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For more information on cookies see our Cookie Policy. (BUTTON) X Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1942 – The Great Hunger, by Patrick Kavanagh The poet skewers traditional depictions of Irish country life and highlights the era’s sexual sterility in his long satirical work Sat, May 16, 2015, 01:00 Fintan O'Toole Hungry hills: Patrick Kavanagh could write with great lyric power about the ordinary life of an ordinary farm. Photograph courtesy of the Wiltshire Collection/National Library of Ireland Hungry hills: Patrick Kavanagh could write with great lyric power about the ordinary life of an ordinary farm. Photograph courtesy of the Wiltshire Collection/National Library of Ireland The world looks on And talks of the peasant: The peasant has no worries; In his little lyrical fields He ploughs and sows; He eats fresh food, He loves fresh women, He is his own master As it was in the Beginning The simpleness of peasant life. These mocking lines from Patrick Kavanagh’s long poem The Great Hunger echo in their dark satire Myles na gCopaleen’s attack, in An Béal Bocht, on the representation of Irish rural life. Kavanagh is the first English-language poet of real stature to emerge from a class that was much written about by others: the Catholic small farmers who were supposedly the heart of independent Ireland. But what he had to say was not quite what many wanted to hear. Kavanagh, who grew up on 16 acres of what he called “hungry hills” in Iniskeen, Co Monaghan, could write with great lyric power about the ordinary life of an ordinary farm and found an audience in the late 1920s through publications such as the Dundalk Democrat and George Russell’s Irish Statesman. But as his voice matured he used it to evoke not just rustic pleasures but also poverty, loneliness and sexual frustration. This was never more potently the case than in his ferocious The Great Hunger. Much of it was published, on the recommendation of John Betjeman, in the London journal Horizon in 1942, before the full poem was printed, in a limited edition, by the Yeats family’s Cuala Press, in Dublin, later that year. The most obvious way into the poem is through its title. With the centenary of the Great Famine approaching, Kavanagh can be seen as mapping its long-term emotional and psychological consequences in an Ireland that had to learn to value continence and caution above all else. The soil of the farm has become both language and body for the poem’s protagonist, Patrick Maguire: Clay is the word and clay is the flesh Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move Along the side-fall of the hill – Maguire and his men. Maguire is an embodiment of the sexual sterility that would give Ireland, by the 1950s, the lowest marriage rate of any developed society. He has “stayed with his mother till she died / At the age of ninety-one”. By then he was 65, and it was too late to think of a wife and children – a fate all too common in an Ireland where eldest sons waited to inherit the farm until their own chances of an intimate life had passed them by. “He saw his cattle / And stroked their flanks in lieu of wife to handle.” In the 14 sections that make up the poem, the bitterness of sterility alternates with a pleasurable kind of pointlessness. Kavanagh uses repetition to mimic the patterns into which Maguire’s life is locked: “Sitting on a wooden gate, / Sitting on a wooden gate, / Sitting on a wooden gate / He didn’t care a damn.” These more playful elements remind us that the poem is not a work of sociology or polemic. The poem’s anger is controlled in its often subtle forms. Kavanagh’s withering conclusion that “The hungry fiend / Screams the apocalypse of clay / In every corner of this land” may be aimed at contemporary Ireland, but it also anticipates a far wider sense of absurdity and disillusion that will descend on much of European culture after the second World War. You can read more about Patrick Kavanagh in the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography; ria.ie Subscribe. ADVERTISEMENT [adserv|3.0|826.1|4268867|0|170|ADTECH;loc=300;target=_blank;kvtopic=Cu lture;cookie=info;] ADVERTISEMENT The Irish Times Logo Sign In Email Address ____________________ Password ____________________ [ ] I agree to the Terms & Conditions, Community Standards and Privacy Policy (BUTTON) Sign In Don't have an account? Sign Up Forgot Password? The Irish Times Logo Sign Up First Name ____________________ Surname ____________________ Screen Name ____________________ The name that will appear beside your comments. 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Photograph: Warren Toda/EPA In pictures: British actor Alan Rickman Photograph: Dermot Barry David Bowie at Slane Castle [image.jpg] IFRAME: https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/users /138142444&color=b74f7d&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_user=fa lse&show_playcount=false&show_artwork=true Subscribe on iTunes Follow on Soundcloud Listen on Stitcher Most Read in Culture 1 Family sugar audit: Eva Orsmond with Louise and Ollie Ryan Television: A sugar-crash course in how we are poisoning ourselves 2 Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed ‘Apollo Creed meant everything to African-Americans’ 3 Did Philip K Dick dream of electric sheep? Much worse 4 Final bow: Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc at the end of the final Friends, in 2004 Friends: they lived perfect lives in a time of plenty. Of course we want them back 5 ‘I think cognitive enhancers should be allowed for academics’ Unthinkable: Is it unethical to take brain stimulants? 6 Dublin Rapper Tommy KD: “I never dreamt I’d be doing stuff like this, like getting the album out or playing my own shows. But at the same time, it’s important to say that everything’s not rosy.” Photograph: Cyril Byrne / THE IRISH TIMES Tommy KD: the Dublin rapper with one of the toughest stories in Irish music 7 Giant’s staircase: Utec, Lima has ‘opened up exciting new frontiers for Peruvian architecture’. Photograph: Grafton Architects, Iwan Baan Studio Bravo Lima: the Irish architects designing the ‘new geography’ 8 Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards: And the nominees are . . . 9 Joseph O’Connor on David Bowie, pictured here in 1965: “Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that the only plausible mission of the artist is ‘to make people feel they’re glad to be alive, at least a little bit.’ There are not many artists who’ve ever managed to achieve that highest of accolades. In my own life, David Bowie was one of them. He was part of my soundtrack, my passport, my pillow. I feel I was enriched to be around during his spell on the planet.” Photograph: CA/Redferns/Getty Images David Bowie: Irish writers pay tribute 10 The dialogues the author creates between Plato and various contemporary characters, including a marketing agent, a Google employee, a Tiger Mum, a radio host and a neuroscientist, convincingly demonstrate the value of continuing the job that Socrates started in ancient Greece. But they also show just why Plato would struggle to be heard today. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Never miss a story. SUBSCRIBE The Film Show The Irish Times Film Show: The Revenant, Creed & Room 7:47 The Irish Times Film Show: The Revenant, Creed & Room The Irish Times Film Show: The Hateful Eight & A War 6:55 The Irish Times Film Show: The Hateful Eight & A War Pop Life Heathers – ‘November’ * Una Mullally The twins return with a new tune and video. A golden moment at the dawn of a golden age * Una Mullally Irish cinema storms the Oscars Children and the Revolution 1916: A guide for children, teenagers and teachers The Hunger Strikes Microsite: 35 years on, exploring the legacy of the Hunger Strikes [image.jpg] IFRAME: https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playl ists/72151780&color=b74f7d&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comm ents=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false Subscribe on iTunes Follow on Soundcloud Listen on Stitcher Thomas Morris: the stories may not range very far geographically, but Morris manages to display remarkable range for a young man in his cast of characters, proving himself equally at home in a middle-aged woman’s heels or an old man’s slippers. The Book Club Click to join in the discussion about this month's book: We Don't Know What We're Doing by Thomas Morris Hennessy short story of the month How to Float by Niamh Donnelly: Two girls drift through a polluted paradise in this month’s winning Hennessy New Irish Writing short story Culture Videos DiCaprio: Oscar nominations 'feel great' 0:50 DiCaprio: Oscar nominations 'feel great' The homeless rapper, who put beats to his story 3:15 The homeless rapper, who put beats to his story Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson talks about 'Room' 3:24 Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson talks about 'Room' The Irish Times Film Show: The Revenant, Creed & Room 7:47 The Irish Times Film Show: The Revenant, Creed & Room Film Reviews Room The walls close in on a mother and child in Lenny Abrahamson’s moving, harrowing adapation of the acclaimed novel Creed Creed firmly overthrows any notions that the Rocky films are trading on an elaborate Great White Hope mythology The Revenant ‘The Revenant’ is short on dialogue and thin on characterisation; however the misery is well worth enduring A War (Krigen) The war in Afghanistan is the inspiration for a tense Danish courtroom drama Shem the Penman Sings Again A delightful, playful study of the relationship between Joyce and McCormack The Hateful Eight Tarantino sinks deeper into his auto-mythology with more haphazard plotting, gooey violence and endless dialogue, writes Donald Clarke Last Hijack: a real-world prequel to Captain Phillips Last Hijack Tommy Pallotta’s documentary is nicely presented but lacks a coherent narrative Ballerinas get bolshie in Babylon Bolshoi Bolshoi Babylon “The world of theatre is cruel . . . It looks beautiful from the outside, but inside it's boiling” Game Reviews Tearaway Unfolded Angry Birds 2: Bigger, badder, birdier? Not quite. Angry Birds 2 | Game Review Yoshi’s Woolly World | Game Review Twit or Miss | Game Review On The Record The playlist – the tunes of the week at OTR HQ * On The Record * Jim Carroll David Bowie, Anderson .Paak, Nicolas Jaar, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Kendrick Lamar, Tommy KD, Khotin and more on the stereo New Music – Pumarosa, Joon Moon, Angus Dawson * On The Record * Jim Carroll Your new music selections for this week from London, Paris and Perth Screenwriter 10 things to note about yesterday’s Oscar nominations * Donald Clarke We had Charlotte, but not Carol. The Force Awakens encounters unfamiliar failure. And an actor who wasn't nominated steals the show Movie quiz for January 15th * Donald Clarke Warm yourself up with a good hard quiz The Razzies are still not funny * Donald Clarke It really is time to do something about the terminally unamusing awards for worst film x Dragons Stirring As part of our Century series, we capture that moment just months ahead of Easter 1916 Great reads From crosswords to great wines and the best bits from The Irish Times - Buy an Irish Times Book today Subscribe About Us Policy & Terms Subscribe * Subscription Bundles * Gift Subscriptions * Home Delivery Irish Times Products & Services * ePaper * eBooks * Crosswords * Newspaper Archive * Dating * Ancestors * Email Alerts & Newsletters * Article Archive * Executive Jobs * Page Sales * Photo Sales About Us * Advertise * Contact Us * The Irish Times Trust * Careers Download on the App Store Download on Google Play * Our Partners * Rewarding Times * MyHome.ie * Irish Racing * Entertainment.ie * Top 1000 * MyAntiques.ie * The Gloss * Irish Times Training * Terms & Conditions * Privacy Policy * Cookie Information * Community Standards * Copyright * FAQs © 2015 THE IRISH TIMES For the best site experience please enable JavaScript in your browser settings Sign In ____________________ ____________________ (BUTTON) Sign In Forgot Password? 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