| History |
W.B. Yeats Dead
(The New York Times, January 30, 1939)
Famous Irish Poet Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 is Stricken in France Noted Too as Playwright Hailed by Masefield in 1935 as 'Greatest Living Poet' -- An Abbey Theatre Founder Read More >> |
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James Joyce, Irish author whose "Ulysses" was the center of one of the most bitter literary controversies of modern times, died in a hospital here early today despite the efforts of doctors to save him by blood transfusions. He would have been 59 years old Feb. 2. Read More >>
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HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe By Thomas Cahill The Ireland of the early fifth century was a brooding, dank island whose inhabitants, while carefree and warlike on the outside, lived in "quaking fear" within, their terror of shape-changing monsters, of sudden death and the insubstantiality of their world so acute that they drank themselves into an insensate stupor in order to sleep. Patrick, however, provided "a living alternative." He was a serene man who slept well without drink, a man "in whom the sharp fear of death has been smoothed away." The Christianity he proposed to the Irish succeeded because it took away the dread from the magical world that was Ireland. And once they were Christianized, the Irish founded the monastic movement, copying the books being destroyed elsewhere by Germanic invaders, eventually bringing them back to the places from which the books had come. "And that," Mr. Cahill concludes with typically wry unabashedness, "is how the Irish saved civilization." Read More >>
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Martyr for Many Causes
by Lucy McDiarmid (The New York Times, February 8, 1998)
Bernard shaw wrote a speech for him. Conan Doyle wrote a novel based on his adventures; W. B. Yeats and Richard Murphy wrote poems about him. He gave Conrad the idea for ''Heart of Darkness,'' and he makes cameo appearances in Joyce, Stevie Smith, Louis MacNeice and Paul Muldoon. Alfred Noyes, the author of ''The Highwayman,'' devoted an entire book to him. A minor muse for many modern writers, Roger Casement (1864-1916) was the most sentimental of Irish rebels and the most idealistic of humanitarians. Read More >>
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When George Mitchell, the chairman of the Northern Ireland peace talks, showed up for a question-and-answer session at University College Dublin the other day, he attracted so many students that school officials had to move the event to a huge theater. Even then, hundreds were turned away. At Trinity College in Dublin, after a honorary Doctor in Laws degree was bestowed on Mitchell, the audience would not stop its ovation. "This has been the longest and most prolonged applause that I've ever heard in this hall," marveled the provost, Dr. Thomas Mitchell, even more, for instance, than for Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, and Javier Perez de Cuellar, a former secretary general of the United Nations. Read More >>
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In May 1997, at a ceremony in Cork, Ireland, commemorating those who suffered and died in the great Irish famine, which began in 1845, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said: "That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event." Read More >>
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For any observer of last week's St. Patrick's Day celebrators who wondered where all those Irish came from, science has provided an unexpected answer: Spain. Read More >>
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| Music |
Music in Grand Irish Houses
by Mary D. Kierstead (The New York Times, March 20, 1996)
Every June for the last 26 years, there has been a festival of music in great Irish houses, and although the concerts are open to the public, getting the word out has not been a top priority.... The festival takes place over a period of two weeks, and consists of a series of concerts in grand houses and historic buildings. The venues vary from year to year -- a couple of the concerts are always in Dublin, the rest scattered about the country. Read More >>
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| Irish Life |
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This nation is playing out the tragic drama of AIDS, and tradition, Roman Catholic orthodoxy and ignorance are among the grim protagonists, advocates in the fight against the disease say. Read More >>
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As times change in Ireland, so too does the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, once the ineffable, undisputed authority of life here. Read More >>
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For Sale: castles in Ireland and other grand piles from Kildare to Kilkenny. Starting prices: $2.5 million to $15 million-plus. Possible buyers: any of a number of Irish millionaires who, in a scant few years of economic lift-off, have suddenly displaced Americans and other foreigners as the prime purchasers of high-ticket real estate hereabouts. Read More >>
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It is hard to find anyone in this busy little town with a specific complaint about the 70-odd strangers who abruptly arrived last fall from places like Chechnya and Nigeria. But that does not mean the town wants them here. Read More >>
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Ireland's booming economy has made it harder for Dubliners to find time to grab a pint at the pub these days, what with so many people working late at the office. But they are still angry over the soaring price of Guinness. Read More >>
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Ireland's economy has been growing faster than any other in the Western world, and the country whose master playwright, Sean O'Casey, once said, "I'd rather be inspired by idleness than bullied by 'busyness' " now has some of the hardest-working citizens in Europe. For the first time in its history, Ireland has a problem with too much money, not too little -- with too few people living here, not too many. Read More >>
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| American Life |
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Between retrieving thrown juice cups and cleaning up crushed cookies, the moms in the mother-toddler program at the Irish Community Center here talk about home. But unlike generations of homesick Irish women before them, many of them aren't just talking. They're going. Read More >>
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| Gaelige |
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From this isolated
region of rock and bog on the wind-blasted western edge of Ireland,
there rises a television tower more than 100 feet into the air.
Its purpose is to make the ancient Irish language ready for prime
time....The station's modest success reflects Ireland's recent warming
to a language that had been in sharp decline over the last two centuries.
Once perceived as the tongue of the poor and uneducated -- those
from the "back of beyond" -- Gaelic is coming to represent the self-confidence
born of recent economic and cultural success. Read
More >>
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| Literature |
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This race and this
country and this life produced me," declares Stephen Dedalus--artistic
image of James Joyce himself--in "A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man." ... In Ireland a major premise of any discussion of
her culture and of her literature is an understanding of Irish nationalism.
And it is at least arguable that Joyce was a kind of inverted nationalist--that
the nationalism which he rejects runs through him like a central
thread. Read More >>
Although novelists
have written plays, and playwrights have written novels, it is rare
for a writer to be equally adept at both arts, with one definite
exception being Samuel Beckett. But at 43, Beckett's countryman
Sebastian Barry seems well on his way to such an accomplishment.
Read More >>
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For decades Yeats
and several publishers - then, after his death, Mrs. Yeats; then,
later still, various historians - have all meant so many things
by a ''definitive edition.'' It has become the great white whale
of Yeats-centered reputations. What, for instance, would be a definitive
text? Read More >>
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Nothing turns a man
into a statue more effectively than a combination of fame, death
and the passage of time. Together they join hands and hoist him
up on a high cold plinth. If the man is a writer, he disappears
into the official editions of his work, all polish and (ideally)
perfection, the fits and starts and wrong turns folded out of sight
like the hem on a pair of dress pants. Read
More >>
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| Theatre |
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Along one of the quieter
streets in Dublin's bustling Temple Bar, a row of traditional terra
cotta brick buildings is interrupted by a stark sky-blue facade
that runs half the length of the block. Glass and steel doors swing
into a high-ceilinged foyer with smiling receptionists. Only the
rough concrete floor, splattered with paint, hints that this could
be something more than the hip office for yet another Irish dot-com
start-up. Instead, the $4.5 million building belongs to Project,
a 34-year-old artists' cooperative credited with leading the drive
to bring progressive visual and performance art to light in Ireland.
It also provided a training ground for future stars like Liam Neeson,
Gabriel Byrne and U2. Read More
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| Business |
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There has never been
a better time to be Irish, President Clinton declared Friday, saluting
the success of Ireland's fast-growing economy and blossoming partnerships
with American investors. Using Gateway Computers as a backdrop,
he touted the high-tech industry as key to the prosperity of the
once-poor Irish Republic. "Ireland will have its day in the sun
because the most important thing in the 21st century is the capacity
of people to imagine, to innovate, to create, to exchange ideas
and information," he said. "By those standards this is a very wealthy
nation indeed." Read More >>
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The Irish have long
been known for their gift of gab, so perhaps it is not surprising
that one of the E-commerce pioneers here is a one-woman shop that
offers a few suitable words on any subject for any occasion for
anyone, anywhere in the world. Read
More >>
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U.S. computer giant
International Business Machines Corp. plans to expand its e-business
operations in Ireland, creating 150 new jobs, the Irish government
said on Monday. Read More >>
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| Travel |
What's
Doing in Dublin
by Richard W. Stevenson (The New York Times, September
24, 1995)
Even wandering down
the pretty, peaceful paths in St. Stephen's Green, the 22-acre park
at Dublin's heart, it's hard not to feel that the sharp edge of
Irish history is lurking just around the corner. And in a way, it
is. Read More >>
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....Then I happened
upon a booklet published by the Irish Tourist Board called "Walking
and Cycling Ireland" while planning a spring trip to Ireland....
I chose a tour of County Clare in the west offered by Irish Cycle
Hire (for $408 a person, double occupancy, based on $1.64 to 1 Irish
pound) because Clare is close to Shannon Airport, not too hilly
and scenically blessed -- with shimmering strands and the dramatic
Cliffs of Moher bordering it to the west, ruined castles, the Aran
Islands, a wild rock-encrusted region called the Burren at its heart,
and all the cockles and mussels of Galway Bay to the north. Read
More >>
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Angling at three of
Ireland's great country houses lands many pleasures, but few bites.
Therein lies the tale. Read More
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Where
Legends Outnumber People
by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot (The New York Times, August
1, 1999)
The islands off Connemara's
coast sustain few inhabitants, but they are rich in history and
folklore Read More >>
On
Foot In Inishmore
by Denise Fainberg (The New York Times, August 1,
1999)
A 30-mile trudge past
ancient Celtic holy places, including a graveyard claiming more
than 120 saints Read More >>
Lure
of a Pre-Celtic Grave
by Denise Fainberg (The New York Times, December
19, 1999)
In three visits to
Newgrange over the years, the author has pursued the silent mystery
of the neolithic Irish who built it Read
More >>
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This quiet town in
Galway is surrounded by ancient monastic ruins, dramatic landscapes
and countryside that inspired Yeats Read
More >>
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Smitten by the crumbling
churches and brilliant plant life of the Burren, County Clare's
limestone landscape that stretches to the sea Read
More >>
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| Online |
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What would St. Patrick
make of his day? The fifth century kidnapee-turned-cowherd-turned-missionary,
the first to convert anyone outside the Roman Empire to Christianity
and a big believer in the ascetic hermit-monk approach to life,
would probably be just as disgusted with today's plastic shamrocks,
green beer and "kiss me" buttons as he was with the bacchanalian
excesses of the comfortable classes in his own time. But seeing
the full text of his "Confessio" on the World Wide Web, in English
translation, with a map, helpful hypertext subheadings and links
to his life story, well, that might warm his crosier. Read
More >>
Irish culture
is, of course, far more than green beer every March 17. For those
wanting to learn more about traditional Irish culture, there are
plenty of places on the Web in which to tarry. Read
More >>
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