Máirtín Ó Cadhain

Máirtín Ó Cadhain [ ˈmɑːɾʲtʲiːnʲ oːˈkaɪnʲ ] (* 1906 near An Spidéal , west of Galway , † October 18, 1970 in Dublin ) was an Irish writer , literary critic and political commentator.

Life

Ó Cadhain grew up in the then almost exclusively Irish-speaking area ( Gaeltacht ) west of Galway and was therefore in close contact with the local dialect of the Irish language and the associated culture from early childhood .

He became a teacher and joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1927 . For his activities there he was arrested in 1940 and spent most of the Second World War , i.e. H. until 1944, at the Curragh Camp internment . During this time he separated from the IRA due to serious differences of opinion. After the war he moved to Dublin and worked in various posts in the service of the Irish state, including a. as a translator . In 1969, a year before his death, he was appointed Professor of Irish at Trinity College , Dublin.

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Most of his work consists of stories . While his early stories mostly describe rural life in the west of Ireland during his youth, many of his later works are devoted to the modern, urbanized and wider world and its conditions for human life. The first volume of short stories, Idir Shúgradh agus Dáiríre (German about "Between Game and Serious"), was published in 1939 by the Dublin publishing house Sáirséal agus Dill . Other volumes followed, which most literary critics consider to be the most important contributions to literature in Irish .

As a translator, Máirtín Ó Cadhain u. a. Translated into Irish the International and the Communist Manifesto .

Cré na Cille

The real meaning of Ó Cadhain's lies in his 1949 novel Cré na Cille (German about "Friedhofserde"). The characters in the book are deceased in a cemetery in Cois Fharraige , the area west of Galway where Ó Cadhain himself grew up. From the point of view of the deceased, not only the lives of the villagers still living "above" (and gradually arriving) are evaluated, but the life and its circumstances as such. Thus the book is understood on the one hand as a parody of village life and on the other hand as a parable of life itself. Stylistically, the book makes the highest demands on readers and translators. It consists entirely of direct speech from the dead. All speaking persons can only be recognized by certain empty phrases that are "dropped" at the beginning of their speech. Above all, however, the language of the book is a mixture of a strongly locally colored variant of Connemara -Irish and idiosyncratic phrases Ó Cadhain, which is heavily interspersed with phrases from other Irish dialects that seemed to fit Ó Cadhain at the respective point. Even for many seasoned Irish readers, the book is difficult to read. But not only for stylistic reasons (he changed the language as needed), but also because of parallels in content (u. A. The treatment of the common things as the important and attention-getting) the work is often with those of James Joyce rarely also from and Samuel Beckett compared . In any case, it has earned Ó Cadhain to this day the reputation of being the most important prose writer in the Irish language and one of the most important in Ireland.

Cré na Cille is considered almost untranslatable. Nevertheless, there is at least a complete Norwegian edition ( Kirkegardsjord ). The American translation Churchyard Clay , which was created as a dissertation , is apparently no longer published. A complete new translation into English was published in 2015 under the title The Dirty Dust . The novel was published in German in 2017 under the title Grabgeflüster , translated by Gabriele Haefs .

Posthumous work

In the nineties of the 20th century several previously unprinted manuscripts of Ó Cadhain were published, the two novels Athnuachan (German for "Renewal") and Barbed Wire as well as the lecture Tone Inné agus Inniu (German for " (Wolfe ) Tone yesterday and today ”), as well as several collections of his journalistic work.

meaning

Ó Cadhain is probably the innovator in modern Irish-language literature in general. At a time when a large part of this literature consisted of nostalgic or homeland-like works, he wrote consistently modern prose on contemporary topics, consciously changing the language if it did not seem suitable for his purposes. In this respect, its influence on the next generation of writers, who were able to work in Ireland under seriously changed social conditions, should not be overestimated.

Besides the Bible , Cré na Cille is the only book in the Irish language that is on the shelves of many ordinary residents of the Gaeltacht areas. This fact could also be due to her sympathy for Ó Cadhain, since he was always considered to be a simple person from the Gaeltacht, even when he had long been living in Dublin. However, many saw him politically and personally as a difficult, uncomfortable and not very sociable contemporary.

Works

• Idir Shúgradh agus Dáiríre. (Stories; German about "Between Game and Seriousness"), 1939.
• To Braon Broghach. (Stories; German about “The first drop from the brandy kettle”, literally “The dirty drop”), 1948.
• Cré na Cille. (Roman; German about "Friedhofserde"), 1949.
• Athnuachan. (Roman, German about “Renewal”), written in 1951, published posthumously in 1995.
• Cois Caoláire. (Stories, for example "Am Killary"), 1953.
• To tSraith ar Lár. (Stories, German possibly "The lying swath "), 1967.
• To tSraith dhá Tógáil. (Stories, German possibly “The swath is salvaged”), 1970.
• To tSraith Tógtha. (Stories, German possibly “Die geborgene Schwade”), posthumously 1977.

Translations

• The Key ( To Eochair ), novella. Translated into German by Gabriele Haefs , Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-520-60001-1 .
• Grabgeflüster ( Cré na Cille ), translated from Irish by Gabriele Haefs, Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-520-60101-8 .
• Kirkegardsjord ( Cré na Cille ), translated into Norwegian by Jan Erik Rekdal, 1995.
• Churchyard Clay ( Cré na Cille ), translated into English by Joan Trodden Keeffe, UMI Dissertation Information Service, USA 1988.
• The Road to Brightcity (various short stories), translated into English by Eoghan Ó Tuairisc , Dublin, Poolbeg Press 1981.
• Cré na Cille / Churchyard Clay (1949) - an extract , translated into English by Eibhlín Ní Allúrain and Maitin Ó Néill, in: Krino 11 (Summer 1991), pp. 13-25.
• The Dirty Dust ( Cré na Cille ), translated into English by Alan Titley, London, Margellos World Republic of Letters 2015.
• Graveyard Clay ( Cré na Cille ), translated into English by Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson, London, Yale University Press 2016.