I got a present shortly before Christmas. From Germany. It was a beautiful Oscar Wilde calendar. Not from the man himself, of course, but from a friend of mine, Jorg Rademacher. I first met Jorg nearly twenty years ago when he helped organise some readings for me in Germany. He’s a very tall, very courteous and highly intelligent man with a passionate interest in many aspects of Irish culture, particularly Oscar Wilde. Besides being an elegant calendar, the book (because it’s really more book than calendar) contains a range of lesser-known poems by Wilde, with an accompanying German translation on the adjoining page. With an effort, I’ll confine myself to the sestet of one sonnet titled “The Grave of Shelley”:
Ah! Sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
I sometimes think people living abroad – in America, in Germany – have more knowledge of and reverence for our Irish heritage. I visited Boston College (yes, that one, Virginia) nearly twenty years ago as well, and I was astonished and the thoroughness and sensitivity with which they cared for and studied things Irish. It’s true: sometimes foreigners put us to shame. Anyway, I’m more than pleased with my Oscar Wilde calendar and filled with gratitude to that scholarly and generous man, Jorg Rademacher. Go raibh cead maith agat, Jorg.
Hi Jude …I imagine if Oscar was living in France today , where he ended his short life, he may have been lifted from penury by contributing regularly to “Charlie Hebdo”… I’d say that would be the kind of magazine that would allow him to promote the likes of Salome….Polite society in Britain and Ireland had ostracised him by then anyway…the same people would do it today . Look too at the way they reclaimed James Joyce when he was safely dead…It could all have turned out so differently…
Rademacher.
What a bell that surname rings, Esteemed Blogmeister.
As in Pete Rademacher, the boxer who won the heavyweight gold at the same Olympics Downunder as Ronnie Delaney.Happily, both golden boys are still h. and hearty and continue to beat the snot off and run five rings around the Grim Reaper with the grey beard and the sharp scythe by his side.
No surprise to read your observations re Germany and Irish culture. The back story of the revival of leprechaun is intertwined with the name of the Gaelic scholar from Hamburg, Kuno Meyer. Whose ground-scratching work led him to being granted the Freedom of Dublin City.
Only to have it rescinded by the then, you know, Mayor, on account of
– donner und blitzen ! – Herr Meyer backing the wrong ass in the Great Donkey Derby of 14-18. But which the Shinners duly restored once they grabbed power in 1920 by dint of dastardly democracy. (Counting, aon, do, tri….).
Or, in the language which shatters understanding: fascism.
Constance.
Another name which rings a bell, albeit a more gentle one with a delicate timbre.
Constance was the wife of the Oscar Wilde and most unusual for a woman in the role of spouse, singularly failed to tame her husband. The man whom the Sunday Independent Cult once famously compared to John Delaney, in terms of appearance.(Reader is invited to add a comment here: ).
Lake Constance is a lake which borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland and a small island near the German shore has a linguistic link with Kuna Meyer. For it was in a monastic cell on that island in the 9th Century that perhaps the most legendary of all leprechaun poems was composed: by a monk about his small white cat, Pangur Ban.
Every Irish poet worth his weight in the Queen’s shillings has tried his paw, and possibly neck, at translating this simple and simply shatter-proof poem. The best remains the original – by the noted Celticist from England, Robin Flower. Who first versed the Erse thus:
‘I and Pangur Ban, my cat
Tis a little task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night’.
Robin Flower, who was known by the Blasphemy, oops, Blasket Islanders as ‘Blaithin’ was also indirectly responsible for the publication of the autobiography of Peig Sayes. ‘Peig’, ni ga a ra/of course, is the great Aunt Sally at which the Father Teddy boys on the fringe of the cultural cringe take turns to peg insults at. Ad brown noseam.
It is perhaps, the only instance in the Free Southern State where the ruling class, the Dworkin c., opts to stay mum where one of their own is under attack. In a beautifully crafted piece in the litter column of The Unionist Times this very day, the eternally outspoken and permanently outraged Ivan Bacik rabbited on (yawn) about ‘hate-crimes’, that sort of thingy.
One suspects the Reid Professor of Criminal Law in TCD does not hang her academic mortarboard off the peg called Peig.
The R. P. of C. Law in TCD has, of course, been compared to the lying-in constituency of those what have the ambish for Arus an Uachtarain. Which is where Perkie must of n. quote Peig’s namesake Leo: ‘More than I can say’.
By a commodious vicus of recirculaiton one returns to the name of Rademacher.
Whose first bout as a professional was for the Heavyweight Title of the World. After knocking down the defending champ, Floyd Patterson, in the second he was subsequently stopped himself in the sixth round.
Floyd P: the same who gets namechecked in the second last (one thought is was in the last story, but sadly no, which means one cannot use a fav word of TUT: eponymous) story of ‘Booing the Bishop’ by one of this parish.
Which can only mean it’s duncher doffing time, Esteemed Blogmeister.
This collection, in a curious way, reminds one of the celebrated ceili band of Peter Sellers. Whereas that egregious ensemble was brimful of ‘bum notes’ there is not one single, solitary b.n. from the beginning to end of this book.
From the huge tree ‘with a trunk like a rhinoceros’s middle’ through the girl ‘whose eyebrows pulled together, separated only by a V of anger ‘ to ‘the jeggety-thud of Peggy Sue on the juke box’ this stockpile of stories, entitled ‘Booing the Bishop’ compels one to misquote W.B. Yeats: ‘a thurible beauty is born’.
In ainm Chroim, if Perkie had of only having knew his lecturer in the Q’s English was half this good he would have having made a better effort to stay awake during class..
And just because this, erm, puff might earn an extension of one’s plenary indulgence from EB (fingers crossed) doesn’t necessarily mean it ain’t true.
Nar laga Dia do lamh go ceann, ceann i bhfad !
The Poet soars with eagles, breathes pure ether,/Basks in the light that suns the mountain peak,/And sings, from spirit altitudes, such strains,/That all the toilers in life’s rugged furrows/Are forced, for once, to lift the bow’d-down head,/And look on Heaven.
Speranza
lovely tribute to oscar and jorg. Enjoy your calendar every day this year
Surely JamesJoyce rejected Ireland, and not the other way about? He seems to have been confused in the mid-1920s by the fact that 26/32nds of Ireland was independent.
Ireland didn’t have much of a publishing industry in Joyce’s day, he wasn’t well-known because he was banned in GB, and under a cloud in the US (with Puritanism’s last hurrah, Prohibition bringing virtual war to the streets), concentrating on Ulysses would have been a problem with Tommy-guns rattling in the background.