File croíuil créúil agus dúchasach!

Comharba ar fhile Phangur Bán!

Tá laoch ar lár, i ndairíre tá triúr ar láir i saol na nGael, beirt a scríobh i nGaeilge agus duine amháin a scríobh i mBéarla.

Beannacht Dé le Maidhc Dainín, Diarmuid Ó Gráinne agus Séamus Heaney.

Is údair cumasach iad triúir, agus ait go leor tá mé ag léamh aistrúcháin Dhiarmada Uí Ghráinne ar leabhar de chuid Abert Camus faoi láthair!

Ó fuair Séamus Heaney bás tá na meáin lán dá chuid fhilíochta. Táid ag rá gur é an file is mó a bhí againn ó Yeats (ar ndóigh is filí a scríobh i mBéarla a tá i gceist). Bheadh sé spéisiúl comparáid nó léarmheas a dhéanamh idir a chuid filíochta agus abair filíocht Mháirtín Ó Díreáin mar shampla.

"Sa bhaile!" (pic ón BBC)

Dár liomsa, i measc na fílí as Éirinn, a scríobh i mBéarla tá Heaney i bhad níos údarach nó fíréantach ná Yeats. (Níor thaitn Yeats liom riamh - "horseman pass by!") Tá macántacht nó ionrachas ag baint lena chuid scríobhnóireacht. Tá a chuid daonacht agus pearsantacht ag léimneach amach as beagnach gach focal a scríobh sé.

Bhí sé dílis dá phréamhacha, préamhacha a bhí go domhain in ithir a cheantair dhúchais - Baile Eachaidh. Ní raibh na préamhacha sin chomh domhain ina dhúthaigh ag Yeats agus atá ag Heaney agus má sin ní raibh a chuid filíochta leath chomh chréúil leis.

Deireann sé i réamhrá a aistrucháin ar Bheowolf (Béarla):

Sprung from an Irish nationalist background and educated at a Northern Irish Catholic school, I had learned the Irish language and lived within a cultural and ideological frame that regarded it as the language that I should by rights have been speaking but I had been robbed of. I have also written, for example, about the thrill I experienced when I stumbled upon the word lachtar in my Irish-English dictionary, and found that this word, which my aunt had always used when speaking of a flock of chicks, was in fact an Irish language word, and more than that, an Irish word associated in particular with County Derry. Yet here it was surviving in my aunt’s English speech generations after her forebears and mine had ceased to speak Irish. For a long time, therefore, the little word was – to borrow a simile from Joyce – like a rapier point of consciousness pricking me with an awareness of language-loss and cultural dispossession, and tempting me into binary thinking about language. I tended to conceive of English and Irish as adversarial tongues, as either/or conditions rather than both/and, and this was an attitude that for a long time hampered the development of a more confident and creative way of dealing with the whole vexed question – the question, that is, of the relationship between nationality, language, history and literary tradition in Ireland.

Nuair a chuagh sé chuig an ollscoil tháinig cineál síocháin, nó réiteach air ó Ollamh

...who could not help informing us, for example, that the word ‘whiskey’ is the same word as the Irish and Scots Gaelic word uisce, meaning water, and that the River Usk in Britain is therefore to some extent the River Uisce (or Whiskey); and so in my mind the stream was suddenly turned into a kind of linguistic river of rivers issuing from a pristine Celto-British Land of Cockaigne, a riverrun of Finnegans Wakespeak pouring out of the cleft rock of some prepolitical, prelapsarian, urphilological Big Rock Candy Mountain – and all of this had a wonderfully sweetening effect upon me. The Irish/English duality, the Celtic/Saxon antithesis were momentarily collapsed and in the resulting etymological eddy a gleam of recognition flashed through the synapses and I glimpsed an elsewhere of potential that seemed at the time to be a somewhere being remembered...

Tá píosa a scríobh sé (agus a shiniú leis) ag dul thár timpeal ar facebook agus twitter le deanaí atá spéisiúil faoina a chuid tuairimí i leith na Gaeilge anseo:

Dár liomsa is comharba fiúntach é ar fhile Phangur Bán. Ba file deas é Yeats ach ba file críoúil créúil é Heaney.

Agus a dán is fearr liom (agus níl gach dán dá chuid léite agam)? Mid term break, a scríobh faoi bhás a dheartháir, Christopher. Agus chuireann sé i gcuimhne dom ar dhá a scríobh an tAth Pádraigh Ó Fiannachta faoi "...deartháirín agam tráth/Ach sciob an bás é..." ina leabhair Deora Dé.

Go raibh áit i measc na n-aingeal ag ár bhfilí agus scríobhnoirí go léir a léiríonn dúinn na teachtarachtaí saoil atá le feiscint, go minic i ngan fhios dúinn thár timpeall orainn!