I eventually leave Galway in my almost first Irish rain. A freezing wind has been blowing the town since I arrived, preventing me from enjoying the big fresh air – except when I foolishly decided to walk Connemara’s moors – but I liked spending a lazy afternoon in Tigh Neachtain warm atmosphere, reading Irish novels, listening to Irish life, writing my Irish steps. I loved that peaceful and quiet time in Galway. Although the town didn’t rock my world like I’ve been told – it might have suffered my stay in Aran –, I would have loved to taste it better until I fell in love with its lovely little paved streets which knew their first glory when Galway traded with medieval Spain and France. The Latin Quarter still stands for that past.
I sleep on my way to Dublin, so it’s less painful to leave the Irish Atlantic. I feel so heartbroken to leave the Wild West, to feel my departure spectrum heavy on my mind. I can still smell ocean in my nose, I’m leaving untamed Connemara freedom to another kind of freedom, the national freedom of a small oppressed island, following Synge rail steps towards another celebration: the fallen hero, the un-crowned King of Ireland, Charles Parnell’s commemoration.
Irish deputy in Westminster, he will lead a massive land reform and most of all, the Home Rule campaign. Ireland has then been inextricably united to the British Crown for over one hundred years, slaved for many centuries, and Nationalists are trying to find a peaceful and political way to gain their freedom. This federal solution would bring back an Irish Parliament while the Crown would still keep some power. It’s not revolutionary but it’s already too much to ask to greed England and it reveals a dreadful division: the one between a Catholic Nationalist Ireland and a Protestant English Ireland, the one between the United Ireland and the loyalist Ulster.
However, in a traditionalist Ireland, Parnell’s personal life jeopardizes this fragile emancipation, Parnellite and anti-Parnellite are fighting over Parnell’s new wife because she divorced her military husband and opinions can’t stand it. Parnell’s falling is a national tragedy, the peaceful revolutionary’s political death knell, too soon followed by his dying breath. People are mourning both their freedom and their savior ungratefully torn to pieces for some ridiculous wedding scandal. Nobody knows then that he yet changed Irish political course for ever: with his endless speeches in Westminster, he brought the whole issue of Home Rule to the forefront of British politics, and politics after him won’t have any other choice than questioning the Union.
I finally reach Eastern Ireland, I reach Dublin, I reach a celebrating city, prepared for the rising, or at least its commemoration, in between past and now. The Irish Republic is everywhere. I could almost forget this rebellion was a failure. It’s time to celebrate. But the dead. But the others. But the sacrificed. But the others. But later. When 2019 will come to remember the true independence? Or 2023 to forget the peaceful blood? What will they have to celebrate then? A divided country’s anger? Are they really united now ?
I step in revolutionaries’ steps and my heart gets a bit heavier. Heavy of something I can’t tell. So heavy. Thankfully, I cheerfully take whatever Dublin has to give me: theater, museums, history. I savor my last Irish moments and I focus on now.
I explore the Liberties; districts of the poorest people, it used to be out of Dublin’s limits. I wander in the ancient working class streets and the rain surprises me. I take shelter under Liberty Market’s roof and I can hear Molly Malone* – that I haven’t met (yet?) – calling for the pedestrians. I’m in Ulysses’ district but I can’t find my Itaque, only another overflowing life. Poor people’s, all wearing the same soulless clothes. They do have a soul though, straight-forward, rough and beautiful, and confused, that you want to cradle. Because poor people only have their powerful shrill voice left to call for help.
Sun is shinier after and in the rain. I can understand the weather like I never did before. I can see the black cloud bringing the second storm for my wet feet. And I run before the clouds, I flee to the other side at any cost, to delay the rain, to get time for a shelter. I only get time to hide under a doorway, and a famous one! Mister Guinness’, please. An old and giant building with endless walls is looking down on me. I’m sure this red bricks walls are the American sky-scrappers’ ancestors. I fell so little and I’m already not that tall.
A fleeting clearing gives me time to reach a more consistent roof. I linger a bit in the Long Hall, a pub with carpets and leather seats, which already hosted my father and I St Paddy’s day. Built in 1880 where used to stand a bar that bankrupted after the Fenian Rebellion since all its usual customers were in jail; everybody now gathers here preventing me from a table to write. I flee to the Palace Bar though, two stories bars like any others Irish bar: beer at the first floor and whisky upstairs. I snuggle in the whisky floor’s comforting warmth, awaiting for my encounter with Sean O’Casey at the Abbey Theatre. Or at least, I hope.
My rendezvous with O’Casey is delayed, maybe for tomorrow or another day, I was too late, even only to mark my name on a waiting list. Instead, I stop at the pub. A new one, which looks like an old rail station bar. I probably wouldn’t get in there in France, but I’m in Ireland. I drink more beers that I have money. I’m sadly almost drunk at 8.00 pm and my shoes are flooding.
The big day is here. It’s time to commemorate on a chosen date that raises arguments: Easter Rising is always celebrated during Easter weekend even if it doesn’t occur each 24 of the month. But Church was the iron hand behind the republican government for years and Easter it is, even if some disagree. I’m attending to remembrance speeches and military parades that I don’t even watch for our French National Day, July 14th. I secretly hope that I would feel something special and be reached by revolutionaries’ groans. Something does happen but not how I thought; it’s unique of my four hours spent with perfect strangers, standing in the cold: I belong to what units those who don’t know each other for a short moment.
Absently rocked by an old couple making music with their flag to tune the same old catchy State ceremony, I try to listen to the different more of less solemn speeches. Every time, my neighbor tells me what is going on, what I might not understand. And when somebody tries to slyly sneak into the spot I have kept for hours, my shocked neighbors fight for me. For a couple of hours, we are The Raft of the Medusa in the storm, we don’t know each other, we’ll never meet again, but this cold sunny Sunday shared moment only belong to us. We finally end with one minute of silence because there is only silent to honor people who sacrificed their life.
I spent my afternoon at the history Museum, reliving the Easter Rising and a piece of the Republic construction, cracking English panel, I’m exhausted. I can’t decide if I want to wander my tired steps to go to the pub, maybe McDaid’s, this writer’s bar that I’ve heard of. Unfortunately, I don’t feel up to go back to Dublin freezing wind. Only my mind wanders instead.
The grandiloquent 1916 celebration questions me about history with a capital H; Ireland constantly faces her painful history demons that she created for a part and the country is trapped a politic past that sill divides… Wouldn’t it be time for this nation to look into its past with all its defaults and not only glorifying or hiding what doesn’t fit? With this overwhelming shiny celebration, Ireland obscures both the Independence and the deadly Civil War commemorations. Would it be possible to forgive England’s crimes and start to question Ireland’s own atrocities? But Ireland is so young she just turned one hundreds! I wonder how to be Irish today: can they be patriot without being narrow-minded? Without being nationalist? Without proving themselves? They lived through centuries of struggles against an alien power, against an oppressing system; limited in their being and their opportunities. Today, can they be Irish without revendication? They are finally free to simply be Irish at their right place in the world, but can they be without any ulterior-motive? Without any preconceived ideas? Without any revenge to fight? Doesn’t a buried anger to English linger? And to any stranger by extension? I think about a story Thorsten told me: a newly settled English in Ireland is completely ostracized. The City council meetings used to be held in English until he came, turns to be in Gaelic. As soon as he enters any shop, people who were talking in English starts to converse in Irish. Bitterness is thick-skinned and this innocent English pays dearly his English legacy.
History knowledge helps us to understand who we are, but doesn’t it become a limit for the future when the past is full of blood and hatred? Doesn’t it become a heavy burden on mortal shoulders? A part of me is bearing Algeria colonization, feeling guilty about it; yet, I wasn’t there, nor any of my family members. However, like this innocent English, I’m French stamped, invisibly heiress of France’s crimes that I haven’t committed. How can we deal with history when it’s only an excuse for hatred, when it’s only an alibi for revenge? Being patient? Forgiving and asking for forgiveness?
I also think about my impatient writing feather, and I wonder what idea I really want to share. I think about France trapped in a glorious past whose sins it sometimes hypocritically atones; wouldn’t it be time for both France and Ireland, to take their past for granted and stand for freedom in the present, to stop waving a lore idea and start working for reality? Questioning Ireland makes me question my own country, the rest of the world, our inheritances and how we can free ourselves in order to create an unrealistic brand new world. Might this be my play write’s task?
Easter Monday is too grand, too generous and too unbelievable to leave me one minute of transcription! Easter Monday is so magical I would like to cry. I can finally see the real people festivity instead of the frozen political emphatic state celebration. The whole city, maybe even the whole country, wears 1916 colors, sometimes awkwardly trying to remember, to honor, to build a new century of freedom, all together. Young, old, ugly, artist, poor, people from here or elsewhere. I surf on memories: I blend into the Irish Nation, women and men, proud and triumphant, denouncing the ugly truth, killed civilians, forgotten children, the one who didn’t have faith. A terrible beauty is born. Every museum, every garden, every street, told me about the past and the present. Ireland of today was born with this uprising: Free Ireland. And Yeats talks to me through a very young girl’s voice.
But most of all, I live a very simple moment, immortally beautiful, extremely generous, like the grand finale or an Irish firework… First, there was this young man, on the bus, who paid for my dad and me because we didn’t have enough change and the driver wouldn’t accept our ten euros banknote; then, there was this boat that traveled me for free from Inis Mor to Inis Oir because I missed the one I booked; and eventually, this lost American who was walked to his hotel by a total stranger without asking… Small attentions which meant everything to me. Yet, it’s nothing compares to what is coming.
I’m going up the National Library first floor to have a glimpse on the dome and listen to some poesy, when an old lady going down asks me: ”Are you free tonight?” She has a ticket for The Plough and the Stars tonight at the Abbey Theatre, she won’t be able to make it because she is too tired. My heart is rushing, getting out of control, racing, bumping, stops for a minute; eventually I articulate a glowing “yes”. I can’t believe it! This lady with such a pure heart just made my Dublin dream come true, I don’t have any change with me, but she refuses my money, she only wants me to swear to go to theater tonight. Thank you madam, you made me the happiest French traveler in the world! Cross my heart and hope to die! How foolish, how lucky! Tears in my heart, I’m sparkling happy. I would like to run through streets and countries to challenge everything my mind can turn into gold!
When I sit in my quilted seat perfectly well situated, my heart is too weak for all my emotions, I am out of tears for my overflowing joy. I don’t understand every word, I’m not even sure they are speaking English sometimes, but the story is beautiful. O’Casey scratches a bit the New Irish State myth and shows another uprising: the one of those who didn’t want that rebellion, the one who unfairly died in that war. Because it was a war indeed, I saw the pictures. A war that left Dublin devastated and in the rubble.
Before that enchanted night, I stopped at the International Bar where I tried to explain , with my poor English, Irish history like I had taken part in it to three Italian girls that I met there. I also met Ryan, pure native Irish, cheerfully jealous of my extraordinary luck with the Abbey Theatre ticket. He told me his hero’s story: “Dev”, Eamon de Valera, ambivalent figure of Ireland’s resistance and independence. Involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, he is the Ultras’ leader and doesn’t accept the British Peace Treaty, leading to the Civil War achieved with the Anti-Treaty’s surrender. One could say he only follows half of Ireland’s lead. Yes but, Eamon de Valera will graciously become president one day…
It’s the penultimate departure morning, the one just before the last exile. I write my last anecdote: as I was going downtown for a stamp, I stop in a supermarket which doesn’t have any. The cashier sends me to the Post Office nearby. I don’t recall a Post Office in O’Connell Street… Except maybe the General Post Office! The Bloody Easter one, where I stood for four hours in the wind! With all these celebrations, I almost forgot its first function! Then I buy my three last Irish stamps in the new Post office since the indoor completely burnt down by the rebellion.
And i let emotions swallow my soul, I let my sore feet get angry. Dublin was beautiful and multiple, Dublin was cultural and open-minded, Dublin was grey and green, Dublin was alive and rainy, Dublin liked me. Dublin stole my heart. I watched the city running in my bus window as I’m driven to my starting point. I’m moved by people saying goodbye, by people’s love, life, song… I can feel my soul squeezing of happiness only to glance at Ireland be.
It’s the real day without Irish tomorrow and Cork puts in its blue dress, its sunny dress. It enlightens my heart with a tragic note. My heart aches even if I can’t realize yet. Buy when it becomes real, my whole body cries. It’s not farewell though, We’ll meet again sings in my mind, perfect soundtrack of my life. I also can hear Nora’s so recognizable voice in my head and I suddenly understand leaving Ireland also means leaving this foreign language that gave me so much freedom. This new reality is so painful.
Every Irish day gave ten thousands lives, the out of space time I needed, and I go home full of hope. However, I feel torn between different doubts: the need to deal with my problems left in France, the certainty to come back to Ireland one (close) day and the desire to stay here forever.
I remember telling my dad, in between two pints, my wish, still true today as I’m ready to fly, to live here for a few months one day. Here, in Ireland – Cork, Dublin, somewhere, anywhere – to sink more deeply in Ireland and history, to meet more of these incredible Irish, for my writings and for myself. And for the first time in a while, I don’t think my life for the ten upcoming year, I think with my instant instinct.
I ride my last Irish bus over the sunny green countryside, I reach the airport and my first arrival memory: in the hall, it’s raining gingers and coppers. One thought it was clever to agree with some Irish cliché and create a redhead portraits exhibition for the foreign travelers.
My journey is ending now, a few more hours and I’ll reach my pink city. A few more hours and I’ll close my travel diary until my next departure. I glance at Ireland until the last moment, clouds are so low or we are so high, I don’t know. Ireland is so beautiful in sun and clouds shadow on the ground. My right ear can still hear the ocean and my soul turns cold. Irish song still fill up my heart though. And the whole world seas surge in the storm of my heart.
* Ulysses‘ female character (James Joyce)
** The Plough and the Stars‘ female character (Sean O’Casey)
Justine T. Annezo – MARCH 2016
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 