Irish Elegies

187 Pages·2009·3.571 MB·English

by  Chris Arthur (auth.)

Irish Elegies
New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature
Claire A. Culleton, Kent State University
Series Editor
Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing:
Writing and Resistance
by Lachlan Whalen (December 2007)
Narratives of Class in New Irish and Scottish Literature:
From Joyce to Kelman, Doyle, Galloway, and McNamee
by Mary M. McGlynn (April 2008)
Irish Periodical Culture, 1937–1972:
Genre in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland
by Malcolm Ballin (August 2008)
Joyce through Lacan and Žižek:
From A Portrait of the Artist to Finnegans Wake
by Shelly Brivic (October 2008)
Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive
edited by Maria McGarrity and Claire A. Culleton (January 2009)
Irish Elegies
by Chris Arthur (June 2009)
Irish Elegies
Chris Arthur
IRISH ELEGIES
Copyright © Chris Arthur, 2009.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61534-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-37917-0 ISBN 978-0-230-62249-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230622494
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arthur, C. J. (Christopher John), 1955–
Irish elegies / Chris Arthur.
p. cm.—(New directions in Irish and Irish American literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Arthur, C. J. (Christopher John), 1955—Homes and haunts.
2. Northern Ireland—Description and travel. I. Title.
DA990.U46A727 2009
941.60824—dc22 2008042738
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Hubert Butler (1900–1991), Ireland’s master essayist, once
described a family property as “a place where it is easier to
believe in happiness than in pain.”
This book is dedicated to
those who have made my places thus.
See you miss nothing proffered. Name and store
and set in order all. Let nothing be
a toy too small, a trophy overpast
the weighing palm that reckons less or more;
for all you know, or I know, these must last
the slow attritions of eternity.
John Hewitt (1907–1987)
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
The Willow Is Green, the Flower Is Red 1
(En)trance 13
Rosary 27
On Not Being Who You Think You Are 47
Bookmarks 59
Wisdom’s Garden 79
How’s the Form? 87
Thirty-six Views, None of Mount Fuji 95
Falling Memory 117
Broken Flags 127
Object Lesson on Qualia with No Mention of This Term 141
An Essay on the Esse 155
Last Words 169
Series Editor’s Foreword
“See you miss nothing proffered,” counsels the epigraph that opens
Chris Arthur’s Irish Elegies, the sixth book published in Palgrave
Macmillan’s New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature
series. Miss nothing he does. The brilliant essays that make up Irish
Elegies explore a variety of topics that capture the wonder in each
ordinary minute of our lives. Much of this wonder Chris Arthur
explores through memory, that imperfect repository of history and
narrative. Memories have a way of surfacing, of pushing through hard
ground with the stubborn determination of a maple tree’s thickest
roots. Though most of our lives we will walk right over those protru-
sions, one day we will stumble over them and be forced to confront a
hazy past.
With elegiac lyricism, Chris Arthur examines those tangled mem-
ories that have secured his understanding of family, community, and
nation. Each rich narrative develops into a marvelously elaborate con-
ceit. Readers will be delighted by Arthur’s masterful juxtaposition,
his striking perceptiveness, his sumptuous vocabulary, by the way he
treats the topics of transience, loss, and death with meditative rever-
ence, and the way he traces through shadowy memories the peculiar
and rare imprints we leave behind for others to interpret and
understand.
I first came into contact with Chris Arthur in May 2008, after he
responded to a call for proposals and book manuscripts I sent out to
members of the International Association for the Study of Irish
Literatures (IASIL). He described his Irish Elegies project, contextu-
alized the trilogy that preceded it—Irish Nocturnes (1999), Irish
Willow (2002), and Irish Haiku (2005)—and added that he’d like to
think that the new direction he could offer the series might be of
some interest. Intrigued, I asked to read some sample chapters, and
then some published reviews of his previous work. I quickly was
astounded; his reviews were the most stellar I’d ever seen: “Chris
Arthur is the Irish writer who has been quietly rescuing the m editative
essay for the twenty-first century” (Patrick O’Sullivan); “Chris Arthur’s
x SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
recently completed ‘Irish trilogy’ of essay collections should not only
put him on the map as the contemporary Irish essayist, but also raise
general interest in the possibilities of the essay form in our time”
(Graham Good); and “[Chris Arthur] must, on the strength of this
collection alone, now be counted among the most innovative advo-
cates of creative nonfiction in contemporary Irish writing, and cer-
tainly the one most committed to creating a distinctly Irish habitation
for the essay” (James Silas Rogers). I signed the book within a week
and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. It is not only a pleasure to
see Irish Elegies in print but an honor to list it among the titles in the
Palgrave Macmillan series New Directions in Irish and Irish American
Literature.
CLAIRE A. CULLETON
Kent State University