Arnaud Mouratoglou

21124880
IS3102 Flann O’Brien and the Irish Comic Tradition

IS3102 Flann O’Brien and the Irish Comic Tradition

In your essay, you should refer to at least two of his novels and the principal critics who have
written about At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, and An Béal Bocht/The Poor Mouth.

Word count: 2000 words

Deadline for submission: 10 December 2021

Lecturer and Course Director

Professor Louis de Paor
Room 202
Centre for Irish Studies
Email louis.depaor@nuigalway.ie
Brian O’Nolan was an Irish writer who was born in October 1911 in Starabe, County Tyrone,
he is best known as Flann O’Brien. His first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds was published in
1939, that book has a strong claim to be one of the founding texts of literary postmodernism
(https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-fantastic-flann-o-brien-1.611390). Flann
O’Brien and his works are seen as modernists or postmodernists, he tries to break with the
traditional conventions of the novel by showing how a modern novel should be (Myles,
J.C.C. Mays, Brian’O Nolan literalist of the imagination p86) but his principal quest was to
find an equilibrium between the way of living and thinking belonging to traditional Ireland, a
post-colonialist period, linked to the past, and structured by conventions and between the
modern world, the present, the new Irish identity, the new way of thinking coming from
Europe and Russia. Flann O’Brien tries to show that duality that is inside himself, a kind of
binary way of thinking that pushes himself to find answers. I will try to show in that essay,
how his three novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and The Poor Mouth consigns
him to the margins of twentieth-century Irish literature because of the lack of a unifying
vision between them but I will also try to show that even if they are very different from each
other, they are linked together. Flann O’Brien wrote them one after one another, as it is
written above At Swim-Two-Birds was published in 1939, The Third Policeman was written
between 1939 and 1940 and The Poor Mouth was written in 1941, it is a really short period of
time for three books of that quality. Even if there is no continuity concerning the plot of these
novels, We could think that they are more or less consciously linked to each other by the
author. They represent chronologically the personal journey of the life of Flann O’Brien
during that period but also the different problems and contradictions that were at stake for
Irish people and Ireland at the time.

His first book At Swim-Two-Birds was innovative, it is seen as a kind of experiment, it also
correspond to a new era of Irish literature. That novel completely breaks the traditional way
of writing. Language and form are at the heart of his work. They represented the state of
Ireland during the 20s, a kind of chaos that is reflected in the modernist era. That chaos is
reflected through the form of that novel. There is for example only one chapter, the novel is
not structured by chapters but by the characters and the story itself, even if the book appears
to be chaotic, everything is organised by patterns. The different stories of the characters are
interlocked to each other, allowing the reader to follow a kind of guidance of thoughts.
Another specificity of that novel is that sometimes the author stops the narrative in order to
show the techniques he uses to trick our mind and perception. It is one of his attempt to
reveal the truth by putting the focus on the medium allowing the reader to think by himself.
His second novel, The Third Policeman is very different from At Swim-Two-Birds concerning
the form. It is structured by chapters and the story is only told by the narrator, however Flann
O’Brien plays with the form of the novel by writing non sense footnotes, he makes them
bigger and bigger, some of them fill more than a page. It is a way for him to mock academic
discourse that pretend to reach the truth. Again Flann O’Brien tries to touch and to play with
the notion of truth through the form of his novel.
Concerning his third novel, The Poor Mouth, the form of the novel could be considered as
more traditional, it could be said that it is a kind of return to his roots for Flann O’Brien.
However the preface of the book is uncommon to read, it says that the editor has the control
on the possibility of speaking of the author, he has the power of censorship, he certifies
himself the work of the author according to his personal conventions. As a result the text is
distorted and once again the truth seems to be unreachable…

The three novels are also very different concerning the use of language made by Brian
O’Nolan. He considers, as other modernist writers, that language betrays reality. Language is
a very important matter for the author but also for the Irish people. In At Swim-Two-Birds,
each character is considered as a story itself, it is shown by the way of speaking and by the
language which is used, for example Finn Mc Cool positions himself as the author of his
story, he embodies the traditional Ireland, he speaks about the past and about old values. He
is a kind of medieval hero but the more he talks the more he seems to be ridiculous, the old
values are no longer great values in the modern era. Flann O’Brien manages to juxtapose
different style of language, from old fashioned language such as poetic language to low
language like slang in order to show the contrast that exists between people who speak in
different style, it allows to pull down the high language and to show that language controls
the person who speaks, as one generally thinks the opposite. Language creates us and we
have to follow its rules but it implies that language is fake, distorted and can not express
reality, the truth.
In The Third Policeman, the author writes English as if it was a dead language, using mostly
Hiberno English, for example the inspector uses the word “irrectitude” (Flann O’Brien, The
complete Novels, everyman’s library, p307). It could be interpreted as language is limited to
the perception of the speaker, it may appear for truth but it could be only an illusion.
Concerning The Poor Mouth, it is very different from the two other novels. Indeed Flann
O’Brien wrote it in Gaelic and it was translated to English only in 1973 (Flann O'Brien
(1941/1974), The Poor Mouth, trans., Patrick C. Power, illus., Ralph Steadman, New York:
Viking, back of dust cover, quoting Stan Gebler Davies, Evening Standard). For Flann
O’Brien, the Irish language, as a Latin one, was more sophisticated than English but is goes
beyond that. At the time a deep feeling of nationalism emerged in Ireland, the movement was
led by nationalists who emphasized on the importance of speaking Irish, although Flann
O’Brien thought that Gaelic was a way to reinforce the Irish culture, he did not think that
language was linked to nationalism. The two languages were constantly facing each other in
Ireland, English was imposed to native Irish, mostly in the West, with time it became a kind
of power to speak English, it was seen as a materialistic language, it allowed people to trade,
and to speak with English “gentlemen”, moreover it was the language of the law, it could be a
necessity for Irish people to learn how to speak English in order to defend themselves in a
court, as at the end of The Poor Mouth, the hero, Bonaparte is found guilty but he does not
even understand why. On the other side, Irish language was powerful in politics, it was
considered as a spiritual language but it does not allow people to improve their daily lives as
opposed to English. For O’Brien, it was a necessity for Ireland to speak Irish in order to
reaffirm its identity, far from English colonialism, as well as for himself, we could consider
that he has realised that, more than anything he had to find himself through his heritage and
his identity.

We will now see the different themes expressed by Flann O’Brien. As we know he uses satire
in order to mock and criticise aspects of Ireland and its society. At Swim-Two-Birds, as we
said before, was a kind of experiment, Flann O’Brien was searching for answers about the
way of living of modern Ireland which was trapped between the past and the present, but it
was also linked to his state of mind, he found out that he was himself trapped into that
perspective. He always opposes two way of perceiving the world, in At swim-Two-Birds, the
main themes are imagination versus reality. All characters in the book that reject the real
world for the imaginary world are kind of doomed. O’Brien tries to show that the real world
can not be denied, people have to face it even if it could lead to some pain, and pain through
the body, as opposed to the mind which is free, is a reminder that no one can escape reality.
That point of view is based on the ideas of Christian religion at the 20th century. Pain is a
reminder of our human condition and the perception of the body is necessary to perceive
reality. The world of imagination can not be separated from the lived experience. For him
human beings are not pure, purity is unreachable and we are always a mix of purity and
corruption.
The Third Policeman, is mainly about the world seen by sciences versus reality, once again.
That perception is very different from the first novel which is chaotic and experimental, that
one on the contrary is well structured and rationality is omnipresent in that book. The Third
Policeman satires the scientific human mind and its logic, modern science has transformed
the understanding of the world at the time and the common way of thinking suggested that
truth could be approached through the rational mind and science. But for Flann O’Brien it
was only an illusion, it was only a way to reassure people in front of their uncertainty about
the world, about reality. However when the hero encounters his soul, it becomes his greatest
assistance in the world, because of that we could say that all truth is limited to by the personal
perspective or we could say that the only truth one can reach is through his personal
perspective. The ultimate truth is beyond human capacity and searching for it is synonym of
searching for an illusion. Only human pride and arrogance can make people think they can
reach the ultimate truth, it is manifested by sciences but it is false and dangerous for O’Brien.
Finally in The Poor Mouth, Flann O’Brien broaches the themes of Irish cliché and Irish
identity versus spirituality, personal growth versus social conventions. We could say that The
Poor Mouth is the consecration of Flann O’Brien questioning about society and himself, he
has understood that the truth he can reach, as well as reality, is his own and personal truth. As
I said above, it is a kind of return to his roots, he satirises the autobiography of Tomás Ó
Criomhthain and his book, The Islandman which was one of his favorite book. For Flann
O’Brien there is a lot of nostalgia about Ireland in the past, he is nostalgic of early Irish
civilisations before colonisation. He imagines an idealised future based on an idealised past
(Documentary of Ruán Magan (Irleand, 2019, 1h37mn) La révolution irlandaise | ARTE), but
he also criticises the relationship between Irish people and the clichés imposed on themselves
by outsiders. For him the fact of accepting these clichés prevents Irish people to build their
own culture, based on the reality of every Irish natives. The knowledge expresses in the
books are mostly clichés, they reduce Irish people to stereotypes and corrupt they way of
behaving but also thinking. For the author Irish people are a spiritual people but they are
sometimes corrupted by materialism, manifesting itself with poverty. Materialism and
modernism put the world in chaos according to Flann O’Brien.

We have seen that even if there is no unifying vision between these three books, they follow a
kind of torrent of thoughts that expresses Brian O’Nollan quest and journey to find his own
identity and who he was. He had the talent to put words on what an entire people was facing
at the time, he tried to communicate the answers he has found and to lead people to their
personal truth and reality by using and playing with conventions and different way of
thinking. But he had to pay the price of that elegance and knowledge he acquired during his
life, he was alcoholic and he was probably deeply suffering from the reality he has found, he
felt probably trapped into that society that could be more difficult to face than expected. As
Flann O’Brien did, “some Irish people spend their day to deconstruct the stereotypes but
spend their night to reconstruct them” (Louis De Paor, 2122-IS3102 Topic in Irish studies).
His work is a reflection of Irish society at the time, but it is more than that, it is a reflection
on every human beings and their quest to find who they are and what they are searching for.
It transcends the past, the present and the future to give a guidance to every readers reading
these books. And that is a wonderful gift Brian O’Nollan has given to us.
 Bibliography:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-fantastic-flann-o-brien-1.611390

Myles, J.C.C. Mays, Brian’O Nolan literalist of the imagination p86

Flann O’Brien, The complete Novels, everyman’s library, p307

Flann O'Brien (1941/1974), The Poor Mouth, trans., Patrick C. Power, illus., Ralph
Steadman, New York: Viking, back of dust cover, quoting Stan Gebler Davies, Evening
Standard

Documentary of Ruán Magan (Irleand, 2019, 1h37mn) La révolution irlandaise | ARTE (La
révolution irlandaise | ARTE - YouTube )

Louis De Paor, 2122-IS3102 Topic in Irish studies