heavens of the same omnipotent, omnipresent Great Father with a long white beard, but why not unite here and now and not wait for then, come all to church good people good people come and pray, and the angel of death is at the wheel or on the wing, and ye know neither the day nor the hour. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kiely country is neither large nor sophisticated. There is the generic small town, typified by Ballyclogher, “the old, humpy roofs, the two or three spires, and all around the blue circle of quiet hills.” There is the bigger town, usually containing a monastery or convent, and entertaining rather more worldly pretensions. There is the seaside resort, as heady with erotic possibility as Paris: “Bracing breezes, silvery sands, booming breakers, lovely lands. Come to Bundoran”\u2014a bit of advertising doggerel that Kiely repeats and dwells on as lovingly as any line of poetry in his repertoire. Then there is the city, specifically Belfast: before the bombs, as innocently exciting to a young man from the country as Bundoran; after them, a mess of burned-out buildings and checkpoints and barricades, destroyed by mindless hatred.<\/p>\n

Many of Kiely’s stories are triumphant, involving some sort of escape or a declaration of independence. The prison bars, as we all know, are always there: social convention, religion, the dead hand of tradition, pretension; age trying to tame youth; women trying to tame men and vice versa<\/em>. In “The Pilgrims” a thirteen-year-old boy breaks away from his religious parents on a group pilgrimage and kisses an older girl in the train; in “The House in Jail Square” another boy, compelled by his mother to board with two domineering maiden ladies while he attends school, finally rebels and as a result is able to live in the wonderful, masculine freedom of the town’s louche boarding house.<\/p>\n

But too often, as too often in life, there is no escape. In the excellent “Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore,” an elegant Dublin girl, Fanny, spends a day with a slickly handsome American major on wartime leave. He expects a certain outcome to their day together, but Fanny knows no middle ground between virginity and complete perdition. A good Catholic girl, she ends the day crying in bed with her rosary, while her major finds consolation elsewhere. In “Through the Fields in Gloves,” a middle-aged man feels so trapped and depressed by life with his morbidly obese wife and half-witted sister that he becomes unhinged. And in “Bluebell Meadow,” a Catholic highschool girl and a Protestant boy are attracted to one another, but being well-behaved young people and solid members of their communities they are soon talked out of their flirtation. Their story is not a personal tragedy\u2014they never even get to know each other well enough to fall in love\u2014but it indicates, in its subdued and understated way, a national tragedy: they, and thousands like them, will never know one another, never even know what they might be missing.<\/p>\n

I<\/font>t would be hard to call Kiely a political writer; his principal gifts are lyricism, exuberance, and appreciation for beauty. But his stubborn refusal, in these stories, to countenance political motivations and agendas amounts to a political statement in its own right. He has depicted himself, of course, in many of the boys and young men who show up in his stories, eager for a good time, an evening with a pretty girl, a day of freedom in the country, but he has also depicted himself, or at least his philosophy, in the elderly Mr. Binchy of Proxopera<\/em>, a well-to-do gentleman who is forced by IRA<\/em> “soldiers” (in reality pathetic and ignorant local boys) to plant a bomb in a public spot in his town\u2014if he refuses, his son and grandchildren will die. Mr. Binchy’s nonsectarian anger and pity are beautifully depicted, making Proxopera<\/em> a masterpiece of protest fiction.<\/p>\n

The American writer with whom Kiely can best be compared is probably not Faulkner but Eudora Welty. As with Welty, Kiely’s deep roots, lifelong connection with his chosen turf, and masterful control of its vernacular make him one of the pre-eminent regional writers of his time. But Kiely’s career, like Welty’s, also shows the limits of regionalism. Like her, he is a little too in love with his native milieu, too quickly seduced by its easy charm and too confident that his readers will be seduced as well. As Welty could descend into folksy cuteness\u2014The Ponder Heart <\/em>is a prime example\u2014so can Kiely: all of the tales in his final volume, and especially its title story, “A Letter to Peachtree,” display self-indulgent rambling, and a blithe confidence that style and manner, rich atmosphere, sentiment, and a command of the local language will suffice in the absence of structure and meaning and real emotional content.<\/p>\n

But Kiely redeems himself in his best work, with tragedy or sadness trumping sentiment, and beauty overcoming charm. There are enough of these fine stories to make this volume well worth obtaining\u2014not to be read all at once, but slowly and lingeringly, one or two stories at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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