Dear Cloverians,
We have missed you!
In getting ready for the trip in June 2025, we are all reading great works of Irish literature.
We’ve been asked for reading recommendations. So, are there some great places to start? Does a bear wear a pointy hat? Does the pope poop in the woods?
Wilde, Oscar
Reading Oscar Wilde is an exercise in letting go. Let me explain. I don’t exactly want to be like him, but I’d like to write like him.
Well, not exactly like him. Less ornate. Less direct.
I’d probably use more imagination being less imaginative. I’d try to be frugal, but I haven’t known the frugality that Wilde knew. And he was a fan of luxury. I’m going to have to let that go.
Anyhoo, Wilde was brilliant.
In a prologue to his great novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wilde writes that all art is quite useless. I shit you not:
“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
In a way I agree with him. But in a way, fuck that.
A good launching point might be ‘The Selfish Giant’. Or watch the movie The Importance of Being Earnest, the 1952 version.
Yeats, William Butler
William Butler Yeats was a complex man of simplicity. He was born into a lace curtain Irish family, of Dublin, and spent his summers with his grandparents in the ruddy provinciality of Cty. Sligo. Willy, as he was known by his friends, enjoyed the bucolic beauty of the Irish countryside, and was a renowned raconteur in London’s high society. He enjoyed chats with plowmen at the pub, and occult philosophical talks with Aliester Crowley. Simply complex.
Old Willy Yeats might well be the architect of the Irish literary and artistic culture we love so much today. He recalled the fields and fairytales of his youth with his grandmother in Sligo, connecting him to an ancient tradition. He witnessed the Easter Rising, the Irish Civil War, and the horrors of World War I. Violence and conflict shaped him into one of the most respected modernists of his time.
It is a curious thing that the totality of his life experiences have somehow created an ethos, in the United States, for the Irish cultural arts. He didn’t merely create an atmosphere for the preservation of art frozen in amber. He revitalized fairytales and historic epics, and brought them into the 20th century. In doing so, he showed the rest of the Irish renaissance artists that they needn’t turn away from their heritage, nor did they need to be purely of the moment. Yeats was the bridge from the Ireland that was to the Ireland that is still becoming.
Excellent poetic works include ‘The Stolen Child’, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and ‘Easter, 1916’.
Heaney, Seamus
Seamus Heaney, a lover of the land he was from and the words that arose from it, is considered one of the major poets of the 20th Century. Well known for his textural landscape poetry, Heany encapsulated the complexities of Irish history in the context of his own identity as a born-Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland and the places that he understood as home.
From collections like Death of Naturalist or Field Work, Seamus Heaney graciously takes your hand and wanders through the Irish terrain of conflict and beauty. He dissects the nuances of The Troubles and urges you to go beyond what is right or wrong. He strives to only report what is true which challenges the reader to look further than a skim of the words of Seamus Heaney.
Joyce, James
James Joyce is widely understood to be one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century in the English-speaking world. He wrote Ulysses, for chrissakes! His language is poetic. His descriptions of people and places in Ireland at the turn of the 20th century are exceptionally rich. Although some of his writing has been described as ‘thorny,’ ‘impassable,’ and ‘difficult to follow along,’ Joyce’s earlier writings are far easier to understand. For example, Dubliners is a collection of short stories, and, seriously, how hard can short stories be?
The most famous short story in Dubliners is “The Dead.” For those seeking more of a challenge, we can suggest A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. It is definitely more complex, but not like Ulysses. In fact, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man serves as an excellent bridge between Dubliners and Ulysses. John is reading Ulysses at least twice before we go. He says he’s doing this because “It’s better this third time around.” He concluded his thoughts with, “I’m in the mood to simply enjoy the writing, and to leave the literary dissection to other people, at other times.”
We still have some room available for our tour, but room is running out fast. To find out more about our Celtic Twilight Tour itinerary, check out our blog post.
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