finished; and I’m not convinced by Yeats’s contention that it would have been the playwright’s ‘masterwork’ if he’d lived to complete it.
The language that soars and makes a new music in the other plays seems wrong here and contrived. Declan Kiberd argues that the writing is strongly influenced by Gaelic sources: written ( Oidhe Chloinne Uisnigh ) and oral (versions Synge may have heard on the Aran Islands); and says that this directness of approach is one reason why his play is more faithful to the legend and more exciting than the Yeats or Russell versions as drama. That’s as may be but I can’t believe in the spoken language of the play: this is the hard brutal world of Ulster, a different hardness to Galway or Kerry, a different way of saying and of being.
Every play must make its own language: we can’t know how Deirdre, Naoise and Conor spoke (if their like ever existed, if they ever spoke at all). A play isn’t a documentary and if it isn’t free to re-imagine (that key word: imagination ), to re-tell, to re-invent then one might as well not bother writing at all. As Synge said: ‘People are entitled to use those old stories in any way they wish.’
I’ve read all the versions of the Deirdre story I know of: from The Book of Leinster and Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn to oral versions in manuscript. I’ve assimilated them, forgotten them and made up my own. The ending of the play is mine – it won’t be found in any source other than my brain and I make no apology for this. The language is mine – with all the risk (and I hope beauty) of poetic theatre – not Synge’s ‘peasant theatre’ and not afraid of swords or ritual.
It’s a bit like At The Black Pig’s Dyke : I remember a few academics asking me what were the written sources for some of the images and myths in the play – and they were flummoxed when I said, in complete truth, that there weren’t any. Henry Glassie’s great book All Silver and No Brass and Alan Gailey’s Irish Folk Drama were invaluable as regards mumming. But the rest came from oral tradition – from my parents and grandparents and god-knows who before them. And from me: my imagination, whatever you want to call the creative impulse.
March 18:
I notice that the original name for Rue des Irlandais is Rue du Cheval Vert, the Street of the Green Horse. The carved date has vanished after the century: 17… or maybe the number signifies an old quartier or district. There’s an image of a white horse on the pavement just outside the Centre Culturel Irlandais, slightly faded, almost like a stencil or tattoo on the ground. But it’s beautiful and gives me pleasure, this small white horse on Green Horse Street.
March 19:
Summer again. It’s as if we’ve skipped spring and moved suddenly from winter snow to these days of heat and hurtful sunshine. In the cool of evening I take a wander and find the Panthéon transformed: a temporary garden of forty thousand jonquils, daffodils, created around the entrance and up the steps, being sold this weekend to raise funds for the Institut Curie and cancer research. Standing there I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of grief at Synge’s early death. I meander in tears remembering the story of the large wreath of daffodils sent by Annie Horniman for the funeral at Mount Jerome; and Yeats noting these and remembering that Synge had said he couldn’t bear to look at a daffodil after enduring Miss Horniman’s hectoring letters on yellow notepaper. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the day reading about him, but this moment seems like a kind of prayer: to stand and remember Synge here in the yellow light of flower and sun and to feel tears turn into a kind of ironic laughter; to walk slowly on the strip of artificial grass all the way down the pavement of the Rue Soufflot to the Luxembourg Gardens.
March 24:
Too wet to walk to Montparnasse cemetery to visit Beckett’s grave. It had somehow seemed like the
The language that soars and makes a new music in the other plays seems wrong here and contrived. Declan Kiberd argues that the writing is strongly influenced by Gaelic sources: written ( Oidhe Chloinne Uisnigh ) and oral (versions Synge may have heard on the Aran Islands); and says that this directness of approach is one reason why his play is more faithful to the legend and more exciting than the Yeats or Russell versions as drama. That’s as may be but I can’t believe in the spoken language of the play: this is the hard brutal world of Ulster, a different hardness to Galway or Kerry, a different way of saying and of being.
Every play must make its own language: we can’t know how Deirdre, Naoise and Conor spoke (if their like ever existed, if they ever spoke at all). A play isn’t a documentary and if it isn’t free to re-imagine (that key word: imagination ), to re-tell, to re-invent then one might as well not bother writing at all. As Synge said: ‘People are entitled to use those old stories in any way they wish.’
I’ve read all the versions of the Deirdre story I know of: from The Book of Leinster and Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn to oral versions in manuscript. I’ve assimilated them, forgotten them and made up my own. The ending of the play is mine – it won’t be found in any source other than my brain and I make no apology for this. The language is mine – with all the risk (and I hope beauty) of poetic theatre – not Synge’s ‘peasant theatre’ and not afraid of swords or ritual.
It’s a bit like At The Black Pig’s Dyke : I remember a few academics asking me what were the written sources for some of the images and myths in the play – and they were flummoxed when I said, in complete truth, that there weren’t any. Henry Glassie’s great book All Silver and No Brass and Alan Gailey’s Irish Folk Drama were invaluable as regards mumming. But the rest came from oral tradition – from my parents and grandparents and god-knows who before them. And from me: my imagination, whatever you want to call the creative impulse.
March 18:
I notice that the original name for Rue des Irlandais is Rue du Cheval Vert, the Street of the Green Horse. The carved date has vanished after the century: 17… or maybe the number signifies an old quartier or district. There’s an image of a white horse on the pavement just outside the Centre Culturel Irlandais, slightly faded, almost like a stencil or tattoo on the ground. But it’s beautiful and gives me pleasure, this small white horse on Green Horse Street.
March 19:
Summer again. It’s as if we’ve skipped spring and moved suddenly from winter snow to these days of heat and hurtful sunshine. In the cool of evening I take a wander and find the Panthéon transformed: a temporary garden of forty thousand jonquils, daffodils, created around the entrance and up the steps, being sold this weekend to raise funds for the Institut Curie and cancer research. Standing there I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of grief at Synge’s early death. I meander in tears remembering the story of the large wreath of daffodils sent by Annie Horniman for the funeral at Mount Jerome; and Yeats noting these and remembering that Synge had said he couldn’t bear to look at a daffodil after enduring Miss Horniman’s hectoring letters on yellow notepaper. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the day reading about him, but this moment seems like a kind of prayer: to stand and remember Synge here in the yellow light of flower and sun and to feel tears turn into a kind of ironic laughter; to walk slowly on the strip of artificial grass all the way down the pavement of the Rue Soufflot to the Luxembourg Gardens.
March 24:
Too wet to walk to Montparnasse cemetery to visit Beckett’s grave. It had somehow seemed like the
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