Island
Voices lecture series Autumn 2016
‘1916:
Language, Identity and Nationhood’
22.9.2016 Museum, Derry
Shovel,
bayonet and pen:
Digging
for nationhood with Francis Ledwidge, 1916-2016
©Dave Duggan September 2016
In
this talk, in English with some Irish, dramatist and novelist Dave
Duggan considers how Francis Ledwidge, navvy, soldier and poet,
turned the sods of his own identity, tilling fields of labour, war
and language into a complex nationality that continues to resonate
today, a century later.
...........................................................................................
Tráthnóna
maith. Good afternoon. Mo bhuíochas daoibh as a bheith anseo. My
thanks to you for being here, for the first, in the 2016 Island
Voices series on 1916: Language, Identity and Nationhood, organised
by The Museum Services, with support from the Nerve Centre. Buíochas
ar leith le Pól, Margaret, Marty agus a gcomhrádaithe. A special
thanks to Pól, Margaret, Marty and their colleagues.
Is
mise Dave Duggan, drámadóir agus úrscealaí, a chónaíonn i
nDoire. I'm Dave Duggan, a Derry-based dramatist and novelist.
The
title of my talk this afternoon is:
Shovel,
bayonet and pen:
Digging
for nationhood with Francis Ledwidge, 1916-2016
It
will last about 40 minutes and there will be time then for questions.
We'll
meet Francis Ledwidge and many more characters, both real and
fictional, some of them alive today, some of them from the recent
past and others from 100 years ago.
Let's
begin with Alderman Fraser Agnew, MBE, chair of the 100 Year
anniversary Battle of the Somme Working Group, in Antrim and
Newtownabbey Borough Council, who writes
It
is generally accepted by historians that events in history mould us
into the people we are. The Battle of the Somme can be viewed as one
of those events in British History that helped mould and create the
Ulster nation.
The
Alderman reveals much about his identity, his language and his
nation. Listen to his words again.
It
is generally accepted by historians that events in history mould us
into the people we are. The Battle of the Somme can be viewed as one
of those events in British History that helped mould and create the
Ulster nation.
Check
with yourself how they sit with you, in particular the words 'we' and
'us'. Attempt a re-write. Feel free to insert The Easter Rising in
place of The Battle of the Somme. Thus we voice utterances formed by,
and forming of, our own identities, languages and nations.
Pretty
soon we're up to our oxters in quagmires of words, allegiances and
passions that make this island and its voices so perennially
fascinating, never more so than now, in 2016, with echoes of 1916
still resonating.
In
April this year, a report in The Irish Times regarding a
remembrance wall in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, said that a
misspelling of one the Irish words chiselled onto the wall would be
corrected. There had already been controversy regarding what names
should be included on this wall, in remembrance of those killed
during the Easter Rising of 1916.
A
set of four letters E i r i, with two accents, one of them in the
wrong place, made a mis-spelled word on the wall. The accent 'fada'
in Irish tells the speaker/reader to lengthen the vowel. In this
case, a 'fada' should appear on the first letter, capital E and on
the last letter, small i, giving the word Éirí as part of the
phrase Éirí Amach na Cásca, which translates to English as
The Easter Rising. Do the stonemasons' hands shake as they chisel
these letters into the wall, under the pressure of the controversies
of remembrance, 100 years on from the event?
Deirtear
gan teanga níl náisiún ann. There is a view which says that a
nation only exists when there is a language. And that a language is a
dialect with a bayonet. A language is a dialect with an army. A
language is a dialect with a regional assembly. A language is a
dialect with a literature.
These
views stiffen when they assert that to form a nation a language,
often external, offering a civic, united, political sense of the
nation, is needed. English for America. English and French, still
contesting, for Canada. English for Australia. Hindi for India.
Mandarin for China. Portuguese for Brazil. Spanish for neighbouring
countries. Visit the Horn of Africa and you'll need Italian, French,
English and Arabic. Oh, and a number of African languages, perceived
as nativist and ethnic, offering cultural forms of nationhood, not
civic forms such as French or English provide. These are the
quagmires and trenches of language, where post-colonial cultural wars
rage on today.
I
suggest we climb into those trenches and do some digging, along with
the Noble Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote
Between
my finger and my thumb
The
squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
And
having described his father digging with a spade, Heaney affirms his
lineage, while picking up the pen and asserting
I'll
dig with it.
So
let's dig with pen, gun, spade or as the title for this talk says,
with shovel, bayonet and pen in the company of another Irish poet,
who, like Heaney, also wrote in English, the civic language of this
nation.
Ba
as Contae na Mí é Francis Ledwidge; file, saighdiúir agus náibhí.
Francis Ledwidge, poet, soldier and navvy, was from County Meath. Ag
an am sin, tús an 20ú aois, b'Éireannach é san Ríocht Aontaithe.
At that time, the start of the 20th century, he was an Irishman in
the United Kingdom, a mono-linguist, speaking and versifying in
English. As a young man, fired by the passions of youth and the
energies of an age of change, he began taking lessons in Irish, like
many others across the country, from the gentry around Yeats and
Synge to the emerging urban lower middle classes such as Pearse.
Their interest in the language of the peasantry was part of the
cultural project of a small nation defining itself as such, a small
nation. Ledwidge was himself a landless peasant, raised by his mother
in a large single-parent family. Look to the biography of Francis
Ledwidge by Alice Curtayne for the basics and much more.
What
impulse towards identity and nationhood bent Ledwidge to learning
Irish? Cad chuige a rinne Ledwidge iarracht ar Ghaeilge a fhoghlaim?
What use was it to him? Hardly much use in his working life, as a
road-mender, a day-labourer for farmers and a copper miner. The
question still resonates today, 100 years later, as does the yearning
Ledwidge felt. How many people have you heard say: I'd love to learn
Irish?
The
revival of interest in the language and culture of the period before
the Anglo-Normans arrived, stretched back into mythological times
with Lady Gregory and WB Yeats, themselves far from peasants, and
generated an understanding that Ireland could also be seen as a great
nation, with stirring heroes and a wondrous literature.
So,
in terms of language, Francis Ledwidge lived, spoke and wrote as an
English speaker, in nationhood terms, a civic language, while trying
to learn a native language of his home place, Irish, and, knowingly
or unknowingly, using line and verse forms common in the literature
of Irish that he could barely read, such as an internal rhyming
between the end of lines and the middle of following ones.
He
shall not hear the bittern cry
in
the wild sky, where he is lain.
Francis
Ledwidge grew up in a period when a sense of Ireland as a small
nation quickened. Such quickening, often leading to uprisings,
occurred periodically. Czech historian Miroslav Hroch, says that
small nations “are those which were in subjection to a ruling
nation for such a long period that the relation of subjection took on
a structural character for both parties”. So, a small nation, like
Ireland, has a long history of foreign rule producing close, and
often tense, bonds of subjugation and interdependence.
Céad
bliain eatarthu, filí Éireannacha, ag scriobh i mBéarla, Francis
Ledwidge ag tús na fiche haoise, Seamus Heaney ag deireadh na
haoise, iad beirt ag iomrascáil lena náisiúnachas. Almost a
century between them, two Irish poets, writing in English, Francis
Ledwidge at the start of the 20th Century and Seamus Heaney at the
end, both wrestling with matters of British and Irish nationhood.
Perhaps.
Did
Ledwidge actually experience any such wrestling? He joined The Irish
Volunteers soon after it became clear that violence was the dominant
method for resolving the political conflicts of his age. British
nationalists imported arms into the north-east of the island, clearly
in expectation of needing to use violence to maintain the status
quo, as pressure for Home Rule for Ireland increased.
This,
among much else, in the spirit of the Alderman's remarks, we
remember. And, of course, we forget. We forget whole peoples and
countless events. French historian Ernest Renan said that nations are
founded “on a rich legacy of memories”, which we, for various
reasons, edit. “Forgetting,” Renan wrote, “and I would even
say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a
nation.”
A
consideration of indigenous peoples in the Americas in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, in Australia in the 17th and 18th centuries
and in Palestine in the 20th century confirms this. Google Dakota
Access Pipeline, to see how the Lakota Sioux nation experiences
historical forgetting today.
What
forgetting formed the Irish nation that emerged from the ashes of
Easter in Dublin and the gory slime of the World War 1 trenches? Any
wonder the stone masons hands shook as they chiselled the words on
the remembrance wall? Soldiers like Francis Ledwidge were an awkward
fit in the new nation, this new small and great nation, needing to be
forged from the bravery and sacrifice of rebellion and the
superheated myths of the Celtic Gods.
Francis
Ledwidge came to Ebrington Barracks, here in Derry, speaking English,
his mother tongue and wearing a British Army uniform, in May 1916.
Thus, his language and nationhood were straightforward, like any
subject of the British Empire. His identity perhaps, that's the most
complex aspect of the three elements of this talk. Cérbh é,
dáiríre? Who was he, really?
He
arrived in Derry after hard years on the eastern front. Chaith sé
seal i mBaile Átha Cliath ar a bhealach anseo. Bhí tionchur
mór air ag bás Thomas Mac Donagh, file, chara agus saighdiúir
eile. He spent some time in Dublin on his way here. The execution of
Thomas Mac Donagh, as one of the leaders of The Easter Rising,
affected him deeply. Mac Donagh was a poet, a friend and also a
soldier fighting for a small nation, in Mac Donagh's case, Ireland.
Was
Ledwidge fighting for Belgium? Like the recruiting posters screamed?
Was Francis Ledwidge a cosmopolitan, an internationalist? Is that the
nation he espoused? A nation of class consciousness? Quickening of
that nature was well underway, north and east of where Ledwidge
fought, as another Empire, the Russian one, strained and convulsed.
Francis
Ledwidge's oft-quoted lines, that he would not have England say that
she defended Ireland while Ireland did nothing but stay at home and
pass resolutions, took him into the British Army. Ledwidge was not
squeamish. He saw action in Gallipoli, against Turks, Bulgars and
Serbs. He did more than pass resolutions. Perhaps his conversations
with Mac Donagh and others never ventured past poetry, into
blood-letting, sacrifice and carnage, in the cause of Ireland.
How
did he hold it together, a soldier affirming death and a poet,
affirming life, with, what he called, his little songs
This
is a song a robin sang
This
morning on a broken tree,
It
was about the little fields
That
call across the world to me.
Francis
Ledwidge used a bayonet, and his locale was the killing beaches of
Suvla Bay and the trenches of Macedonia, France and Belgium. His
soundtrack was shells in fusillade and the cries of dying men, as
well as the echoing call of the robin. Does one cover for the other,
in the forging of an identity?
Seamus
Heaney never used a bayonet and his soundtrack was the acclaim of the
Academy and the applause of a wide-ranging public, though directing
his pen, when the barricades of insurrection went up around his home
place at the end of the 20th century, may have challenged his sense
of nationhood. It perhaps brought on a babhta úr iomrascála,
a new bout of wrestling, with the native language and mythologies of
his place, as seen in his work on Sweeney's Journey in the great
sequence, Station Island.
He
writes I was a lookout posted and
forgotten.
He
is perpetually set above the home-place, keeping guard.
Like
many people, Francis Ledwidge included, nationhood and identity, are
most fixed upon images of home, so that the limits of our national
territory is personal and domestic.
Pressure
on the soldiers in Ebrington Barracks, in the period July to December
1916, to remember and to forget, was awesome. I suggest we use
Ledwidge's time there to further explore matters of language,
identity and nationhood.
Let
my play, Still, The Blackbird Sings, first produced by the
Playhouse in 2010 and just finished a run, in a script-in-hand
adaptation, produced by Creggan Enterprises, be our guide to digging;
where to hoke with the shovel, where to pin, stab, cut and clip with
the bayonet and where to sketch with the pen, those aspects of
identity that make humans, in the time and place life finds us.
Ach
roimhe sin, lig dom caractair eile a mhealladh isteach. But before
that, allow me to invite in two more characters. Writing in the
London Review of Books in 1985, Brandywell man and ace
literary critic Seamus Deane tells us about Donegal writer, Patrick
MacGill.
As
Rifleman No 3008 of the London Irish, MacGill fought in the First
World War and wrote of his experiences in the trenches, particularly
of the offensive which climaxed in the Battle of Loos, during which
he was wounded and invalided out of the war. The
Red Horizon deals with the preparation for the assault; The
Great Push gives an account of the battle itself. The war
is a reproduction of the conditions of the labourer’s life in
peacetime, more brutal and remorseless, but not essentially
different. There is a System, which is impersonal and kills; there is
a Sentiment which persuades the victims to accept what is happening
to them. In war, it is called patriotism.
Yet
why should MacGill, of all people, be willing to give his blood, to
be made into an emblem of that idiocy which he attacked so vigorously
in his writings? The answer must be, in part, that he did not know
what he believed.
Patrick
MacGill's confusion about what he believes, as suggested by Seamus
Deane, may have an echo in Francis Ledwidge, though their sense of
patriotism may not have been as confused as that of Jason Bourne, in
his latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Seamus
Deane suggests that digging with the shovel (navvying) and cutting
with the bayonet (soldiering) are not much different. Certainly
MacGill didn't make much difference between them in telling tales of
them. Deane sees this as a failure of language. Ledwidge's failure –
if you might call it that – to write war poetry like Sassoon,
Graves, Owen, Kipling and others may also be a failure of language,
but more likely it is a manifestation of the complex patriotism he,
and MacGill, experienced as the sentiment that kept them in line.
Ledwidge could readily use the shovel and the bayonet for war, but
not the pen.
Unlike
Deane and Heaney at the end of the 20th century, Ledwidge and MacGill
did not live in the Academy, but in the rat-pits and the trenches of
the early part of the century. Theirs is a very different experience
for persons of similar nationhoods, identities and languages. Irish
nationalist in British territory. English speakers and writers in
English.
Seo
iad anois, Francis Ledwidge agus a chomhrádaithe samhlaithe, sa
bheairic i míle naoi chéad is a sé deag. Let us meet, then, my
fictional, dramatised Francis Ledwidge in Ebrington Barracks in 1916.
On arrival in the barracks, Francis Ledwidge is with his squad of
young men, glad to be home, already marking out their personal
territories. They banter in a babble of voices. Can you make out
Lance Corporal Francis Ledwidge?
This
- most certainly - is not my home.
Closest
you’re going to get to it for a wee while.
I’ll
be up that road to the city of Belfast just as soon as I get the sand
out of these boots.
Belfast
is nothing but a bogging village.
And
what “village” are you from kiddo?
Drumahoe.
Never
heard of it.
There’s
nothing in Belfast only a swamp.
Not
another country boy! Are yeez all country boys or what?
What
do they call you?
Mc
Laren. Right men. Settle down.
Frank!
You made it.
Add
me to your list of countrymen, Mc Laren. Cadden. Right?
That’s
right. You know me from Suvla Bay.
We
dug in together, thousands more of us stretched along the beach.
Damn
right we did. And we gave those Turks hell.
By
their voices, accents and home places, the soldiers assert, contest
and affirm their identities and their language in ethnic, almost
pastoral, word play until the killing beaches of Suvla Bay confirm
their current lot.
As
to nationhoods, the civic language of the Empire is required to bring
that on stage. Francis Ledwidge clashes with Major Willock, a
professional soldier. Again, can you hear the Lance Corporal wrestle
with his complex nationhood, while Major Willock is having none of
his lip? Éist le Major Willock, ag éirí mí-fhoighneach.
And
Ireland’s duty lies with his Majesty The King and with the Empire.
At least until this war is over. Tell me, Lance Corporal Ledwidge,
are you loyal?
I
am a soldier, sir.
And
something of a poet I believe. You knew some of the insurrectionists?
I
met Pearse, sir. MacDonagh was my friend.
Your
‘friends’ were anti-British when they attacked our troops in
Dublin.
They
were Irishmen, doing what they thought was best for Ireland, sir.
Your
poets are rebels, Lance Corporal Ledwidge. True Irishmen are in this
uniform.
My
countrymen are fighting for freedom and the self determination of
small nations on many fronts. In Belgium, France, Gallipoli, Serbia.
And here.
The
cataclysm that was World War 1 plunged Francis Ledwidge into a
maelstrom, where small nation projects were fending off the dominance
of large nations, with actions that were essentially ethnic in
character, where the impetus came from a charged mix of the cultural
(locale, religion, language, descent, myth) as opposed to the
political or civic sense of group identification, known as
nationhood.
Often,
for their own ends, imperialists, even today, describe certain other
nationalisms as ethnic (that is irrational, nativist, inherited) and
their own as civic (voluntary, rational, consensual), when it is
quite clear that all nationalisms are composed of ethnic and civic
features and that civic nationalisms, such as the French or American,
can be just as exclusive and xenophobic as ethnic ones.
The
'small nation' description often suggests a degree of similarity
between Ireland and the postcolonial world. This interpretation was
reinforced by John F Kennedy’s 1963 speech at Leinster House, where
he proclaimed that “every new nation knows that Ireland was the
first of the small nations in the twentieth century to win its
struggle for independence”.
Is
this the nationhood Francis Ledwidge espoused? And how fares it today
as Ireland's state forces move into closer and closer international
co-operation with the UK, where we, in the UK, have voted to leave
the massively-flawed, cross-national entity that supports European
economic, cultural and social ties, the EU, while remaining within
the military one, NATO?
All
nationalisms draw upon the mythology of a glorious past and create a
narrative of greatness. A grander version of Irish nationalism,
almost tongue-in-cheek, in music festivals and on golf courses, is
heard today in phrases like 'little island, punching above its
weight' and 'you'll never beat the Irish' and seen in St. Patrick's
Day parades all over the world. Everybody is Irish for at least one
day. Is that the nationhood Francis Ledwidge lived? An í seo an
náisiúnachas a mhothaigh Francis Ledwidge?
The
bottom line with nationalism, whether derived from smallness or
greatness, is that nationhood has to be the most important group
we're in and that every nation should have its own state. A complex
formulation in the early part of the 20th Century for Ledwidge,
MacGill and others of peasant stock, in the midst of the convulsing
of British, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.
David
Rieff, in his recent book, In Praise of Forgetting, wonders if
a
decent measure of communal forgetting is actually the sine
qua non of a peaceful and decent society, while remembering
is the politically, socially, and morally risky pursuit? Or, to put
it somewhat differently, what if the past can provide no satisfactory
meaning, no matter how generously and inclusively … it is
interpreted?
What
people choose to remember and are enabled to remember for the
creation of identity, nationhood and language, as in the outline
given by the Alderman, is an edit. Rieff also points out that
the
historical importance of an event in its own time, and in the decades
that follow, offers no guarantee that it will be remembered in the
next century, let alone for many centuries after.
Agus
ná déan dearmad ar an foláireamh cáiliúil a thug an úrscealaí,
Milan Kundera, dúinn. Of course, there is the famous caution offered
by novelist Milan Kundera, from The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting, that
The
struggle … against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting.
Who
does it suit that people forget events, languages, identities and
nations as we forge our languages, identities and nations?
Seamus
Deane tells us that Patrick Mac Gill's first novel, The Children
of the Dead End, sold ten thousand copies in a fortnight in 1914.
In the same year, James Joyce's Dubliners sold a mere 499
copies, a fifth of them to himself. Most of the MacGill sales
occurred in Britain and further afield. We have here an example of
what the historian Rieff said about forgetting. The cosmopolitan view
of the modernist Joyce seems better remembered in the early 21st
century. Joyce spurned the nationalist view that you must have a
nation before you could have art. In the artistic manifestation of
his own nationhood, Joyce is an Irish writer, writing in English,
travelling across Europe, much as Ledwidge did, but without shovel or
bayonet, while continually writing about home. Mar a rinne Ledwidge.
Much as Ledwidge did.
In
my play, the fictional Francis Ledwidge meets the fictional Rosie
Friel, a serving girl at the home of Lord Dunsany, Ledwidge's officer
and literary mentor. Dunsany teases the young woman about love. Does
Rosie's assertion echo Ledwidge's?
And
what about love then, Rosie? Do you know anything about love?
What
would I know about love, sir?
Oh,
come now, Rosie, surely a young woman like yourself must sometimes
think about love?
I
leave that to the poets, sir.
And
to the soldiers no doubt?
The
soldiers have their fighting and their killing to do.
You
don’t mention their dying.
They
talk enough about that themselves. They should talk more about their
living and their lives at home.
Then
you don’t think about the dying of soldiers?
I
do.
The
ones at the front?
I
think on them. And I think on the poets in Dublin.
My
God, Rosie, are you a rebel?
I’m
an Irishwoman, sir.
Ba
téagartha é an strus a mhothaigh Ledwidge is a scuad is iad
bailithe in Ebrington Barracks, i míle naoi gcéad is a sé déag.
When Ledwidge and his squad gathered in Ebrington Barracks in
Autumn 1916, the stress among them was immense. They awaited their
next posting, knowing that their chances of surviving were decreasing
each time. Ba bhreá leis na saighdiúirí feastal ar na tabharní i
Sráid Duke, leis an strus sin a laghdú. The soldiers delighted to
go to the pubs in Duke Street to relieve this stress. Bhí siad ar
bís le nuacht faoi ordaithe úr, len iad a thabhairt chun an
Fraince. They were delirious for news of orders that would take them
to France. Listen to their arguments, spilling over into violence.
What do you expect with soldiers, even those working with the pen, as
well as with the shovel and the bayonet? Is saighdiúirí iad, cad
chuige nach mbeadh foiréagan ann?
You
thought Johnny Turk’s shells had got you, only to find yourself
waiting to cheat death once more. A strange thing happens in the
course of war, my friends. We transform. No longer human, we
alchemise into … cats.
Miaow!
Miaow!
Enough
of your tricking, Ledwidge!
In
this way the generals are guaranteed at least nine lives out of each
and everyone one of us. So drink up, my fine, Irish feline friends.
Who’s to say, when the English generals will want us out there
again, losing our lives at the front?
Treachery.
Listen!
Cats! All hissing and spitting.
You’re
two-faced Ledwidge.
Fights
bubble up through the comradely surface all the time. The word
'traitor' is used as the vilest curse. A fellow-soldier chastises
Francis Ledwidge:
You’re
two-faced, Ledwidge.
This
echoes the description Seamus Heaney gives in his poem,
In
memoriam Francis Ledwidge
In
you, our dead enigma, all the strains
Criss-cross
in useless equilibrium.
The
'useless' is harsh here. Does it reflect on Heaney's efforts to
juggle his own sense of nationhood?
Many
writers have been drawn to Ledwidge, an enigma, surely, as are all
the dead. Dermot Bolger has written marvellously about him, including
a fine play called Walking the Road. There are memorialising
societies in Slane, Inchicore and elsewhere. Scríobh mise faoi
Francis Ledwidge don chéad uair, i míle naoi chéad is a nócha
seacht. I wrote a radio talk about Francis
Ledwidge for the RTÉ programme Sunday Miscellany, in 1997, - an age
ago - after I visited his grave in Belgium, in Artillery Wood
Cemetery, near Boesinghe.
I
wrote
Grave
number 5, Row B, second plot. There is a corner of a foreign field
that is forever Ireland.
I
stood amidst the gravestones, pleased somehow that Ledwidge should be
lying among the green fields outside a small village. No Boyne water
rushed by, but a small river passed under a bridge.
I
thought about the poet and the lines from his own poem, A Soldier’s
Grave
And
where the earth was soft for flowers we made
A
grave for him that he might better rest.
So,
Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed,
And
there the lark shall turn her dewy nest.
Let
me draw upon the reflections of philosopher Richard Kearney to bring
these considerations of Francis Ledwidge and his language, identity
and nationhood to a close. Writing in The Los Angeles Review of
Books in July this year, Kearney underlines doubling.
A
year of double remembrance for the Irish, 2016 marks the centenary of
Ireland’s Easter Rising against Britain, when almost 500 Irish
citizens died, and it commemorates the Battle of the Somme in
Flanders, in which 3,500 Irish expired in a single day fighting in
British uniform against Germany.
Richard Kearney
invokes a symmetry, an equivalence of nations as between
ethno-religious groups, when, on a civic level, the nations were far
from on a par. This historic asymmetry has changed in the passing
century, though in economic terms, it essentially remains. The body
politic in Ireland is shaken as the UK tentatively embraces Brexit.
Fears erupt, from considerations of trade, the free movement of
people and the survival of the peace process.
Could we imagine if
Brexit, call it Eire-exit, were the other way round? Unlikely.
Furthermore, that the Union in the United Kingdom is under stress,
from Scotland to Cornwall, from Londonderry to London, no one would
deny. Where might Ledwidge's nationhood get to now?
Richard Kearney
advises that we retrieve unfinished stories, as we hold to memories
that emancipate rather than incarcerate. He sees in Ledwidge and the
impact on him of Easter 1916 and the Somme a useful doubling, a way
of intruding and/both into our considerations, rather than either/or.
I'm with him on this, in regard to identity, language and nationhood.
I suggest we could reach for more.
Ledwidge's story is
retrievable among his work with bayonet and shovel, because he also
worked with the pen. The great many more who worked without the pen,
who laboured in fields, trenches, behind barricades and under
fusillades, with just bayonet and shovel, their stories are not
retrievable. They left no marks, no little songs, such as Ledwidge's.
How do we retrieve these? An bhfuil a scéalta, a saolta, caillte go
deo? Cad é a chiallaíon sinn don náisiúntacht? What does that
mean for nationhood?
I fear doubling the
remembrance of Easter and the Somme 1916 offers a convenient salve to
the slaughter rather than a meaningful narrative healing, as sought
by Richard Kearney, who says you cannot commemorate a contradiction,
such as Ledwidge's effort. We can relish it, however, for what it is
– as human a life as any other, encouraging us to push against
either/or, on to and/both and then to push further on yet, through
singles and doubles, onto multiples.
Not only and/both
but also more/all.
I suggest we view
Ledwidge's identity, language and nationhood in this way. There are
no direct equivalences. Oppression on an imperial scale occurred then
and occurs now. Easy doubling will not assist with Heaney's 'useless
equilibrium'. The dynamism of multiplicity, more whirl-gig than
see-saw, offers us the best hope.
The
notion has taken hold publicly that it is a 'good' thing that large
numbers of Irish Catholics died at the Somme and in other World War 1
battles and, that it is also notable, if not exactly 'good', that
Irish Protestants played revolutionary roles in the early 20th
century – think of Sean O'Casey, as secretary of The Irish Citizen
Army.
All
I see is a failure to face the immolation of the early 20th
century and to commit to making it never happen again.
I see Ledwidge, not
motivated by a noble if unfulfilled dream, as Richard Kearney
suggests, but as a human in his time and place, making choices,
contingent life choices, by acts of remembering and forgetting.
What's the point of remembering and forgetting, if we do nothing
about what we remember and forget? Our past, including Francis
Ledwidge's, holds different meanings, depending on the future choices
we build from it.
The most telling act
of remembering we could make now, I suggest, an act of retrieving
that might create a genuine healing narrative from which to forge the
future, would be to chose to remember the slaughter and to actively
work towards it never happening again.
What would
Ledwidge's nationhood, language and identity be then, with the
bayonet re-cast as software, a digital ploughshare for the age, in
support of the shovel and the pen?
Thank you. Míle
buíochas.
©
Dave Duggan 22.9.2016
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
