ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)
A National Poetry Day Special featuring the works of Peter O’Neill, Sera Csatt, Martin Burke, Patrick Joseph Dorrian, John Jack Byrne, Maire Maxwell and Clare McCotter. Hard copies can be purchased from our website.
Issue No 25 October 2014
A New Ulster On the Wall Website
Editor: Amos Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents
Cover Image “Gateways” by Editorial
Amos Greig page 6
Peter O’Neill; 1:My brother the fly
Sera Csatt; 1:Hill Search 2:Welcome Back 3:Naming What Was
Martin Burke; 1:Shadows Dream 2:Scenes from Malpertuis
Patrick Joseph Dorrian; 1:Going Back to Paper
John Jack Byrne; 1:Autumn 2:Winter Years
Maire Maxwell; Selection of Haiku
Clare McCotter: 1:Communion 2:Changed not lost 3:It is not your chair 4:Memory Tests 5:The Snow Queen 6:The abandoned Asylum
On The Wall Message from the Alleycats
page 49
John (Jack) Byrne; John’s work can be found
pages 51-53
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Round the Back Arthur Bloomfield’s response to Peter O’Neill
page 55-57
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Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 23 High Street, Ballyhalbert BT22 1BL Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 50 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/ Published in Baskerville Oldface & Times New Roman Produced in Belfast & Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland. All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 77 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work. ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Cover Image “Gateways� by Amos Greig
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“We are what we repeatedly do. Exellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle. Editorial A New Ulster is celebrating National Poetry day this issue and yes we have launched later than the 2nd but that was due to unforeseen circumstances this issue features a poem by John Jack Byrne a response to our Autumn challenge. We also have several essays from Arthur Broomfield and Peter O’Neill I hope you enjoy the range and scope of this issue also this month will see not one but two issues of A New Ulster online. The world has gone through some interesting and terrifying changes since we began this journey in issue three we talked briefly about the ceasefire in Gaza and the work being carried out by artists from both sides and now peace seems so tantalizingly far away. Aristotle famously said “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance” That is why poetry is still so powerful even after all these years.. It is with sad heart that I report the death of Sabine Wichert a writer that I had the privilege of working with at the start of both of our careers Sabine would become a historian and a poet with a strong voice. I hope you get as much enjoyment reading these pieces they speak highly of the artists who submitted to this issue and to paraphrase Arthur Rimbaud they show the artist as God. Their brush strokes, words give life to a world we can barely interpret however through their eyes for a brief moment we can walk different lands. Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity! Amos Greig
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Biographical Note: Peter O’Neill Peter O’ Neill was born in Cork in 1967. His debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry) appeared in 2013, and to critical acclaim. ‘Certainly a voice to the reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (DCU). His second collection The Elm Tree was published by Lapwing (2014), ‘A thing of wonder to behold.’ Ross Breslin ( The Scum Gentry ). His third collection The Dark Pool is due to appear early in 2015 (Mauvaise Graine). As well as being a regular contributor to A New Ulster and The Scum Gentry his work has also appeared in The Galway Review, Danse Macabre, Outburst, Colony, Levure Littéraire, Mauvaise Graine, Abridged, and Bone
Orchard
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“my brother the fly” The Common Housefly Seen as Metaphor for Sex and Death BuZzing its way through the works of James Joyce & Samuel Beckett
Peter O’ Neill
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Flies have always had their place in literature. In ancient Egypt they had their own hieroglyph, even representing bravery in the New Kingdom 1550BC, when soldiers were awarded the ‘order of the Golden Fly’ for courage. 1 It is thought that the fly signified persistence, and hence the sign on the merit of honour. Though, they had been depicted since 3 100 BC, appearing on amulets and necklaces as possible signs of virility.2 In ancient Greece (421 BC) the fly appeared on coins ‘issued by the mint of Zeus’3. In two entries in his Description of Greece, Pausanias records the worship of Myiagros-Myiakores or “Shoo-FlyZeus”, who was honoured before the main sacrifice, sometimes in the form of a whole ox. 4 Using Wolfgang Iser’s theory of ‘the intended reader’ (1972) , the motif of the flies as they appear in the Lestrygonians chapter in James Joyce’s Ulysses , will first be treated before moving on to two poems published in the nineteen thirties, by Beckett: Serena I and La Mouche. Finally, Beckett’s treatment of flies thirty years later, where they are given a full page in his last full length novel Comment c’est- How It Is, will conclude this short study in reception analysis. In order to do so properly, particularly in relation to this last work, I will be obliged to pass via Giambattista Vico, again whose New Science was introduced to Beckett by Joyce in the late twenties in Paris in order to prepare the reading public for his final work Finnegan’s Wake. Vico’s ‘three ages of man theory’, this essay will also argue forms the structural body which holds the tri-partite structure of Comment c’est together.
1
http://www.kendalluk.com/sacredinsect. Site accessed 03/12/2012. 2
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/n/necklace_with_fly_amulets.aspx Site accessed 03/12/2012. 3
Cook, Arthur B. : Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion, Vol. 2, Part 1, Cambridge University Press Archive, pp.781-782
http://books.google.ie/books?id=Ys83AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA782&lpg=PA782&dq=zeus+the+fly+catcher&sourc e=bl&ots=Q1F8YxBwa9&sig=pgFBCQEZ07FBJUOiAiNcKeHPLc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tRy7UMSREeLb0QXT7IHYAg&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=zeus %20the%20fly%20catcher&f=false Site accessed 03/12/2012 4
Pausanias: Description of Greece, Translated by Jones, W.H.S and Omerod, H.A., Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias5A.html Site accessed 02/12/2012
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Thematically, this is extremely important to underline, as the flies whose appearance I will be treating here in this epic work make their appearance in part 2 of the book, which is indicative of Vico’s second age when the law of force rules, a fact which is all important to frame contextually all that is to now follow.5
In Joyce’s Ulysses, flies appear coupling before Bloom in the Lestrygonians chapter set in Davy Byrne’s Pub, on Little South Anne Street, Dublin 1. The Lestrygonians in Homer’s Odyssey were cannibalistic giants who ‘speared the crews like fish’ before devouring them, or so Homer has Odysseus narrate in Book X of his epic.6 Joyce parallels this scene, in a grotesque parody, with the bestial eating habits of the diners of the Burton restaurant ‘swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food’.7 But it is later on, in Davy Byrne’s, that we see Bloom seated away on his own, after Nosey Flynn has been, and unknown to Bloom, alluding to him and his wife’s infidelity with BlaZes Boylan . In a moment of cruel irony, Bloom watches the coupling flies and thinks back to happier times with his wife Molly. Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the wine press grapes of Burgundy.
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As the flies copulate before him, Bloom sits in the public house, with his glass of Burgundy, reminiscing of previous deep, physical love which they, Molly and he, both shared many years previous. With the flies buzzing around him, mimicking Molly and he in former happier times, the creatures take on the symbolism of a kind of grotesque memento mori to Bloom and Molly’s now sexless marriage. A more dramatic reading, no doubt, would see the creatures as emissaries of Beelzebub, the ‘Lord of the Flies’, or Satan as he is better known as today. The ‘ cannibalism’ apparently being highlighted by Joyce here being more metaphoric than literal, with Flynn’s dire character assassination of the hapless Bloom. In fact, the whole scene is a kind of crucifixion, with the flies playing a central role.
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Indeed, so important is Beckett’s reception of Vico in Comment c’est/ How it is that I make it the study of my dissertation ‘La voix ‘d’elle’ in which I trace the multiple appearances of the Homeric Muse. 6 Homer: The Odyssey, Translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, New York, 1996, p.234. 7 Joyce, James: Ulysses, The Bodley Head, London, 1986, p.138. 8 Ibid, p.144.
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Kissed, she kissed me. Me. And me now. Stuck, the flies buzzed.9 The double irony being the fact that this time it would be the Christians who are seen to be doing the crucifying, while Christ, in the shape of Bloom, being as always, a Jew. Beckett’s reception of the above scene in Ulysses is evident in the poem Serena 1, the flies which appear in the last stanza are the ‘intentions’ embedded in the text by the author, taken as they are from Ulysses, only to be reworked again in the French poem La Mouche.i all things full of gods pressed down and bleeding10 The poem takes us from the British Museum which Beckett frequented a lot, at the time of the poems composition, back to his empty digs, where he finds only the flies for company. my brother the fly the common housefly sidling out of darkness into light If Thales is evoked in “all things full of gods”, as Kowlson and Fletcher 11 claim, Heraclitus, with his binary concepts, is most certainly too in the ‘darkness into light’ and the idea of the ephemeral notion of human happiness which became, later on, so central to all of Beckett’s later thinking; ‘où s’en va le plaisir de perdre’.12 9
Ibid, p.144. Beckett, Samuel: Collected Poems in English & French, Grove Press, New York, 1977, p.21. 11 Ibid,p.142. 10
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Ibid,p.41. ‘where has it gone the pleasure to lose’ (Translation my own)
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The flies, whose appearance almost thirty years later in Comment c’est , are given more fuller treatment in the Masoch- Sade dichotomous dynamic, all in keeping with the Heraclitean notions as already pronounced back in Serena 1 thirty years earlier.13 This being proof positive of a life- long engagement with the sage from Ephesus, which is significant in helping us to come to an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of the sexual dynamics between the plethora of pseudo-couples existing in the Beckett canon, be they fly or human, Bim or Bom14. F donc bien profound foin de lumière vite la fin là-haut dernièr chose dernier ciel cette mouche peut-être glissant sur la vitre sur la drap tout l’èté devant elle ou midi Gloria de couleurs derrière la vitre dans l’embrasure de la cavern et les voiles qui arrivent15 ii We must never forget the Viconian context upon which the whole scaffold of the text rests: the three ages of man. Part 2 of the text, ‘avec Pim’, equally equating with the ‘second age’, which is governed by the ‘Noble’ law of force. The couple then, be they fly or human, but a microcosm through which the whole violence of the organism is given its fullest expression. Here Beckett is at his most NietZschean16, who perhaps more so than any other philosopher was also so attuned with the wisdom of the Ephesian. Indeed, the connection with NietZsche, Vico and Beckett is the power of metaphor as sole truth, which links them to Michel Foucault. The flies also being a metaphor for discourse itself, being creatures which inhabit the air, buzzing away like human phonemes.
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‘Another minute of this and I consecrate the remnant of my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus, I shall be that delving diver who, after the third or fourth submersion, returns no more to the surface!’ Beckett, Samuel: More Pricks Than Kicks, Picador, London, 1974, p.149. 14 Even more curiously, these two figures appear also in Yellow, Godot and Comment c’est. Ruby Cohn was to first to note this in her first review of the novel Comment c’est ‘De Quoi Rire’ 1961. 15 Beckett, Samuel: Comment c’est, Les Éditions De Minuit, Paris, 1992,p.137. 16 ‘The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.’ NietZsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil, Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, London, 1973, p.73.
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deux voiles l’un de gauche l’autre de droite qui arrivent se rejoignent ou l’un qui descend l’autre qui monte ou pan coupé en diagonal de l’angle supérieur gauche ou droit inférieur droit ou gauche un deux troix et quatre qui arrivent se rejoignentiii
All of the most exacting movements of the human couple, in the form of the Narrator and Pim as they have just been so graphically described previous in part 2, are here so precisely mimicked, giving virtual literal embodiment to the expression ‘like mere flies are we to the Gods’. The dedoublement is so accurately depicted.
F donc bien profound vite la fin là-haut la lumière ma claque et ongle sur la peau pour la barre supérieure du I romain17
In the ‘divine’ age of wandering, giants and wayfarers roam free, uninhibited. However, in the second age, the ‘heroic’, everything is about possessions; people being the primary source of such interaction. Beckett signals this to us very early on in ‘avec Pim’.
maintenant ses bras en croix de Saint-André 17
Cc. p.138, paragraph 3. E then good and deep quick now the end above sick of light and nail on skin for the down stroke of the Roman N (HII,p76, paragraph 5.)
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branches supérieurs angles plutôt fermé ma main gauche en suit le gauche pénètre à sa suite dans le sac le sien18
Amusingly, Beckett changes the points of reference in the English translation from F in the French original to E in the English version; does it really matter, E or F? man or fly? the result is one in the same. The Heraclitean dichotomy in both man and insect is one and the same. Indeed, there have been many fascinating comparative studies tracing the correspondence between men and beasts, be they animal, insect or bird . For Brigitte Le JueZ , in Flaubert’s Un Coeur simple ‘le perroquet deviant progressivement métaphore de l’amant réel ou manquant’.19 While Adam Watt, returning again to Beckett, sees intertextual elements going on in Beckett’s fourth ‘foirade’ in Pour finir encore et autres foirades in the motif of the ‘hanneton’, or cockchafer, who appears in the text as ‘métaphore de la futilité’ 20and which, according to Watt’s reading, is in fact a sign of Beckett’s reception of Proust, hinting as it does to ‘cet excellent Gri-gri’ le Prince d’Agrigente who appears at the Gurmantes Ball scene in Proust’s A la recherche . Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Orwell’s celebrated novel Animal Farm being just two more illustrations of the anthropomorphicism which appears in modern literature, but which taps deep into classical antiquity.
However, whether it be of man or animal, the configuration , or formula, remains ultimately Sado-Masochistic. But, what exactly does this mean? For Giles DeleuZe, ‘Sade’s heroes claim to reconstruct the world and rewrite the
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Cc, pp.90-91. now his arms Saint-Andrew’s cross top V reduced aperture my left hand moves up the left branch follows it into the sack his sack 19 http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/revue/article.php?id=66 Accessed 15/04/2013 ‘the parrot progressively becomes a metaphor for the lover, whether real or imagined.’ (my translation) 20
http://www.fabula.org/atelier.php?Pr%26eacute%3Bsence_de_Proust_dans_la_prose_tardive_de_Samuel_Beck ett Accessed 15/04/2013.
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“history of the heart”. They muster the forces of nature and tradition, from everywhere- Africa, Asia, the ancient world- to arrive at their tangible reality and the pure sensual principle underlying them.’21 Interestingly, Deleuze goes on to describe Masoch’s historical vision of the world22 , his lifelong labour, ‘to hold up a perverse mirror to all nature and all mankind, from the origins of history to the 1848 revolutions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire- “The History of Cruelty”.23 The similarity of the nature of both men’s vision of humanity, it being grounded in history, becomes all the more apparent both taking a Brunoian turn. For, as DeleuZe goes on to state, both sides becoming, at some point, their opposite number. The sadist, once having fully realised their sadistic nature will, in time, become their masochistic Other, and vice-versa. For the sadist, this metamorphosis is ‘the crowning glory of their glorious infamy’.24 For Beckett, this phenomenon is nothing other than the insertion of Giordano Bruno, which Joyce had made in Finnegan’s Wake. ‘There is no difference, says Bruno, between the smallest possible chord and the smallest possible arc, no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line. The maxima and the minima of particular contraries are one and indifferent. Minimal heat equals minimal cold. Consequently transmutations are circular.’25 All of this is compounded in Comment c’est by Beckett’s monstrous treatment of the Hegelian dialectic in part 3, ‘apres Pim’.
Vico’s third age is governed by ‘human reason’26 . Beckett’s lifelong engagement with rationalist philosophers has been heavily documented, mainly by readers coming to him through English, the language being heavily imbued by AngloSaxon culture which is philosophically heavily biased towards the ‘analytical tradition’. 27 When one is reading a work like Comment c’est this can be extremely 21
DeleuZe, Gilles: Masochism -Coldness and Cruelty, Zone Books, New York, 1991, p37. Deleuze is at pains to remind us that Sacher Masoch was first and foremost a renowned historian and was appalled when his name was to be associated, by Krafft-Ebbing ‘to designate a perversion’. Ibid, p. 10. 23 Ibid. p.38. 24 Ibid. p. 39. 25 Beckett, Samuel: Disjecta, Grove Press, New York, 1984, p.21. 26 In Book 4 of New Science, in Section 3, writing on the ‘Three Kinds of Natural Law’ Vico states: ‘The third is the human law which is dictated by fully developed human reason’. Vico, Giambattista: New Science, Translated by David Marsh, Penguin Books, London, 2001, p.400. 27 This assertion can be easily proved by looking at the wealth of publications treating Beckett and rationalist philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Malebranche, Arnault Guelincx and early Wittgenstein. Please see my Bibliography for a detailed list of such publications, which were consulted during the composition of this paper. 22
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disconcerting. For, although Malebranche is given a ‘cameo’ in part 1, as Anthony Cordingley so correctly notes28, I would hasten to add the pre-Platonic philosopher Heraclitus also appears and in the same part of the text, yet whom Cordingley, curiously enough, omits to mention.29
Beckett has never before been so savage in his condemnation of such ‘rationality’, as he is in part 3 of Comment c’est. The Viconian structure pre-establishes the context, it will all implode, for Vico it is pre-ordained, though he uses the term ‘providence’.
une première paire puis d’autres par-dessous autant du fois qu’il le faut ou une première un deux trois ou quatre une deuxième deux trois quatre ou un une troisième iv The movements so minutely described forming the Cross of Saint Andrew, which Beckett has the flies tracing in their movements, and which he also has his humans , two X’s forever affixed as indeed Aristophanes relates in Plato’s Symposium concerning the giants Ephilates and Otus who attempted to rebel against zeus and so were forever punished by being split in two30.
et qu’ainsi relié directement les uns aux autres
28
Anthony Cordingley Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui Vol. 18, "All Sturm and no Drang": Beckett and Romanticism, Beckett at Reading 2006 (2007), pp. 185-199.
29
Heraclitus appears for the first time in Beckett’s writing in the chapter ‘Yellow’ which makes up his first novel More Pricks than Kicks, which was published as far back as 1934. So to see him appearing again in Comment c’est which was published almost 30 years later in 1961, would seem very much indicative of a lifelong engagement. This is a subject worthy of a whole discourse in itself and which I will be addressing this summer – please see http://beckettucd.wordpress.com/ 30
The subject of scissiparity is directly referred to in Comment c’est, - migration de vers alors ou à queue des latrines frénésie scissiparie les jours de grande gaîte,-Cc. p. 175 / migration of slime- worms then or tailed latrinal scissiparous frenzy days of great gaiety- HIS, p. 98.
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chacun d’entre nous en meme temps Bom et Pim bourreau victim pion cancre demandeur défendeur muet et theatre d’une parole retrouvée dans le noir la boue là rien à corrigerv The eventual abandonment of the whole enterprise, book and civilisation, is all in keeping with the Viconian process of renewal. Reason simply cannot support, or explain, the full weight of humanity. So, the Hegelian dialectic, which Beckett simulates in the insane mathematical calculations towards the end of the book , implodes, and by doing so simulates Vico’s concluding third age when democracy crumbles in upon itself for the weakness of its Judgement 31. And so, we are once again returned, as in Finnegan’s wake, to the first age, or pages of the divine period of eternal wandering. Civilisation is renewed once again, back to its original first order.
The philosophical resolution which concludes the novel is Nietzschean in the extreme, the motif of the figure of Da Vinci’s Vitruvean Man, evoked as it is in the figures spread-eagled on the Saint Andrew’s Cross, a kind of renewed crucifixion by Beckett, which very much is in line with the German philosopher’s famous passage in his Genealogy of Morals: ‘slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside”, what is “different”, what is “not itself”; and this No is its creative deed.’32 Nietzsche was referring to Hegel’s Master and Slave Dialogue which he saw it as being reflective of the position of ‘the slave’, negating all, rather than in embracing difference in ‘triumphant affirmation’.33 For Nietzsche, as would also appear to be the case for Beckett in Comment c’est, ‘The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.’34
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‘By contrast, punishments are milder in democracies, because they are ruled by the masses who, being weak, are naturally inclined to compassion.’ Here, Vico is at his most Nietschean. Vico, Giambattista: New Science, Penguin Classics, London, 2001, p.449 32 Nietzsche, Friedrich: Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Introduction by Peter Gay, Translated by Walter Kaufmann, The Modern Library, New York, 2000, p.472. 33 Ibid. p.472. 34 Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil, Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, London, 1973, p.73.
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To finish, in his essay The Joyce that Beckett Built Kevin Dettmar35makes a very convincing case that our perception of Joyce today has been profoundly influenced by the way Samuel Beckett, in his later period, distanced himself from his former mentor. Dettmar refers particularly to the way Beckett responded to Richard Ellman’s questions, and which were eventually to become a significant contribution to Ellman’s celebrated biography of Joyce. He also uses the ‘interview’ which Beckett apparently gave to Israel Shenker, in which Beckett apparently states that he in the antithesis of Joyce in that Joyce ‘includes’ whilst he ‘excludes’. Comment c’est was written in 1961, after the success of En attendant Godot and the ‘Trilogy’, Beckett was at the height of his powers. And still, with the inclusion of Vico, and the flies, we can see the continuing influence of Joyce at work.
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Dettmar, Kevin: The Joyce that Beckett Built, James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 35/38,University of Tulsa, summer/fall, 1998, p.616.
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Biographical Note: Sera Csatt Bio: Sera Csatt An independent scholar specialising in pre-Christian esotericism and mystery cults, Sera has travelled extensively throughout Britain, Scandanavia and Ireland. She also enjoys cookery and equestrianism.
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Hill Search (Sera Csatt) Tracking past the one remaining Sentry like at the crossroads Of privet, bramble and fairy tree, I step south of the dying sun And under a thin wire – Here it is set out. Five branches spanning An eternity of green That draws everything north And east towards the power Lurking there unseen: unsounded; Under the silent mound – Here it stands. A world tree traced by ruminants Guides my step As I seek him: my spark, My ever changing constant – Where roams Sleipnir now?
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Welcome Back (Sera Csatt) Unintended and unplanned As you were You knew us before We found you again; That gaze all unremembered By you lit a torch For our grief and burnt Away to ashes the losing Of all that we lost – Stilled hearts and antiseptic Ringing through our nostrils: Too high a price this! You know us; A different step perhaps But the same shadow Follows you now As it did then And peace has settled.
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Naming What Was (Sera Csatt) It was normality, for it was all that occurred And had no measure made against it At the time: normality is what is known. Normality is home; home was a simmering rage Boiled up in vodka and potatoes With too much butter; too much salt And a chemical mix to wash it away – Home was this and less besides. The just heard hatred and swopped rooms In an old woman’s house filled with ghosts and tears; Where the little girl dared to question any of it – She was ill, after all; ill and difficult and unable And so they managed her. For more than three decades They managed her. And at last the words are spoken And it is named for what it was In truth: normality, home, all twisted. It was abuse. The little girl is grown now Despite them, not because of them – Normality is what she has won From the wide rack of the world That she knows is real.
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Biographical Note: Martin Burke
Though born in Ireland poet and playwright Martin Burke lives in Belgium from where he has to date published sixteen books of his work including BLAKE/LONDON/BLAKE by Feral Press (USA) & IEPER by Lapwing Publications (UK)
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SHADOW’S DREAM – some paintings of Paul Delvaux © Martin Burke 2014 This is the woman viewed under a sliver of the moon by attentive eyes and there is an orchard (it is wintertime, but it is an orchard) Rest now where the fates (which are the graces) cover her face with the face of a bird And her hair like a schooner’s mast spread over the sea where mermaid swim as sisters walk the shore She rests, taming the swan (you will know this story only in its convoluted version) reclining against a background of temples, dressing herself in soft greens Is now bridal attended by tender hands and concerned eyes Now in a triad walking the narrow path by the high wall Reclining in a wood, gathering three others about her where men come to watch But the ground could be a chess board and so she rests in the agora where a skeleton on a cross poses a dreadful redemption She prepares for a waltz, is dressed in a crown of brambles and leaves, and in soft light extends a hand to the beautiful god who walks by Now she attends the prayer-house, now is a mask wrapped in red ribbon where three skeletons gather to discuss immortality in the adjoining library But the agora calls her to face the empty station where a child is searching for her Golden light illuminates the shunting yard where she walks as if this was the hour of her passion And now all is white in the garden with the glass pavilion, thus the skeleton comes to her for simple conversation (in this is his redemption) Now she baths under the canopy of stars, now she reads a blue book her twin reads the absent pages of On the long red couch, changing to a white couch with a blue drape Or in the lamp-lit lane where the temple is empty Now ghosts and lovers attend. Now she stands accused, now she is acquitted. She greets an admirer in the market-place. She observes the moon observing her Ah but the railway carriage is waiting with invitations and temptations as a single would-be admirer wants to offer homage She rests on a couch in a welter of dreams yet sees the train approaching while at the mansion many are gathering for the yearly Ball Now she dreams her twin to life in a series of sensual poses where one kisses the statue of a god Now she is attended by flowers and nymphs. Now she watches from a garden wall where a bourgeois couple pass under a large, imposing umbrella. So she kisses and would be kissed - bowing before the self she has become in a mirror placed on a beach, in a landscape of towers and trains and deserted streets or streets with voyeurs, in landscapes that are solid yet dissolving, where a train takes her to that destination we cannot follow her into regardless of our wishes and needs 23
For this has been a dream’s shadow of a dream. This is the dream and the shadow. This is the shadow’s dream.
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SCENES FROM MALPERTUIS © Martin Burke 2014 Malpertuis is a gothic novel by the Flemish author Jean Ray, in which a dying warlock has trapped the aging gods of Olympus inside the skins of ordinary Flemish citizens in the house called Malpertuis. The text was composed to accompany a series of drawings by the Flemish Painter Eddy Tange. The gods are held within the house: see the door that cannot be passed, the windows that cannot be opened. Watch the wind guard the entrance and exit, watch the leaves obey the patterns of the wind. Birds are marked by seventeen strokes – but there are no markers for the absence of music (there is neither harp nor cymbal here.) Here is an epic of history, of has-been and will-be, here is an epic told in stunning colour. Count the steps to the door then count the beats of your heart – they will align where little else aligns unless it be the rattling of your bones. The gods are not dead but held within where gravity sags under the weight of time. * These women, three sisters, move between the two clocks telling different times neither of which is correct. Time is different, is strange where time stops as if it was a closed book never to be opened. And the urns –of whose ashes are they the container, or of whose ashes will they be? Even distance cannot be measured where the stained-glass window in stained with a chronicle it holds to itself. There is a skull and two winged horses –prisoners also and though the sisters suggest mourning by their dress and attitude we are not yet in mourning. Take note of the candelabra with two candles –light them in your heart for the sake of the living. * He address, he courts, he atones –the long-coated one, seeker or professional hunter of spirit and soul. In the silence it is clearly midnight and this is a midnight ritual. Focus on the figure in the vase and add your tears to its for the sake of release. The room in a curio-cabinet suggestive of mystery and explanation in equal portions about to be unbalanced. In a moment he will turn but we will not be here -for while we may observe we must pass on into other frames beyond this frame. Meanwhile address, court, atone –you have been here once and will not return though you have added your signature to his. Now you are the face within the vase –the one whose tears no longer guarantee release. * Ah! what a nineteenth century Breugel scene this might yet prove to be. Fire in the hearth, food on the table, pipes and tobacco for smoking –in other words, the good things of the good life. Wine also, of course, for what fare would be complete without the wine of transformation? So, let us enjoy what is before us. What came before and what will come after is, as yet, of no matter –but of course everything matters. The open book could belong to a poet or a magus and the woman serving the steaming food could be – No, do not say it. Leave her name unsaid. Here the spoken and unsaid are doppelgangers. Here you may observe but not yet participate. 25
* But if the gods are here then so are the anti-gods. They follow you into vacant rooms. They are the shadow you do not see. The presence you are not yet aware of. Leaves and snakes litter the floor and stairs. Bat wings flap the air like a giant mill. A forked tongue of flame issues from a skull. Now the world has changed. Now the anti-gods are coming into their own like a prophecy whose time of fulfilment has come. So walk but do not look behind you. It is midnight: Orpheus will not sing, Icarus will not ascend. * Tableau. In the library. Priest and virgin. Or is this a confessional moment to which we are privy? We would not wish to intrude but are held by the innocence of the scene –the more so because it occurs within a house such as this. Jealous eyes would attempt to break the moment of its perfection but this is a respite upon which no jealous eye intrudes. Beauty weaves its own compassion about them, and us. We are here and would not be elsewhere. The green leaves suggest a prophesied spring. * As is to be expected we meet the three sisters again meeting a fourth holding a lamp to light the darkened corridor. Their feet rustle along the tiles but there is no whispering that might be overheard. (Leaves are, of course, flittering down the hallway) What might we make of this moment if we did not know what had preceded it? Would we say these are innocent figures of the night or sinister conspirators plotting a devious moment? Both possibilities are present for they are the graces who might yet be the fates. Turn when they turn to the darkened room. Follow the footsteps they leave for you to follow. * Warlock. Impounder of virtues. Mind that moves where no mind dares. Conductor of the anti-orchestra. Silent because he has spoken what he needed to say. Unmoving magus in the throne of his bed (so little embellishment). Three clocks with the three times of hell. Gaoler. Warden of winter. The less said the better. * And now the fire begins to rage and birds desert the sanctuary. The bell that will ring will be the bell of alarm and mourning and the clouds will gather as witnesses. You will witness also. You will not want to look but you will witness. Is this the conflagration of all fear? Is this some burning of heaven and earth? Give it whatever name seems appropriate. It will not matter. It will change nothing. The sanctuary will burn and is burning –the passive sky is littered with stars. * Ruin, and ruination. Crows gather above the walled-in world beasts and shadows will inherit. After desolation there is only further desolation. Already the overgrowth creeps towards the burned walls. Now winter, now fire of ice, yet the snow is virginal and soft upon the ground. And silence (suitable brevity). Snow and silence combine to compose a story told in an off-hand manner, as if the
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proposed narrative was, and is, yours to complete. Then write the private chronicle of your life on each page and advocate for each tableau a befitting quotation. * Silence –and yet is there not a hint, a suggestion of lilting voices? No doubt I’m prone to voices on the wind but I suspect that Orpheus is singing. Voices are ringing where no voices are. I suspect that Orpheus is singing.
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Biographical Note: Patrick Joseph Dorrian
Patrick is Belfast born bred and buttered as McDowell would say. He retired from teaching in 2007 after 30 years struggling in West Belfast. Patrick is married to Frances and they have three offspring all adults now. He has exprimented with poetry for several decades as a means of escape and has had poetry published in various magazines.
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Going back to paper (Patrick Joseph Dorrian) I'm going back to paper, ink works better on it; I can score a line through mistakes, make shapes not available on screen. I'm going back to paper, it can be folded eight times, comfortably, reduced to fit all sorts of pockets or coats, never needing a battery or charger. I'm going back to paper, 'Comes in colours, at Christmas and birthdays; brown for durability; newspaper white for fish and chips, absorbs stains and water. I'm going back to paper, because this bleeding laptop is bleeding useless at sopping up, and Tippex destroys the screen and now the charger's fucked.
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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne
John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry Traditional and Japanese short form and have had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals http://johnisleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/
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AUTUMN (John Byrne) Old man Autumn's 'round my door as summer waves goodbye, darkness steals the evening light as swallows homeward fly. Harvest saved , the air grows cool and leaves turn yellow and gold, children trekking off to school, clutch hands with the newly enrolled Apple branches, heavy with fruit, a time of cider making, of apple tarts and blackberry pie delights of good home baking. A migrant season for some on the wing, and squirrels with something to hide, of ghosts and goblins and haloed moons, and a bounty that nature provides. Crispy short days, and long starry nights, white frosts that blanket the land, descending leaves upon the winds, wild seas upon the strands. The colourful glow of Autumn, of yellows reds and greens, filling our hearts with reflections this season that’s rich and clean.
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WINTER YEARS (John Byrne) His slightly built frame appeared at the window waving to greet me, as I go about my work, a tired soul in the winter of his years, seeking company from what’s left of his life. His eyes seem much sadder this morning, like a loyal pet after it’s master has departed, pupils dull and unmoving as he stares from the window of a room which has become his home and prison . Gone are those carefree fun times of his youth, in their place loneliness, frustration, and fear. If only he didn’t have to grow so old and frail, oh to have the strength of the lion he once was In these his winter years he watches the sunset slowly dipping below the mountain pulling another day of his life into the abyss where the present becomes the past Night hours finds him thinking, always thinking Of one more day, another dawning, and if He will hear the birdsong one more time In the tall pines which point to heaven and rest
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Biographical Note: Maire Maxwell
Maire was invited to read at An Evening of Poetry and Music in the Dean Crowe Theatre on July 4, 2014. Her writing has featured online and in print publications in the USA, UK, and Ireland. One of her poems is forthcoming in the Veils, Halos and Shackles International Poetry Journal on the Abuse and Oppression of Women. Maire’s work was longlisted in the 2013 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year.
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Haiku selection (Maire Maxwell) starling reunion pulsing murmuration restarts aching heart supermoon off Clare perseids and cloud spit high genie fireworks supermoon peeks out behind the thatched cottage dancing bear alights
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Biographical Note: Clare McCotter
Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Iota (forthcoming), Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea,County Derry.
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Communion for Annie Bradley (nÊe Rainey) Behind the old house in silence a plum tree waits. Its oval alms pendent on boughs you gleaned seasons long before the roan pony left. Claret fruit becoming attar of summer stored in sundry jars given with heart and hand. Sweet benediction ministered to all leaving the door you lost with a white conch shell and ballroom of faces out among tall golden corn. All manner of things will be spoken of no more the Snowy Breasted Pearl Portugal’s stony coast a garden sown with silky vermillion and persimmon. They are gone with test results that pared the forest of your fear down to a peach stone. For years you counselled no talk of cancer yet there you sit calm in the thin thrum of their words size and spread and scan. Vascular dementia shaving of God on her tongue.
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Changed Not Lost Rising on the crest of a scream she runs from the room appalled by the heft of his hand on her shoulder. She is nineteen years old a student at a teacher training college dressed in brand new Hepburn slacks and fitted peplum jacket. They are insane to say she is married to a man dowsed with sleep and time crusty saliva hinging his mouth. Frantically stopping pale passing faces she asks where is the nearest train station. Tied to a walking cane he is a winded lily solo on the unsteady floor he mutters only the faculties matter when they go all is gone. But she is changed not lost. The first eight bars he hums touches and she turns with words surfacing like the memory of water the lift the fall rippling her skin her throat her tongue: That certain night, the night we met There was magic abroad in the air There were angels dining at the Ritz And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
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It Is Not Your Chair He steers across bright buffered floors through two dayroom doors into the long corridor u-turning at an exit guarded by codes and a fire extinguisher set on a metal hook where a woman waits with wild cat’s cradle eyes as the swathe of silver widens in her chemically auburned hair. It is not your chair manoeuvred tonight in a yelp of fluorescent light while a man screams I should be at work and another is as he scratch coats a wall with a broken comb beside the cream screens shrouding specialised seating and the wide yellow sign reading Nurse’s Station. It is not your chair he guides rather a Déesse in dove grey every dovetailing part making it a cathedral car or some high-crested creature come from the sky with hydraulic suspension and variable ground clearance and under each glass cowl a pair of scowling moth ocelli. It is not your chair nurse that leaves Cill Chiaráin Straith Salach and Rinn Mhaoile behind while a girl in the back counting horses 38
spots the rarest of all out here a deep-chested cremello turning its head towards the purple hills as he drives into the west on into the west.
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Memory Tests Every encounter is an examination a probing an inspecting a questioning invariably beginning do you know who I am? If only they would still a minute give time a chance to fill with a trace a thread an alphabet a faded picture grainy in monochrome. In this desert there is no oasis no glass in failing light to follow the gazelle hound’s flight. Every road even the back road has a checkpoint with an officer asking name age address where are you going to where are you coming from do you remember who I am? World a ceaseless assessment of the recalled the forgotten the amorphous just now. Discussed though you are present like an overawed contestant on an endless talent competition. Each and every exchange evaluated grades given comments made highlighting incompetence or pouncing on the positive. But when doctor brings a Mini Mental State Test professional objectivity’s professed. Holding the veined translucence of your trembling hand she asks do you know who I am? Her flawlessly foundationed face fractured at your response. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck.
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The Snow Queen Her breath in the bleached asylum garden is an angel trumpeting softly of splinters shredding the velvet in old man’s heart. Clattering like diamonds in the dessert his tears began with the snow he wants to gather in a pianist’s fluttering demented hands. But the voluptuous red roses underground naming and numbering the dead would know one more if he were taken out into that steely air. From Kerala’s watery dark green byways she travelled here to be christened untrained worker tolerated for the sake of a husband’s skill. They do not know she is an apothecary today soothing another heart made foreign sculpted snow her salve carried to a chair parked by a locked door. Stout in outstretched arms the small snowman skirts a plastic basin his planet curves all tarted up with diamante earring and bright pink scarf.
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The Abandoned Asylum Thready and broken these corridors are capillaries worming eczema. Glossy griege paint cracked and sore and madly peeling falls over still half shining floors. At the dusky far end a wheelchair minus footrest waits outside two fire doors opening on a dayroom carpeted with the death throes of a Virginia creeper. Breaching the bay window’s mouldering frame it is a wound crossing space and time to tongue a rictus of rotten piano teeth. Next door Dorm One, bereft of stubby brown lockers and metal beds, hosts group therapy for the dead on a zero of black plastic chairs. Overhead fallen plaster crunches stairs climbing to an attic sheltering drip stands and a bluff of suitcases gaping like startled mouths in a silent film. Medium sized Cheneys small beige Bakelite vanities, sharp-cornered brown board Pakawas one crannied name tag telling this is the property of Mary Rose. Inside in a torn dust cover a copy of Melissa by Taylor Caldwell Coty lipstick in brick red and a washed out yellow hand knit bootee.
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If you fancy submitting something but haven’t done so yet, or if you would like to send us some further examples of your work, here are our submission guidelines:
SUBMISSIONS NB – All artwork must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Indecent and/or offensive images will not be published, and anyone found to be in breach of this will be reported to the police. Images must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Please include your name, contact details, and a short biography. You are welcome to include a photograph of yourself – this may be in colour or black and white. We cannot be responsible for the loss of or damage to any material that is sent to us, so please send copies as opposed to originals. Images may be resized in order to fit “On the Wall”. This is purely for practicality. E-mail all submissions to: g.greig3@gmail.com and title your message as follows: (Type of work here) submitted to “A New Ulster” (name of writer/artist here); or for younger contributors: “Letters to the Alley Cats” (name of contributor/parent or guardian here). Letters, reviews and other communications such as Tweets will be published in “Round the Back”. Please note that submissions may be edited. All copyright remains with the original author/artist, and no infringement is intended. These guidelines make sorting through all of our submissions a much simpler task, allowing us to spend more of our time working on getting each new edition out!
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October’s MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS: It’s our birthday where’s our cake or fish? Hmm Fishcakes yum! We have some amazing Haiga again as well as a piece by Arthur Broomfield. We did put out a poetry challenge and the winning entry is featured in John Jack Byrne’s work. Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone. Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.
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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://john-isleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/
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Her Kiss by John Jack Byrne
The September Sun by John Jack Byrne
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Summer Ends by John Jack Byrne
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Troubled Seas by John Jack Byrne
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A response to fair criticism : Arthur Broomfield replies to Peter O’Neill’s review of his book The Empty Too : language and philosophy in the works of Samuel Beckett. Peter O’Neill has published an interesting and at times, perceptive, review of my study on the works of Samuel Beckett, The Empty Too: language and philosophy in the works of Samuel Beckett (CSP 2014). He reviews three of the chapters from the work, those that deal with Waiting for Godot, How It Is and Worstward Ho! I thank my fellow Beckettian for the work and thought he has applied to his review, and I acknowledge the importance of Peter’s contribution to a fresh discourse on Beckett’s works, a discourse that distances itself from that currently in vogue in Irish studies that seems to read the masters texts through the political agenda of the agent rather than through the artist’s texts. In his analysis of my critique of Worstward Ho! and Waiting for Godot O’Neill gets my argument that Beckett wishes to free language (from the perceived) and ‘that language is the real that is haunted by non-being.’ Importantly he stresses that ‘ one of the very real pleasures of The Empty Too is that it, rather forcefully, encourages the reader to return to the texts’ for, possibly, the central point of The Empty Too is that Beckett’s texts themselves reveal the profundity of his understanding of the interconnectedness of philosophy and language. Though I refer to Plato and other philosophers in my book where it is necessary to mention areas of convergence with Beckett’s thinking, I stress that Beckett exceeds the thinking of all philosophers to date, and to read him through the lens of even the greatest of them is to reduce Beckett’s works. Peter takes issue with the subtitle of my book language and philosophy in the works of Samuel Beckett on two points. He expects ‘a complete analysis into the linguistic and philosophical ideas which Beckett evokes’ and suggests an alternative subtitle. He may have a point about the wording of the subtitle, though I will defend it by saying that I am talking about the philosophy of Samuel Beckett that is evident throughout his works. Too often critics tend to read Beckett’s works through the erroneously perceived evocation of other philosopher’s thinking in his works, where Beckett, in many cases quarrels 50
with, rather than evokes their thinking. In any case that kind of fossilised application of tired philosophy to Beckett’s texts has been overdone, and to the detriment of Beckett studies. I do draw on the thinking of Blanchot and Leslie Hill; both of their approaches go close to mine. O’Neill wonders why I treat How It Is only in the English translation; the answer is simple - I am not competent to critique any of Beckett’s works in any other than the English language but as Beckett is the work’s translator I am assuming that he has given it his imprimatur. When I speak of language I don’t mean the comparison of different languages, nor am I greatly interested in Beckett’s ‘multi-lingual fluency’ the study of which seems to me to address the comparison of accepted surface ‘meanings’ of languages rather than being a study of the impossibility of accurately re- presenting perceptions in a specific language – be it English – and relating it to being, which, as I read him, is where Beckett is at. This may well be the flaw in O’Neill’s approach, which we see in his comments on How It Is, that causes him to lose contact with the central point to Beckett’s project which is that language is the real and cannot be perceived by the senses at all. The point of my chapter on How It Is is that Beckett, through ingenious arrangement of the text e.g.in the omission of punctuation and its openness to interand intra- genre interpretation, subverts all possibilities of connecting it to any definite point of reference. The Beckett project that Peter identifies in Godot and Worstward Ho! is sustained in How It Is, as it is through all of his later works. Sadly Peter loses touch with the master’s project and takes comfort from the last resort of conservative academics; he connects it to an approach, through Vico, that reduces that which defies the collective thinking of philosophers to date to the approach of one of their numbers. Ironically Peter, in his final quote from Beckett’s study of Vico, taken from an early work, ‘Dante…Bruno, Vico…Joyce ‘untypically, misses out on the key to understanding Beckett: Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read- or rather it is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself The citation read alongside a line from How It Is it places the emphasis on the reducibility of the word ‘it ‘ to its basic irreducibility in the existential world, and hence nearer to the aspirational, pure language, the life to come: ‘ ‘ that wasn’t how it was no not at all’ (Beckett 2006 519) ( my italics ). As in How It Is (so obviously pregnant with the word under discussion ), Beckett distinguishes between the higher and lower cases, significantly in what we would take to be a 51
pronoun, the word that he reduces to the bare ‘it’ . The corporeal construction, the higher case ‘It,’ is to be looked at and listened to, while the purer lower case ‘it,’ distancing itself from the senses , is not to be read. By looking at and listening to the higher case ‘It’ we engage with the process of ‘going on’ towards the disengagement of language from the senses, to the possibility of the senses being unable to read ‘it’ We comprehend the profundity of Beckett’s vision, language is all and the realm of the senses will disappear into the void in ‘it is that something itself,’ form and content vacate the stage to leave ‘it’ as the unreadable, unsayable , aspirational and unreachable real, the something in itself, as the young Beckett says, that cannot represent , and strives for non-presence. From this approach to Beckett’s remarkably consistently sustained thesis it is difficult to give credence to Peter O’Neill’s proposition that, in Beckett, ‘Be-ing (is) centred around the senses. Being , as I read Beckett , is of the life to come that cannot be perceived by the senses , it is the real that has jettisoned the sentient to the void, the real that is ‘ only me yes alone yes with my voice…no murmuring…when the panting stops ‘ (520-521 ). and not ‘as Peter suggests, food for thought ‘centred around the senses.’ Peter O’Neill has written a serious review of my book that I welcome. I thank him for his generous contribution of time and thought which, hopefully will stimulate further discussion. I am uncomfortable with the term ‘Irish studies’ when it is applied to Beckett’s works as it implies appropriation by insular causes and agendas with which I have nothing in common, of something that is universal. I prefer to talk about studies of Beckett by Irish critics and Peter is assuredly one of these. I look forward to hearing more from him.
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Padriac Fiacc portrait by Amos Greig
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