On our last day in Ireland, I enjoyed walking through the Ulster Museum, eating lunch at Maggie May’s, and taking a Black Taxi Tour of Belfast. At the Ulster Museum, I found the exhibit dedicated to The Troubles fascinating and appreciated the museum’s effort to present the material as impartially as possible. I found it interesting that the museum had a suggestion box at the end of that exhibit that encouraged visitors to share ways in which the exhibit could be more impartial, representative, and inclusive. In all my years visiting museums, I’ve never seen anything like it.

On the Black Taxi Tour, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about Ireland’s current political climate. I had no idea a wall existed that divided Belfast or that gates were closed every night to help citizens on either side feel more secure. It reminded me a lot of East and West Germany and of the conflict that for so long defined and divided that country.

The taxi tour perfectly illustrated the importance of place. On the Protestant side of the wall, there were memorials dedicated to citizens killed by the IRA. The language on various murals and memorials conflated the IRA with ISIS, an interesting tactic. Conflation is a tactic I often see the US media use to advance an argument. Rarely do supporters of a particular argument find conflation problematic; however, it’s easy to recognize agitprop in arguments we oppose. On the Catholic side of the wall, the murals and memorials were more nationalistic and stressed the sacrifices made by IRA members and others in support of a free Ireland.

In this part of Ireland, place is identity. The lives of Irish people in Belfast are shaped by what side of the wall they’re on.

This trip has been a phenomenal exercise in studying the intersection of place and identity. The activities consistently engaged us on multiple levels, and I’m thankful for LeeAnne’s meticulous planning which allowed us to think critically about a difficult subject.

The Titanic Museum in Belfast is slightly misleading insofar as it encompasses much more than the Titanic tragedy. The first portion of the exhibit is dedicated to an exploration of early-twentieth-century Belfast, which was nicknamed Linenopolis because of its linen production. It was fascinating to read about linen production and to see its production in various phases. The museum engages visitors on a variety of tactile and technological levels as early-twentieth-century Belfast comes alive through multiple moving screens, interactive maps, and still exhibits.

There’s a fun 4D ride halfway through the exhibit that allows visitors to see, hear, and feel what it may have been like to work on the Titanic’s hull. I enjoyed seeing examples of class-based living quarters and reading survival accounts of the sinking.

A few things in the exhibit reminded me of themes we’ve discussed over the last few weeks. In the portion of the exhibit dedicated to the building of the Titanic, a narrator mentions that the Titanic was often referred to as the pride of Belfast. In this way, the city’s identity was intertwined with this feat of engineering. Tickets were given away and sold so that spectators could witness the Titanic being launched. This representation of Belfast as a lively, thriving city stands in marked contrast to the paralysis of Dublin represented in much of the literature we’ve read and studied.

Something else that stood out to me was a section devoted to the captain of the Titanic. There are many accounts of where he was and what he was doing as the boat sank. All of them are heroic. These various and contradictory accounts speak to the human tendency to mythologize and/or canonize tragic figures.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the museum not only for its fascinating history of the Titanic but for its larger contextual history of Belfast.

Although not connected to Irish literature or history, the Vermeer exhibit at the National Gallery of Ireland highlights the evolution of Dublin from Joycean poverty and paralysis to contemporary cosmopolis. As I perused the paintings in the exhibit, one of the first things I noticed about almost all of them was the use of chiaroscuro, which gives the paintings incredible depth and makes many of them appear three dimensional.

The intertextuality of the paintings is remarkable. It is fascinating to see paintings within paintings and different renderings of the same subject matter. This intertextuality reminded me of the different scholarly approaches taken when analyzing literature. Each is beautiful, valuable, and relevant in its own right and, in most cases, analyses and theory, like these paintings, builds on what comes before it.

Among this coterie of artists there seems to have existed a healthy balance of rivalry and support. It’s reminiscent of other relationships between successful artists such as Yeats and Joyce as illustrated in Joyce’s letters at the Yeats exhibit at the National Library. What is meaningful to me in both examples is that the artists were better for being challenged and supported by their peers. Academia can be a difficult, contentious, and somewhat exclusive environment. Although I resist the urge to idealize the relationships among the Dutch masters, it’s clear that the artistic circle in which they moved engendered greater creativity and skill through amicable interaction. In the last portion of the exhibit, the older master was inspired by a younger artist, which is a good lesson in humility and is  sometimes necessary for progress.

The Yeats exhibit at the National Library is a phenomenal window into Yeats’s life. The layout of the exhibit and the different sets around the periphery of the main room create a uniquely intimate atmosphere that I don’t usually associate with these types of exhibits. Yeats’s father’s self-portrait is stunning. I enjoyed reading about how the Yeats family entered into the arts. It’s easy to mythologize these families and people and forget the very real struggles associated with an artist’s life.

The rooms around the periphery of the exhibit are fun and informative. The séance room is quirky and provides interesting insight into Yeats’s preoccupation with the occult. The theatre room is enlightening with regard to Yeats’s contributions to theatre, especially in light of our visit to The Abbey to see No’s Knife. Robert Gregory’s miniature set designs are charming. The large picture of Maude Gonne made me pause and wonder what it was about her that so captivated Yeats. References to and pictures of Hugh Lane and Lady Gregory are spread throughout the exhibit, which was interesting given their established influence on the arts.

The letters from Joyce to Yeats are fascinating in their progression. In the first letter, Joyce bemoaned Dubliners’ publishing woes, in the second letter, Joyce thanked Yeats for the money he had given him and mentioned a book he was working on, Ulysses, that wouldn’t be finished for several years, and in the third letter, Joyce advised Yeats about how to unbind the first few pages of Ulysses so Joyce could sign it for him. It was surreal to read their correspondence.

I enjoyed the way in which this exhibit reinforced so much of what we’ve talked about on this trip and beautifully illustrated the intersection of people and place.

Last summer, I read Ulysses with a small group of graduate students from GSU. To put it simply, Ulysses is a difficult text. As the summer wore on, our mantra became “let’s just get through it.” We incorporated into our study of Ulysses Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Gilbert Schema and Linati Schema, and some other criticism, but we mostly soldiered through the text. I read Ulysses after my first visit to Ireland, so I had a limited frame of reference for many of the places and people Joyce included in his tome; however, on this trip, I have been able to relate much more to the text because I’m in Ireland and many of the tours and activities in which we’ve participated have revealed aspects of Joyce’s life, both personal and professional, that have helped me better understand the minutiae of Ulysses.

Randy Malamud and I have had several discussions about the importance of reading certain texts in place. To that end, I appreciated our read in place assignment because it made me connect differently with the material. Also, with regard to preparing for my comprehensive exams, I’ve read all Irish literature on this trip. Specific aspects of these texts are more meaningful to me because of what I’ve learned in the last week. Although I couldn’t read Ulysses in its entirety on this trip, it was exciting to read “Telemachus” and visit the Martello tower at Sandycove. The tower was exactly as I envisioned it, especially the round room.

In honor of Bloomsday, I want to post my favorite passage from Ulysses, which is in the episode “Ithaca.” Joyce’s prose in this passage is stunning:

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman?

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendor, when visible: her attraction, when visible.

When I was in Ireland last summer, I didn’t have time to visit the Book of Kells, so I was determined to visit the exhibit this year. This morning, I made my way to Trinity College and was able to see the Book of Kells and The Long Room. The Book of Kells is fascinating and the textual scholarship, much of which is debated among scholars, is overwhelming. The books are beautiful and thought-provoking. I enjoyed reading about how pigments were made and seeing the letter-by-letter examples of the illustrated alphabet. Upon entering The Long Room, I was overcome by “old book smell,” which only reinforced why I will always read books I can hold. There’s something about the tactile experience of turning pages and the scent of a book, old or new, that I never want to trade for the convenience of an eReader. I’m not a Luddite, but I unashamedly love old-school book reading.

After leaving the Book of Kells, I met Whitney and Nicole for lunch at Foley’s. I enjoyed a goat cheese salad (greens! vegetables!). After lunch, we walked to Stephen’s Green and enjoyed donuts from The Rolling Donut.  Most of the local bookstores have Irish sections, and Eason’s is less expensive than Hodges and Figgis, so we decided to peruse their Irish literature section.

I bought a signed copy of A History of Running Away by Paula McGrath,who is a UCD MFA graduate, and The Green Road by Anne Enright, which won the Man Booker Prize and is shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Joseph O’Connor’s review of McGrath’s book is especially poignant given the theme of our study abroad class: “This beautifully written novel is urgently contemporary in its concerns but is also a quietly compelling exploration of the notions of home and belonging. Paula McGrath is a wonderful storyteller with a vivid sense of place and person.”

Whitney and I made our way to Buff Spa where we spent some time in the sauna and relaxation room. Later in the afternoon, we pampered ourselves with Swedish massages.  

Constance Markievicz was born in London in 1868, although her family home, Lisadell, was in County Sligo, Ireland. She was a childhood friend of Yeats and was featured in his poems “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” and “Easter 1916.” For me, as a voracious reader, it’s been fascinating to read about places, people, and historical events and to subsequently visit the places featured in poetry, prose, and historical texts. In this way, the literature, so much of which features the events surrounding the Easter Rising, has come alive.

On the 1916 walking tour, it was eerie to see the grapeshot at the GPO. These physical scars on the landscape reinforced the historical reality of what occurred. Although I could envision the battle taking place at St. Stephen’s Green where Constance Markievicz was a sniper during the Easter Rising, seeing her name on the intake registry at Kilmainham Gaol reinforced the reality of her involvement and the consequences of her choices. A portion of the entry that describes her crime reads as follows:

Did attempt to cause disaffection among the civilian population of His majesty.

As I toured Kilmainham Gaol, it was surreal to see the jail cell in which Constance Markievicz was held. Initially, she was sentenced to death, but she had her sentenced commuted to life imprisonment because she was a woman. She was released from prison in 1917 and continued to support the cause of Irish Freedom.

The sentence portion of her registry entry reads as follows:

Death

commuteth to Penal Sentence for Life

As soon as Whitney, Nicole, and I entered the Beatty Library, it became clear to us that we had not allowed enough time to fully explore this incredible space. This evening when we returned to campus, we checked the schedule to determine when we could return to the library. We plan to visit again before leaving Dublin.

As I was reading about Beatty, a few things stood out immediately, much of which is summed up in the title of this blog post and is a quote attributed to him: “It was all a great adventure.” Beatty viewed life as an adventure. His adventurous spirit is relatable, especially because I have traveled so many miles away from home to better understand Irish literature, history, and culture. There’s a hint of a kindred spirit in him.

On a somewhat superficial note, I was awestruck to learn that Beatty had his own librarian. The sheer volume of his collection necessitated a personal librarian. This unique factoid is a testament to the seriousness with which he viewed his collection. Beatty’s enrichment of Dublin (and the world given that his collection is showcased at many other museums) through his collection of ancient texts is invaluable. His approach to collecting these types of artifacts is the right one – his desire was for these materials to be accessible to the masses. The library itself is laid out beautifully (although the impossibility of taking pictures is almost painful), and I appreciate the timelines and explanations that accompany the texts. Beatty was clearly interested in religion, and given the volatile tensions between various religions, it’s surreal to see Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic texts peacefully occupy the same space. The sheer beauty of these papyri, scrolls, and books is overwhelming. I look forward to spending more time exploring Beatty’s collection and learning about him.

The Hugh Lane Gallery houses an exciting and diverse collection of artwork. I enjoyed perusing the stained glass exhibit and the Francis Bacon exhibit. Bacon’s claim that his chaotic workspace was conducive to creativity was thought-provoking insofar as all artists and authors have strong opinions about engendering creativity under certain (usually repeated) conditions. For me, a chaotic environment is unrelentingly prohibitive of creative output. I found my favorite piece from Anne Madden’s Colours of the Wind exhibit, Winged Figure, at Town Hall today, although the pieces showcased at the Hugh Lane Gallery are all beautiful.

Ire/Land III by Patrick Graham is darkly evocative and is a piece I can’t stop thinking about. I’ve reviewed my pictures of it several times, and I plan to research the artist and his artwork in the future.

However, the artwork I was most drawn to in the Hugh Lane Gallery was Lady Gregory by Antonio Mancini. The reason I’m drawn to this portrait of Lady Gregory is because it crystallized for me her pervasive influence on the arts in Ireland. Not only was she a patron of Yeats and a co-founder of The Abbey theatre, but she was also an accomplished playwright. Her short play “The Rising of the Moon,” while on its surface simple, is a thought-provoking tale that in its deceptive simplicity challenges the audience’s notion of nationalist loyalty. Her portrait in the museum solidifies her influence and has encouraged me to further research her artistic and political contributions to Ireland.

Before I left the United States for Ireland, I read The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism, which helped me better understand the nuances of modern Irish literature. Most of the essays in the anthology outline the distinctions between an Irish revivalist and an Irish modernist and the effects of these differences on Irish authors and literature. W.B. Yeats, an Irish revivalist, was a nationalist whose inner circle was comprised of many participants in the Easter Rising. Several of his poems are dedicated to Maude Gonne, a prominent member of the nationalist movement. At the time of Yeats’s death, W.H. Auden had just crossed the Atlantic on his way from England to America. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” is an elegy for Yeats in which Auden penned the famous phrase “poetry makes nothing happen.”

The Garden of Remembrance, featuring  Children of the Lir, a statue designed by Oisín Kelly, and a plaque showcasing Liam Mac Uistín’s poem “We Saw a Vision,” is dedicated to the participants of various uprisings who gave their lives for Irish freedom. Even though Yeats didn’t die for the nationalist movement, it was surreal to stand in a place dedicated to his friends who did die for the cause of Irish freedom and read an elegy written for him by an English-American poet. This intersection of place and identity (of both Yeats and Auden) is what I love so much about Transatlantic Modernism. The complexity of the history and citizenry of both men intersecting in single poem is a testament to the efficacy of literature as a medium through which we express the complexities of life.