Today, I did my reading in place in the corner of Merrion Square Park at the statue of Oscar Wilde. I chose a passage from Dorian Gray, which ended with, “Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

I love this quote, but I also chose it because it applies so much to this class and this place. We talk (obviously) about Irish literature, both how important it is to Irish history and how deeply ingrained it is into their culture. Words/literature are ways to attempt to control narrative in history. It is a way to make history tangible. As literature students, words are the way we make sense of the world around us. Words were how Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Yeats made sense of their life and the life of people around them. Words were their and our means of giving form to the seemingly formless.

I was also thinking about the Irish wanting to preserve their own language, and even the choice to make Irish the first language on road signs and maps is so deliberate and important to them. They are all just words, strung together beautifully in a novel about the history of a country or printed on a sign that has directions in English second. But they matter. There is nothing as “real as words.”

My photo is my reflection in the pillars in front of the Oscar Wilde statue today. The Wilde quotes on the pillars are copied from the personal handwriting of famous Irish people.