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NEW DIRECTIONS IN IRISH AND
IRISH AMERICAN LITERATURE
Limits and Languages

in Contemporary
Irish Women’s Poetry
Daniela Theinová
New Directions in Irish and Irish American
Literature
Series Editors
Claire A. Culleton
Department of English
Kent State University
Kent, OH, USA
Kelly Matthews
Department of English
Framingham State University
Framingham, MA, USA
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scholarship centered on Irish and Irish American literature. The series’s
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twenty-first century understanding of Ireland, America, Irish Americans,
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Daniela Theinová
Limits and Languages

in Contemporary Irish
Women’s Poetry
Daniela Theinová
Department of Anglophone Literatures
and Cultures, Faculty of Arts
Charles University
Prague, Czech Republic
New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature

ISBN 978-3-030-55953-3 ISBN 978-3-030-55954-0 (eBook)
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For Karel & Daniel
Acknowledgements
While writing this book, I have received generous help and intellectual
gifts from many people and it is my pleasure to acknowledge them here.
My thanks are due to Máirín Nic Eoin, Máire Ní Annracháin, Brian Ó
Conchubhair, Rióna Ní Fhrighil, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Tríona Ní
Shíocháin, David Wheatley and Justin Quinn for sharing their own texts
and translations, and to Pádraigín Riggs, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Pádraig
Ó Liatháin, Sarah McKibben and Michaela Marková for helping me to
obtain materials and sources essential to my research. I am indebted to
Irish-speaking friends and colleagues, Radvan Markus, Ken Ó Donnchú
and Síle Ní Bhroin for the much-needed linguistic consultation, and to
my students, present and past, for their insightful comments about some
of the works I discuss.
My greatest debts are to Justin Quinn who was the supervisor of the
thesis from which this study emerged and whose example as a critic,
writer, translator and teacher has been an immense inspiration to me. I
am greatly indebted to Matthew Campbell for his valuable criticism and
for pinpointing traits worth following in the original text. I would also
like to thank Martin Procházka and Ondřej Pilný who both provided
helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. I am grateful
to my friends and colleagues at the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles
University in Prague, Clare Wallace, Ondřej Pilný, Radvan Markus and
James Little, for their encouragement and stimulating conversation and to
Brian Ó Conchubhair at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, whose
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
friendship and wise advice I treasure dearly. Finally, I wish to thank

Mícheál Mac Craith for drawing my attention to some of the poets and
works, and for opening up the world of Irish-language poetry to me many
years ago.
At Palgrave Macmillan, I was initially in contact with Tomas René, the
former Commissioning Editor for Literature and Theatre & Performance,
who showed faith in the project and found two sensitive readers whom
I would like to thank for their generous feedback and immensely stimu-
lating reports. I am grateful to the series editors of New Directions in Irish
and Irish American Literature, Kelly Matthews and Claire A. Culleton,
for accepting the manuscript into their series, and I thank the editors for
Literature and Theatre & Performance, Vicky Bates and Eileen Srebernik,
for taking the book through the final stages of the commissioning process,
and the editorial assistants Jack Heeney and Rachel Jacobe for all their
help and very useful advice. My thanks also go to Linda Jayne Turner for
reading and carefully copy-editing the manuscript.
Most of all, I am grateful to Karel whose love and brilliant humour
have sustained me through this and every other project and to Daniel
who was born around the time the idea for this project was conceived.
This book is dedicated to them.
Parts of this research have previously been published as “‘Letting in
the Light of Laughter’: Traditional Iconic Images of the Feminized Land
in the Hands of Contemporary Poets,” in The Politics of Irish Writing
(Prague: Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University, 2010), “‘My Dream
Sister’: Irish Women Poets Deconstructing the Muse,” in Boundary Cross-
ings: New Scholarship in Irish Studies (Prague: Centre for Irish Studies,
2012) and as “Original in Translation: The Poetry of Aifric Mac Aodha,”
in Post-Ireland?: Essays on Contemporary Irish Poetry (edited by Jefferson
Holdridge and Brian Ó Conchubhair; Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest
University Press, 2017).
I am extremely grateful to Biddy Jenkinson for her kind permission
to include my English translations of her poems in the study. In April
2020, after the manuscript has been accepted for publication by Palgrave
Macmillan, Eavan Boland sadly passed away. This book discusses the
poet’s central role in the development of anglophone Irish poetry over
the past fifty years and is dedicated to her memory.
Contents
1 Introduction: Uncertain Identities 1

Women on the Margin 4
Women and Languages 11
Works Cited 26
Part I New Lands for New Words
2 Revolutionary Laughter: Irish Poets Dismantling Old

Icons and Shibboleths 41
Irish Mothers: Eavan Boland and Vona Groarke 42
Chilling Apparitions: Biddy Jenkinson and Nuala Ní
Dhomhnaill 52
Works Cited 68
3 Figures in a Landscape: Women on Language, Land

and Desire 73
Ironic Inversions: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Medbh
McGuckian 74
Shifting Soil: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Eavan Boland 84
Works Cited 97
ix
x CONTENTS
Part II Secret Scripts
4 The Muse in Question: Tropes of Inspiration Revisited 107

Radical Reticence: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Paula
Meehan 110
All Is Muse: Medbh McGuckian and Biddy Jenkinson 119
Works Cited 133
5 Poetry of Silence: Rhetorical Concealment

and the Possibility of Speech 137
Sounding Gestures: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Caitríona
O’Reilly 139
Thinning the Muse: Caitríona O’Reilly and Vona Groarke 147
Works Cited 159
6 Kinds of Between: The Margin as a Mainspring 163

Woman at a Window: Eavan Boland and Eiléan Ní
Chuilleanáin 165
Ghosts and Bodies: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Medbh
McGuckian and Vona Groarke 172
Works Cited 186
7 Original in Translation: Poets Between Languages 189

Irish as the Source and Target: Aifric Mac Aodha 190
Reinventing the Language: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Medbh
McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Eavan Boland 199
Works Cited 216
8 In and Out of Ireland: New Poets and New Places 219

Words as Things Worth Knowing: Sinéad Morrissey 221
Translating Home: Ailbhe Darcy 232
Works Cited 245
CONTENTS xi
9 Conclusion: Feminism After Poetry 247

Works Cited 254
Selected Bibliography 255
Index 271
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Uncertain Identities
The close of James Joyce’s Dubliners strikes a conciliatory note as Gabriel

Conroy sleepily watches the snowflakes, his eyes filled with “generous
tears” of recognition: “snow was general all over Ireland . . . His soul
swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe
and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living
and the dead.”1 The sense of integrity and belonging, previously lost in
the turmoil of the night, is restored in the image of the snow enfolding
the island and levelling off its edges. It mitigates the negatively defined
identity to which Gabriel was driven in frustration upon being accused
of “West-Britonism”: “O, to tell you the truth . . . I’m sick of my
own country, sick of it!”2 Taken aback by how easily his assiduous
cosmopolitanism could turn into a vehement denial of everything Irish,
including the language, he polarised his after-dinner speech with the
ostensible opposition between the tradition of “genuine warm-hearted
courteous Irish hospitality” and the “hypereducated” young generation
that threatens to destroy the latter with its obdurate republicanism.3
Not only does Gabriel’s dilated consciousness and puzzling wave of
panoptic nationalism in the closing paragraph round off the story of his
own emotional upheaval but it is intended to be an atoning appendix
to the rest of the book. In a letter in 1906, Joyce remarked: “Some-
times thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily
harsh. I have reproduced (in Dubliners at least) none of the attractions
© The Author(s) 2020 1

D. Theinová, Limits and Languages in Contemporary
Irish Women’s Poetry, New Directions in Irish and Irish
American Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55954-0_1
2 D. THEINOVÁ
of the city.”4 A year later, “The Dead” was written to make up for that
harshness.
Beneath the peaceful resolution, however, newly apprehended tensions
are lurking; Gabriel’s serenity becomes an illusion when we look away
from the surface evened out by the snow. As is revealed during the lancers
with Miss Ivors, his sense of identity and self-possession are only main-
tained with a conscious effort. Pieced together, the various challenges
to his will and resolution that come up in the story form its leitmotif.
As she abandons the scene laughing and bidding him goodbye in Irish,
the committed girl leaves a trace of self-doubt in Gabriel. But the radical
Molly Ivors is not the only one stirring up disturbing emotions. Gabriel’s
wife, Gretta, undergoing a series of transformations, repeatedly forces him
to question his role and attitude. As he waits for her to join him after
the party, he wonders “what is a woman standing on the stairs in the
shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.”5 Imagining himself to
be a painter, he promptly adapts to the situation, aware that fixing her
in that aesthetic posture is the only way he can deal with her elusive-
ness. Still, the seed of desire has been sown and the sequel becomes an
account of Gabriel’s sexual and emotional disappointment, with Gretta
receding further west, lost in her memories of a one-time sweetheart. As
he observes her transformation from a desired spouse into an allegory—
first a Spéirbhean, a beautiful young figuration of Ireland, and then an
old hag or Cailleach—Gabriel finds an answer to his earlier question,
discovering the source of the distant music that has triggered and accom-
panied the uncontrollable sequence of changes. For a moment, seized
by an indefinite terror, he imagines some “impalpable and vindictive
being . . . coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague
world.”6 Indeed, this terrifying being is Gretta as his unknowable other,
as the symbol of death itself, and the personification of Éire claiming the
lives of young Irishmen for her cause. Gabriel, empty-handed, resembles
a poet-admirer from the Gaelic vision poetry tradition (with a message
from the now sleeping motherland figure to ponder), and also a West
Briton—the subaltern Irishman who begrudges his wife her rural western
origin (to Miss Ivors he pretended that it was just “her people” who were
from Connacht).7
Like Molly Ivors, whose name and elusiveness are prefigurings of
Eileen and the meditations on Tower of Ivory in A Portrait of the
1 INTRODUCTION: UNCERTAIN IDENTITIES 3
Artist as a Young Man, Gabriel’s bifurcated identity foreshadows the

conflicted identity and troubled sense of belonging that characterises
Stephen Dedalus. In foregrounding a self that “was fading out into a grey
impalpable world” just as “the solid world itself, which these dead had one
time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling,”8 “The Dead”
not only concludes Dubliners but also paves the way for A Portrait and
the theme of fissured national awareness that figures throughout Joyce’s
work. It is not that Gabriel would have accepted as his own the republican
ideals of Miss Ivors or come to terms with the threatening reminder of
Ireland’s “uncivilised” past in Gretta’s origin as a “county cute.”9 Rather,
positioned by the window as the imaginary borderline between Anglo-
and -Irish, between the living present and the pull of the dead past, he
finds reassurance by acknowledging the impossibility of a cosy, ready-
made identity and the beneficial yet also disruptive tensions pertaining
to that cleft.
As Jacques Derrida writes about his Franco-Maghrebian origin in
Monolingualism of the Other, identity, however split or tangled, is never
a given and can only be “promised or claimed.” According to Derrida,
“[t]he silence of that hyphen does not pacify or appease anything, not a
single torment, not a single torture. It will never silence their memory.”10
The same silent echo resounds in Joyce’s story, most strikingly in the
final image of “the snow falling faintly . . . and faintly falling” through
the universe.11 The use of this phrase and its inverted form contradicts
the connotations of smoothness and repose carried by the snowfall and
suggests oscillation. It speaks of the eternal crossings on the threshold
between within and without, between west of England and west of
Dublin, the living and the dead, between the fringe of the Gaeltacht (a
primarily Irish-speaking region, mostly located on the western seaboard of
Ireland) and the pale of the anglicised capital. Indeed, in pointing to the
contradictions between the pragmatic city and the romantic rural west
(including the obvious linguistic connotations), between the proximity
of the inaccessible past and the slipperiness of the present, Joyce’s “The
Dead” reflects the complexities of Irish political history and the ongoing
sense of identity crisis shared by many anglophone and Irish-language
writers of the twentieth century.12
4 D. THEINOVÁ
Women on the Margin

The experience of being torn apart by multiple affiliations and simultane-
ously left out on all sides informs the writing of a number of Irish authors
of the time when Ireland was striving for an independent cultural, polit-
ical and linguistic identity. Yet the competing allegiances and antagonistic
concepts that Paul Muldoon sums up as “the violent juxtaposition of the
concepts of ‘Ireland’ and ‘I,’”13 were still constitutive to the Irish cultural
imagination during the final third of the last century and the first decade
of the new millennium, the main period covered by the present study.
My project aims to show how this motif of cleft cultural and linguistic
identity, linked with the concepts of transience and reversibility, features
in poetry by Irish women of the time. While I account for the significance
of the hyphen for the Anglo-Irish as well as the Irish-language poets, it is
not only across the linguistic divide that contradictory tensions are traced.
Diachronic in its overall approach, this study also explores the transition
by women from the role of poetic subject to that of the subject of poetry
and focuses on the shift from the phase in Irish poetry informed by femi-
nist thinking to the next phase which, although clearly defined by the
achievements of literary feminism, has abandoned its rhetoric and much
of its original agenda.
Between the 1970s and the late ’90s, the Irish poetry scene was entered
by a growing number of women whose writing engaged, in various
ways, with the contemporaneous feminist discourses. In keeping with the
emphasis of second-wave feminism on the individual, these poets searched
for an authentic expression of their individual autonomy,14 defined mostly
against the backdrop of the prevailing masculinist discourse and the
restricting images of femininity in the male tradition and in the public
mind. Also, in keeping with literary feminism’s view of women’s writing as
an experience—a private or intimate and sometimes non-rational experi-
ence—they sought to offer expressions of reality not previously addressed
in Irish poetry. “Feminism” and “feminist literature,” of course, are not
monolithic categories. Pointing to the difficulty of finding a sound defini-
tion of the latter, Rita Felski identifies two basic characteristics of feminist
analysis: the first is the proposal of “distinctive female consciousness or
experience of reality as the legitimation for a feminist aesthetic,” and the
second is “linguistically-based” and “appeals to a notion of the ‘feminine,’
construed as a disruption or transgression of a phallocentric symbolic
order.”15 Both these approaches are relevant in relation to Irish women’s

poetry from the aforementioned period.
It is to be pointed out that the character of feminist engagement
and resistance varies considerably among the exponents of the generation
born between the early 1940s and mid-’50s, including Eavan Boland,
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Medbh McGuckian and
Paula Meehan. Yet, although some of these women occasionally refuse
to be categorised as “feminist poets,” it has been customary to consider
the poetry by Irish women from the last three decades of the twentieth
century according to criteria of literary feminism and women’s writing.
Even though feminist-related issues by no means lost their urgency with
the turn of the millennium, that phase in Irish poetry ended with women
gaining a stable position on the literary scene and with the access of
a new generation of strong female voices in the late 1990s and the
first decade of this century, including Vona Groarke, Caitríona O’Reilly,
Sinéad Morrissey, Aifric Mac Aodha and Ailbhe Darcy. Their poetry,
albeit occasionally informed by feminist thematics, generally (and some-
times emphatically) eludes the category of “women’s writing” and is
best described, in this context, as “post-feminist.” As will be seen in
the following chapters, where I intentionally juxtapose poets from both
groups, there are many common themes and outlooks, just as there are
some borderline cases—such as the Irish-language poet Biddy Jenkinson
who, although chronologically a member of the first group, has only
sporadically resorted to feminist rhetoric, and then mostly with the aim of
drawing attention to the haphazardness and ultimate irrelevance of gender
divisions in poetry. Above all, however, there are a number of distinct
poetics and discrete identities that this study aims to document.16
Throughout the book, the tensions between variously defined, often
opposing positions are shown as stimulating rather than destructive. In
the works discussed, the poets occupy an ambiguous border zone where
they are able to reflect on the formation of their identity as writing
subjects. Derrida’s proposition that, in any culture, identity never exists
but has to be achieved, together with the fundamentally unfinished posi-
tion of the speaking “I,”17 has special relevance for Irish poetry: due
to Ireland’s cultural history and the much-debated politicised concept
of the “national language,”18 “Irish poetry” is an inherently equivocal
concept that defies the singular. In the broadest terms, my argument is
that the hyphenated cultural perspective, delineated above with reference
to Joyce, frequently figures in poetry by women in contemporary and
6 D. THEINOVÁ
near-contemporary Ireland, as Irish marginalisation is replicated in Irish

women’s marginalisation within the literary canon.
Although the days when poetry originated from the centre of power—
as in Augustan Rome or Celtic Ireland—are long gone, the status of
the poet in society has often been associated with exclusivity. Whether a
prominent or a marginal figure, the poet is credited with a special under-
standing and superior command of words and thus with the capacity to
name and help others realise what they know about the world and them-
selves. This idea of the universal relevance of poetry, however, is in sharp
contrast with its inherent inwardness and peculiarity, and with the image
of the poet as a loner standing apart. As Muldoon argues, Irish writers
have for a long time tended to locate themselves between the concepts
of the self and nationality, in order to either accommodate the two or to
insist on their incongruity, often attempting both simultaneously. It is, he
suggests, “as if they feel obliged to extend the notion of being a ‘medium’
to becoming a ‘mediator.’”19 In this sense, the historical marginality of
women should not be seen simply as a drawback but rather as a character-
istic that relates to the traditionally dual role of the poet in a community
and is shared by Irish poets in general. I will examine in particular how
women have used their former position in their poetry, transforming the
margin into a productive threshold.
If, until the final two decades of the twentieth century, women had
been peripheral figures in most poetic traditions, many construed their
minor role as a form of resistance. Despite their unchallenged status in
the American and modern poetry canon, Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dick-
inson, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop all preferred obscurity, or
even insignificance, as a way of maintaining their creative and epistemo-
logical independence. Their main concern was not to introduce feminine
subject matter but to maintain the referential and formal idiosyncrasy of
their poems. I use the examples of Dickinson, Moore and Bishop inten-
tionally to indicate how far some of the Irish women poets have looked
for inspiration. Yet their determination to keep poetry’s inner conflicts
alive would, of course, be shared by many poets elsewhere, both female
and male, for it is the borderline status of poetry that helps individual
poems shun the unifying requirements of a genre, trend or culture. Eavan
Boland aphoristically noted that “years of marginality suggest . . . the real
potential of subversion.”20 It is useful, I think, to revise her remark by
removing it from the usual associations with the strategic modesty that
helped women reach the centre of the literary forum, and to examine
instead the implications of the margin itself—not only as a key complaint

and limiting factor but as a fundamental enabling metaphor.
The essential marginality of the poet’s position resembles the
prolonged state of transitory identity of monks or exiles and is conve-
niently viewed through the concept of the liminal.21 In anthropology, the
liminal (from Latin lı̄men, a threshold) refers to the temporary phase in
social rituals when the previous structuring of identity has been shed while
no new stage has been achieved. Typically, it is deemed to have spatial as
well as temporal relevance.22 Victor Turner defines the liminal as follows:
“an interfacial region or . . . an interval . . . of margin or limen, when the
past is momentarily negated, suspended or abrogated, and the future has
not yet begun, an instant of pure potentiality when everything, as it were,
trembles in balance.”23 I use this concept to follow the variable forms of
the fundamentally hyphenated, ever-emerging identity that inform many
of the poems discussed and that are of particular relevance in terms of the
speaking “I” formation. I also argue that various thematic expressions of
the liminal often occur in poems that engage with questions of inspiration
or address the uneasy—often politicised—issues of linguistic identity and
poetic translation.
Entering the literary scene in unprecedented numbers in the last three
decades of the last century, women poets such as Ní Chuilleanáin, Boland,
Meehan, Jenkinson and Ní Dhomhnaill in the Republic of Ireland and
McGuckian in Northern Ireland turned it into an open, or even transitory,
space marked by the element of change. Their advance and recognition
were facilitated by the existence of a number of feminist presses such as
Arlen House, Attic Press and, later, Salmon Poetry, set up in the Republic
of Ireland in the 1970s and ’80s. Yet many of the poets born in the two
mid-century decades quickly established themselves as authors with other
prominent publishers in Ireland and abroad.24 They thus contributed to
“Irish women’s poetry” becoming an internationally acclaimed category.
My point, however, is not that by accessing and transforming the
platform these poets have replaced or trumped their established male
counterparts but that—precisely by referring to the margin as a powerful,
viable motif—they have adopted and reinforced the Irish poet’s inherent
role as a mediator interposed between multiple identifications. As Laura
O’Connor notes of the pale–fringe interface, “it entails a double move-
ment of polarization and interaction.”25 Perceived and used in this way,
the enlivening margin is not a place on the periphery and far removed
from the centre but rather an ambiguous frontier between two worlds
8 D. THEINOVÁ
charged with energies that converge and clash. In other words, it is an

excellent place to write poems.
Naturally, the cleft between Ireland and “I” to which Muldoon alludes
would have specific relevance to the generation of major women poets
who began publishing in the late 1960s to the ’80s. Perceiving themselves
as historically marginalised speakers, they often express a problematic
stance to the masculine tradition which, in their eyes, had been hostile
to them as authors while exploiting them as objects. Several phenomena
contributed to the formation of these sentiments. In 1991, the long-
awaited publication of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing led to
many people objecting to the underrepresentation of women authors
(notably in the contemporary poetry section) and lack of female editors.
Although there had been a number of female—mostly anglophone—
poets who had written and published during their lifetime, especially at
the turn of the century and in the early decades of the twentieth century,
they were almost invariably excluded from the canon. This, as the critics
of the publication asserted, was a historical fact which the three-volume
anthology confirmed rather than attempted to amend. Boland complained
that it was as if these women had “written in sand: Their names disappear,
their effects blur away.”26 Determined to have a more lasting effect on the
canon and a larger say in its making, Boland and many other poets of her
generation called for change and for that “mechanism of erasure . . . to be
dismantled.”27 Eventually, their endeavours led, among other things, to
the publication by Cork University Press of two additional volumes of The
Field Day Anthology, focusing on Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions
(2002).
Significantly, however, recognition and systematic promotion of their
female precursors was not part of this process of creating a more stable
position on the literary scene. In her epoch-making contribution to the
study of Irish women writers’ history, Poetry by Women in Ireland: A
Critical Anthology 1870–1970, Lucy Collins argues that “Boland’s inter-
rogation of the position of the woman poet in Ireland has highlighted
the important omissions in terms of critical inclusiveness, yet has in large
measure perpetuated the notion that few women of significance published
poetry prior to the late twentieth century.”28 As she refused to associate
herself with the women of whose existence she is in many cases aware,
Boland insisted on their historicity and irrelevance. Yet, while this stance
appears to be stubbornly unhistorical, it followed from Boland’s own and
her peers’ acute sense of historical exclusion and isolation. Consequently,
it is possible to interpret the complaints about the lack of continuity by

poets such as Boland, Ní Chuilleanáin, Meehan and Ní Dhomhnaill as a
mark of heightened awareness of the actual historical circumstances and
their relevance for their own situation.
Riding on the crest of second-wave international feminism, the civil
rights movement of the late 1960s, as well as the Irish Women’s Liber-
ation Movement and the Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement
(both established in the 1970s), Irish poets were writing in a changing
world where representation of private experience was becoming not only
possible but requisite for women artists and writers. As Margaret Kelleher
explains, there was no guarantee that the discovery of more actual female
predecessors would make up for the sense of seclusion. According to
Kelleher, “in becoming aware of [the earlier poets’] existence, rereading
their aims and ambitions from the distance of a century, one’s reac-
tion may be less one of ‘celebratory identification’ with predecessors and
foremothers and more a consciousness of our own historicity and vulner-
abilities.”29 While it does not seek to revise the historical canon, the
present study explores the basis of the attitude adopted by Boland and
many other poets of the time who claimed to be unable to relate to
their male peers and predecessors and failed to acknowledge their female
precursors. If this stance was motivated by the urge to start from scratch,
as it were, and to create space for new subject matter, unrecorded in
poetry to date, its outcomes included a sustained presence of women on
the literary scene. In the long run, it has encouraged the abandonment
or judicious exploration of conspicuously female topics and concerns.
As they worked on developing a distinctive personal style that would
enable them to include new themes, these poets would often find
themselves torn between the impulse to renounce the literary heritage
altogether and the need to find ways of embracing it. Even as they delimit
themselves against an older body of texts and set of attitudes, these poets
rarely view “the tradition” as something established or easily defined.
Just as the women of the past are isolated figures in the poetic tradi-
tion they either had been part of or had defied, these poets are, as Collins
points out, “individuals working within the compass of their own experi-
ence to explore more public roles.”30 They may share the sense of their
estrangement from “the literary tradition,” but their varied understanding
of what constitutes that tradition, as well as their insistence on its broken-
ness, testifies to the tradition’s and their own heterogeneity. If the later
poets, starting with Groarke in the early 1990s, and including O’Reilly,
10 D. THEINOVÁ
Morrissey, Darcy and Mac Aodha from the second half of that decade
onwards, have been able to turn away from the earlier traditions as a
source of conflict and a limiting factor, they are indebted here to the
changes brought about by the previous generations of women poets.
As I repeatedly argue throughout the book, the feminism of many Irish
poets in both languages has been inextricably linked to their awareness of
the problematic concepts of national and linguistic identity. In each of the
chapters, analyses of various themes merge with explorations of language
as a creative tool, but also a highly politicised literary topic and the ulti-
mate objective in poetry. While female experience of reality provides the
primary subject matter for many of the poems discussed, it is their atten-
tion to language that defines them as poetry. Both these characteristics
are common to poets who are considered within the rubric of feminism
and poets whose stance can be described as post-feminist.
Acknowledging the influence of Judith Butler’s concept of “double
entanglement,” Angela McRobbie has characterised post-feminism as a
movement which encompasses “the existence of feminism as at some
level transformed into a form of Gramscian common sense, while also
fiercely repudiated.”31 Indeed, post-feminism is a broad enough term
to cover the many different and evolving attitudes that these poets have
expressed in relation to the language issue but also the phenomenon of
“Irish women’s poetry.” Groarke, for example, has been outspoken in
her wish to move forward and to draw a line under any such labelling.32
O’Reilly, Mac Aodha and Darcy have all written poems and essays with
feminist undertones and spoken of being indebted to their predecessors.
Yet they have also been consistent in dismantling some of the topoi and
objectives of literary feminism.
As used in the pages that follow, the term “post-feminism” by no
means indicates a clearly delineated movement with an oppositional stance
to feminism. Rather, it refers to yet another transitory, liminal stage in the
development of Irish poetry that reflects the current state of affairs and
changing conditions as much as poetry influenced by feminism did in
the 1970s to ’90s. With literary feminism relegated to the past, feminist
thematics are frequently invoked alongside commentaries on cultural and
linguistic minorities, atrocities of war and social violence, as well as the
positive and adverse effects of the increasingly globalised world.
Women and Languages

As mentioned above, one of the aspects of Irish literature in which the
idea of its essentially fissured character combines with the concept of
the liminal is its linguistic multiformity. If Irish and the writers of the
language have long existed outside the pale of Ireland’s culture, the theme
of marginality is particularly pertinent to the women among them. In
an essay on the role of women in the Gaelic tradition, Ní Dhomhnaill
shows how even in earlier Irish society where poets ranked high, women
were unwelcome intruders into the hereditary system.33 Although there
are references to powerful women poets to be found in the canon, very
little or nothing of their work has been preserved: “whatever the actual
literary status of women poets in the Gaelic tradition, they were in general
not let near the ink and they were not allowed into the corpus of the
canon.”34 This kind of institutional censure is a concern that was shared
by women of both languages and that lay at the basis of the various
complaints of a broken heritage. In “Outside History,” a well-known
essay first published in 1990 but reprinted several times since, Boland
(at that time the best-known Irish female poet) had turned to the Irish-
language canon, referring to the scarcity of women authors within this to
account for her own marginalisation by the English tradition.35
Boland’s dismal view was initially vehemently supported by Ní Dhomh-
naill (by then and since the best-known Irish-language poet): “Nowhere
in the Irish tradition can I find anything but confirmation of Eavan
Boland’s claim that women have been nothing else but ‘fictive queens and
national sibyls.’”36 Ní Dhomhnaill later toned down her statements,37
admitting that as a poet of Irish she had been lucky to have had two living
women poets on whom she could rely as role models at the start of her
career: due to this “double exposure” to Caitlín Maude and Máire Mhac
an tSaoi, she claims, “women poets, so far as I was concerned, were a
natural part of any poetic or scholarly inheritance.”38 In this shift of tone,
Ní Dhomhnaill approximated the views of Biddy Jenkinson, another poet
writing exclusively in Irish and Ní Dhomhnaill’s near contemporary who
dismissed any generalising concepts of the tradition as simple “received
truths.” Comparing such notions to sightings from St Brendan’s whale,
Jenkinson has observed that
[t]he greater the viewer’s confidence in the totality of his vision, the greater
the potential for error . . . The view that Irish women poets of the present
12 D. THEINOVÁ
have no antecedents seems to me to be just such a borrowed view from

a sounded whale. I have always had a very healthy relationship with my
living, though deceased, sisters. The occasional male mistake about them
never bothered me. To find Eavan Boland, whose poetry I admire, writing
them out of existence . . . was quite another matter.39
Jenkinson’s outspoken reliance on the Irish-language literary canon was

prompted by a reaction to Boland’s assertion about its hostility to women
authors. However, it also stands as a reproach to the notions (still preva-
lent at that time) of modern Irish and its literature as mere echoes of a
vanished or vanishing world.
If, compared to their peers writing in English, Ní Dhomhnaill and
Jenkinson profess to both an assured and reverent attitude to their
language tradition, it is because they had immediate predecessors. In the
1970s, when Ní Dhomhnaill and Jenkinson first started writing, Máire
Mhac an tSaoi had been recognised as one of the three major figures
of modern poetry in Irish (along with Máirtín Ó Direáin and Seán Ó
Ríordáin); having soon established herself as an authority on linguistic
authenticity and a stringent critic of her contemporaries, Mhac an tSaoi
never really had to assert herself as a female poet. Meanwhile, Caitlín
Maude was widely celebrated among Irish speakers as a language activist,
poet and a talented sean-nós singer.
This does not mean, however, that for those who write in Irish, the
margin would have no relevance. On the contrary, as they often combine
complaints about the marginalisation of women with accounts of what it
is like to write in a minoritised language, many of these poets have spoken
about being doubly removed from the centre to the periphery.40 Mostly,
however, the concern for the language comes before the woman ques-
tion in Irish-language poetry, despite the fact that, as Jenkinson pointed
out in 1996, the Irish word for feminism (feimineachas )—although it
existed—was not included in the Irish dictionary.41 Ní Dhomhnaill admits
that she feels “much more strongly on the language issue than on the
woman issue. Much as the exclusion of women in The Field Day Anthology
bothers me,” she says, “it angers me far more that Irish is so underrep-
resented there.”42 In an interview with Siobhán Ní Fhoghlú, Jenkinson
claims that she feels sorry for the speakers of English who have no proper
literary tradition to rely on, considering the long literary history of the
country.43 Yet, elsewhere, she also admits that
[i]t is true that we suffer erosion. Irish speakers are rather like travellers.
We are marginalised by a comfortable settled monoglot community that
would prefer we went away rather than hassle about rights. We have been
pushed into an ironic awareness that by our passage we would convenience
those who will be uneasy in their Irishness as long as there is a living Gaelic
tradition to which they do not belong.44
As Rióna Ní Fhrighil argues in her seminal book on Boland’s and Ní

Dhomhnaill’s poetry—Briathra, Béithe agus Banfhilí from 2008, which
was the first comparative book-length study of the conceptualisations of
language, feminism and femininity by poets of both languages—the latter
quote by Jenkinson could be taken as an aside to Boland who repeatedly
denounced any connection with the Gaelic literary past and considered
the literature as well as the language long defunct.45 Indeed, in the above-
cited interview, Jenkinson points out that “[b]uaileann Nuala agus mé
féin gach re bhuille orthu siúd a bhíonn ag iarradh ‘Irish Literature’
a thabhairt ar litríocht an Bhéarla amháin, mar dhea is nach ann don
Ghaeilge agus nárbh ann di riamh” (Nuala and I aim every second blow at
those who only mean writing in English when they say “Irish literature,”
as if Irish did not exist and never had).46 Ní Dhomhnaill can also be seen
as reacting against Boland’s use of Irish as shorthand for her own sense
of anachronism and her insistence on presenting the language as safely
tucked away in the past. Clearly, the notion of what constitutes “Irish
tradition” or “Irish poem” varies greatly among these poets, not least
with respect to their linguistic background and individual experience.
Jenkinson often finds it necessary to reject the prevalent nostalgia for
the Gaelic past. Even as she speaks of being marginalised on account of
operating through Irish and thus on the brink of dissolution, she refuses
to “burden [herself] with obligations to the dead.”47 In this, she reacts
tongue-in-cheek to Mhac an tSaoi who likes to see herself and those she
finds worth praising as the exponents of a dying generation, the possessors
of a truth found solely in the heart of the oral tradition.48 Jenkinson
debunks any such romantic notions by insisting that in Ireland, poetry
is only written on the margins (“Déarfainnse nár scríobhadh filíocht in
Éirinn ach amháin ar na himill”).49
Obviously, the sense of being relegated to the periphery while caught
between two states of mind is intrinsic to the Irish-language poet’s experi-
ence. Gearóid Ó Crualaoich notes: “Is é cás an fhile Ghaelaigh . . . bheith
‘bicultural,’ stractha idir dhá saol, dhá theanga, dhá mheon, bheith ‘as
14 D. THEINOVÁ
riocht’ . . . bheith eolgaiseach ar imeall na beatha, ar buile, ar thost síoraí,

ar an neamhní” (It is the lot of the Irish-language poet . . . to be “bicul-
tural,” torn between two lives, two languages, two minds, to be “out
of shape” . . . to know the edges of life, madness, eternal silence, the
naught).50 Despite the exalted tone that seems to be at odds with both
Jenkinson’s and also Ní Dhomhnaill’s matter-of-factness, the statement
does have relevance for the poets I discuss, as they alternately claim to be
outsiders in two languages and to be “at home” nowhere but in Irish.
This dilemma is aptly put by Aifric Mac Aodha, the youngest of
the three Irish-language poets examined in the present study. Although
surrounded by the language from her early childhood, she does not
consider herself a native speaker: “I am constantly aware that I come
to the language, although it [is] my literary home, as something of a
tourist.”51 Indeed, even if poets of Irish generally stress the indispens-
ability of their linguistic medium for their creativity, none of them live
in just one language; they are not members of a comfortable settled
monoglot community and are not free of doubts, either in relation to
the status of the language or to their own competence. Together with
Derrida, they may wonder how the language which they, with varying
degrees of ease, “inhabit,” “remains always mute . . . distant, hetero-
geneous, uninhabitable.”52 Still, while Ní Dhomhnaill, Jenkinson and
Mac Aodha all know about being pulled between two languages and two
minds, this split is rarely expressed in their poems; as in Joyce, the topic is
dealt with polemically—if not in after-dinner speeches then in essays and
interviews.
Typically, the Irish-language poet perceives her medium as either a
privilege of choice or an inevitability, often both at the same time.
Explaining why she is unable to write poetry in English, Ní Dhomhnaill
remarks: “I had chosen my language, or more rightly, perhaps, at some
very deep level, the language had chosen me.”53 Similarly, Mac Aodha
affirms that writing in Irish is not a matter of choice: “To ask me why I
write in Irish is to ask why I write at all.”54 For Jenkinson, Irish is simply
a given: “I write in my own language, the language of my household.”55
All three have admitted to feeling responsible for the language and to the
Irish-speaking community although, as I argue in the ensuing chapters,
they have all found different ways of dealing with this inevitable aspect of
writing in Irish.56
Although anglophone poets also speak of inevitability, it is in refer-
ence to their lack of choice: writing in English is not the only workable
option, as Irish is for Ní Dhomhnaill or Mac Aodha, but the only practi-
cable alternative. While all Irish-language writers today are bilingual, only
a few of those who write in English are. Writing in Irish entails identifi-
cation (no matter how hesitant) with the language. The notion of Irish
literature in English, as formed in the nineteenth century, has been based
on difference. As John Montague suggests, the position of anglophone
Irish writing is peculiar in having “the larger part of its past” deposited
in “another language.”57 If Ní Dhomhnaill, Jenkinson and Mac Aodha
have on occasion placed Irish in opposition to English to stress its role as
the natural element for their poetry, no such helpful dynamism is avail-
able to the poets working in English: paradoxically, they have often found
themselves closer to the “margin” than their Irish-language peers. Short
of the advantage of useful role models, Boland and Ní Chuilleanáin in the
Republic in the 1970s and then McGuckian in Northern Ireland in the
1980s had to tread their own path. Moreover, their work is marked by
a conflicted stance to English. All three have repeatedly referred to their
essential alienation from the English language, with a look of nostalgia
cast in the direction of the—from their point of view—vanishing trace of
Irish whose “persistence, as a cultural force,” as Austin Clarke argues, “is
both near-fiction and obdurate if nostalgic longing.”58
Such wavering on the threshold between the present and the past
is rehearsed in the problematic attitude to the mother tongue, which
can be related to Derrida’s concept of the same as an impossible loca-
tion or habitat, always linked with notions of exile and nostalgia. Once
it is defined as the mother tongue, one is already distanced from it.
While Ní Chuilleanáin has remarked that she writes “English rather as
if it were a foreign language into which I am constantly translating,”59
McGuckian has called English “this other language which basically gets
on my nerves,” asserting that English and “[t]he whole grammar of it is
foreign to me.”60 Elsewhere, McGuckian further develops the image of
the language as something external and imposed. Using a metaphor of
deadly weight, she alludes to how the border between the Republic of
Ireland and Northern Ireland has affected everyday life and the sense of
identity in the North: “I do feel that there’s a psychic hunger . . . and
that all I’ve had in my education has been shoved onto me, and I’m lying
like a corpse under it all.”61 The nostalgia, of course, is as “impossible”
as its object since, in her case, there is no proper first language besides
English, which is described as unnatural. Irish (and the same applies to
16 D. THEINOVÁ
English, after all) is not some lost language of origin, but can only be an
ambition, a promise never to be achieved.
Viewed in this light, the distinction between Irish as the language
of the dead past and English as the language of the living present
is in constant tension and undergoing perpetual change. The ongoing
process of identification is perceived as desirable in both English-language
and Irish-language poets. As Máirín Nic Eoin argues in relation to Ní
Dhomhnaill: “In ionad a bheith de shíor sa tóir ar ghrinneall cinnte
féiniúlachta, b’fhéidir gur folláine sa deireadh féachaint ar an sealbhú agus
ar an athshealbhú cultúir mar thionscnamh cruthaitheach nach mbeidh
deireadh go deo leis” (Rather than being constantly in pursuit of the
definite location of identity, it is perhaps ultimately healthier to look at
the possession and the repossession of culture as a creative project which
never ends).62 Both languages are alternately construed as the impos-
sible, unattainable mother tongue that never has existed and that is still
(or never) to come. Transformed—always temporarily—into the language
of the other, however, each becomes the only possible site of creativity.
The works of the poets of the “feminist” generation abound with
examples of such blurred oppositions between the mother tongue and
the language of the other. The new poets in both English and Irish,
however, show an even less clear-cut sense of otherness—in terms of
linguistic and cultural identification, or of poetic affiliation.63 While the
impossible memory of the mother tongue and the sense of language as
an elusive literary home inform their works, the nostalgia is no longer
connected with the moribund Irish. Instead, it is traceable on the level of
the inevitable alienation in language as such. Although it is the locus of
thought and individual consciousness, language is also an acquired skill
that marks the necessary rootedness of one’s consciousness in a partic-
ular culture. This general notion of language as something that has to be
appropriated while it can never be one’s own pertains to the process of the
lyric “I” formation. It is always at the same time the language of the indi-
vidual and the language of the community. The subject’s abstract capacity
to say “I” has nothing to do with a stable, pre-existent linguistic identity
(which is an impossible concept and can only exist in performance). Thus,
as Derrida argues, there is no language preceding the “I,” and they must
both be invented at the same time.64
This balancing of the speaking “I” on the edge of language has
informed poetry by Irish women since the early 2000s. Although their
writing is generally free of the interactions on the border between English
and Irish, the younger poets are aware that they are operating in a tran-
sitional space. As Mac Aodha insists: “All poetry, and certainly all the
poetry that I am interested in, is in part a negotiation between tradi-
tion and the individual poet, between a notional authenticity and a living
artefact, between fidelity and assertiveness, origins and originality.”65 It
is with a view to exploring their origins as well as their originality that
I approach these works. Tracing the points of contact between cultures
and languages in contemporary Irish women’s poetry involves examining
various contexts in which limits and limitations are both accented and
overcome.
∗ ∗ ∗
Indeed, the productive potential of liminal spaces and situations, as well as

the limiting aspects of marginality, is one of the key concerns of this study
(with languages and marginalised languages naturally playing an impor-
tant role in the discussion). There are many ways and moments in which
the concepts of limits and languages contained in the title converge, and
the abundance of these situations attests to the wide variety of the poets
examined. It is also indicative of the multiple binaries and dividing lines
underpinning Irish poetry. Beginning with explorations of the gender and
linguistic divide, the book moves on to show how female experience and
language may indeed be limited as subject matter and a means of commu-
nication respectively, as well as how they are also limitless in their immense
plurality.
The present study is largely chronological. It is divided into two parts:
the first accentuates women’s reactions to stereotypes of nationhood and
inspiration as recorded in the Gaelic and anglophone Irish tradition while
the second pays attention to how these poets conceptualise issues such as
poetic affiliation, subjectivity, inspiration and translation. Part I examines
how some of the contemporary poets who first published between the
late 1960s and mid-’80s have countered the pre-existing tradition and
the feminine stereotypes of nation and the Irish landscape recorded in
the tradition mainly through their ironic subversion. Discussing works
by Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy
Jenkinson and Medbh McGuckian, I argue that humour forms the basis
of the poems’ polemics as well as their poetic potential. I also propose
that the use of ironic distance and heteroglossia by poets born in the
1940s and ’50s often combines a focus on feminist issues with linguistic
18 D. THEINOVÁ
incertitude. Laughter opens up a new space as the securities of motherland

are challenged, together with those of the mother tongue and the idea of
an unambiguous linguistic identity.
Chapter 2 shows how the major women poets of the pioneering gener-
ation, namely Boland and Ní Dhomhnaill, have overcome their sense of
displacement through a mocking revision of the tropes of the feminised
nation in the male canon. The need to define themselves against the past
is, indeed, one of the prominent themes in feminist criticism. Taking
some of the groundbreaking studies in the field as its starting point, the
chapter brings the discussion further by placing women’s reactions within
the context of the writing on the same subject by their male precursors.
Most importantly, parallels are drawn between Irish literary feminism and
the revisionist stream in Irish poetry and criticism in the 1980s and ’90s.
Moreover, ironic laugher directed at the glamorised figures of the moth-
erland is presented not only as a factor facilitating historical redress but as
an enabling element in poetry.
Chapter 3 traces the ways in which women contradict the stereotyp-
ical figuring of Irish landscape as a female body and the abstract notions
of ideal womanhood. Adopting the viewpoint of the male admirer, poets
such as Ní Dhomhnaill, McGuckian, Ní Chuilleanáin and Boland reverse
the conventional distribution of roles between the speaking subject and
the inspiring object. As they were coming to terms with the traditional
concepts of the motherland and the inspiring feminine, many of these
poets referred to the need for an alternative idiom. Although the hopes
of a new, distinctly female language in which they could make up for
the historical silence of women were frustrated, many of their poems
evidence original approaches to the landscape and offer revised views of
postcolonial nationality.
By means of a broader focus on irony, strategic reserve and willed
opacity as driving forces in women’s poetry, Part II explores how women
have responded to traditional—not necessarily Irish—figures of artistic
inspiration and to the issues of poetic affiliation. Secrets are central to
this dynamic. Consideration is given to the effects of concealment and
the centrifugal power of silence in reconciling the private and the public
in women’s writing. In the first two chapters of this section, the focus
evolves from texts informed by feminist and revisionist outlooks to poems
and stances that are based on the achievements of literary feminism but
go beyond its original agendas. The final two chapters foreground poets
who entered the literary scene after the turn of the millennium. The focus
is on how these authors reconsider issues surrounding various imposed

(and denied) identities that were previously addressed by many of the
established figures.
Chapter 4 proceeds from instances in which women react against the
habitual troping of the female muse to make meta-poetic observations
on the search for poetic identity and authentic expression, as achieved
through mock paroles, grammatical and contextual ellipsis, and clandes-
tine writing in general. I demonstrate how, in their insistence on the
essentially elusive character of the speaking “I,” Ní Chuilleanáin, Paula
Meehan, McGuckian and Jenkinson document the shift from silence and
imposed objectivity to assertive subjectivity.
Chapter 5 illustrates how that subjectivity is still very much based on
silence which poets such as Ní Dhomhnaill, Caitríona O’Reilly and Vona
Groarke construe not as a shortcoming but as a benign factor inevitably
linked with the possibility of speech. This tendency to salutary silence
goes hand in hand with the distancing techniques of self-irony and obliq-
uity—not in the Barthesian sense of mystery as a hidden (theological)
final sense, but in the sense of an acknowledged plurality of meaning, its
endless emerging and disappearance. Silence is shown to be emblematic
of the boundless possibilities of language.
Chapter 6 further explores how the themes of the formation of the
poetic self and issues of inspiration are conflated with the changes in
the lyric “I” that can be traced alongside the shift from feminism to
post-feminism in Irish poetry. Attention is paid to works by Boland,
Ní Chuilleanáin, Ní Dhomhnaill, McGuckian and Groarke in which a
metaphorical threshold is the site of inspiration and the source of the
poem’s effect.
The same focus on the motif of the liminal informs Chapter 7 which
intersperses examples of mocking muse invocations with transactions over
the partition between the two main languages of Irish literature. Special
attention is paid to the theoretical and practical aspects of poetic transla-
tion which is viewed as a zone of passage or transformation. The chapter
begins with an exposition of the Irish-language poetry by Aifric Mac
Aodha, who has based her poetics on the concept of translation. The latter
part of the chapter touches upon the occasions on which other poets of
both English and Irish, including Ní Dhomhnaill, McGuckian, Boland
and Ní Chuilleanáin, consciously place themselves in a position between
the two languages.
20 D. THEINOVÁ
In Chapter 8, the motif of translation is considered in a broader context

as it is explored in the works of two poets working in English, Sinéad
Morrissey and Ailbhe Darcy, who write about their experience of life
abroad. Touching upon the permeability of borderlines between multiple
cultures and art disciplines, they offer a critique of the idea of a positively
defined identity, not least in view of an increased global consciousness
and the multivalent implications of terms such as integrity, centrality,
integration and connectivity.
Notes
1. James Joyce, Dubliners: Text and Criticism, eds. Robert Scholes and
A. Walton Litz (London: Penguin Books, 1996), 224.
2. Joyce, Dubliners, 189.
3. See Joyce, Dubliners, 203.
4. Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber
and Faber, 1992), 109.
10. Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin,
trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998),
11.
12. For a rigorous account of Joyce’s conceptualisation of Irish as representing
the disappearance of language and the loss of meaning, as well as an idea
of a coherent communal identity that is nevertheless buried in the past,
alongside the language, see Barry McCrea, Languages of the Night: Minor
Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland
and Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 20–9.
13. Paul Muldoon, To Ireland, I: The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature
1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35.
14. See Deborah L. Mandsen, Feminist Theory and Literary Practice (London,
Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2000), 35.
15. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social
Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 19.
16. Some cornerstone anthologies, book-length studies and publications on
Irish women’s poetry include: Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis eds., The
Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012) [essays on Ní Dhomhnaill, Groarke and McGuckian]; Patricia
Boyle Haberstroh, Women Creating Women: Contemporary Irish Women

Poets (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996); Haberstroh, ed.,
My Self, My Muse: Irish Women Poets Reflect on Life and Art (Syra-
cuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001); Angela Bourke et al., eds.,
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing : Irish Women’s Writings and
Traditions, vols. 4 and 5 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002) [sections
on Irish women and women writers in both Irish and English from the
seventh century to the present day, with introductory essays by Gerar-
dine Meaney, Clair Wills, Margaret Kelleher, Máirín Nic Eoin, Máirín
Ní Dhonnchadha, Angela Bourke, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and others];
Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish
Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) [essays on Boland,
McGuckian and Ní Chuilleanáin]; Lucy Collins, Contemporary Irish
Women Poets: Memory and Estrangement (Liverpool: Liverpool Univer-
sity Press, 2015); Collins, ed., Poetry by Women in Ireland: A Critical
Anthology 1870–1970 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012); Jane
Dowson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century British
and Irish Women’s Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
[chapters on Boland, Ní Chuilleanáin and McGuckian]; Alexander G.
Gonzalez, ed., Irish Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2005); Irene Gilsenan Nordin, ed., The Body and
Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006);
Peggy O’Brien, ed., The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry, 1967 –
2000 (Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 1999); Justin
Quinn, The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800–2000
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) [chapters on Boland,
Meehan, Ní Chuilleanáin, McGuckian and Catherine Walsh]; Quinn,
ed., Irish Poetry after Feminism (Monaco: Princess Grace Irish Library
Lectures, 2008); and Ailbhe Smyth, ed., Wildish Things: An Anthology of
New Irish Women’s Writing (Dublin: Attic Press, 1989).
Important monographs dedicated to individual Irish women poets
writing in English include: Jody Allen Randolph, Eavan Boland (Cork:
Cork University Press, 2014); Boyle Haberstroh, The Female Figure in
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Poetry (Cork: Cork University Press, 2013);
Leontia Flynn, Reading McGuckian (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2014);
Borbála Faragó, Medbh McGuckian (Cork: Cork University Press, 2014);
and Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Reading Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, a Contem-
porary Irish Poet: The Element of the Spiritual (Lewiston, NY: Edwin
Mellen Press, 2008).
Book-length studies and collections of essays in Irish include: Pádraig
De Paor, Tionscnamh Filíochta Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (Baile Átha Cliath:
An Clóchomhar, 1997); Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, Téacs Baineann, Téacs
Mná: Gnéithe de Fhilíocht Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (Baile Átha Cliath: An
22 D. THEINOVÁ
Clóchomhar, 2005); Máirín Nic Eoin, B’Ait Leo Bean: Gnéithe den Idé-
Eolaíocht Inscne i dTraidisiún Liteartha na Gaeilge (Baile Átha Cliath: An
Clóchomhar, 1998); Rióna Ní Fhrighil, Briathra, Béithe agus Banfhilí:
Filíocht Eavan Boland agus Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (Baile Átha Cliath:
An Clóchomhar, 2008); Ní Fhrighil, ed., Filíocht Chomhaimseartha na
Gaeilge (Baile Átha Cliath: Cois Life, 2010) [essays on Mhac an tSaoi,
Ní Dhomhnaill and Jenkinson]; and Eoghan Ó hAnluain, ed., Leath na
Spéire (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar, 1992).
17. See Derrida, 14.
18. Bunreacht na hÉireann/The Irish Constitution (1937) identifies Irish as
“an teanga náisiúnta” (the national language) and refers to it as the
primary and English the secondary official language of Ireland. In terms of
the numbers of their speakers, however, there has been a gaping discrep-
ancy between the two languages and Irish has unquestionably always been
the minor one in independent Ireland.
19. Muldoon, To Ireland, I , 35.
20. Eavan Boland, “Outside History,” Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman
and the Poet in Our Time (Manchester: Carcanet, 2006), 147.
21. For an overview of the “fixed liminality” of solitaires, exiles, soldiers,
as well as societies, see Bjørn Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of
Liminality,” International Journal of Political Anthropology 2.1 (2009):
5–28.
22. See Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge,
1977); Victor Turner, Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage: A Study in
Comparative Symbology (New Delhi: Concept, 1979); Turner, “Betwixt
and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” The Forest of
Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1967), 93–111; Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality,” in Secular
Ritual, eds. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff (Amsterdam: Van
Gorcum, 1977), 48–65. For the interplay between margin, marginalisa-
tion and liminality in literary studies, see Mihai I. Spariosu, The Wreath
of Wild Olive: Play, Liminality, and the Study of Literature (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1997).
23. Turner, Pilgrimage, 41.
24. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (b. 1942) has published all her books with Gallery
Press in Dublin and later on Oldcastle in County Meath, starting with
Acts and Monuments in 1972. Eavan Boland (1949–2020) published her
first collection, New Territory, with Allen Figgis in Dublin in 1967. In
the 1980s, she transferred to Arlen House with whom she collaborated as
author and editor for more than a decade; from 1994 onwards she also
published with Carcanet in Manchester (and, occasionally, Norton in New
York). Paula Meehan (b. 1995) had her first book published by Beaver
Row Press in Dublin in 1984 but has mostly published with Gallery Press,
Carcanet and Wake Forest University Press (Winston-Salem, NC). Medbh

McGuckian was first published by Oxford University Press and changed
over to Gallery Press in the early 1990s. Biddy Jenkinson (b. 1949) and
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (b. 1954) both soon became prominent on the
Irish-language literary scene, having published with Coiscéim (Jenkinson)
and Cló Iar-Chonnacht and An Sagart (Ní Dhomhnaill). The latter has
also had bilingual selections of her poetry published by Raven Arts Press
and Gallery Press.
25. Laura O’Connor, “‘Eater and Eaten’: The Haunted English of W. B.
Yeats,” Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, the British Empire, and De-
Anglicization (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2006), 6. In her study, O’Connor discusses in detail the various pale–
fringe zones of linguistic contact between English and Irish, and the
instances of historical as well as contemporary concepts of Irish as the
“other” of English. See O’Connor, Haunted English.
26. Boland in Kathleen Fraser, “Eavan Boland and Kathleen Fraser: A
Conversation,” Parnassus 23.1/2 (1997): 397.
27. Boland in Fraser, “A Conversation”: 397.
28. Collins, “Slow Tide on Tide of History,” in Poetry by Women in Ireland,
2.
29. Margaret, Kelleher, “Writing Irish Women’s Literary History,” Irish
Studies Review 9.1 (2001): 8.
30. Collins, Contemporary Irish Women Poets: Memory and Estrangement
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), 5.
31. Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social
Change (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington
DC: Sage Publishing, 2009), 12.
32. Vona Groarke, “Editorial,” Verse 16.2 (1999): 7.
33. According to Ní Dhomhnaill’s research into oral poetry, “[t]here was
a widespread belief that if poetry, which was a hereditary gift (féith nó
tréith dúchais), fell into the female line then it was gone from that partic-
ular family for seven generations to come . . . A similar taboo existed
against women telling Fenian tales—‘tráthaire circe nó Fiannaí mná’ (a
crowing hen or a woman telling Fenian tales).” See Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill,
“An Bhanfhile Sa Traidisiun: The Woman Poet in the Irish Tradition,”
Selected Essays (Dublin: New Island, 2005), 53. For an in-depth study
of the mechanisms through which female narratives were systematically
underrepresented in the Irish oral tradition and for an analysis of how
Ní Dhomhnaill has striven to reverse those mechanisms in her poetry, see
Angela Bourke, “Bean an Leasa: Ón bPiseogaíocht go dtí Filíocht Nuala
Ní Dhomhnaill,” in Leath na Spéire, 74–90.
34. Ní Dhomhnaill, “Traidisiun,” 51.
24 D. THEINOVÁ
35. See Boland, “Outside History,” PN Review 75 17.1 (September/October

1990), accessed 12 May 2011, https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scr
ibe?item_id=4549.
36. Ní Dhomhnaill, “What Foremothers?” Poetry Ireland Review 36 (1992):
24.
37. In a later version of “What Foremothers?”—“An Bhanfhile Sa Traidisiun:
The Woman Poet in the Irish Tradition” from which I have quoted in
this chapter—Ní Dhomhnaill amended the phrase quoted to refer to “the
criticism of the Irish tradition [in which] until recently women have been
nothing else but ‘fictive queens and national sibyls.’” My emphasis. See
Ní Dhomhnaill, “Traidisiun,” 48.
38. Ní Dhomhnaill, “Traidisiun,” 44.
39. Biddy Jenkinson, “A View from the Whale’s Back,” Poetry Ireland Review
52 (Spring 1997): 62. Refuting Boland’s complaint, Jenkinson insists on
the basically ungendered character of the anonymous tradition and shows
how written records of that tradition and scholarship based on it are
problematic, if not ultimately irrelevant.
40. For a detailed summary of the reasons why Irish-language female poets
have felt “doubly insulated,” and for an enlightening discussion of the
various reasons and self-acknowledged motivations for the choice of the
language on the part of women writing in Irish, see Nic Eoin, “Gen-
der’s Agendas: Women Writing in Irish. A Double Marginality,” Graph
12 (Summer/Autumn 1992), 5–8.
41. In an interview with Siobhán Ní Fhoghlú, Jenkinson draws attention
to the fact that the closest entry in Ó Dónaill’s dictionary (see Foclóir
Gaeilge-Béarla) to “feimineach” (feminist) is “feimíneach” which means
“tail-eating animal.” Jenkinson in Ní Fhoghlú, “Ceilpeadóir, Rí, Nóinín:
Biddy Jenkinson ag Caint le Siobhán Ní Fhoghlú,” Oghma 8 (1996): 63.
42. Ni Dhomhnaill in Laura O’Connor, “Comhrá: A Conversation with
Medbh McGuckian and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill,” Southern Review 31.3
(June 1995), accessed 20 May 2011, http://connection.ebscohost.com/
c/literary-criticism/9508243323/comhra-foreword-afterword-by-laura-
oconnor.
43. See Jenkinson in Ní Fhoghlú, 65.
44. Jenkinson, “Máire Mhac an tSaoi: The Clerisy and the Folk (P.I.R. 24):
A Reply,” Poetry Ireland Review 25 (Spring 1989): 80.
45. See Ní Fhrighil, Banfhilí, 52.
46. Ní Fhoghlú, 65. My translation.
47. Jenkinson, “Reply,” 80.
48. One of Mhac an tSaoi’s categoric criteria is her insistence on authenticity:
“unless I hear the voice of the tribe therein, the poetry does not impinge.”
Mhac an tSaoi thus resolutely rules out all “modernity” in her conception
of the poetic language of Irish-language poetry. See Máire Mhac an tSaoi,
“The Clerisy and the Folk: A Review of Present-Day Verse in the Irish
Language on the Occasion of the Publication of Innti 11,” Poetry Ireland
Review 24 (Winter 1988): 33–5.
49. Jenkinson, “Nuafhilíocht na Gaeilge i dtreo na mílaoise,” Feasta 53.2
(February 2000): 11. Qtd. by Nic Eoin in “Modern Irish-language Liter-
ature: Minor, National or Global?,” keynote lecture presented at the 2017
Canadian Association for Irish Studies Conference, 13 June 2017.
50. Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, “An Nuafhilíocht Ghaeilge: Dearcadh Dána,”
Innti 10 (December 1986): 64. Qtd. in Nic Eoin, Trén bhFearann Breac:
An Díláithriú Cultúir agus Nualitríocht na Gaeilge (Baile Átha Cliath:
Cois Life, 2005), 89. My translation.
51. Aifric Mac Aodha, “A Talkative Corpse: The Joys of Writing Poetry in
Irish,” Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art (25 October 2011),
accessed 11 November 2011, http://columbiajournal.org/a-talkative-cor
pse-the-joys-of-writing-poetry-in-irish-3/.
52. Derrida, 58.
53. Ní Dhomhnaill, “Why I Choose to Write in Irish, the Corpse that Sits
Up and Talks Back,” Selected Essays, 13.
54. Mac Aodha, “Corpse.” A working version of the text was entitled “Why
I Don’t Choose to Write in Irish” and included the sentence cited. Mac
Aodha, e-mail message to the author, 15 November 2011. The actual title
of Mac Aodha’s blog, “A Talkative Corpse: The Joys of Writing Poetry
in Irish,” refers to Ní Dhomhnaill’s well-known “manifesto” in The New
York Times Book Review (January 1995). See Ní Dhomhnaill, “Why I
Choose to Write in Irish,” Selected Essays, 10–24.
55. Jenkinson, “Reply,” 80.
56. For a discussion of the engagé aspect of much of the writing and
criticism in Irish, see Nic Eoin, “Cultural Engagement and Twentieth-
Century Irish-language Scholarship,” in The Language of Gender, Power
and Agency, eds. Amber Handy and Brian Ó Conchubhair (Dublin: Arlen
House, 2014), 181–221.
57. John Montague, The Figure in the Cave and Other Essays, ed. Antoinette
Quinn (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989), 110.
58. Austin Clarke qtd. in Michael O’Neill, “Yeats, Clarke, and the Irish Poet,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, 56.
59. Ní Chuilleanáin in Leslie Williams, “‘The Stone Recalls its Quarry’: An
Interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin,” in Representing Ireland: Gender,
Class, Nationality, ed. Susan Shaw Sailer (Gaineswille: University Press of
Florida, 1997), 31. Qtd. in Justin Quinn, “Incoming: Irish Poetry and
Translation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, 343.
60. McGuckian in Kimberly S. Bohman, “Surfacing: An Interview with
Medbh McGuckian,” The Irish Review 16 (Autumn/Winter 1994): 98.
61. McGuckian in L. O’Connor, “Comhrá.”
26 D. THEINOVÁ
62. Nic Eoin, Trén bhFearann Breac, 281. My translation.

63. See Quinn, “Incoming,” 345.
64. See Derrida, 28, 31.
65. Mac Aodha, “Corpse.”
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———. Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time.
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———, ed. My Self, My Muse: Irish Women Poets Reflect on Life and Art.
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———. The Female Figure in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Poetry. Cork: Cork
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———. Contemporary Irish Women Poets: Memory and Estrangement. Liverpool:
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Felski, Rita. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change.
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Flynn, Leontia. Reading McGuckian. Irish Academic Press, 2014.

Fraser, Kathleen. “Eavan Boland and Kathleen Fraser: A Conversation.”
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———. Reading Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, a Contemporary Irish Poet: The Element
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Jenkinson, Biddy. “Máire Mhac an tSaoi: The Clerisy and the Folk (P.I.R. 24):
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———. “Nuafhilíocht na Gaeilge i dtreo na Mílaoise.” Feasta 53.1 (January
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———. Dubliners: Text and Criticism. Edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton
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Mac Aodha, Aifric. “A Talkative Corpse: The Joys of Writing Poetry in Irish.”
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of-writing-poetry-in-irish-3/.
Mandsen, Deborah L. Feminist Theory and Literary Practice. London and
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McCrea, Barry. Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imag-
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McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social
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Muldoon, Paul. To Ireland, I: The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1998.
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———. Poems 1968–1998. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
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Ní Dhomhnaill. Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar, 2005.
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———. B’Ait Leo Bean: Gnéithe den Idé-Eolaíocht Inscne i dTraidisiún Liteartha
na Gaeilge. Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar, 1998.
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———. “Cultural Engagement and Twentieth-Century Irish-language Scholar-

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———. Selected Essays. Dublin: New Island, 2005.
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PART I
New Lands for New Words
In the satirising dissection of the sectarian strife in the North in Autumn

Journal, Louis MacNeice asks pungently why a country, “like a ship or
a car,” should always be construed as female.1 While it may appear in
many different shapes, MacNeice complains, like Kathleen Ni Houlihan,
the land is always at the same time a threatening presence and an
elusive dream. The image of a woman going by, included in MacNeice’s
autobiographical long poem written at the close of 1938, is a taunt appar-
ently directed at Yeats’s famous playlet and the figuration of Ireland as
Seanbhean Bhocht (Poor Old Woman). But the trope of Ireland as a female
figure can be traced back to the early Irish manuscripts and to medieval
political writings, including various forms of the sovereignty myth as well
as odes composed for Irish lords. Its diverse forms range from the old
crone to the trope of a young beauty—regal or plebeian—representing
the provinces of Ireland awaiting the return of the rightful ruler.
Irish poetry, of course, has no exclusive right to identifying the national
with the feminine. Writing of Women in Irish Culture and Politics, Gerar-
dine Meaney adopts the concept of Indian political philosopher Ashis
Nandy concerning the history of political colonisation which, according
to Nandy, can be theorised as a history of feminisation while the attempts
of a people to regain autonomy have been customarily described as a
fight to resume a “traditionally masculine role of power.”2 In Western
cultures, abundant propagandist use of this metaphor has accompanied
the national and literary resurgence resulting from the romantic plunge
32 PART I: NEW LANDS FOR NEW WORDS
into the unknown waters of the vernacular. It has commonly—and contra-

dictorily—been paraded as a standard on both sides of diverse conflicts,
representing the subjugated territories as perceived by the oppressor
while at the same time symbolising the resistance of the colonised or
marginalised people.
However, while the trope is supposed to be of Indo-European prove-
nance, it was employed in Irish literature continuously from earliest times,
and even served as the basis of a separate poetic genre. By the end of the
sixteenth century, motifs of the formerly fruitful bond between the ruler
and the female figuration of his region began to be seen as problematic
with the tightening hold of the colonisers on the lives of Irish lords and
with their deforestation and landscape-charting activities. While the land-
scape and its inhabitants were plagued by the invaders, the conceit of the
feminised land was taken over by the post-bardic poets of the seventeenth
century and subsequently appropriated by Irish Jacobitism. It was at that
point that it became the symbol of the colonised nation—an image that
would pervade Irish political poetry and nationalist resistance for the next
300 years.
The main subgenre of Irish Jacobite verse, the sophisticated, highly
ornamental aisling (or vision) poetry refers to the subjugated land most
often as the Spéirbhean (Sky-Woman), a regal figure of great physical
beauty appearing under one of the Celtic names for Ireland, such as Éire,
Ériu, Banbha or Fódla, adopted from the ancient sovereignty myths. In
the slightly later development of eighteenth-century Jacobite folk songs,
the Sky-Woman was given a body of flesh and blood and a name in
the vernacular, such as Caitlín Ní hUallacháin, Síle Ní Ghadhra, Cáit Ní
Dhuibhir and, later, Rosaleen or Róisín Dubh, or indeed the Seanbhean
Bhocht .3 By the time the national and literary revival were in full swing
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, poets had mostly
abandoned the conventions of Jacobite forms. Still, the woman image
representing all kinds of abstract concepts and ideals remained cherished
and used abundantly. Through the Irish Jacobite song in English, it
developed into a nationalist symbol and pervaded the rhetoric of the
Anglo-Irish cultural revival. As the chief instrument of cultural nation-
alism, the feminised icon of Ireland became so inextricably linked with
the awareness of national identity that the latter was virtually unthinkable
without the former.4
PART I: NEW LANDS FOR NEW WORDS 33
This section of the book focuses on some of the ways in which modern
and contemporary poets, both male and female, have confronted the alle-
gorical representations of the feminised land and harnessed them to their
own polemics with the inherited literary tradition. The necessity to come
to terms with past iniquities is, of course, one of the common themes in
feminist theory, and Irish poetry and criticism have paid close attention
to the absence of women from both language canons. My aim in Part I is
not to give a definitive survey of the existing stances and arguments but
rather to review some of the older polemics in the light of the book’s dual
focus on limits and languages . To keep the discussion within bounds, I
will concentrate mainly on reactions penned by women. My intention,
however, is to look at their responses in the context of other writings
and criticism of the period, and to show how they are often directed at
specific manifestations of stereotyped femininity and nationhood in poetry
by their male predecessors and near contemporaries.
In their vehement rejection of the old topoi that ascribe to women
either silence and passivity on the one hand or intimidating sexual power
on the other, female poets often lend their support to the anti-nationalist,
revisionist stream in poetry and criticism of the 1980s and ’90s. Also
in response to the escalating sectarian conflict in the North, the latter
demanded eradication of conventional images of nationality, pointing to
their emptiness as well as potential perniciousness. Although revisionist
critics such as Edna Longley would occasionally question the concep-
tual integrity and legitimacy of some of the feminist complaints by Eavan
Boland and others,5 it is pertinent, I suggest, to view the two trends as
part of one sociocultural milieu.6 In pointing out the decisive role that
factors of linguistic and geographical division had played in Irish literary
history and categorisation, poetry inflected by the rise of feminism was—
particularly within the anglophone production—part of the move towards
historical revisionism in Ireland.
In keeping with the book’s secondary focus on strategic applications
of laughter and secrecy, I will draw attention to the elements of satire
and parody that often inform these efforts of transgression. Towards
the end of Chapter 2, I will outline certain parallels detectable between
these ironic approaches by women poets and the Bakhtinian concept of
the heteroglossic forces in language employed to undermine the unitary
discourse of ideology.7 At the heart of the following two chapters are
poems that originated in the final third of the last century when revi-
sioning of this kind was largely considered to be necessary so that women
34 PART I: NEW LANDS FOR NEW WORDS
could take up the threads of the predominantly masculine tradition. What

is of special interest to me, however, is that satirical revisions of old
conventions and stereotypes constitute a unifying element reaching across
the sexual divide (as MacNeice’s words quoted at the beginning of this
section illustrate) and pertaining to poets of both English and Irish, over
a long period of time.
By looking at poets of the English as well as the Irish language and by
applying the specific perspective of subversive humour and irony, I will
extend the feminist critique of Irish poetry in new ways. As the majority
of the country’s literary history took place through the medium of Irish,
contemporary poets can often be seen exploring the Irish-language canon
in their attempts to reconcile with the past. This aspect of literary and
feminist revisionism coincided with an inevitable phase in which a number
of poets writing in English and Irish concerned themselves in the closing
decades of the twentieth century with the language issue. The critical
debate on this subject was marked to a large extent by the repercussions
of postcolonial attempts to determine the national language of Ireland.
In her breakthrough study on Northern Irish poetry, Improprieties
(1993), Clair Wills pointed out that the nationalist ideal of a single,
unifying common language had been futile from the outset, and insisted
that “the language which can unify the various sections of the community
in the island of Ireland must necessarily be one which can accommodate
difference.”8 In this, Wills alludes not to the limits between languages
but to the limitations and ultimate pointlessness of the idea of politically
motivated linguistic identity which, no matter how inclusively defined,
will always prove to be restrictive and potentially discriminating. One of
the most interesting aspects of the current theoretical debate on the future
of the Irish language as a creative tool is the question of whether Irish has
been successfully detached from its role as a token national language. On
this subject, Michael Cronin has lauded the fact that “Irish is no longer
locked into an exclusive relationship with English” and argued that its
status might benefit from the growing plurality of Irish society and the
changing linguistic context.9
In view of this ideal of social diversity prominent towards the turn
of the millennium, the very heterogeneity of the poets I discuss can be
seen as denial of the concept of a single “national language” based on
linguistic uniformity. Provisionally united in their relation to a shared
literary past, they show how this pluralistic notion of languages has been
PART I: NEW LANDS FOR NEW WORDS 35
instrumental in surpassing the limits of discriminatingly defined nation-

ality. If literary production in English and Irish still appear to constitute
two separate worlds, they also arguably belong to a space increasingly
less marked by division. The almost habitual opposition between the two
languages, based on their historical and continuing imbalance, has occa-
sionally been identified with the areas of gender politics or nationalist
and sectarian sentiments. While the status of English and Irish remains
unequal, the greater diversity and consequent opening up of Irish society
has coincided with the endeavours of some poets to further separate the
literary languages of Ireland from nationalist conventions and to extricate
women from the stereotypical notions of femininity and national identity.
It is the constant reworking of the trope of the feminised land,
including the aisling conventions and the motherland figure adopted by
the national revival that sustains my interest in the diverse instances of
poets coming into contact with the Gaelic tradition. In the Constitution
of Ireland from 1937, Irish was established as the first official language
in the Republic of Ireland. However—both in the Republic and in the
North—it has also been the language of a minority. In the South, Irish
has been taught as a compulsory subject at primary and secondary level,
yet the system has obviously not produced any new native speakers. Irish-
language education in Northern Ireland in the post-partition period was
affected by the withdrawal of official funding and was subsequently run
on a voluntary and community basis.10 Although the number of people
learning the language on the island has increased since the turn of the
twentieth century when Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), a social
and cultural organisation dedicated to preserving and promoting the Irish
language, was gaining a wider influence, there is a limited number of those
who are fluent in and use the language on a daily basis.11
Consequently, many anglophone readers and writers will have no direct
connection with the vast majority of Ireland’s literary past and will have
to rely on translation and paraphrase in relating back to the Irish canon.
Very few of those writing in Irish today will consider it their first language
and be living their lives, personal and professional, exclusively through
Irish. Thus, to a number of these poets, the liminal space between the
two languages, always privately defined, is a source of genuine concern
as well as inspiration. Whenever it comes to the fore, the relation-
ship with one’s creative language seems to be marked by controversy.
This awareness of an equivocal linguistic background is particularly
apparent in the poetry and criticism of Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian,
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Nell’ora stessa della notte all’altra estremità del palazzo vegliava il
Duca in convegno coll’astrologo Ebreo.
La camera ove essi stavano sorgeva a guisa di torre all’angolo
orientale della Rocca, e non si poteva colà pervenire che per mezzo
di un ponte coperto e chiuso, il quale veduto dal basso s’aveva
forma d’un arco altissimo che congiungeva due parti dell’edifizio.
Quella camera conteneva ogni specie di macchine, stromenti e
arnesi ch’erano stati sino a quell’epoca inventati per segnare la
misura del tempo, e per lo studio delle sfere celesti; era insomma un
osservatorio astronomico, quale si può immaginare ginare che fosse
al principio del secolo decimoquinto; e ciò che meglio caratterizzava
il tempo e le idee erano gli utensili alchimistici che si vedevano
ovunque frammisti a quelli che unicamente servivano alle operazioni
dell’astrologia.
Fra i quadranti, i lambicchi, i cerchii, le clessidre e i gnomoni,
distinguevasi sopra larghi sostegni d’oro un ampio globo stellato e
dipinto a figure d’uomini e d’animali. Il Duca lo aveva comperato per
ingente somma da un mercante saraceno, e pretendevasi fosse il
celebre Planetario arabico, stato mandato in dono dal Califfo di
Bagdad ad Abderamo re di Granata.
Una gran lampada rifletteva la sua viva luce su quel globo, di cui gli
anni avevano alquanto annerito lo splendido azzurro. Il Duca stava
seduto in atto attentivo, tenendo fisi gli occhi sul Planetario, mentre il
vecchiardo Elìa con una verga d’ebano nella destra, toccando i segni
rappresentanti lo zodiaco, andava spiegandogli i nomi, i moti, gli
influssi delle varie costellazioni, le quali erano ripetute in un grosso
libro ch’ei sosteneva coll’altra mano.
Un colpo dato al battitojo di bronzo di quella camera fece
sospendere le parole alll’Astrologo; il Duca porse orecchio, e avendo
udito succedersi due altri tocchi leggierissimi, quindi uno più risentito
— Entra — gridò con impazienza.
La porta s’aprì, ed avanzossi un uomo pressochè interamente
avvolto nel mantello; s’accostò al Duca e gli parlò all’orecchio.
Filippo Maria ai detti di colui mostrò prima sdegnarsi, poi sogghignò
fieramente; dopo pochi istanti di secreto colloquio tra loro, fecegli un
cenno, quegli uscì, e la porta si serrò di nuovo.
Elìa era intanto rimasto immobile cogli occhi sul suo libro, nella
lettura del quale sembrava interamente assorto.
«Proseguite, maestro (disse con calma il Duca). Non parlavate voi
delle stelle che compongono la coda allo Scorpione?
«In cauda venenum» — profferì lentamente il Filosofo israelita come
se ripetesse le parole che stava leggendo; poscia alzò la testa e
divisi sulle labbra i peli della bianca barba, ritoccando colla verga sul
globo la nera figura, proseguì in sua nasale cantilena — «Quest’è il
celeste Scorpio che s’abbranca al Sagittario e colla coda percuote la
Libra. Efraim Afestolett Mammacaton ne’ precetti del decimo mese,
insegna essere tre volte sette il numero degli effetti nefasti che piove
sul mondo questo freddo animale. Esso è propizio a chi annoda
occulte trame, e attenta colpi proditorii; siccome d’indole sua penetra
nelle case e sta celato presso le coltri ove ferisce nel sonno...
«Un mostro di tal natura, uno scarabeo avvelenito in sembianza
umana, abita presso di noi (disse interrompendolo e con subitaneo
rancore Filippo Maria).
«Non vi prendete di ciò pensiero (rispose l’Ebreo); quando la sua
traccia verrà scoperta tutti si affretteranno a schiacciarlo.
«Eppure non è così. Una donna lo accoglie, lo accarezza e si lascia
da lui aizzare contro di me (replicò il Duca misteriosamente, fatto più
truce nell’aspetto). Ma essi non sanno che queste mura s’infuocano
e fanno contorcere le membra ai traditori come se fossero collocati
sopra lastre roventi.
«Le tenebre non lo terranno lungamente avvolto. Guai se lo
scellerato si palesa!
«Io li conosco già i suoi delitti: essi sono troppo gravi (profferì Filippo
con feroce freddezza). Gettate per lui le sorti, o maestro, questa
notte medesima. Domani allo svegliarmi entrerete a riferirmi ciò che
avrà prescritto il destino; rammentatevi che attendo voi pel primo.
Elìa chinò il capo in segno d’obbedienza. Il Duca alzossi; poscia ad
una sua chiamata si spalancò di nuovo la porta, ed ei ne uscì
preceduto per le scale ed i corritoi da due paggi che recavano i
doppieri.
Da quanto fu detto colà è agevole comprendere che i progetti di
Macaruffo non erano rimasti ignoti. L’intrattenersi ch’ei faceva
soventi ora con uno, ora coll’altro dei capi delle antiche bande di
Facino; il trarli seco a convegno nei battifredi più appartati del
Castello mentre mostravasi taciturno e selvatico con tutte l’altre genti
di Corte, aveva eccitati i sospetti e destata la vigilanza della turba dei
delatori del Duca. Ogni suo passo fu quindi numerato, sorvegliate
diligentemente le sue azioni.
La notte susseguente a quella in cui avvenne il colloquio da noi
riferito, il Venturiero passando meditabondo sotto il portico che dal
cortile interno della Rocca metteva all’andito della torre, sentì
afferrarsi per un braccio. Rivoltosi riconobbe Scaramuccia, valletto di
confidenza del Duca, con cui aveva stretta conoscenza militando
insieme sotto le insegne del Conte.
«Rendi grazie a’ tuoi santi protettori ch’io t’abbia ritrovato — disse
pianissimo Scaramuccia traendolo in un canto dietro le spalle
dell’arco, fuori della lista di luce che mandava la lampada. Il
Venturiero con voce aspra rispose:
«Renderei grazie sì, ma quando potessi al tuo padrone....
«Zitto, zitto (proseguì l’altro) non è tempo da far parole. Ascolta. Se
fra poche ore non sei lontano le molte miglia da queste mura tu
finirai di mala morte. Hanno girato per te la luna, il sole e le stelle: il
tuo nome sta in mano al Giudeo, e la gola del pozzo in fondo alle
vôlte fu aperta e t’aspetta. Pensa a’ tuoi casi. Addio. — Ciò detto lo
lasciò frettolosamente e scomparve nell’ombra.
Macaruffo benchè non suscettivo di timidi pensieri e omai
indifferente ad ogni sventura, non dubitò a tale inaspettato
avvertimento, che in realtà la sua morte fosse stata ordinata da
Filippo Maria, sia per avere scoperto i di lui tentativi, sia per togliere
un amico fedele alla Duchessa. Quindi non volendo cadere vittima
invendicata dell’abborrito Visconte determinò di cercare salvezza
nella fuga.
Deposta ogni arma e tramutate le vesti, presso l’albeggiare potè
uscire inosservato dal Castello. Comunque grande però fosse il suo
pericolo rimanendo in queste vicinanze, non sapeva staccarsi dai
luoghi ove l’infelice sua Signora, serbando solo i titoli e le apparenze
della sovranità, gemeva prigioniera d’un inesorabile tiranno.
Per lunghi giorni andò errando nelle terre prossime a questa città, e
la notte accostavasi guardingo alla tremenda ducale dimora, spiando
se qualche lume apparisse nelle finestre dal lato occidentale della
Rocca, e s’affisava in quello come in una luce amica, consolatrice,
poichè sembravagli illuminasse la camera della Duchessa, ch’ei si
rappresentava assisa a quel mesto chiarore in atto pensivo e col
volto irrigato di lagrime. Chi potrebbe ridire quanta fosse la potenza
che l’immagine di lei esercitava su quell’anima, chiusa in ributtanti
spoglie, ma sì nobile e generosa che avrebbe con gioja, e senza
ch’ella pure il sapesse, sagrificata l’esistenza per procurarle un
istante di contento e di pace?
Dovette però convincersi alfine Macaruffo ch’era vano ogni tentativo
per rivederla, e sarebbe stata follìa l’intraprendere di sottrarla suo
malgrado alle mani del Duca. Pensando d’altronde che se si fosse
scoperto ch’ei s’aggirava quivi d’intorno avrebbe potuto far cadere su
di lei il dubbio che per suo mezzo tramasse congiure o tradimenti, si
decise con pena indescrivibile ad abbandonare questo suolo, e
riprese cammino verso la patria.
Allorchè calando da una delle Alpi che fiancheggiano il mare di
Liguria, distinse tra il verde della valle le torri del castello di Tenda,
vide il lago de’ palombi, e poco lungi scorse tra il folto degli alberi le
merlate mura del maniero de’ Gualdi, non dolci affetti si sollevarono
in lui con soave tumulto, non esclamò, non sorrise; solo un grave
sospiro uscì dal suo petto affranto dalla fatica e dalla doglia, e
s’asciugò due amare stille di pianto che gli caddero sulle arsiccie
guancie.
Visse colà inconsolabile, solingo.
Quando nelle paterne mura ribombò con terrore e desolazione
l’orrendo annunzio che Beatrice, dannata per scellerata sentenza dal
Marito, aveva lasciata la testa sul patibolo nel castello di Binasco, il
Venturiero quivi più non si rinvenne.
Alcuni giorni dopo apparve un Pellegrino in vicinanza al castello del
supplizio, e fu veduto starsi ogni notte immobile per lunghe ore,
pregando alla ferriata della cappella dei morti, ove i resti della
Contessa erano stati deposti. Nè andò guari che chiuse gli occhi
esso pure alla vita, e nessuno scoprì mai la sua storia o il suo nome.
Un Cadavere antico [7]
.... Orrendo e vero

Simulacro di morte!...
H.
Era il cielo cinericcio; oscurava. Ad ogni istante rendevasi più fosco il

colore delle alte mura della Basilica, che la Longobardica Regina
eresse in Monza al divino Precursore, e più visibile traspariva dalle
sue arcuate finestre il chiarore delle lampane solitarie.
Io camminava a lenti passi sotto l’atrio contiguo a quella vetusta
Chiesa attendendo l’un de’ custodi. Il silenzio universale, la tenebria
della sera che s’avanzava m’avevano reso mesto e meditabondo,
onde le impressioni della mia mente consuonavano all’intutto
coll’idea del lugubre oggetto che una viva curiosità mi aveva tratto
quivi ad ammirare. Venne alfine la guida recando un torchio acceso
e m’accennò di seguirla; le tenni dietro: ed essa arrestatasi ov’era
un’imposta alla parete, la spalancò ed offrì al mio sguardo un
cadavere, una specie di mummia, quivi serbata in una nicchia.
Fatto immobile, affisai avidamente gli occhi in quella salma antica, e
i molti gravi pensieri che sorsero in me, attutarono il profondo
ribrezzo che suol sempre assalire alla vista di umane carni
inanimate. Sta ritto quel cadavere, rigido, giallognolo: il diseccare de’
muscoli, de’ tendini, l’indurare delle cartilagini l’ha alcun poco
contratto e impicciolito, ma mantiene tuttavia intatte le forme,
conserva i denti, i capelli, le ciglia, e mostra illesa ovunque la cute,
fuorchè alla nocca d’un piede. Lo esaminai con tutta attenzione
facendo appressare mano mano il lume ad ogni sua parte, e provava
il mio spirito certo qual solenne diletto nel contemplare un corpo, che
senza bende egizie o balsami trinacrii, si sottrasse alle possenti
consuntrici leggi della natura; un corpo, che serbando per quattro
secoli le primiere sembianze, giunse da spente e trapassate
generazioni sino a noi come l’unico resto d’un gran naufragio sopra
ignoti lidi.
Quella salma non fu d’uomo volgare, poichè s’ascrisse anch’esso fra
i dominatori dei popoli. Oltre d’avere padroneggiato Monza, venne
salutato signore di Milano, e sebbene qui non tenesse il comando
che per brevissimo spazio di tempo, collegò milizie, impose tributi,
stampò monete, attribuzioni esclusive della sovranità. Portò il nome
di Estore, e vanta per padre Bernabò Visconte, principe temuto e
crudele, che perì di veleno nel Castello di Trezzo.
Estore non condusse una fiacca o codarda vita. Pugnò
possentemente contro i due duchi suoi cugini, Giovanni e Filippo
Maria, figli di Galeazzo. Seppe tenere il campo a fronte di Facino
Cane, di Lancillotto Beccaria e di Valperga ch’erano fra i più valenti
condottieri dell’epoca. A Filippo Maria contrastò con vigore il
possesso dello Stato; assalito in Milano da forte schiera d’uomini
d’armi, oppose nelle stesse contrade della città la più ostinata
resistenza. Cedette alfine e ritirossi in Monza nel di cui Castello
sostenne un lungo assedio, respingendo più volte gli assalti di tutto
l’esercito ducale. Per ordine di Filippo, che sterminato voleva un sì
audace rivale, non cessavano mai le offese contro le assediate
mura, le quali dall’assiduo lavoro de’ mangani e delle bricolle già
scoperchiate e cadenti in più luoghi, non offrivano ai difensori che
debole e incerto riparo.
Un giorno (era in settembre del 1412) Estore Visconte se ne stava
nel mezzo del cortile del suo Castello presso al pozzo ove si
abbeveravano i cavalli. Nel momento forse che all’udire le esterne
grida de’ nemici meditava sdegnato una tremenda uscita, o che
l’anima sua sorpresa dall’idea dell’instante periglio cominciava a
vacillare invilita, una grossa pietra slanciata con tutta veemenza
venne dall’alto e lo colse in una gamba che gli spezzò presso
l’attaccatura dei piede, onde cadette, e perdendo sterminata quantità
di sangue, in capo a poco tempo rimase esanime.
Eccolo innanzi a me coi segni del fatal colpo, che ha lacerate le
carni, infranto l’osso, e lasciò su quello le traccie del sangue
aggrumolato.
— O arido ed annerito carcame, tu dunque fosti un guerriero
d’intrepido cuore, e ricoperto di ferro vivesti tra l’armi e le battaglie?
Ah perchè schiavando i denti che serrò morte, non puoi narrare tu
stesso i fatti de’ tuoi giorni, o rivelare ai mortali i segreti delle tombe
tra cui sì lungamente dimorasti! Ma l’ironia ferale dei tuoi tratti è fisa
e impassibile, e nel rimirarti mi fai sentire più amaro e truce il
pensiero che mentre ogni oggetto vivente con somma rapidità
trapassa e si solve, un cadavere s’innoltra incorrotto verso le ridenti
età future.
FINE.
IL BACIO FATALE
....... Ei nell’amata
Donna s’affigge, ode uno squillo: il suono
Quest’è che serra le stridenti porte.
Un istante gli resta, un bacio invola
A quella fronte gelida, una croce
Alle sue mani impallidite, e come
Luce nell’aer per le mute logge
Inosservato e celere dispare.
Tealdi-Fores.
Chi ignorava la beltà di Evelleda, la prigioniera d’Oriente divenuta

sposa del cavaliero Unfredo de’ Rodis?... Dal lago alle Alpi tutta la
valle dell’Ossola risuonava delle lodi di lei e si portavano a cielo non
solo le avvenenti sue forme, ma le virtù e la dolcezza soavissima
dell’animo. Nel mirarla era un’estasi che infondevano in petto la
leggiadrìa e la nobiltà delle sue movenze, l’armonìa della voce che
serbava ne’ suoni alcun che di straniero e la luce celeste di che
erano animati i suoi sguardi. Oh! gli sguardi di Evelleda superavano
quanto mai l’immaginazione più ardente sa figurarsi d’incantevole e
d’angelico: quegli su cui quelle nere pupille si posavano con
tenerezza o con mesto sorriso provava in cuore un ineffabile
commovimento e sentiva circondarsi da un’aura più pura.
Questo fiore di bellezza era nato sotto altri soli e dalle falde del
Libano era stato trapiantato presso quelle delle Alpi. Il cavaliero
Unfredo valente di braccio quanto d’animo ardente e vendicativo,
offeso in cuore da secrete ingiurie, determinò sino dall’età sua
giovanile d’abbandonare la patria; radunò una schiera de’ più prodi
suoi vassalli Ossolani, fece voto di combattere per la liberazione di
Gerusalemme e raggiunse in Oriente l’esercito dei Baroni Crociati.
Ebbe parte nelle imprese più ardue e famose; venne ferito e si
ritrasse a Bisanzio sotto la protezione de’ greci Imperatori.
Ricuperata colà la salute e il vigore, tornò in Palestina ove
capitanando una parte dell’esercito prese d’assalto una ricca città
de’ Saraceni, di cui gli furono cedute in premio le spoglie. Egli
trascelse per sè le più preziose; abbandonò l’altre a’ soldati, e dei
vinti non tenne in suo potere che una donna bellissima fra tutte,
madre d’unica fanciulletta, vezzosa come l’amore, la quale fu trovata
dai guerrieri cristiani nel solitario harem custodita da due schiavi muti
e neri al paro della pece.
Vinta Nicea ed Antiochia, Unfredo, a cui le ferite benchè rimarginate
rendevano l’armeggiare penoso, volle far ritorno alle patrie terre, e
caricate su una nave Pisana le conquistate ricchezze, afferrò le
spiaggie d’Italia. Morì attrita dai lunghi affanni, anzichè toccasse i
nostri lidi, la bella prigioniera saracena, e il Cavaliero le rese meno
penosi gli ultimi istanti giurandole sulla croce che a lui segnava il
petto, che avrebbe con ogni studio vegliato al bene dell’orfana
fanciulla ch’ella abbandonava nelle sue mani.
Toccava questa appena il tredicesimo anno, nè altri che la propria
madre conosceva sulla terra che potesse intenderla, guidarla e che
le fosse di sostegno e d’aita. Vedendo la genitrice languire per
mortale angoscia gemeva profondamente, sinchè giunta al punto
estremo ne raccolse disperata l’ultimo sospiro e si dovette strapparla
a forza dalla fredda salma di lei.
Per lunghi giorni le sgorgò incessante un pianto inconsolabile: alla
fine però le tenere e più che paterne cure del generoso Unfredo le
ridonarono la calma; cessarono le lagrime d’irrigarle le pallide
delicate guancie, ed ei si dispose a condurla alla propria valle nelle
mura dell’avito castello.
La fama delle sue gesta lo avevano preceduto: accorsero i vassalli
esultanti ad incontrarlo ed ei ricalcò festeggiante dopo tanti anni di
lontananza l’antico ponte del suo fiume nativo. Nel guerresco
corteggio che lo seguiva attraevano gli sguardi di tutti i due schiavi
Etiopi abbigliati nella loro barbarica foggia; ma ciò che destava più
vivamente la curiosità generale era la fanciulla che sedeva sopra un
placido e bellissimo palafreno guidato a mano da un paggio,
ricoperta da fitto velo il quale l’avviluppava pressochè interamente.
Allorchè dopo molti mesi il dolore della perdita della madre fu
alquanto più mitigato nell’animo della giovinetta, Unfredo che sentiva
nascere in seno per lei ardentissima fiamma, la fece istruire nei sacri
misteri di nostra religione e poscia rigenerare nelle acque del
Battesimo. Profuse quindi tesori per rendere il proprio castello il più
sontuoso che mai si vedesse e per prevenire ed appagare ogni lieve
brama dell’adorata fanciulla, un di cui sorriso lo rendeva felice.
Riconoscente essa pure a tante affettuose dimostrazioni del suo
guerriero vincitore, benchè non lo amasse che quale amoroso padre,
cedere dovette alle lunghe ripetute istanze e condotta da Unfredo
all’altare con pompa regale divenne sua sposa.
Sorgeva il castello di Unfredo sulle sponde della Toce là dove questo
fiume abbandonati i nativi dirupi, scende limpido e tranquillo ad
irrigare l’esteso piano della valle dell’Ossola. Il ponte levatojo di quel
castello rimaneva sempre abbassato, e sebbene numerosa schiera
d’armati vi stesse a guardia continuamente, erane però a tutti libero
l’ingresso, poichè colà venivano accolti con eguale cortese ospitalità
il povero pellegrino, il ricco barone, il questuante eremita e lo
sfarzoso Abate che vi giungeva cavalcando con gran seguito di
monaci e di laici. Infiniti erano quivi entro gli scudieri, i paggi, i servi,
tutti abbigliati con vaghe e ricche assise. Nei portici, negli atrii, sulle
scale miravasi scolpito in marmo o dipinto lo stemma della possente
famiglia de’ Rodis, ch’era una stella d’oro con due ali in campo
azzurro, circondato da una nera fascia.
Le stanze superiori nelle quali abitava il Signore del castello erano
tutte magnificamente addobbate; ma ove si poteva dire veramente
esausto quanto mai il lusso de’ tempi sapeva creare di più
sorprendente e ricercato, era la grande aula di ricevimento e
l’oratorio di Evelleda. Nella sala entravasi per due ampie porte alle
quali corrispondevano vaste finestre, divisa ognuna in due archi
acuti sostenuti da sottilissima colonna spirale: ne chiudeva il varco
una vetriata a colori su cui si diramavano simetrici arabeschi. Le
pareti erano coperte da purpurei arazzi trapunti in oro: marmoreo era
il pavimento ed istoriata la volta: i larghi sedili finamente intagliati, e
sulle tavole, ricoperte di lastre di preziosi marmi, posavano gemmati
doppieri. Sulla parete frammezzo alle porte d’ingresso stavano
sospese a modo di trofeo le armi più ricche d’Unfredo: nel mezzo era
collocato l’usbergo coi guanti, i bracciali e gli schinieri; a sinistra lo
scudo collo stemma rilevato a cesello; a destra la spada e la lancia,
ed al di sopra l’elmo di massiccio argento con cimiero d’altissime e
candide penne.
Quell’appartata camera che nella dimora d’una ricca dama viene a
lei unicamente consacrata e sta presso la stanza di riposo, servendo
così ai misteri dell’addobbamento, come alle solitarie letture ed alle
meditazioni, la quale ora noi chiamiamo Gabinetto, appellavasi nei
bassi tempi Oratorio, poichè conteneva una specie di domestico
altare avanti a cui soleva la Dama profferire le serali e mattutine
preghiere. L’oratorio d’Evelleda non era spazioso ma rinserrava
tesori. V’avevano due entrate, l’una da una porta che s’apriva
nell’atrio vicino alla sala, e l’altra più ristretta che riusciva nella
camera contigua ove era eretto il talamo nuziale. Di contro all’arcata
finestra d’egual forma di quelle della sala, stava nell’oratorio una
nicchia, dentro la quale sorgeva sopra un piedestallo il simulacro
della Vergine col divino infante, coronati l’uno e l’altro di un serto di
gemme: sul petto della celeste Madre pendeva appeso ad un serico
nastro un’anforetta in un cerchio d’oro che conteneva un frammento
del velo di Lei, reliquia rarissima acquistata per cento bisanti dallo
stesso Unfredo in Palestina da un Maronita di Betlemme. Davanti al
simulacro stava un ginocchiatojo tutto rivestito da ricco e morbido
drappo. In giro alla camera vedevansi arche ed armadietti d’ebano e
d’avorio, elegantemente intarsiati con fili d’oro e tempestati di pietre
preziose: alcuni di essi rimanendo aperti, mostravansi ripieni di vasi
lucenti, di cassette d’aromi, di odorosi unguenti; altri di fermagli
d’oro, vezzi di perle, spille, colanne, braccialetti e di quanto può
concorrere ai più sontuoso e variato femminile adornamento. Le
seggiole andavano ricoperte di velluto azzurro frangiato in argento, e
ad una di esse co’ bracciuoli, i quali avevano la forma di morbidi colli
di cigno, pure d’argento, stava dinanzi un tavoliere su cui posava un
vaso di cristallo cilestrino con fogliature in oro che conteneva i più
vaghi fiori, e vicino v’erano varj libri in pergamena con leggiadre
miniature. Da un lato del tavoliere stava un tripode in bronzo con
coperchio a traforo che serviva ad ardere profumi, dall’altro lato eravi
un elegante leggìo a cui stava sospeso un arpicordo saracinesco
con bischeri d’oro. Dalla volta pendeva una lampada alabastrina
sostenuta da tre catene in figura di serpi. La luce che dalla finestra
entrava in quella camera era mitigata a piacere, poichè le ampie
tende bianche e turchine che la fiancheggiavano potevansi
variamente panneggiare, ed ora si simulava con esse il soave
chiarore dell’aurora, ora la luce moribonda del crepuscolo e per sino
il bianco irradiare della luna.
Varia poi e spaziosa era la veduta che s’appresentava da quella
finestra, se ne venivano spalancate le imposte. Vedevasi l’intera
corona degli alti monti che formano parete alla valle, e tutta la
chiudono fuorchè a mezzodì ove ne lambiscono il confine le acque
del Lago Maggiore; miravasi più da presso la merlata roccia di
Vogogna eretta sopra scoscesa rupe, e scorgevasi nel piano il lucido
esteso serpeggiare della Toce che toccava mormorando a quelle
mura. Al di là del fiume quasi a prospetto sorgeva un edificio di
semplice architettura ma che s’aveva del castello insieme e del
convento: constava di massiccie mura, aveva porte e finestre ad
archi acuti, ma non era merlato nè munito di torri. Tale edificio
chiamavasi la Masone ed era ospizio de’ cavalieri Templari, i quali
solevano ivi stanziare ogni qual volta recavansi in Francia o ne
redivano.
Prediletto ad Evelleda era quell’oratorio ed ella passava in esso le
più lunghe ore del giorno o con qualche fida ancella occupata ai
lavori della spola e dell’ago, o da sola leggendo i canzonieri degli
amorosi Trovatori, o traendo dalle corde melodiosi suoni. Talvolta
nell’ora più tacita della sera ella univa a que’ suoni la sua voce:
arrestavansi negli atrii i paggi ed i donzelli ad ascoltarla, sospendeva
il passo per fino il rude arciero che stava a guardia a piè delle mura.
Eravi in quel canto un non so che di nuovo che rapiva, era una
melodìa ispirata da un altro cielo, da una più ridente natura.
Il raggio candidissimo della luna brillava sulle acque del fiume, ed
illuminava la fronte della Masone dei Templari. Ritto nel varco
dell’arcuata porta si stava uno dei guerrieri dell’Ordine appoggiato
alla sua lunga spada; la bianca sopravveste eragli serrata ai lombi
dal pendone della spada stessa, e in mezzo al suo petto si scorgeva
un’ampia croce rossa. Teneva scoperto il capo, il quale aveva da
nera inanellata capellatura rivestito, bruno e regolare era il giovanile
suo viso. In atto mesto e pensieroso lasciava errare le pupille ora
sulle correnti acque, ora sulla pallida verdura, ed ora le alzava al
disco della luna. Ad un tratto un irrompere di dolcissime note tratte
da sonoro stromento gli ferisce l’orecchio; guarda al castello di
prospetto da cui quel suono partiva e quasi tratto da magica forza
s’accosta alla sponda del fiume, onde meglio bearsi in quell’armonìa.
S’alza una voce... ma qual gioja inaspettata, qual soave sorpresa
manifesta il Cavaliero del Tempio!... quella voce canta
nell’armoniosa lingua dei poeti dell’Alambra, essa ripete gli accenti
che richiamano al Yemen felice la memoria dell’avventuroso
guerriero. Ecco come canta quella voce celebrando il suolo nativo.
«Mia sfera è l’Oriente, splendida regione, ove sorge magnifico

il sole come un possente monarca e procede per le vie del
giorno sempre serene: così una nave d’oro voga sull’onde
azzurre portando l’Emiro di vasta contrada.
«I doni tutti del cielo furono versati sulla zona orientale: in
ogni altro clima il fatale destino fa germogliare amari frutti a
lato ai saporosi. Ma Iddio che guarda sorridendo le terre
dell’Asia, la riveste de’ fiori più puri e accorda maggiori stelle
al suo cielo, maggiori perle al suo mare.
«Quivi sono le ampie città che l’universo ammira. Laora dai
campi fiorenti: Golconda, Cascemira, Damasco la guerriera,
la reale Ispahan; Bagdad da baluardi coperta come da ferrea
armatura, e Aleppo il mormorìo delle cui immense contrade
sembra al lontano pastore il fremito dell’oceano.
«Misora è qual regina collocata sul trono. Medina dalle mille
torri irte d’aguglie colle punte d’oro rassembra al campo d’un
esercito nel piano che inalza sulle tende una selva di lucicanti
saette.
«Chi non brama contemplare sì grandi maraviglie? Chi non
desìa sedere su quei terrazzi simiglianti a canestri di fiori; o
seguire nei prati l’Arabo vagabondo? Al cader del sole
quando i cammelli s’arrestano spossati presso le fresche
acque dei pozzi, la giovinetta bajadera intreccia la sua danza
voluttuosa.
«Anch’io un giorno con passi infantili errando pensosa presso
al chiosco solitario sotto i rami delle palme beveva l’aure
imbalsamate che scendevano dagli azzurri monti! Ma ohimè!
io non potrò mai più rivedere nè le palme, nè quei monti
quantunque la mia anima voli incessantemente alle beate
regioni orientali.
Armando di Nerra, tal era il giovine Cavaliero, fu scosso da quel

canto sin nell’intime fibre del cuore. L’oriente era pure il suo sospiro:
in oriente egli aveva appreso ad amare; quando l’oggetto de’ suoi
deliri perì, egli da libero combattente divenne Cavaliero dell’ordine
del Tempio, consacrando sè stesso e la sua spada alla Religione ed
assoggettandosi ai voleri del gran Maestro.
Attese ansiosamente la sera successiva: una melodia parimenti
soave lo venne dal castello a beare sulla sponda della Toce.
L’incanto fu irresistibile. Seppe chi era Unfredo, lo riconobbe ed
entrò nel suo castello da lui stesso accoltovi ed onorato.
Unfredo era oltre modo bramoso che distinti personaggi
contemplassero il lusso e la magnificenza da lui spiegati entro le
proprie mura; e siccome andava superbo di possedere una
bellissima sposa, gioiva che venisse ammirata ed elevata a cielo da
tutti: fiero e contento che gli altri invidiassero a lui quella beltà
famosa, a lui già d’età provetto, a lui d’ispidi lineamenti, a lui che
giovane in quella patria aveva dovuto subire l’umiliazione d’un rifiuto
quando pretese alla mano di donzella uscita da un lignaggio ch’ei
stimava paro al suo. Aveva abbandonata la terra nativa giurando di
vendicarsi di quel disprezzo o morire: e la sua vendetta era completa
quando alcuno proclamava non esservi nell’Ossola castello più ricco,
nè sposa più leggiadra di que’ d’Unfredo. Raggiante di gioja, dopo
avere fatto osservare gli atrii fastosi e le stanze più addobbate;
condusse il giovine Templario nella gran sala ove fece dare annunzio
ad Evelleda di presentarsi.
Esiste un’arcana relazione fra i diversi sentimenti dell’uomo, per cui
allo svilupparsi di un solo, più altri s’intraveggono con secreto
presentimento. Armando di Nerra al primo mirare avanzarsi dalla
spalancata porta la Dama del castello, sentì con certezza che da
nessun altri che da lei sola potevano essere partite quelle
maravigliose note che avevano richiamate tante dolci e dolorose
memorie al suo spirito. Unfredo nominò alla moglie il Cavaliero,
magnificandolo per la nobiltà del sangue e le illustri sue gesta. Ella lo
salutò con sorriso gentile, e allorchè si fu assiso in prossimità di lei e
del marito, le chiese se recavasi allora nei campi della Palestina o ne
retrocedeva. Rispose il Cavaliero che di là veniva e ritornava nelle
sue terre di Francia per riabbracciare il padre cadente, che più non
aveva veduto dal giorno che s’indossò la bianca sopravveste dei
Templari.
— Oh voi felice (esclamò con trasporto Evelleda), che avete la bella
sorte di ricalcare quel suolo ove apriste gli occhi alla luce
coll’indiscrivibile consolazione di esservi atteso dall’autore dei vostri
giorni! Quanti e quanti hanno posto il piede fuori della patria terra e
non la rivedranno mai più! —
Queste ultime parole furono pronunciate con tutta l’espressione della
soavità e della melanconìa, ed Armando assorto nel contemplare
quel volto e quell’angelico sguardo che s’abbassò con tristezza, vi
lesse la storia della profonda piaga d’un cuore senza amore e senza
speranze. — Oh figlia di una terra prediletta dal sole, perchè non ho
io pel tuo spirito languente un balsamo più dolce del frutto della
palma, più del ditamo fragrante? — così susurrò a bassa voce in
favella orientale il giovine Cavaliero e una gioja inaspettata si diffuse
sul volto alla bella. Ma Unfredo s’alzò, onde fu forza ad Armando
seguirlo, e ad Evelleda ritirarsi nelle proprie stanze.
Chi può descrivere i sogni d’una mente colpita dallo spettacolo
incantatore della bellezza, d’una bellezza mesta e pensierosa a cui
si sente il potere d’infondere nel cuore il sorriso della felicità? A tale
immagine la fantasìa vagando fra il sereno e le rose, dà forma alle
beatitudini eterne e si crede la favorita del cielo. Ahi troppo
ingannata! poichè non sa che il destino alla coppa dei beni aggiunge
irremissibilmente quella delle più crudeli amarezze.
Unfredo accolse più volte Armando nel proprio castello, sicchè
questi divenne famigliare a segno, che pure allorquando il Signore
n’era assente, o per sedere nel consiglio dei capi della valle o per
seguire le alpestri caccie, entrava liberamente tra quelle mura e vi
stanziava a suo talento.
Fragile è l’uman cuore e troppo possente incanto esercitano su di
esso le grazie, gli amorosi sospiri e le dolci animate parole che
giungono sommesse all’orecchio con un alito fragrante, carezzevole
e quasi affannoso, allora quando si è liberi da ogni altro umano
sguardo e il sole stesso non manda che timido il suo raggio a
traverso i cristalli colorati e le tende!
Nell’oratorio di Evelleda troppo felici scorrevano le ore per lei, per
Armando. Allorchè essa s’accompagnando con flebili o lieti suoni
cantava a piana voce canzoni piu tenere dell’usato, il Cavaliero in
un’estasi voluttuosa stava immobile contemplandola, sorreggendo il
mento col braccio appoggiato sul morbido velluto del sedile di lei, e
quando egli narrava le proprie imprese o ripeteva le novelle apprese
sulle rive del Giordano dagli Arabi pastori, ella pendeva beata dalle
labbra di lui, immemore per sino di sè medesima.
L’invidia rabbiosa e la vigilante maldicenza non concessero però che
lunghi corressero quei giorni di felicità. Tronche parole, maligni
sorrisi, inattese interpellazioni stillarono il veleno della gelosia nel
cuore d’Unfredo: si fece cupo e taciturno, parlava rado e sulla moglie
più non alzava che severo lo sguardo. Intese tremando Evelleda la
giusta causa di quel cangiamento, e risolvette di sacrificare anche sè
stessa al proprio dovere. Da fido messo fece recare un foglio ad
Armando in cui dicevagli «Non doversi essi rivedere mai più; averli il
cielo riuniti un istante per disgiungerli per sempre; solo giurava che
vivrebbe nell’anima sua eternamente la memoria di lui, che pregava
non dimenticarsi d’una infelice per la quale erano estinti tutti i beni
della terra.
La disperazione s’impossessò d’Armando. Il pensiero di non più
rivedere Evelleda era per lui tremendo come quello della morte: egli
sentiva di non potersi staccare da quei luoghi, di non poter
sopportare la vita se non le porgeva un addio, un ultimo addio, e se
non udiva ripetere dalla bocca stessa di lei il giuramento di
mantenere sempre impressa nel seno la sua immagine. Fece ogni
cosa disporre per la propria partenza, e messo frattanto uno
scudiero in agguato, quando seppe che Unfredo erasi allontanato a
cavallo dal castello, ei vi si recò e penetrò nell’oratorio di Evelleda.
Scorse però breve spazio di tempo da che egli aveva posto piede in
quelle soglie e già Unfredo, benchè discosto, n’aveva avuto avviso:
rivolge a furia il destriero, galoppa per una via fra’ boschi, rientra nel
castello e sale nella camera di riposo di Evelleda, da cui a passi
sospesi s’affaccia alla porta dell’oratorio, e vede... oh che vede egli
mai!... Il Cavalier del Tempio, un ginocchio a terra innanzi ad
Evelleda, con ambe le proprie mani premevasi al cuore una mano di
lei, ed essa seduta e colla faccia inclinata verso la sua lo inondava
singhiozzando di lagrime e faceva forza per rilevarlo.
A sì tenero spettacolo la pietà imbrigliò il furore, e le dita di Unfredo
rimasero un momento arrampinate al pugnale senza trarlo dalla
vagina. Ma ohimè! non fu che un lampo: una crescente foga d’affetti
vinse gl’incauti amanti, le loro labbra s’accostarono, s’unirono ed
essi si perdettero in un bacio di delirio... Era il primo... e fu celeste
quanto fatale. Il pugnale d’Unfredo s’infisse fino alla guardia nel
cuore d’Armando, Evelleda acciecata con un ferro rovente perì fra gli
spasimi: ruina e desolazione regnarono in quel castello dal quale
Unfredo disparve senza che più traccia si trovasse di lui.
FINE.

Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Womens Poetry 1St Ed Edition Daniela Theinova Full Chapter

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Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Womens Poetry 1St Ed Edition Daniela Theinova Full Chapter

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Limits and Languages in Contemporary

Irish Women's Poetry 1st ed. Edition

Limits and Languages

More information about this series at

Limits and Languages

New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature

Cover illustration: Donal Murphy Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

friendship and wise advice I treasure dearly. Finally, I wish to thank

1 Introduction: Uncertain Identities 1

Part I New Lands for New Words

2 Revolutionary Laughter: Irish Poets Dismantling Old

3 Figures in a Landscape: Women on Language, Land

Part II Secret Scripts

4 The Muse in Question: Tropes of Inspiration Revisited 107

5 Poetry of Silence: Rhetorical Concealment

6 Kinds of Between: The Margin as a Mainspring 163

7 Original in Translation: Poets Between Languages 189

8 In and Out of Ireland: New Poets and New Places 219

9 Conclusion: Feminism After Poetry 247

Selected Bibliography 255

Introduction: Uncertain Identities

The close of James Joyce’s Dubliners strikes a conciliatory note as Gabriel

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Artist as a Young Man, Gabriel’s bifurcated identity foreshadows the

Women on the Margin

order.”15 Both these approaches are relevant in relation to Irish women’s

near-contemporary Ireland, as Irish marginalisation is replicated in Irish

instead the implications of the margin itself—not only as a key complaint

charged with energies that converge and clash. In other words, it is an

it is possible to interpret the complaints about the lack of continuity by

Women and Languages

have no antecedents seems to me to be just such a borrowed view from

Jenkinson’s outspoken reliance on the Irish-language literary canon was

As Rióna Ní Fhrighil argues in her seminal book on Boland’s and Ní

riocht’ . . . bheith eolgaiseach ar imeall na beatha, ar buile, ar thost síoraí,

Indeed, the productive potential of liminal spaces and situations, as well as

incertitude. Laughter opens up a new space as the securities of motherland

is on how these authors reconsider issues surrounding various imposed

In Chapter 8, the motif of translation is considered in a broader context

Boyle Haberstroh, Women Creating Women: Contemporary Irish Women

Carcanet and Wake Forest University Press (Winston-Salem, NC). Medbh

35. See Boland, “Outside History,” PN Review 75 17.1 (September/October

62. Nic Eoin, Trén bhFearann Breac, 281. My translation.

Flynn, Leontia. Reading McGuckian. Irish Academic Press, 2014.

———. “Cultural Engagement and Twentieth-Century Irish-language Scholar-

———. Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology.

New Lands for New Words

In the satirising dissection of the sectarian strife in the North in Autumn

into the unknown waters of the vernacular. It has commonly—and contra-

could take up the threads of the predominantly masculine tradition. What

instrumental in surpassing the limits of discriminatingly defined nation-

.... Orrendo e vero

Era il cielo cinericcio; oscurava. Ad ogni istante rendevasi più fosco il

Chi ignorava la beltà di Evelleda, la prigioniera d’Oriente divenuta

«Mia sfera è l’Oriente, splendida regione, ove sorge magnifico

Armando di Nerra, tal era il giovine Cavaliero, fu scosso da quel

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