I
am afraid I am not done with Mr Sebastian Barry yet.
Besides, I am enjoying keeping him Mr Mysterious, so I predict many
Barry for months! Yay! I always leave my research on him at the point
I am most yearning for more. I love that feeling. It requires
self-control but great pleasure too, after the waiting is over. He
has such a lengthy and intense career but here I am, tasting him by
little spoonfuls. Since I started this blog a couple of weeks ago, I
have only talked about literature and about Ireland – as central
issues. But this blog is completely theme-opened, because it is a
reflection of/on myself week after week. So it could be said
that you can easily track where I am at by peeping into my little
blog!...“No
one even knows I have a story.” (B:4). Okay,
now that you have seen this strange combination of signs between the
brackets, it is time to explain my quoting system for this blog.
Basically, I simplify all the formalities and just put the initial of
the author's surname and after the two dots the page on my copy of
the novel. At the end of the post you will find the details of each
edition. So, if you find a "B" it means the quote is
extracted from The Secret Scripture, as it is the case
now; but a "D" before the two dots would mean Reading
in the Dark.
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| Phoenix Park, Dublin. |
Anyway,
so this post could undoubtedly be said to be the continuation of the previous one. As a matter of fact, that one turned out to be a mere
introduction for what was going to come next, this post maybe?
Although I never dive into a new post without a neat, handwritten
outline of the topic I am going to develop, once I begin typing, the
thing gets really crazy! I can already tell by my short experience
here so far! The explanation is – sorry if I repeat myself!– I
want to keep it real! Needless to say, when dealing with literature
it is essential to know your theory and cultural history but all
those big words are just empty shells if you are not able, or not
wanting to, assimilate them into your own inner discourse, your own
narrative. That is, talking about these concepts so that anyone can
understand it; that is, no academic training is required here.
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| Temple Bar, Dublin. |
So,
as I was saying, my initial purpose was to take a closer look
into The Secret Scripture and I also promised to
make a Barry/Deane comparison. So, please, if you are so kind as
to allow me a couple of minutes so I can take a deep breath, maybe I
would find myself as courageous as to dare going into such thrilling
issues! Listen, my imaginary world up there in my little head is the
loveliest thing in the world. Everything makes sense, perfect sense!
But when I go down to the world we share, it all crumbles, so I have
to leave it behind. This blog is an approximation, an effort to put
that loveliest_world_ever forward so I can share it with you. So I
can make the two of them meet...my two worlds – the private and the
public – and also my world and yours. But, bear in mind...
"(...)I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
So,
here we go again... back to Sligo! Oh, look, even the geography is
favourable and encourages me to tackle the issue with a little help
from Seamus Deane. Sligo must be just a couple of hours away from
Derry. Even though I hate repeating myself, in this case I prefer
that than leaving a textual gap in these lines you are reading. So
first just let me make a little summary of why Deane and Barry are so
tightly together in my private imagery. I received Reading in
the Dark and The Secret Scripture as
presents for Christmas. I read one book following the other.
First, Deane; then, Barry. During the unforgettable Barry
reading process, I filled my book with many “DEANE” pencil marks.
The similarities were of many kinds: plot, characters, themes,
historical references.
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| Dalkey, Dublin. |
But
there were some contrasting characteristics too. I confess: I have
not checked out any academic information or googled this possible
Deane/Barry comparison-contrast. As I said in the previous post, I am
of the opinion that one works best when free. I am basing my writing
essentially on my reading of the texts, on the notes I made of them,
on my knowledge of literature in general, of Irish literature
specifically. The final magic touch: my wacky romantic imagination :)
I believe any writer of fiction gives you a novel, the baton, and now
it is your turn to continue the race. Because all novels are
unfinished. If finished, it is rubbish, not a novel. We are
constantly fighting to find words. The right words. The wrong ones.
For many different situations. Transcendental or trivial. To fill in
the gaps. The others' and ours. We are surrounded by them. Gaps of
knowledge, gaps of memory, gaps of emotion. But probably the greatest
one –of which most people are unaware of although we are the
victims of it every day– is the insurmountable gap that exists
between soul and language, mind and language, the pre-linguistic and
language. Nature and Man (the masculine gender, of course. Nature is
female, Artifact is Man, to tame the first. Good! A new topic for a
future post!).
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| Temple Bar, Dublin. |
The
novel, as the extension of life it is, is of course no more gapless!
The correct way of reading a novel is filling in these gaps.
Moreover, the way you fill in these gaps defines you. So, at the end
of the day, it is the novel which reads you.
Needless to say, the filler of those holes will necessarily be
different from person to person. Every single human being is a filter
of reality, and as such, the way we approach a particular novel would
result in as many readings as readers. That is why we celebrate
literature! Literature puts human beings at the same level, we are
all filters of reality. A novel provides the raw materials for us to
a.) dream b.) be critical c.) change our life d.) … change the
world! It empowers us. When we read a novel we produce a reading, a
meaning that will be as equal and great as any other's. Because
everything in life depends on perspective. A person who is sitting on
the first row at the cinema does not see the screen in the same way
as a person who is on the back row on the furthest left. Life works
like that, too. As I said somewhere in this blog before, a sublime
novel marks the difference when it never leaves you alone. Double
meaning here! Alright, it is food for the mind and soul, there is no
space for desolation but also it keeps coming back to you. It haunts
you. It reminds you of forgotten obligations. Of uncomfortable
thoughts. Of celebrating the greatest pleasures of life.
So
all this long talk just to say that I am responsible for the contents
exposed in this blog, they are creations of my own humble genius, and
that if someone does not agree, or is bothered by them, deeming them
absurd conclusions because s/he thinks the author did not intend
that, I would just say that real History is made up of histories, a
lesson these two novels do not cease to remind us. Even though my
excessive imagination can be clearly seen to be at work in my
writing, the raw material my rambling is based upon is the written
word on the books. What then comes into play is the filler of the
gaps: I provide an interpretation of what is not said –deliberately
or unconsciously– and why. To read between the lines, to put it
clearly. But remember that at the end of the day I will be writing
about myself, not about Reading in
the Dark and The
Secret Scripture, because I just
cannot come out of my skin. Every single word I utter is conditioned
by my personal experience. That is another great lesson to extract
from these two novels. So, do you wanna read me?
:)
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| Derry. |
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| Ballintoy, Co Antrim. |
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| Michael Collins, Merrion Sq, Dublin. |
This
peculiarity aside, both novels work as a sharp critique on and a
denunciation of the institution of the Irish Catholic Church. Both
narrators have in common that they belong to a “marked family”.
We will be dealing with this later, so for a moment let's go back to
straight facts. Seamus Deane was born 15 years before Sebastian Barry
and the novels discussed here are also separated by a span of a bit
more than a decade, 12 years. However, as you know, I think they are
inextricably related. They are similar but they differ in their
personalities. Each author has its own literary profile and voice.
That is what makes these two novels so interesting, specially reading
them together. They provide a different perspective on the same
period and national preoccupation. Ultimately, both novels reach the
same conclusions: the celebration of the little (hi)stories that form
History. There is not a History with a big capital
letter, but (hi)stories. Furthermore, Deane and Barry seem to agree
that memory and silence shape human lives. Note the sharp contrast
between silence and noise in this extract from Reading in the
Dark:
Free Derry
“Now, as the war in the neighbourhood intensified, they both sat there in their weakness, entrapped in the noise from outside and in the propaganda noise of the television inside” (D: 231)
Here
the narrator describes his home during a visit from Belfast where he
attends university. Silence and (silenced) memory have dominated his
parents' pasts, before their marriage and after. They remain in that
silence despite, or because of, the horrifying turmoil of The
Troubles outside and the brainwashing uproar supplied by the media
inside. To go from the present to the past we need memory. For this
reason, Deane and Barry make memory a central concern in their
respective novels. To penetrate into memory, both authors explore
such aspects as “(...)
versions of memory, the absolute fascist certainty of memory, the
bullying oppression of memory” reaching the conclusion that, after all, memory is “a
type of indiscretion of the mind.” (B: 185). The narrator in Reading in the
Dark collects through the novel the broken pieces of memory
their family let slip. The novel is a quest for identity. He has to
reconstruct the family story, to make the unspoken speak. To fill in
the gaps. To read between the lines.
 |
| Derry |
“Some of the things I remember I don't really remember. I've just been told about them so now I feel I remember them, and want to the more because it is so important for others to forget them.” (D:225)
I think the most heartbreaking part we find in Deane's text is for the reader to be witness of the growing apart of mother and son. From the moment it starts you know it is just going to get worse before it gets any better. So, that is why the narrator's quest is to put all the jigsaw pieces together. The family's secret is getting her mother further and further away from him. The mother knows that he knows something so she just avoids him. He knows she is ignoring him. All that process takes place in silence. The child has to fill in the gaps. Meanwhile, the mother is tormented by memory, by stories, by histories, by History.
“But she didn't like me for knowing it (...) I hated him not knowing. But only my mother could tell him. No one else. Was it her way of loving him, not telling him? It was my way of loving them both, not telling either. But knowing what I did separated me from them both.” (D: 187)
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| Free Derry. |
"A
choice, an election, was to be made between what actually happened
and what I imagined, what I had learned, what I kept hearing." (D: 182)
Both
writers make silence an indispensable characteristic of memory, as I
have already mentioned before. They are practically synonyms. Two
sides of the same coin, but never antonyms, that's for sure. The
bleeding heart at the core of both narratives turns out to be “[t]he
mystery of human silence and the efficacy of a withdrawal from the
task of questioning” (B: 309). According to Dr
Grene, Roseanne “has
helped herself, she has spoken to, listened to, herself. It is a
victory” (B:290)
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| Bogside, Derry. |
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| GPO, Dublin. |
 |
| Derry |
As
regards Deane, the thread of narrative that softens your heartbreak a
bit –from witnessing the abysmal distance between mother and son–
is the bond father-son, the father figure as a whole. He is not the
prototype of the Catholic father figure. He takes care of his wife
when she is getting ill and at no point condemns her. Both narratives
ultimately came out to be father narratives; both stories are family
stories in which the father is an essential piece for them to make
sense of themselves, to find their own private –family– and
public –society– identity. However, in spite of the fact that
these two fathers are inscribed into a Christian faith –Protestant
for Roseanne, Catholic for Deane– their roles as fathers are free
from the rules of their churches. They are not patriarchal: they love
their sons and that's enough guide for a father to be one. As a
matter of fact, we do not have many –or unfiltered– information
on Roseanne's parents, so I am just analysing them by Roseanne's
words. Within the context Deane and Barry are locating their narratives it is very important to analyse how religion shaped both private and public lives. For these
two stories, it proves to be a force that rather than enlighten your
life, ruins it. Politics in Ireland are unfortunately inextricably
related to religion. As regards Derry, Deane declares
that “[p]olitics
destroyed people's lives in this place.”(D:
204). For Roseanne, life works in a similar fashion: “Sligo
made me and Sligo undid me” (B:4). However, Barry goes further away and his beautifully
wise Roseanne reaches the conclusion that if that was to be
true,
“then I should have given up much sooner than I did being made or undone by human towns and looked to myself alone. (…) I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortars against the horrors and cruel dark tricks of time that assails us, and be the author therefore of themselves.(B:4).
TO BE CONTINUED...the original text has been split in two.
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