Letteratura inglese

DESCRIZIONE LITTLE C.

First time that we have a physical description of a character in Dubliners. It is a

description of a masculine character, but has something feminine in him (he has

something you would not expect from a man in Joyce times).

A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how useless it was to

struggle against fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages had

bequeathed to him.

He remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had bought

them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the little room off

the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the bookshelf and read out

something to his wife. But shyness had always held him back; and so the books

had remained on their shelves. At times he repeated lines to himself and this

consoled him.

Again, poetry was a feminine thing, melancholy too.

He wondered whether he could write a poem to express his idea. Perhaps

Gallaher might be able to get it into some London paper for him. Could he write

something original? He was not sure what idea he wished to express, but the

thought that a poetic moment had touched him took life within him like an infant

hope.

This is exactly who Little Chandler is: he is not writing a poem, or thinking of the

wonders of the evening, but he is thinking of the idea of writing a poem and publishing

it. (…) A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old -

thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the point of maturity.

There were so many different moods and impressions that he wished to express

in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a

poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought,

but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and

simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men

would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the

crowd, but he might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds. The English critics,

perhaps, would recognize him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the

melancholy tone of his poems; besides that, he would put in allusions. He began

to invent sentences and phrases from the notice which his book would get. 'Mr

Chandler has the gift of easy and graceful verse'... 'A wistful sadness pervades

these poems'... 'The Celtic note'. It was a pity his name was not more Irish-

looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother's name before the

surname: Thomas Malone Chandler; or better still: T. Malone Chandler. He would

speak to Gallaher about it.

Repetition of the word “melancholy”. He fantasizes not on the content of the poem,

but on the reviews of the critics to a non-existent poem. There is also the idea of being

an Irish, a Celtic poem: “Malone” (famous song in England “Come back to Eirie (=il

nome di Irlanda) Malone”).

The Celtic School or Celtic Twilight: “English characterization of Irish poets of the last

th

19 century as producing writing that wistfully looked back on the lost heritage of

Gaelic folklore and legend with dreamy, otherwordly sorrow”. School made of Scottish,

Welsh and Irish poets inspired by the atmosphere, old legends and folklore of these

territories.

He watched the scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he

thought of life) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him.

How melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the melancholy of

his soul in verse?

“Melancholy” is a key word not only in this story. The first to talk about melancholy as

part of Celtic literature was Matthew Arnold, Victorian poet, who was also a social

critic. According to him, English people were solid but gross, lacking the gentle feelings

On the Study of Celtic Literature

of the Celts. 1867, , by Matthew Arnold:

The Celt has not produced great poetical works, he has only produced poetry

with an air of greatness investing it all, and sometimes giving, moreover, to short

pieces, or to passages, lines, and snatches of long pieces, singular beauty and

power. And yet he loved poetry so much that he grudged no pains to it; but the

true art, the architectonicé which shapes great works, such as

the Agamemnon or the Divine Comedy, comes only after a steady, deep-

searching survey, a firm conception of the facts of human life, which the Celt has

not patience for. So he runs off into technic, where he employs the utmost

elaboration, and attains astonishing skill; but in the contents of his poetry you

have only so much interpretation of the world as the first dash of a quick, strong

perception, and then sentiment, infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his

want of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back from the highest

success.

= poesia celtica: aria di grandezza, bellezza e potenza; no indagine approfondita

(non hanno pazienza nel soffermarsi sui fatti della vita umana); Tecnica elaborata

ma contenuti non approdonditi; interpretazione veloce dovuta alla mancanza di

sanità mentale nel poeta.

If I were asked where English poetry got these three things, its turn for style, its turn for

melancholy, and its turn for natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of

nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way,—I should answer, with some doubt, that it

got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its

melancholy from a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got

nearly all its natural magic.

Idea that the Celtic feeling and expression is characterized by melancholy. This idea of

the Celts had a political perception: the fact that the Celts had no patience, were

childish was an impediment for them to govern themselves. Terence Brown:

John V. Kelleher makes a very persuasive case for considering much poetry

written by Irishmen and women in the years between the fall of Parnell and the

War of independence as work which seems to prove the aptness of Arnold’s

categories and the accuracy of his assessment of the Celtic genius. Celtic twilight

poetry might almost have been written, so Kelleher implies, to Arnold’s

prescription. And Arnold may indeed have been partly responsible for creating a

critical climate in which work of a particular kind could gain currency as

representing the Celtic imagination.

We have said that Celts generally mean Welsh, Scottish and Irish. There were different

strategies by the English to deal with the Celts request of independence. The Welsh

were the closest to London, and the first to seek independence. Since they were too

close to the state, the best way was to welcome them into the governance of the

state. In Scotland, the English helped one group against the other to control the

situation. In Ireland, finally, there was a colonial attitude. The old Celtic aristocracy

was substituted with the British aristocracy, land was given to soldiers – this happened

mainly in the north, Ulster. As far as Ireland is concerned, beyond the Celtic revival

and old Gaelic legends there was a strategy aiming at least at cultural independence:

Yeats wrote that the Gaelic tradition was older than the English one – the first English

Beowulf,

work is but in Ireland can be found older stories.

Three Celtic Revivals, connected to periods where Irish fought for their independence:

first period: fine 700-inizio 800 (Romanticism and Pre-Romanticism). Reference:

 Ossian, Irish

1

a cycle of poems by James McPherson (1760s), Thomas Moore’s

Melodies. This movement had a big influence also internationally. Historically, it

is the same period of the first real attempt at independence in Ireland.

second: metà 800 (antiquarians). It is about collecting Irish folklore stories,

 which are supposed to represent the soul of the nation. Very often, the stories

were adapted or rewritten. Political and literary elements go together: at the

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end of the 19 century, there was another insurrection in Dublin.

third: fine 800-inizio 900 (Celtic Twilight, Irish Literary Revival, Gaelic League),

 referred to the stereotypes identified by Arnold of Celts and Saxon. The Gaelic

League tried to revive the language culture and language (the objective was to

encourage the use of Irish in everyday life in order to counter the ongoing

anglicisation of the country).

This last Celtic revival referred to the stereotypes identified by Arnold: Celts vs Saxon.

And here the categorization of Irish poetry by Arnold can be seen through a political

lens. There is a fundamentalist idea of what a Celt is, a person attracted by magic,

feelings, emotion, and fluid; while the English is attracted by solid things, to build an

empire. Opposition that Arnold does: Celts are probably poets, their only possibility is

literature, and this is why they should remain under the rule of the English. The idea of

Ireland was strongly connected with the emerald (“The island of Emerald”), an idea

that conveys the belief of a land where people believed in magic and mystical

creatures, people with long hair playing in the woods. Of course it was not like this: the

Celts were people calate nella loro società, non creature elfiche che vivevano soli nei

boschi (romantic vision che risale a quando in England started to talk about

Celticism).

End of the century: a lot of poets started to recognize themselves as people with

strabordante sentiment vs solidity of English, e.g., Yeats. Yeats was the most important

poet of this Celtic school or Irish revival; this is true for the first part of Yeats’

production, after 1922 he started to write a different kind of poetry. However, Yeats

was perfectly aware that the storytellers he is talking about are storytellers in villages,

Fairy and

talking to other people, not alone in the woods. W.B. Yeats, «Introduction» in

Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry:

Assuredly some joy not quite of this steadfast earth lightens in those eyes—swift

as the eyes of a rabbit—among so many wrinkles, for Paddy Flynn is very old. A

melancholy there is in the midst of their cheerfulness—a melancholy that is

almost a portion of their joy, the visionary melancholy of purely instinctive

natures and of all animals.

(…)

We have here the innermost heart of the Celt in the moments he has grown to

love through years of persecution, when, cushioning himself about with dreams,

and hearing fairy-songs in the twilight, he ponders on the soul and on the dead.

Here is the Celt, only it is the Celt dreaming.

1 L'opera di Macpherson (scozzese) raccoglieva antichi canti gaelici da lui tradotti, attribuendoli

ad un leggendario cantore bardo chiamato Ossian. Si tratta perciò di un abile falso letterario

che rielabora antichi canti popolari.

Yeats dice che il celta era un sognatore malinconico ma con una malinconia che

era par