Today, Ireland and the reading world celebrate Bloomsday, a day named after the hero of Joyce's novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. June 16, 1904 is the very day during which the action of this huge and complex novel takes place, which has become business card European literary modernism.

This day became special shortly after the publication of the novel. As early as 1924, four years after the release of the first version of Ulysses, Joyce wrote in a letter about the existence of "a group of people who observe what they call 'Bloom's Day' - June 16th." Fans of Joyce's work and tourists visiting Dublin on this day organize walks to places from the novel, and around the world they organize readings of excerpts from Ulysses.

Today we will talk about interesting books by several modern Irish authors. All of them are published in Russian and, we hope, will interest you.

Seamus Dean. Reading in the dark

For a long time Dean was known as a literary critic and poet, and Reading in the Dark was his first novel. The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

This is largely an autobiographical book. Its narrator is a young man from an Irish Catholic family who witnesses the struggle of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for independence from England and tries to understand family secrets.

To some extent, Reading in the Dark may be reminiscent of Joyce's less famous but no less remarkable novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, less famous than Ulysses. Here, too, an attempt is made to construct a reliable children's narrative - naive, confused, contradictory, poetic and mythologizing the real. The world of an Irish child is full of mysteries and secrets, often truly dangerous:

“That winter there were two police cars - black and black, two interplanetary ships they landed from the first glimpse of the street. I saw a metallic glow flash through the windows of a neighboring house as we were being taken away. But first, a search. One, bright, in a white raincoat, stepped into the bedroom and began to flip the switch. He was screaming, but I was deaf from horror, and so his mouth just closed and opened. Wrapped in dense silence, I got dressed. I knew they were looking for the gun that I had found the day before in the bottom drawer of the closet in the next room where the sisters were sleeping.

It was long, cool, heavy, this black gun with a blue tint, and I took it out secretly and showed it off to the boys from Fane Street by the old city wall. They came to play football, then we started a political discussion. I was strictly ordered not to even mention the pistol, which, I was told, was given to my dad by a young German sailor whose submarine was brought to our port when the war ended. He and thirty others like him were placed in barracks behind the docks, and his dad fed him every day with sandwiches and milk, because he helped set up their electrical wiring. And before parting, the young sailor gave his dad this pistol as a souvenir. And since our relatives are in prison for connections with the IRA, our family is being watched and we need to keep an eye out. But what are you going to do with the little idiot.

Pushing for the pistol, we estimated its weight, determined its length by placing it on our hand, and took aim. And suddenly I felt that they were looking at me. Fogy McKeever stood in the alley. A well-known police informant. Young, about twenty, open face, clear smile, round, surprised eyes. In a word, the soul is wide open. He watched me carry the gun back into the house.”

Colum McCann. And let the beautiful world spin

For his novel Let the Beautiful World Spin, McCann received a Dublin literary prize(interestingly, he is only the second Irish writer to be awarded this prize - any English-language author can claim victory).

As in Ulysses, the novel's narrative centers on one specific day - August 7, 1974. But the setting is not Dublin, and not Ireland at all, but New York. Among the heroes are sufferers from different walks of life, from a prostitute to a priest, from a judge to an accountant. They witness the performance of the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who walked along a tightrope stretched 110 floors between the twin towers of the World shopping center. For the heroes, this event is not just an exciting show, but a reminder that, no matter how hard it is, you can continue to fight for your life.

This is how the novel describes a photograph depicting Petit’s performance:

“She saw a tattered, slightly yellowed card in San Francisco four years ago at a yard sale. At the very bottom of the box with photographs. The world never tires of presenting its little surprises. She bought the photograph, framed it and took it with her ever since, moving from one hotel to another.

A man is frozen in the middle of the sky, while the plane seems to be diving into the corner of a skyscraper. One fleeting piece of history intertwined with another. It was as if the man walking on a tightrope somehow foresaw the coming events. The collision of time and history. The climax of the reporting. We are waiting for an explosion, but there is still no one. The plane flies past safely, the tightrope walker reaches the end of the wire. The universe does not fall apart.

It seems to her that the photograph preserves a stable, enduring moment: a lonely person on the scale of history, still capable of creating myths, despite all other circumstances. The photograph became one of the things dearest to her heart; without it, the suitcase did not seem packed, did not want to close, as if something important was missing from it. Wherever she went, she would certainly put the photograph carefully wrapped in wrapping paper along with other memorabilia - a string of pearls, a lock of her sister’s hair.”

Sebastian Barry. Tablets of Fate

Barry began with poetry, became famous through plays, but achieved success with his novels. "Tables of Fate" was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and won the prestigious Costa Literary Prize.

The novel consists of two diary texts. The first is the diary of a doctor in an old Irish psychiatric clinic. The second is the diary of his centenarian patient, whose youth fell during the Civil War. Despite the gloomy setting, the book has a quite optimistic message.

Recently the novel was filmed, but it would be better not to do it. Definitely read the book:

“Dear reader! Dear reader, if you are good, kind person how I would like to grab your hand. I would like so many impossible things. I don’t have you, but I have a lot of other things. There are moments when I am pierced with an inexpressible joy, as if, although I have nothing, I at the same time own the whole world. As if, sitting in this room, I was actually sitting in the vestibule of heaven, and soon the doors would open before me and I would emerge into green fields and hedged farms, rewarded for all my torment. This grass burns with such greenness!

Dr. Gren came in this morning, and I had to immediately hide these notes. I don’t want him to see them and start questioning me, because secrets have already appeared here, and my secrets are both my property and my mind. Fortunately, I heard him walking down the corridor from afar, because he has metal heels on his shoes. And, fortunately, I do not suffer one bit from rheumatism or any other infirmity due to my age, according to at least in the legs. My hands, alas, are no longer what they were, but my legs still hold up. The mice that run behind the wall are faster than me, but they have always been faster. A mouse, when it needs to, can run like your athlete, that's for sure. But I was able to get ahead of Dr. Gren.”

Emma Donoghue. Room

Be warned: this book is not for the faint of heart. The plot of The Room, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is based on the case of Josef Fritzl, a man who kept his daughter and the children conceived with her in an underground bunker for many years. The narrator of “Room” is a child who previously lived locked up all his life, and is now free.

The novel talks about the difficulties of adaptation to the world in which the hero and his mother found themselves after liberation. Like Joyce and Dean, in this text the author tries to show the world through the eyes of a child. This turns out, on the one hand, less skillful, but on the other hand, much more naturalistic and dramatic.

The novel was recently filmed; actress Brie Larson received an Oscar for her participation in the film. To read the book, it doesn’t matter at all whether you’ve seen the film or not, since the most valuable thing here is not in the plot at all, but in the way it is told by the child hero.

“I notice that people in the world around us live in tension almost all the time and constantly complain about lack of time. Even my grandmother often complains about this, but she and her stepfather don’t work, and I can’t understand how other people manage to work and do all the other things necessary in life. Ma and I had enough time in our room to do everything. I think that time, in a thin layer, like butter, is evenly distributed throughout the world, along its roads, houses, playgrounds and shops. And in each place there is a very small piece, so everyone runs to grab it in time.

And wherever I see children, the thought comes to me that adults do not love them, even their own parents. In words, they call the children sweethearts and smart kids, they force them to take the same pose many times so that the photographs turn out better, but they don’t want to play with them. They would rather drink coffee and chat with other adults than spend time with their children. Sometimes small child cries, and his mother doesn’t even notice it.”

Maeve Binchy. Heart and soul

A choice for those who found previous stories and settings too dark. Binchy’s cheerful novel “Heart and Soul,” although it tells about the everyday life of workers in a Dublin cardiology clinic, is categorically optimistic. It is about kind and sensitive people, about humanity and how communication with others like you can help overcome loneliness.

A National Book Award winner, Binchy died in 2012. Local television announced her death as that of Ireland's most popular contemporary author.

“The first person to come in was a woman named Judy Murphy, who told him that she had absolutely no worries, she was doing great, absolutely fine, but they were urging her to go to hospital for a three-day check-up. The problem is the dogs. She has two Jack Russell puppies, who will look after them? There is no money for an expensive nursery, and it’s sad for them there. The neighbor is ready to feed them twice a day, but he will not go for walks with them. And dogs need to be walked. So she won't go to the hospital. Maybe they'll prescribe her a stronger medicine. There's nothing wrong with her, right? She watched with worry on her thin face as he read the entries in her chart. Chronic sore throats, severe pressure changes. Declan's gaze fell on her address. Judy Murphy lived a couple of blocks from his house.

“I can walk them,” he suggested.

- You... what?

- I can walk them. I still go for a walk every evening with Dimples, my dog, and will take everyone together. “He noticed how the woman’s face lit up with hope.

- With Dimples? - she asked again.

- A huge, terribly charming, neutered half-labrador. And in life - an overgrown kitten, your kids will like it.

- Doctor, really?.. Doctor?

“Declan,” he corrected her. - I'll start today.

- But I won’t go to the hospital today?

- No, Judy, to the hospital tomorrow, and today Dimples and I will get to know your dogs. I'll come by at eight. Go make an appointment with Clara, then Anya will contact the hospital, and soon you will be completely healthy.

“You are the best doctor, Doctor Declan,” Judy said.”

If you know others interesting books contemporary Irish authors, be sure to tell us about them in the comments!

1. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", Oscar Wilde
One of the most famous novels world literature, the publication of which in 1891 caused a scandal in English society. Critics condemned it as an immoral work, but the novel was enthusiastically received by ordinary readers. It poses the eternal questions of humanity - about the meaning of life, about responsibility for what one has done, about the greatness of beauty, about the meaning of love and the destructive power of sin. This immortal work of Oscar Wilde has been filmed more than 25 times.

2. "The Boy on the Mountain Top" by John Boyne
New novel author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. An ordinary boy, Pierrot, lives in Paris. His mother is French and his father is German. Dad went through the First World War and was forever mentally traumatized. And although not everything is fine at Piero’s home, he is happy. His parents adore him, he has a best friend, Anshel, with whom he communicates in sign language. But this cozy world is about to disappear. It's the second half of the 1930s. And soon Piero will find himself in Austria, in a wonderful house on the top of a mountain. Pierrot will now be called Peter, and he will have a new adult friend. A new friend has a mustache with a brush, beautiful lady named Eva and the smartest German shepherd Blondie. He is kind, smart and very energetic. Only for some reason the servants are scared to death of him, and the guests who are in the house talk about the greatness of Germany and that it’s time for all of Europe to know about it. A piercing, disturbing and incredibly in tune with our time novel, which became, in fact, a continuation of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” although the characters are completely different.

3. "Ulysses", James Joyce
James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) has long been recognized as a masterpiece of world literature. This is a unique work that opened new paths for 20th-century prose. In one day, lived by a simple Dublin city dweller at the dawn of our century, the author, not in jest, but seriously, finds all the adventures ancient world about Odysseus. By scrupulously analyzing all aspects of a person, his spiritual, mental, sexual, pathological traits, the novel gives one of the most profound pictures of man and society of our time.

4. "Room", Emma Donoghue
What is freedom? And who is freer - a person who has never in his life left the four walls in which he was born, and who draws knowledge about the world around him from books and through the TV screen? Or the one who lives outside? For little Jack, such questions do not exist. He is happy, his mother is with him, he does not know that, due to someone’s malicious intent, he is forced to live differently from how others live. But illusion does not last forever, little man grows up, and one day there is an epiphany. Then the room becomes cramped and you urgently need to find a way to get out of it.

5. "Love, Rosie" by Cecelia Ahern
Rosie and Alex are friends with early childhood. They do not forget about each other even in the whirlwind of joys and anxieties of their youth, which took them to opposite sides of the ocean, and carry on a lively correspondence. Friends know that no matter what happens to them, there is always a shoulder they can lean on. But won’t even such a strong and tender friendship be undermined by the endless marriages and divorces of both heroes of this bitter and bright history?

6. "Tablets of Fate", Sebastian Barry
From the classic modern prose, which has been called "an incomparable chronicler of a life lost forever" (Irish Independent), is "a masterpiece of literature, a triumph of style that does not shy away from the techniques of the detective genre" (Sunday Business Post), a novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won prestigious award Costa Award. "A language of incredible beauty and life, pulsating like a song" (The New York Times) Barry tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, a young, irresistible beauty who spent most of her life in psychiatric clinic. Roseanne sat there for so long that no one remembers why she was there. And so the new chief physician, Dr. Gren, became interested in the fate of the mysterious patient. One day he discovers Roseanne's hidden diary: for several decades she wrote down her memories. These memoirs contain the secret of her imprisonment and a story about an amazing life and all-consuming love, passionate, painful, tragic...

7. "Dracula", Bram Stoker
Dozens of various film adaptations. An image replicated in world culture like probably no other. The novel that became the basis of the entire “Gothic” subculture and the cornerstone various directions in fantasy literature... We can talk endlessly about Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but it’s better to just open the immortal novel about the sinister and mysterious Transylvanian vampire count and immerse yourself in its bizarre, mysterious and bewitching atmosphere.

8. "Dancer", Colum McCann
The icy Bashkir winter of 1941. In a wretched barracks, a small boy is dancing on the dirt floor, dust flying from under his tattered shoes. Twenty years later, Paris, the whole world at his bare feet. A novel about a ballet genius, the most mysterious and incomprehensible dancer in history. A novel about a man for whom dance is life itself and an obsession at the same time, about a genius and a villain rolled into one. Like a hero spinning in a perfect dance, the electrons of McCann's prose revolve around a light-emitting and absorbing core - the mysterious Rudolf Nureyev.
Rudolf Nureyev is the most famous dancer in the history of ballet. Nureyev made a revolution in ballet, escaped from the USSR, became a glamor icon, became famous not only for his ballet steps, but also for his fights, he was a monster and a handsome man in one person. He was pursued by paparazzi around the clock, and with his adventures he fed hundreds of secular observers. Millions and millions of words have been written about him. But despite the fact that Rudolf Nureyev’s life passed in the merciless spotlight, the secret of his personality remained a secret. Nureyev had too many faces, but what was he really like? A magnanimous egoist, a generous miser, a shy brawler, a noble scoundrel... Nuriev constantly made up something about himself, provoked ridiculous rumors, and his close friends remained amazingly silent. "Dancer" - a novel about Rudolf Nureyev, here fiction closely intertwined with facts. This book is not at all another attempt to create a glamorous or, on the contrary, frightening image of a great dancer. This is an attempt to comprehend the essence that was hidden behind the phantasmagoric life. Colum McCann observes Nureyev through the eyes of people who have always been in the deep shadow: his sister, the housekeeper, the shoemaker, the daughter of the first teacher... Their voices tell the story of how a desperate and lonely boy from a poor family gradually turns into one who is ruthless towards himself and everything world of a great artist trying to make him dance beautiful world rotate. "The Dancer" is not a fictionalized biography, it is a novel in which Colum McCann combined fiction and reality, inspired by the extraordinary personality of Nureyev and the unusual nature of his fate.

9. "Pygmalion", Bernard Shaw
The collection includes three plays by Bernard Shaw. Among them, the most famous is “Pygmalion” (1912), based on which many films were made and the legendary Broadway musical “My lovely lady" The plot is based on - ancient greek myth about how the sculptor tries to revive the beautiful statue he created. And the hero of Shaw's play tries to turn a simple flower girl into a sophisticated aristocrat in 6 months. “Pygmalion is a mockery of the blue-blooded fans... every play of mine was a stone that I threw at the windows of Victorian prosperity,” said Shaw. In 1977, a ballet film based on this play was staged with E. Maksimova and M. Liepa. "Pygmalion" is still successfully performed in theaters all over the world. The publication also includes the play “Candida” (1895) - about the incomprehensible and mysterious, not amenable to rational explanation, why a woman can love a man; and “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets” (1910), a peculiar dramatization of the hidden plot of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Translators: S. Bobrov, M. Bogoslovskaya, P. Melkova, M. Laurie.

10. "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray
Why does Skippy, a 14-year-old student at the prestigious Catholic school Seabrook, drop dead in a local cafe? Is this connected with the attempts of his classmate Ruprecht to open a port in parallel universe? Is it the fault of the young drug dealer Karl, who persistently seduces the girl who became Skippy’s first love? Or maybe the ruthless school principal or the monks teaching at Seabrook have something to hide? Irish writer Paul Murray's novel Skippy Dies begins with the death of the title character, but describes both what preceded it and how events developed afterwards.

The young Irishman's rapid ascent up the Hollywood career ladder began in 1998 in London, where Joel Schumacher was casting for his new film. Farrell, along with hundreds of other young actors, submitted his video audition, filmed by his sister using an amateur camera.

Pierce Brosnan

When Brosnan was still very young, his mother left him with her parents and went to London to work as a nurse. She was able to see the baby only a couple of times a year. After his grandparents died, Pierce found himself in the care of his uncle and aunt, who sent the boy to the Brothers of Christ school - Brosnan still treats religion with a shudder. Corporal punishment in a Christian institution was used with all its might, and the only thing such treatment taught children was hypocrisy and secrecy.

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift is a famous satirist, essayist, poet and public figure originally from Ireland. Born on November 30th. Jonathan Swift became best known for his tetralogy, Gulliver's Travels. Others famous works Jonathan Swift are: “Battle of the Books”, “The Tale of a Barrel”, “Diary for Stella”, etc.

Bono

Bono is the leader and vocalist of the famous group U2. The group performs its compositions in such directions as rock, alternative rock and post-punk. In the group, Bono performs many functions, he is a vocalist, the author of many songs and a rhythm guitarist. He composed the music and wrote the lyrics for many of the group's hits, leading the group to the top of the world music charts.

Brem Stoker

Bram Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was born in Dublin. The third child in the family of a modest civil servant, he was unable to walk for a long time due to illness. But over time, the disease subsided, and at Trinity College, from which he subsequently graduated with honors, Stoker became famous as an athlete and an excellent football player.

Samuel Beckett

The Irish writer and Nobel laureate (1969) wrote in his works full of pessimism, permeated with themes of decay and death, about man’s hopeless attempts to comprehend the meaning of his own actions.

Joyce Cary

Over the course of the next 19th century, Ireland did not produce many outstanding authors who lived within the country. It is necessary to name the poet and bard Anthony Raftery (1779-1835), born in County Mayo and lived all his life in the west of Ireland. Some of his texts, written in Irish, have reached us. In the second half of the 19th century, it began to operate Gaelic League(Union of Irish Language Authors), it holds literary competitions in the country.

IN mid-19th century century, during the years of the “great famine” caused by the failure of the potato harvest, about a third of the country’s population dies out, almost the same number emigrates to England and the USA. Most of the emigrants assimilate with the local population.

Literature in English

In the 18th and 19th centuries, among English writers some were of Irish descent. Among them were such world-famous authors as Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. A realistic picture of the life of Irish society in the 18th - early 19th centuries. give the novels of Maria Edgeworth. At the same time within the country national culture The Irish are systematically suppressed and even destroyed by the British.

Of course, this couldn't go on for long. IN late XIX century there was a new rise national identity Irish, associated with the struggle for the country's independence. The Irish literary revival produced a number of remarkable writers. The largest of them were playwrights D. M. Singh and Sean O'Casey, a collector folk legends Lady Augusta Gregory, and poet and critic William Butler Yeats. Many Irish authors achieved worldwide fame while living in England; among them Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

XX century

In the years after Ireland achieved independence, many interesting authors. Novelist James Joyce, author of the epic novel Ulysses and the classic short story series Dubliners, had a significant influence on European literature in the mid- and late 20th century. Another famous master of the short novel was Frank O'Connor, whose books are still published in large editions in English-speaking countries. Avant-garde playwright Samuel Beckett and later poet Seamus Heaney became laureates Nobel Prize in literature, respectively in 1969 and 1995. Also widely known modern writers William Trevor, John Banville, John McGahern, playwrights Brendan Behan, P. Galvin, Brian Friel and poets Patrick Kavanagh, Michael Hartnett, Michael Longley, Yvonne Boland, Paula Meehan, Eileen Ní Cullinan, Dennis O'Driscoll. There is a Poets' Union in Ireland (Poetry Ireland), which organizes poetry readings throughout the country. Literary festivals are held in many cities.

Bibliography

• From modern Irish poetry. - M., “Rainbow”, 1983
• Irish legends and fairy tales. - M., “Goslitizdat”, 1960
• Irish theatrical miniatures. L. - M., “Art”, 1961
• Irish fairy tales. M., "Visma", 1992
• Irish and Welsh fairy tales. - M., “Gandalf - Met”, 1993
• Kalygin V.P. “The language of ancient Irish poetry.” - M., “Science”, 1986
• Poetry Ireland. - M., “ Fiction", 1988.- 479 p. ill.
• Singing shamrock. Collection of Irish folklore. - M., “Rainbow”, 1984
• Sarukhanyan A.P. Modern Irish literature. - M., “Science”, 1973
• Sarukhanyan A.P. “Embrace of Fate”: Past and Present of Irish Literature. - M., “Heritage”, 1994.
• A modern Irish story. - M., “Rainbow”, 1985
• “Foreign Literature” 1995, No. 2. Irish issue
• Irish literature of the 20th century: A view from Russia. - M., “Rudomino”, 1997
• Word from mouth. Poems by contemporary Irish female poets in translations by Russian female poets. St. Petersburg, "TEZA", 2004. - 240 p. ISBN 5-88851-053-X
• Welch, Robert; Stewart, Bruce. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford University Press, 1996. - 648 pages. - ISBN 0-19-866158-4

And others. Irish culture is one of the oldest in Europe, and after 700 years of English rule, the country has regained its national identity much faster than what is happening in Russia after 70 years of the existence of the Soviet Union. Within literary project“Hidden Gold of the 20th Century” will soon publish two books by Irish authors, which have not previously been entirely published in Russian. What is unique about Irish history and culture and why the Irish are so similar to Russians, the translator told.

Spherical Irishman in a vacuum

From about the time of Shakespeare, Ireland - with outside help - began to create the image that is now called the "stage Irishman". He first appeared in Henry V. This initiative was taken up by other playwrights. Then what began in the theater spilled out from the stage into the people, and the image of the Irishman who now lives in people’s heads is largely due to English playwrights, the complex relationship between England and Ireland and the 700-year dominance of the former over the latter.

In defining what a “stage Irishman” is, I follow the position of the eminent 20th century Irish thinker Declan Kiberd, who dedicated his life (God bless him, he is still alive) to the study of how world culture and history created Ireland. This “stage Irishman” was invented by the English so that England would have an “other”: a collective figure for everything that England is not. It was especially in demand in the Victorian era.

Around the time the Industrial Revolution began in England, English cultural space and the mentality was pleased to consider ourselves effective, that is, not wasting ourselves on emotions, fantasies and dreams. All dream reality and the feelings associated with it are recognized as ineffective, unnecessary and set far aside. It is postulated that the British are reserved, cold, closed - something that is still stereotypically associated with England. And the Irish are everything that's the opposite.

Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Getty Images

In this sense, cultural maturation is not very different from human maturation. Especially in adolescence. Only an adult can define himself as a self without denial. I am this and that, I can do this and that, I have achieved this and that. When we are little, we do not yet have achievements and failures, we have to define ourselves through “I am not...”: I am not Vasya, not Petya and not Katya. Who are you? I don't know. In this regard, England needed an “other”, and this other was just a stone’s throw away - a neighboring island. And he was everything that England seemed not to be: undisciplined, lazy, quarrelsome, flighty, emotional, sentimental. It looks like a classic conflict between physicists and lyricists. This set of qualities stuck with the Irish for a certain time.

There was an Irishman hiding under the mask of an Irishman

Somewhere from the middle of the 19th century and a little further, when a stream of migrant workers from Ireland poured into industrialized England, the Irish even benefited from this stereotype. Because when a person comes from a remote village (and Ireland is mainly a non-urban space) to the city, he finds himself on another planet, where there is nothing in common with the communal life that he led in the village. And then they offer him a ready-made mask of a kind of village fool - and he takes it upon himself. At the same time, we understand that even the rural Irish are smart, cunning, observant, malicious, demonstrating everyday acumen and the ability to survive in extreme circumstances. But this image was beneficial, and the Irish, especially those who moved to England, supported it for some time - consciously or unconsciously.

Drawing by Irish artist James Mahoney (1810–1879).

The Great Famine of the mid-19th century is a fantastic event in the enormity of Irish history, when 20 percent of the country's population died or left. It is clear that then World War II happened, and the world had not seen anything like this, but before the invention of weapons of mass destruction and without any epidemics, to lose so many people simply because they had nothing to eat was monstrous. And it must be said that the population of Ireland has not yet recovered to its previous size. Therefore, the tragedy of the Great Famine is relevant for Ireland and still influences the Irish people’s idea of ​​themselves, their position regarding the world around them, and even more so determined the intensity of passions during the Irish Renaissance turn of XIX-XX centuries, when the country finally gained independence from England.

Leprechauns and other evil spirits

Later, already in the 20th century, against the backdrop of that same “stage Irishman” - a cheerful, sharp-tongued goofball - a consumerist society emerges with all this commercial hype around leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold, dances like Lord of the Dance, which have a rather indirect relation to folk tradition. A country that had been in poverty for a long time finally realized that the richness of its history, its temperament (because without temperament you cannot survive in their conditions - the climate is not a fountain, and the history of the last 700 years has not been conducive to relaxation) - all this can be commercialized. This is a normal activity for anyone European culture. Just among European countries Ireland is so rich in humanities that it is richer than almost any culture, not counting the ancient one.

This happened, in particular, also because Ireland was never under Rome. Urban culture did not reach it through the same channels through which continental Europe received it. And the organization of relations between people was not like that, and hierarchical relationships in society were not built under the pressure of Roman law and Roman order.

Photo: Siegfried Kuttig / Globallookpress.com

Ireland in general was very fragmented - such as the Tver region, divided into areas approximately the size of Chertanovo. Each had its own king and its own relationships with its neighbors. Moreover, until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, it was all a single cultural continuous space of more or less a single language (there were plenty of dialects, but people understood each other), a single old law, perhaps one of the oldest surviving legal systems on the ground. It was based on everyday logic, because in Ireland there was neither punitive nor legislative power in the Roman sense.

The law was tradition, and tradition was law. Once in a while there was a meeting of the people under the supreme king, a trial was held, and precedent amendments were made. And this ancient tradition, unbroken for thousands of years, created a unique culture that the Irish - after the English left them alone - commercialized, and we now have all these leprechauns who are in mass consciousness are connected with Ireland as the nesting doll, balalaika, bears and snow are with Russia. At the same time, we understand that we don’t say “to be healthy” while drinking, we only give matryoshka dolls to each other out of great banter, and you need to be a very specifically image-oriented person to wear a cap with a carnation in everyday life.

Irish writers who had to defend their Irishness

And now about why we decided to publish in Russian authors who are unknown to anyone. Firstly, the great Irish writers of the level of Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, O'Casey, Yeats, Heaney - one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent to a lesser extent translated into Russian. Another thing is that few people realize that they are Irish. And they are Irish. Despite the fact that the concept of Irishness is very, very complex.

Photo: Sasha/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Why? Because Ireland is the same as America, only within Europe. Until the conquest of that hemisphere began, Ireland was the edge of Europe. Further - big water. Wave after wave of people who went west eventually came to a limit - Ireland. And a lot of people came there, so genetically the Irish are a mixture of Iberian Celts, continental Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Scandinavians. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider those who consider themselves Irish to be Irish.

Within Ireland, from the 12th to 14th centuries, the first wave of Anglo-Normans very quickly adapted, assimilated, and these people who were before Cromwell were called “Old English” - Old English. So they are considered absolute Irish, despite the fact that their deep history is not of Celts, but of Anglo-Saxons and Normans. But they had children, these children already spoke Irish, wore Irish clothes, sang Irish songs and were Irish because their fathers married Irish women. And the mother raises the child, speaks to him in her own language, so the child is Irish, regardless of his paternal blood. In this sense, it is a completely matriarchal story.

As long as England was Catholic, everyone who came to Ireland became Irish. People fell headlong into this old, viscous, fascinating culture and dissolved in it. Because the Anglo-Norman culture was 100 years old at that time. This mixture of Anglo-Saxons and Normans was such a Frankenstein monster, which had not yet realized itself as a separate self. And by that time Ireland had already had a written language for seven centuries, they were the center of European civilization, saved all of Catholic Europe from the Dark Middle Ages, and were the center of enlightenment. And in the VI-VIII centuries, a crowd of Catholic educators came from the north of Europe to the south.

But in the Tudor era the situation changed: England ceased to be Catholic, and the Irish became enemies because they remained Catholics. And then it was already a national-religious conflict. On this basis, ideas about the Irish changed, and politics in the 19th century equated Irishness with Catholicism - that is, cultural aspect fell away, but the religious one remained, and the English-speaking Protestants, who considered themselves Irish to the core, had a hard time - the writers in particular.

Now about literature. Ireland has four Nobel laureate in literature - Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Heaney. And this is in a nation of only five million people. This is the first thing. Secondly, in their shadow, especially in the shadow of Joyce, a huge literature has grown, some of which, fortunately, also exists in Russian. And we would also like to emphasize this.

Why O'Crihin and Stevens?

Well, this year we decided to publish two authors who had a direct or indirect connection to the Irish Renaissance. The first is Thomas O'Krihin with the book "The Islander". He wrote in Irish, and Yuri Andreychuk translated it from Irish, which is especially valuable because there is a tendency to translate Irish writers With English translations. Medieval Irish literature has been translated into Russian for a long time, but modern Irish literature written in Irish hardly figures in the Russian-speaking space. And we decided to start this campaign - not exactly Napoleonic, but we have some plans for a dozen books translated from Irish.

We won’t make more than two books a year, because Yura [Andreychuk] won’t be able to handle any more: translating from Irish is not a ram’s sneeze, and Yura still has a teaching load. But I really want to show the Russian reader that the Irish language is not dead - it is not Latin, and how rich literature is in the Irish language. It contains both modernism and postmodernism. Irish literature in force historical reasons more inclined to the small genre than to the novel form. And “Ulysses,” in general, is not a very disguised collection of stories, which does not detract from its merits, but it is important to understand that the entire tradition of Irish creativity in language organizes this literary space as a space of small form: poetry, stories, drama. Although, you see, we will present to readers a certain set of novels that are familiar to us.

"Islander"

Thomas O'Krichin wrote an epoch-making biographical novel. O'Krichin was born in the middle of the 19th century, that is, around the Great Famine, and lived a fairly long life already in the 20th century. He lived on Blasket Island. This is such an absolute reserve in terms of culture, language , relationships and other things, the Blasketians, of course, went to Mainland- to the main island - on their own business, but everything is specific to them: clothes, gait, language, they stand out in the crowd. And when they were asked - what kind of Irishman are you, they answered: we are Blasquetians. Ireland, from their point of view, became oppressed, modernized and vulgarized, but they remained Old Testament.

Life on Blasket was cruel, gloomy, such a constant struggle, when you could not go outside for a week because the wind knocked you down. Because the soil there is a stone overgrown with grass, and there is nothing but algae to fertilize this soil. And the people on this island survived. They were evacuated from there in the mid-twentieth century under the pretext that the conditions there were unsuitable for life, but in reality - so that the people would not evade taxes and would generally be under control. And now these islands are slowly being turned into museum-reserves. In particular - Blasket.

And a resident of this island, at the suggestion of one of his friends, slowly, in a whole series of letters, compiled an autobiography. And it gave birth to a whole stream of autobiographical testimonies that were intended to record the fading reality of this reserve: two more such memoirists appeared on Blasket besides O’Krichin. In “The Islander” there is a very complex Irish language, a specific dialect, Yura fought with it for almost a year. And the help desk is large.

“The Islander” by Thomas O'Krichin is a real memoir, not a fictionalized Ireland, a unique document. There is another bonus: the novel “The Singing of Lazarus” by Flann O'Brien is largely a nod towards “The Islander” and the Blasket memoir phenomenon in general. But this is not a parody on the islanders themselves, but rather on the sentimentalization of this layer literary statements. Overall it was popular genre, because the Irish understood: nature is leaving; its fixation was valuable not only to nationalists, but also in general intelligent people- as a memory of the past.

"Irish Wonderful Tales"

The second book is James Stephens's Irish Wondrous Tales, an example of the Gaelic Renaissance, with which we are familiar mainly from the works of Yeats, Lady Gregory and, to some extent, George Russell. These are people who were engaged in the revival of culture, collecting folklore, rebirth and broadcast of what was collected through the theater. Stevens is of the same generation as Joyce, then retellings of mythological material were a fashionable thing, O'Grady Sr. took up this, and then Yeats, Gregory and Stevens.

But what is remarkable about Stevens is his fantastic sense of humor. If Lady Gregory worked with the texts very pedantically, meticulously, then he took ten tales and reworked them, retold them, rearranged them. He pulled out what was funny, ironic, hooligan, and lively from these texts, and blew away the patina of eternity from them. The reader is often inclined to treat any epic with reverence and boredom, because people with incomprehensible motivation act there, they have their own values, different from ours. Stevens's book can give the Russian-speaking reader the opportunity to see timeless real life, live laughter and poetry. Stevens in this sense is a translator between times.

The bottom line, it seems to us, is that these two books will give the reader the opportunity to come into contact with the time of the Gaelic Renaissance - that is, the time when Ireland radically rethought itself and recreated itself as we now see it, beyond the popular stereotypes.