The Genius of Myles na Gopaleen

 As Frank McNally says, the sovereignty of Myles na Gopaleen should not be subjugated by the imperialism of Mr Flann O’Brien. The latter fellow had his moments but the first mentioned was really the man of rare genius. There he is on the left there, in the Palace Bar, some time during the Emergency. Those were cold times, as you may discern, for Ireland. As they are again.

For more than a quarter of a century he produced a daily column for the Irish Times. In many of those years his column was the only entertaining thing found in that self-consciously noble blatt. By turns satirical, whimsical, loopy, angry, absurd, laced with puns and parody and above all funny, much of The Cruiskeen Lawn still tickles 70 years after it first sidled into print. It was so popular, in fact, that the column enjoyed a posthumous life as for several years following the author’s death in 1966 (the drink, of course) the paper simply republished epistles that had first greeted Dubliners years before. No-one has caught the rythmns of Irish speech so well since. Indeed your man is tempted to believe that your other man must have invented it all himself.

If you care for these things, in some ways na Gopaleen – the subject of a TIME profile in 1943 that is (itself) a winning example of TIMEspeak – was a proto-blogger, not only on account of his prodigious output but in the manner in which a column might pick-up from where a previous outpouring had left-off, often abruptly. His purview knew few bounds and he ranged haphazardly, flitting from one passion to another prejudice as the mood took him. Granted, he made demands on the reader: the columns in Irish are beyond me and so, faith, are the ones in Latin. But in range and as a body of work it is an astonishing achievement. The novels are fine, but the column is the thing. It helps (of course) that Myles was happy to denounce his own paper’s editorial line. There was sock-puppetry too since he’d also write letters to the editor defaming or defending his own articles. Whatever. There’s been nothing like it, I thinks, in any newspaper since. How could there be since Myles was one of the greatest journal-ists of the twentieth century?

This is his centenary and this being the year and the man that’s in it, it makes sense to celebrate the old boy on the 45th anniversary of his death not the 100th of his birth. That would be today. The Plain People of Ireland are invited to the Palace Bar this (very) afternoon to mark the occasion. I wish I could be there, having been an admirer from a time when it was neither profitable nor popular. But there you have it. The Brother will show his face. So will Steam Men. There will be Bookhandling. Keats and Chapman shall be there (god help you all). And much more besides.

You can purchase collections culled from the columns here but hopefully some day there’ll be an omnibus edition reprinting the Cruiskeen Lawn as it was originally published, unscissored or distorted by even well-meaning editors. Here, for the moment, is Myles on Synge:

A lifetime of cogitation has convinced me that in this Anglo-Irish literature of ours (which for the most part is neither Anglo, Irish, nor literature) (as the man said) nothing in the whole galaxy of fake is comparable with Synge. That comic ghoul with his wakes and mugs of porter should be destroyed finally and forever by havig a drama festival at which all his plays should be revived for the benefit of the younger people of today. The younger generation should be shown what their fathers and grand-daddies went through for Ireland, and at time when it was neither profitable nor popular.

We in this country had a bad time through the centuries when England did not like us. But words choke in the pen when one comes to describe what happened to us when the English discovered we were rawther interesting peepul ek’tully, that we were nice, witty, brave, fearfully seltic and fiery, lovable, strong, lazy, boozy, impulsive, hospitable, decent, and so on till you weaken. From that day the mouth-corners of our smaller intellectuals (of whom we have more per thousand births than any country in the world) began to betray the pale froth of literary epilepsy. Our writers, fascinated by the snake-like eye of London publishers, have developed exhibitionism to the sphere of acrobatics. Convulsions and contortions foul and masochistic have been passing for literature in this country for too long. Playing up to the foreigner, putting up the witty celtic act, doing the lovable but erratic playboy, pretending to be morose and obsessed and thoughtful – all that is wearing so thin that we must put it aside soon in shame as one puts aside a threadbare suit. Even the customers who have been coming to the shop man and boy for fifty years are fed up. Listen in the next time you hear some bought-and-paid-for Paddy broadcasting from the BBC and you will understand me better.

This trouble probably began with Lever and Lover. But I always think that in Synge we have the virus isolated and recognisable. Here is stuff that anyone who knows the Ireland referred to simply will not have. It is not that Synge made people less worthy or nastier, or even better than they are, but he brought forward with the utmost solemnity amusing clowns talking a sub-language of their own and bade us take them very seriously. There was no harm done there, because we have long had the name of having heads on us. But when the counterfeit bauble began to be admired outside Ireland by reason of its oddity and ‘charm’, it soon became part of the literary credo here that Synge was a poet and a wild celtic god, a bit of a genius, indeed, like the brother. We, who knew the whole inside-outs of it, preferred to accept the ignorant outsiders on things Irish. And now the curse has come upon us, because I have personally met in the streets of Ireland persons who are clearly out of Synge’s plays. They talk and dress like that, and damn the drink they’ll swally but the mug of porter in the long nights after Samhain.

The Plain People of Ireland: Any relation between that man and Synge Street in Dublin where Bernard Shaw was born?

Myself: I don’t think so, because Bernard Shaw was born before Synge.

The Plain People of Ireland: The Brothers runs a very good school there – manys a good Irishman got his learnin there. They do get a very high place in the Intermediate and the Senior Grade every year.

Myself: Faith you’re right.

The Plain People of Ireland: But of course your man Shaw digs with the other foot.

Myself: Aye.

One more for the road? Sure, what harm can it do? So here’s an adventure featuring our friends Keats and Chapman:

Keats and Chapman, in funds for once, decided to take a two-day trop to Ostend, having in mind the not uncharacteristic belief that there was, for a modest initial stake, a fortune to be made on the tables. The steamer was new and large, the channel like glass. A few hours out, Keats suggested a few bowls of nourishing bouillon, and to his surprise noticed that Chapman’s face, which was deadly pale, became green.  He collapsed on a seat and covered his face with his hands. Keats, having reflected on the oddity of Chapman’s condition against the background of happy holidaymakers, all in the most jovial spirits, repaired to the bar and consumed some cognacs. Returning later in search of his friend, he found him now putty-coloured, moaning dreadfully and staring at his lifeless hands. His condition was not enhanced by the titters of passers-by, chiefly women who should in justice be far sicker than he.

“You will be all right when we land” Keats said helpfully. “It is only four hours.”

“I don’t mind sea-sickness so much,” Chapman wailed, “it’s the ignominy of being the one person on board who is sick. If everybody was the same, the thing would be at least bearable…”

Keats studied his friend with compassion.

“O si sic omnes,” he murmured.