TOM MALONE
The American and French Revolutions at the end of the 18th century ushered in a new era, the beginning of modern history. The Old Order, where political and economic power was confined to a small elite, was swept aside by the huge upheavals in France and America.
These seismic changes in the power structures, in what we now call Western countries, can also be seen in the art and literature of the post-revolutionary period. In England, the Romantic poets – Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron – were breaking new ground in content and style.
Their credo was encapsulated by Wordsworth and Coleridge in their introduction to Lyrical Ballads in 1798. They said that they were committed to writing in simple words about the beauties of nature, stressing the pre-eminent importance of imagination in the human quest for wisdom and truth. There were also strong democratic tendencies in their writing; they espoused the cause of the common man.
The Romantic Hero was different from the person who distinguished himself in war, business or politics. Instead, he tended to be an eccentric figure, guided by different values than those shared by the general populace. I wrote about one such example, the Scholar Gypsy, in a recent blog. Arnold’s gypsy rejected the comfortable university life in Oxford, and, instead, devoted himself to a lifelong search for wisdom in the lore of a group of outsiders, of wanderers, whose lifestyle was denigrated by most people.
All of this was going through my mind when a friend, who lives in Venezuela, John Sweeney, sent me a poem that he wrote about Tom Malone, a beggar man that he knew when he was young in Ireland, more than fifty years ago. John was a missionary priest in Venezuela in the 70’s when he decided to leave that line of work after falling in love with a local woman. They are now proud grandparents, and John is a retired teacher in that country.
He was born in Kilgarvan, less than ten miles away from where I grew up, and I remember seeing Tom Malone in my town, Kenmare, when I was in my early teens. He was a tall imposing man, with a rather long beard, dressed in black. He was different from other beggars insofar as he spoke with authority on various topics, did not frequent the pubs and expected the local men to give him a few shillings, not the usual pennies that a beggar would be glad to pocket.
He had certain houses where he would stay as he moved around within a radius of about forty miles in the mountainy region that stretches from the Kenmare area of South Kerry into Bantry in West Cork. He never stayed in my family’s house; however, my younger brother, Michael, has a clear memory of him coming by for a cup of tea or a bowl of soup, on a few occasions. Tom was born in Coolea, near Macroom, in County Cork to a settled family, but he was so broken-hearted, so deeply hurt, by his mother’s death, when he was sixteen, that he never again returned to his home.
Instead, he chose the life of a rover. He would surely qualify, using Wordsworth’s definition, as a Romantic figure, an eccentric seeker, a restless soul who lived his life tramping from place to place, looking for some meaning to life.
The following is John Sweeney’s fine poem about Tom Malone.
I am Tom Malone, I walk alone, along my lonely way,
I got no house, no chick nor child, no garden, oats nor hay,
I know the clouds, the wind, the rain, as I walk my lonely road,
For fifty years I have traveled it, with ne’er a fixed abode.
In a little house beyond Coolea, my mother gave me birth,
She cradled me and she cuddled me in the crib beside the hearth,
But the Good Lord took her from me when I was just sixteen,
I left her in the churchyard and I left behind my dream.
I never more went near that house. It was no longer home,
Both love and joy had left it, and my fate it was to roam,
The pain was deep within me, I had to go away,
I faced the West, I walked all night and all the following day.
The road is long, it stretches on, beyond the heather bog,
The rain comes down, the wind is sharp, I stumble through the fog.
Of why I go, I’ll never know as I pass by rock and tree,
I hear a voice from other lands, and the road keeps calling me.
I slept last night in Lounahan, where I’ve been often fed,
And now I’m off to Gornaskea where I’ll find a feather bed,
I’ll sup my tay and puff my pipe and I’ll watch the coals grow red,
While I talk to Tomas Laidir of the living and the dead.
We’ll talk of those who have gone ahead to the land beyond the sky,
And of those who’ve left their native home in a foreign land to lie,
And of drunken Mike who slept all night at the mouth of a badger’s den,
And how Doctor Tadgh cured the old bay mare with the blood of a hatching hen.
We’ll think and talk the night away, and then we’ll wonder why,
The snail is made to crawl the earth and the bird is made to fly.
Of why there’s some who dress in rags while others wear a crown,
Of why the smoke goes up the hill and why the fog comes down.
The night moves on, I’ll tell old Tom what I heard from Con Cabog
‘Tis how the rainbow’s black and white to the West of Tir na Nog,
Of the leprechaun with whooping cough that he heard in Tory’s Lis,
And Big Jack Hyde who was crucified by the Borlin banshee’s kiss.
The night is done, we’ve had our fun; it’s time to hit the hay,
We’ll rake the fire and quench the lamp, there comes another day,
The road it calls, I’ll cross the top, go round another bend,
Until I meet the Lord above and reach my journey’s end.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
WAITING FOR GODOT
Waiting for Godot
I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.
Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.
Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative drama enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; it deals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.
While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!
Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inherent angst, the inevitable anguish, of the human condition. In this world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.
The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!
A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.
Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to the Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, many people say, is the central theme of the play?
Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a strong sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.
Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.
foWaitingr Godot
I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.
Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.
Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; itdeals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.
While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!
Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inevitable anguish of the human condition. In this Beckettian world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.
The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!
A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.
Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to our Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, for many people, is the central theme of the play?
Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.
Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.
I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.
Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.
Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative drama enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; it deals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.
While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!
Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inherent angst, the inevitable anguish, of the human condition. In this world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.
The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!
A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.
Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to the Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, many people say, is the central theme of the play?
Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a strong sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.
Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.
foWaitingr Godot
I first experienced Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot many years ago when I was attending University College Dublin. It was a really memorable experience.
Prior to college, in my younger years, I never missed drama productions by local or visiting theatrical groups in my home area in County Kerry. I even participated, without distinction, in a few dramatic efforts during my high school years. Many of the plays were written from a strictly nationalist or narrow Catholic perspective, which appealed to the Irish rural population fifty or so years ago.
Beckett’s Godot was a completely new experience from attending a traditional play, where the audience would see a narrative enacted, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would be a story about human emotions, involving people dealing with love or hate or jealousy or some other aspect of the human condition. The best performers drew us into their world of tears and laughter, while we wondered how the third act would end. By comparison, Waiting for Godot has a minimal story line; itdeals with two tramps on a barren stage waiting for a guy who vaguely promised that he would visit them.
While they are waiting, they eat, sleep, fart, argue, swap hats – anything, as Didi says "to hold the terrible silence at bay." They worry about how to pass the time, although they have great difficulty establishing any time frame. Yesterday and tomorrow blend into a perpetual present moment. They agree that they will spend the rest of their lives doing nothing!
Beckett clearly was not interested in dealing with heroes and scoundrels, the meat for so much Shakespearean drama, but rather in exploring the inevitable anguish of the human condition. In this Beckettian world, we are confronted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of life. Waiting for Godot is a great example of what is commonly called The Theatre of the Absurd.
The second time I saw the play was in a university playhouse in Brooklyn, shortly after I immigrated to New York. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Aileen, who thought it was the most boring play she ever saw and who assured me that the Antarctic would melt before she would ever again go near a Beckett play! She has been true to her word in that promise!
A few months ago, my oldest daughter, Siobhan, much to her mother’s disgust, booked tickets for the two of us for the Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, and, last week, we attended the play together. The actors were superb, true to the high standards we expect in a Broadway production, and all aspects of the staging were excellent. Still, quite a few people did not return for the second act, suggesting that Aileen is not the only one with a poor opinion of this wonderful play.
Siobhan and I talked a lot about our reactions to our Roundabout experience. We wondered what the play is really about. Is Beckett challenging us to focus on how our lives are often built around our hopes and dreams for tomorrow – for success, for winning the lotto, for anything that will enhance our paltry existence? Is he saying that our existence is defined by waiting, which, for many people, is the central theme of the play?
Or, we wondered, is the play about this strange character, Godot? He never arrives on stage, but he does send a child twice to say that he hopes to come the following day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!! There is a sense that this mysterious figure would never come, even if the play had ten acts. Didi and his good friend, Gogo, the two main characters, know very little about this man and, they are very unclear about what he can do for them – even if he does arrive.
Perhaps, Beckett was inviting his audience to focus on the futile way that people, throughout history, have looked for a hero, a superman, a saviour, a Godot who would make sense of the absurdity of life for them. Maybe, he was suggesting that we look in another direction, and, definitely not to any outside individual, for salvation and meaning.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
THE SCHOLAR GYPSY
THE SCHOLAR GYPSY
In the 19th century, Matthew Arnold wrote about The Scholar Gypsy who left his privileged status as a student in Oxford for a life of wandering, seeking answers to questions that the University would not or could not deal with. Arnold's poem is:
The story of the Oxford scholar poor
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,
One summer morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.
Years later, he met some of his old college friends and explained to them that The gypsy crew, his mates, had arts to rule, as they desired, the workings of men’s brains.
He went on to explain that he was still a novice, trying to imbibe the secret of their art,--- But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.
His critique of Victorian England, with its stress on knowledge acquired through science and reason, as opposed to intuition or religion, resonates today with many spiritual writers. They point to the materialism that dominates our culture, where success is measured by the size of the car or house or boat, with scant regard for the deepest human cravings for stable communal support and spiritual values.
Arnold explores these themes with some memorable lines:
This strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertaxed.
He describes his contemporaries as bereft of the imaginative power that prevailed with previous generations:
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed, ---
Who hesitate and falter life away.
The hippy movement in the 60’s tried to deal with the same issues. The many young people who were part of the Woodstock generation condemned their parents’ lifestyle because they sold their souls for the company’s gold.
Dropping out became popular as kids tried to construct their own “natural” communities with value systems that rejected the stress on acquisitiveness and one-up-man-ship. Mind-altering drugs, condemned outside of the communes, were welcomed for offering a heightened consciousness.
In The Year of the Hiker, John B. Keane explores sympathetically the plight of a man who leaves his family for the open roads, because he can’t cope with all the demands and pressures of his home situation. In the play, Keane gives the Hiker, his central character, every opportunity to explain himself, but, in the end, his leaving, dropping out, is seen as a selfish act. While the Hiker explored the life of the rover, his family suffered the harsh consequences of abandonment.
The idea of a higher, more fulfilling life outside of the humdrum demands of everyday experience is utopian. The Greek origin of that word suggests a perfect place but also a place that doesn’t exist. We have to make our way in the real world with all its limitations and challenges.
I love The Scholar Gypsy because of the many haunting lines and descriptions. Also, one has to admire the young man who rejects the conventional wisdom of his day and goes off to follow a higher calling, a pursuit of a more profound truth that can only be glimpsed by embracing the gypsy lifestyle.
In the 19th century, Matthew Arnold wrote about The Scholar Gypsy who left his privileged status as a student in Oxford for a life of wandering, seeking answers to questions that the University would not or could not deal with. Arnold's poem is:
The story of the Oxford scholar poor
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,
One summer morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.
Years later, he met some of his old college friends and explained to them that The gypsy crew, his mates, had arts to rule, as they desired, the workings of men’s brains.
He went on to explain that he was still a novice, trying to imbibe the secret of their art,--- But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.
His critique of Victorian England, with its stress on knowledge acquired through science and reason, as opposed to intuition or religion, resonates today with many spiritual writers. They point to the materialism that dominates our culture, where success is measured by the size of the car or house or boat, with scant regard for the deepest human cravings for stable communal support and spiritual values.
Arnold explores these themes with some memorable lines:
This strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertaxed.
He describes his contemporaries as bereft of the imaginative power that prevailed with previous generations:
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed, ---
Who hesitate and falter life away.
The hippy movement in the 60’s tried to deal with the same issues. The many young people who were part of the Woodstock generation condemned their parents’ lifestyle because they sold their souls for the company’s gold.
Dropping out became popular as kids tried to construct their own “natural” communities with value systems that rejected the stress on acquisitiveness and one-up-man-ship. Mind-altering drugs, condemned outside of the communes, were welcomed for offering a heightened consciousness.
In The Year of the Hiker, John B. Keane explores sympathetically the plight of a man who leaves his family for the open roads, because he can’t cope with all the demands and pressures of his home situation. In the play, Keane gives the Hiker, his central character, every opportunity to explain himself, but, in the end, his leaving, dropping out, is seen as a selfish act. While the Hiker explored the life of the rover, his family suffered the harsh consequences of abandonment.
The idea of a higher, more fulfilling life outside of the humdrum demands of everyday experience is utopian. The Greek origin of that word suggests a perfect place but also a place that doesn’t exist. We have to make our way in the real world with all its limitations and challenges.
I love The Scholar Gypsy because of the many haunting lines and descriptions. Also, one has to admire the young man who rejects the conventional wisdom of his day and goes off to follow a higher calling, a pursuit of a more profound truth that can only be glimpsed by embracing the gypsy lifestyle.
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