Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews

226 Pages·0.923 MB·English

by  J. M. Synge

Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews
CONTENTS
VITA VECCHIA
ÉTUDE MORBIDE
ON A TRAIN TO PARIS
UNDER ETHER
IN WICKLOW
AN AUTUMN NIGHT IN THE HILLS
IN CONNEMARA
BETWEEN THE BAYS OF CARRAROE
AMONG THE RELIEF WORKS
THE FERRYMAN OF DINISH ISLAND
THE KELP MAKERS
THE BOAT BUILDERS
THE HOMES OF THE HARVESTMEN
THE SMALLER PEASANT PROPRIETORS
ERRIS
THE INNER LANDS OF MAYO
THE SMALL TOWN
POSSIBLE REMEDIES
VARIOUS NOTES
LA VIEILLE LITTÉRATURE IRLANDAISE
THE POEMS OF GEOFFREY KEATING
AN IRISH HISTORIAN
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
AN EPIC OF ULSTER
A TRANSLATION OF IRISH ROMANCE
IRISH HEROIC ROMANCE
IRISH FAIRY STORIES
LE MOUVEMENT INTELLECTUEL IRLANDAIS
THE OLD AND NEW IN IRELAND
THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND
THE WINGED DESTINY
GOOD PICTURES IN DUBLIN
A CELTIC THEATRE
ANATOLE LE BRAZ
THREE FRENCH WRITERS
A NOTE ON BOUCICAULT AND IRISH DRAMA
CAN WE GO BACK INTO OUR MOTHER’S WOMB?
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
VITA VECCHIA
A YOUNG GIRL of the Roman Catholic Church spent nine
weeks in the house where I lodged when I was studying
music in Germany. Two days before she moved on to Venice
I promised to play for her on the violin. The following night
I dreamed that I did so, and that when I began a crowd of
people rushed into the room with such noise and
disturbance that I stopped playing and threw down my
fiddle on the floor with the horror of nightmare.
The next morning I played for her as she wished, and as I
was in the middle of an old love song I had chosen, a
number of children ran into the room and began to make
fun of my performance. I was playing from memory. I began
to lose notes, and in the end I broke down utterly.
A year later my thoughts were turning continually to the
same person, and I dreamed that I was sitting beside her as
her accepted lover in a gathering of people. Then a sad
deserted woman passed near us and I stood up and
followed her. In the morning I wrote these lines: —

By my light and only love
Long I lived in glee
Marked her musing deep delight
Murmur love for me
A footfall faint arose
Timid touched the way
Of one that many loved
In days passed away.

I faltered, found my feet
Bound me to her side
We wandered years and years
Till she drooped and died.

I learned afterwards that this second person that I
dreamed of was engaged to be married two days later at
the other end of the world.
In a few months I came back into the neighbourhood of
my friend, and I lived in a house where I could see her
window at the other side of the street when I was
practising. I made many simple poems the days that I saw
her: —

I have seen her brows and head,
Trimmed around with angel-thread,
Bending o’er the lines she read.

I have seen her pearly eyes
Peering round her, quaintly wise,
Seeking souls to sympathise.

I have seen her finger white,
Round those leaves to linger light,
Happy leaves though crumpled quite.
She was a devout Christian in her heart, and was always
busy doing good among the poor. One day I heard people in
the street talking of her great beauty, and goodness, and I
made these lines: —

Sweet seemeth it when people praise,
What fair I deem,
When many turn on one to gaze,
That I esteem.
So find I joy when many meet
Where thou art known,
For eulogies my yearning greet
Of thee alone.

Even at this time I began to mock my proper exaltation,
although I was still full of wonder and delight that after my
desolate youth a person of such beauty should be ready to
regard me.
I continued my way to the south, and in a little time I was
in Rome wandering in the streets. One day I went into a
church, where they were celebrating a High Mass for the
princes that had been killed in the Abyssinian war. I saw a
woman kneeling by a pillar who was like my friend. I made
these lines: —

I heard low music wail
Woe wanton, wed to fear,
Heard chords to cleave and quail
Quelled by terror sheer.

I saw a women bend,
Bowed in saintly prayer,
Where shadow round did wend,
Won by face so fair,
Like yours that kneeling form,
Far under mine that woe,
Our sorrow’s rage and storm,
Stem gods had died to know.

I dreamed afterwards, when I went in out of the
moonlight, that I was walking in the street before her
house, and that she came into the window, and closed the
curtains when she saw me, without any salutation. This is
the end of the poem I made in the morning: —

I saw thee start and quake,
When we in face did meet,
I saw dead passion wake,
One thrill of yearning sweet.

Then came a change, a wave,
Of bitterness, disdain,
That through my grassy grave
Will rack my haunted brain.
The same week the second person I had dreamed of
broke off her engagement in peculiar circumstances. She
came to Italy, and I learned to know her in Venice, with
another woman who also answered my dream.
Then my friend to whom I was still desolately faithful,
wrote to tell me that her confessor had made her believe
that it would be a sin to marry a man who was not a
Christian.
After many months I find these lines in my note-book: —

I curse my bearing, childhood, youth
I curse the sea, sun, mountains, moon,
I curse my learning, search for truth,
I curse the dawning, night, and noon.

Cold, joyless I will live, though clean,
Nor, by my marriage, mould to earth
Young lives to see what I have seen,
To curse — as I have cursed — their birth.

One night I went back to the town where she lodged, and
went to look upon her door. As I passed she came into her
window, and looked down on me with no sign of
recognition. I went back to Ireland into the heart of the
hills.

I fled from all the wilderness of cities,
And nature’s choristers my art saluted,
Chanting aloud to me their tunes and ditties
And to my silent songs like joys imputed;
But when they heard me singing in my sorrow,
My broken voice that spoke a bosom breaking,
They fled afar and cried! Hell did borrow
As through their notes my notes fell discord waking.

I had a strange feeling as I returned among the hills I
worshipped in my childhood.... I rested by low beds of the
streams where there was nothing but heather and granite
and blue sky, with a brown current near me, and the tumult
of the bees.... The autumn was beginning and I sensed the
dismay that is blended for many of us with all that is lovely
and puissant on the earth....
I wrote in a nook by a river:

Wind and stream and leaves and lake,
Still sweeter make
The songs they wake
A thrill my throes would prisoner take.

Birds and flies and fish that glide,
Why would ye hide
Or slip aside
From one who loves your lonely pride?...

I stood on the side of a hill watching the stars and the
moon and listening to the crying of the snipe.... An earth
breath came up across the bogs, carrying essences of
heath, and obscure plants and the ferment of the soil... In a
little while the same moon will rise and there will be
wonderful perfumes and darkness and silver and gold lights
in the pathways of Wicklow, and I will be lying under the
clay.... I am haunted by the briefness of my world. It brings
me at times a passionate thirst for the fulfilment of every
passive or active capacity of my person. It seems a crime
that I should go home and sleep in trite sheets while
heaven and earth slip away from me for ever....
Later I thought I was better and returned to Paris. I
wrote this little verse: —

Wet winds and rain are in the street,Where I must pass
alone, Where no one wayfarer I meetThat I have loved or
known.

’Tis winter in my heart, the air
Is wailing, bitter cold,
While I am wailing with despair,
As I have wailed of old.

At this time also I wrote this sonnet:

Through ways I went where waned a lurid light, While
round about lewd women wan did glide, Yet no hard hand I
sought to soothe my side But will-less went, held from the
earth my sight:
Then saw among the clouds one woman white Star-like
descend; when I her aim descried My temples reeled, I
staggered, scarlet dyed, Then sightless stood, heard
weeping swift indite.

‘From Heaven have I seen thee, wherefore here?
‘I loved thee, named thee noble, praised thee pure, ‘How
canst thow to defilement turn thee near, ‘How loathsome
lust, thus tolerate, endure?’

I moaned, ‘Sad, innocent, I torture flee,
‘Him wouldst thou blame, joy-exiled, damned by thee?’

At last I met her in the street:

Again, again, I sinful see
Thy face, as men who weep
Doomed by eternal Hell’s decree
Might meet their Christ in sleep.

I find two short poems at the end of my note-book:

Five fives this year my years
Half life I live to dread,
Yet judged by weight of tears
Now were I calmed, were dead.

Not craven crushed in heart
Loves longing love decayed
I living learn my part
In sternness steeped arrayed