PLAY IT AGAIN, BOB by Perkin Warbeck

Bob Dylan, whose career commenced under an Irish influence (the Clancy Brothers in Greenwich Village) seems intent on winding it down under a different Irish influence (Sam Beckett in Selmun Palace).

Certainly, if his refusal to allow an invitation to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature interfere with his busy schedule, is anything to go by.

In 1969, when Sam Beckett was informed that he had been chosen as the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature the first reaction from the hawk-visaged chap from Foxrock was the sound of one hand clapping. The second reaction was a trunk call to his agent to find him a hidey hole to coincide with the pomp-drunk Swedish Ceremony where he could retreat to, safe from the prying lens of the paparazzi.

His agent came up trumps – The Selmun Palace Hotel in Malta. (see photos in Pics of the Week).

Curiously, the second most famous artistic work in the English language associated with Malta has a relevance of sorts for both Sam and Bob, both of whom have have spurned the Stockholm Ceremony and prefer to choose a Syndrome away from Syndrome, as it were.

If the Maltese Falcon (the hawk-visaged one might object) was the most celebrated work of literature associated with Malta in the English/French writing- worlds then the play by Christopher Marlowe, the contemporary of The Great Shakes, was the second:

-The Jew of Malta.

While the play itself is (undeservedly) little regarded these days, yet it lives on as one of its lines has pointy-elbowed its way into the vernacular.

(One once knew a chap from El Paso/ Dún Dealgain whose catch phrase it was: it proved the most versatile phrase one ever encountered: he inserted it into every inconceivable topic, from sporty, to political to scenes which might be considered a deal less than the ideal of domestic bliss).

-You have committed Fornication !

– Ah, but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

Sam enjoyed his non-Swedish stay immensely in the Selmun Palace Hotel – especially the walks down the winding boreens of the locality between the stone walls which led down to the remnants of Fort Campbell. This old British Army outpost overlooks St. Paul’s Island, so called because its eponymous saint was shipwrecked there on his way from Ephesus to effin Rome where he was due to be h, d. and quartered in less than salubrious lodgings.

Curiously (2) there is a Irish naval vessel called the MV Samuel Becket currently engaged in saving shipwrecked refugees in the same choppy waters of the Mediterranean.

Sam’s name was a peculiar one for an Irish ship: once, when queried by a French journalist if he was English he replied:

-Au contraire.

As his own family background was staunchly Southern Yune – they were supporters of the Fianna Fail Better party – The name of their Foxrock house was ‘Cooldrinagh’ which is a contrary version of the original ‘Blackthorny Corner’ -one suspects he would have given an identical reply if Irish had replaced English in the Frenchman’s question. That is why one suggested to the Irish Naval Service that perhaps the following might be a more apt name, fore and aft:

– MV Eau Contraire.

The reply was – you guessed it – the sound of the other hand clapping.

Still, he is entitled to be granted at least an honorary Irish pass : anyone who includes the following c-word in his most celebrated work is certainly deserving of no less. The c-word occurs in one of Lucky’s speeches in ‘En Attendant Godot’:

-Camogie.

Re-spect.

The No-show Nobel Prize winner’s stay on Malta was of the wish you were not here variety though not without the odd hitch : Sam was expelled from St. John’s Pro-Cathedral which houses a Caravaggio to sigh for: he  was not so much caught short as caught wearing shorts.

It is not recorded if he was wearing a bowler hat.

Whatever about the shorts, Bob Dylan might opt to sport one of his leopard-skin pill-box hats should he follow Samuel to Selmun.