Máirtín Ó Direáin | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1910-11-29)29 November 1910 |
| Died | 19 March 1988(1988-03-19) (aged 77) Dublin, Ireland |
| Resting place | Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin[1] |
| Pen name | Ruaidhrí Beag |
| Occupation | poet, writer |
| Language | Irish (Connacht Irish) |
| Literary movement | Modern literature in Irish |
| Years active | 1949–1986 |
| Notable works | Rogha Dánta andÓ Mórna agus Dánta Eile |
| Spouse | Áine Colivet (m. 1945–1976, her death)[2] |
| Children | 1 |
Máirtín Ó Direáin ([ˈmˠaːɾˠtʲiːnʲoːˈdʲɪɾʲaːnʲ]; 29 November 1910 – 19 March 1988) was anIrish poet from theAran IslandsGaeltacht. Along withSeán Ó Ríordáin andMáire Mhac an tSaoi, Ó Direáin was, in the words ofLouis de Paor, "one of a trinity of poets who revolutionised Irish language poetry in the 1940s and 50s."[3] According to a 1984 lecture byDesmond Egan, "Ó Direáin's genius stands revealed - to the extent that we must look abroad for poets with whom his achievement might best be compared; toSpain andAntonio Machado's sweet intensity; toRussia andAkhmatova; toGermany and the bittersweet music ofHeinrich Heine."[4]
Ó Direáin was born in Sruthán onInis Mór in theAran Islands[5] and was the eldest of the three sons and one daughter of Seán Ó Direáin and Mairéad Ní Dhireáin of Inis Mór.[6] As was still common in the West of Ireland at the time, Ó Direáin grew up as amonoglot and spoke onlyConnacht Irish until his mid-teens.[5] His father died prematurely in 1917 and left his widow with four children and less than 20 acres of farmland.[6] Ó Direáin was educated at Onaghtnational school.[7]
Like many other writers, poets, and intellectuals of the post-Irish War of Independence era, Ó Direáin chose to make a career in theIrish civil service. He worked first for theDepartment of Posts and Telegraphs inGalway City from 1928 to 1937,[8] where Ó Direáin also served as the secretary of the city's chapter ofConradh na Gaeilge and sometime times also acted in Irish languagestage plays.[6] While living in Galway City, Ó Direáin also wrote an Irish-language stage play about the life ofRussian Symbolist poetAlexander Blok for theTaibhdhearc theatre run byMicheál Mac Liammóir andHilton Edwards.[9]
Ó Direáin then lived and worked inDublin, first for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and thenDepartment of Education, among, "the scurryingLilliputians of the metropolis, theseangánfhir, or ant-people", from 1937 until 1975. After hearing a lecture in 1938 by prominentGaelic revival poet and writerTadhg Ó Donnchadha, Ó Direáin decided, by his own account, to dedicate his life toModern literature in Irish and began writing poetry.[10] Muiris Mac Conghail later disagreed in a 1988 article about his late friend, as he believed that Ó Direáin was already planning to be a poet even when he was still a child upon Inishmore.[11]
At this time, Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and many other Gaelic revivalists like him favouredreviving both theClassical Gaelicliterary language andDán Díreach; the strict metres. Both had been traditionally used in theIrish bardic poetry composed in bothGaelic Ireland and theHighlands and Islands ofScotland and continued to be widely understood in both countries for at least a century after the bardic schools were closed down in the17th-century. Instead of taking this approach, Ó Direáin, joined a few years later by fellow poetsSeán Ó Ríordáin andMáire Mhac an tSaoi, spearheaded a revival ofModernist poetry, which had been lying dormant in Irish language verse since theexecution by firing squad ofPatrick Pearse following theEaster Rising in 1916.[12]
Similarly to Ó Ríordáin and Mhac an tSaoi, Ó Direáin preferred using theModern Irish he had grown up speaking in a livingGaeltacht community instead of older forms of the language. Ó Direáin differed radically from Mhac an tSaoi, however, who sometimes wrote Dán Díreach in the livingMunster Irish dialect spoken aroundDun Chaoin, in that he preferred emulatingT.S. Eliot and writing poetry inrhythmically measured, but more loose and experimental verse forms inspired by theAmhrán metreoral poetry andSean Nós songs he had learned in the ceilidh houses as a child upon Inishmore. The results were nothing less than revolutionary.[6]
Ó Direáin published his first two poetry collections at his own expense in 1942 and 1943. In 1949, his selected poems became one of the first books published bySáirséal agus Dill, a new publishing house forModern literature in Irish.[6]
Ó Direáin's early poetry celebrated the traditional cultural life he had known upon the Aran Islands and lamented both its passing and the mass migration to Ireland's major cities. One of his best-known poems,Stoite ("Uprooted"), contrasts traditional Irish rural life in union with seasonal rhythms and ancestral culture with the drab existence of urban civil servants and office workers.[6] At the same time, as his poetry and other writings also reveal, Ó Direáin enjoyed, at least to an extent, the Irish-speaking literary and cultural life of both Galway City and Dublin.[13]
While Ó Direáin was rooted deeply in the literature andoral tradition of Gaelic Ireland, his poetry also shows influence from throughoutworld literature. For example, Ó Direáin drew inspiration from bothT.S. Eliot andWilliam Butler Yeats, whose, "antipathy for 'the filthy modern tide'", matched his own.[14] Even when delivering public lectures in the Irish language, Ó Direáin often quoted extensively from the poetry and essays of Eliot, in the original English.[15]
From theliterature of theGermanosphere, the philosophy of bothFriedrich Nietzsche andOswald Spengler further influenced Ó Direáin's, "apocalyptic sense of a civilisation in terminal decline."[16] Another favorite modern writer who influenced Ó Direáin deeply wasanti-communist Russian politicalrefugee and philosopherNikolai Berdyaev.[17]
In a radical difference from the rejection of Catholic teaching on human sexuality found even during the 1950s in the poetry of Máire Mhac an tSaoi,[18] Ó Direáin's poetry, both during and after theEmergency in Dublin, repeatedly displays the horror he felt as he witnessed the escalating collapse ofChristian morality, the growing number of, "emasculated men" and the similar loss of feminity in women.[19] Ó Direáin considered all three trends to be rooted in the (Irish:stoiteachas), or "Uprootedness", ofIrish culture andIrish people in long English-speaking parts of the country.
Ó Direáin also went on the record as a harsh critic offeminism, but during an interview for the documentaryAn Carraig Stoite, a female Irish civil service colleague described Ó Direáin as a man who was always very gentlemanly towards his female coworkers. She described the Irish civil service of the era as an extremely depressing career for people of both genders.
During the same documentary, Ó Direáin's daughter, Niamh Ní Dhireáin, recalled the very deep love that her parents felt for each other and that the happiest times of her father's day were always after coming home to his family. Ó Direáin's vocalanti-feminism was accordingly rooted in his own preference for time with his family and his hatred of working in an urban office.
In an interview published posthumously, Ó Direáin went on the record saying that he thought women who chose to build their whole life around their job were either very foolish or very controlling in a manner he had often seen among malecareerists. No one, he explained, should work a day job if they had another and better option. He also said, though, that he firmly believed that women who did the same job as men deserved to be paid the same wage.[20][21]
He also published poetry eulogizingGrace O'Malley and the courage and the sacrifices made in the name ofIrish republicanism by women during both theEaster Rising and theIrish War of Independence.[22]
In 1952, Ó Direáin translated a play by Irish playwrightTeresa Deevy forRadio Éireann; the play was calledThe King of Spain's Daughter[23] (translated asIníon Rí na Spáinne).[24]
Ó Direáin's lifelong adherence totraditionalist conservatism,Roman Catholicism,Irish republicanism, and theanti-colonialist values ofOfficial Ireland, further influenced his contempt for what he perceived as the massSecularisation and greed-inspiredAmericanization ofIrish culture beginning in the 1960s. His views on this era are best expressed in his poemsÉire ina bhfuil romhainn ("Ireland in the Times Ahead") andMar chaitheamar an choinneal ("As We Spent the Candle").[6]
As he grew older, Ó Direáin increasingly mixed his literary and formalist idiom, the heart of which still remained, "the spoken language of theGaeltacht", with much older influences, such as traditional bardic poetry in Classical Gaelic byPádraigín Haicéad andDáibhí Ó Bruadair, the17th-centuryProtestant translation of theChristian Bible by BishopWilliam Bedell, as well asPatrick Dinneen's 1904 and 1927 dictionaries.[25] Another influence upon Ó Direáin as he aged was thePostmodern literature and Irish language poetry composed byCasla,Connemara native andTallaght schoolteacherCaitlín Maude.[26]
Furthermore, during the early 1980s, Ó Direáin chose to take the risks of crossing what was still a "hard border" and the danger of falling victim to the ongoingparamilitary violence byUlster Loyalists duringThe Troubles. Ó Direáin travelled toNorthern Ireland and gave a poetry reading at theCumann Chluain Ard, an urbanlanguage revival club in theUlster Irish-speakingGaeltacht Quarter of WestBelfast.[27]
In a November 1984 lecture in Ó Direáin's presence,Desmond Egan commented, "I have long considered him not only the finest Irish poet, writing in Irish, of our times; but more: that very embodiment of that Irish civilisation and ethos, that preciouscultura which has now become a threatened species, the survival of which is by no means assured. Ó Direáin could - and with more justification than the Englishman - adoptLytton Strachey's claim duringThe Great War to be, 'the civilisation for which you are fighting.'"[28]
According to his English translator Frank Sewell, "It is evident from the poems that an early love affair and broken relationship haunts many of Ó Direáin's poems, even if he remains circumspect about the identity of the particular Aran-islandBeatrice dei Bardi orMaude Gonne who set him off on the well-worn poets' path of longing for an absent Muse."[29]
Máirtín Ó Direáin married Áine Colivet, a Dublin native of French descent, in 1945. They had one child, a daughter named Niamh Ní Dhireáin, in 1947.[6] Ó Direáin's wife died in 1976.
His literary awards include theAn Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council Awards (1964 and 1971); the Butler Prize, withEoghan Ó Tuairisc (1967); the Ossian-Preis für Dichtung from the Freiherr vom Stein Foundation inHamburg,West Germany (1977). He was also a member ofAosdána.
Máirtín Ó Direáin died in Dublin on 19 March 1988.[6]
The texts of a series of lectures that Máirtín Ó Direáin had delivered on his own work inUniversity College Dublin in 1969, were later edited byEoghan Ó hAnluain and published posthumously in 2002 asÓn ulán ramhar siar.[6]
Carraig agus cathair: Ó Direáin is a recent (2002) biography. Its title ('The Rock and the City') refers to Ó Direáin's journey from his native rocky island toDublin, where he lived most of his life.
An Charraig Stoite (The Uprooted Rock) is a 2003 award-nominatedTG4/Bord Scannán na hÉireann funded documentary on Máirtín Ó Direáin which was written byAlan Titley and produced and directed byMac Dara Ó Curraidhín.
On 27 May 2010,An Post (theRepublic of Ireland'sPost Office) issued a single stamp to commemorate the birth centenary of Máirtín Ó Direáin featuring a portrait of the poet.[30]
In 2018, theUniversity of Galway, celebrated the 30th anniversary of Ó Direáin's passing by making him one of the main themes of their annual celebration ofSeachtain na Gaeilge. The title of the event and exhibit, which drew on university, State, and private archives, was"Máirtín Ó Direáin – Fathach File / Reluctant Modernist". Ó Direáin's daughter Niamh (née Ní Dhireáin) Sheridan, spoke at the event and was joined by her daughter and her grandson.[31]
Six of Ó Direáin's poems have been put to music byIrish traditional musicianColm Ó Snodaigh of the music groupKíla:Faoiseamh a Gheobhadsa,Maith Dhom,Bua na Mara,Dínit an Bhróin,"An tEarrach Thiar" andBí i do Chrann. The first three were recorded onHandel's Fantasy,Luna Park (two Kíla albums) andGiving - Colm Ó Snodaigh's 2007 solo album.
Another more recent musical setting ofFaoiseamh a Gheobhadsa was composed byZoë Conway and her husbandJohn McIntyre, who first recorded their arrangement as part of the albumAllt, which is a collaboration withScottish traditional musicianJulie Fowlis and her husband Éamonn Doorley. A native speaker of theNorth Uist dialect ofScottish Gaelic, Julie Fowlis has performed the song alongside them, alternating verses in Scottish Gaelic with Zoë Conway singing the originalConnacht Irish. Conway and McIntyre's musical setting of Ó Direáin's poem remains a very popular one, and they often perform it together on the concert stage.
His main works include the poetry collections:
His autobiographical essays are collected asFeamainn Bhealtaine (1961).
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