Seán Ó Faoláin

Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin (also Sean O'Faolain , born John Francis Whelan ; born February 22, 1900 in Cork , † April 20, 1991 in Dublin ) was an Irish writer.

life and work

Seán Ó Faoláin was born as John Whelan on February 22, 1900 in Cork. His father, a policeman, was a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary , which was loyal to England , and his mother ran a guesthouse for artists from the nearby opera house. During his school days, Daniel Corkery's works aroused his interest in Irish culture and literature, although he later turned them down.

At a young age he showed himself to be a rebel against the existing conditions. His revolt was initially directed against the success and authority-oriented morality of his petty bourgeois parents, against the cultural provinciality of his hometown and increasingly against the orientation of the entire life according to English models, neglecting the Gaelic cultural tradition and finally against the political rule of England in Ireland.

After finishing school, he studied English, Irish and Italian at University College Cork , came into contact with the Republican movement and joined the Irish Volunteers (forerunners of the Irish Republican Army , IRA for short). Even as a young student he gaelicized his maiden name John Whelan to Seán Ó Faoláin and took part in guerrilla fights against the police and the military until the Irish Free State was founded .

Like many idealists of the struggle for independence, he rejected the compromise treaty negotiated in 1921 , which prevented the complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain and led to the separation from Northern Ireland . He joined the Republicans and was then briefly head of propaganda for the Irish Republican Army in southern Ireland. However, after witnessing the collapse of the republican resistance in this exposed position, he left the IRA shortly afterwards because, in his opinion, it was unable to implement its revolutionary goals.

After the end of the civil war he tried first as a sales representative and teacher and then by returning to Cork University to reconnect with civil life. He completed his studies with an MA in English literature. A three-year Harvard scholarship then enabled him to distance himself from his own youthful experiences. After a few more years of teaching in America, where he married his wife Eileen in Boston in 1926 , and later teaching at an English college , he returned to Ireland in 1933 as a freelance writer. In 1932 his daughter Julia O'Faolain was born in London , who later also became a writer.

In contrast to many other Irish authors, such as James Joyce , Seán O'Casey or Samuel Beckett , “he renounced a self-chosen exile and faced the reality in his home country despite all the cultural, political and religious restrictions that he found there ".

In 1940 he founded The Bell magazine , which campaigned for the regeneration of Irish society and the establishment of new cultural standards and fought against state and private literary censorship and the supremacy of the clergy . The Bell was published by him until 1946. In the phase of cultural and political self-isolation in Ireland, Seán Ó Faoláin provided Irish intellectuals and writers with a forum for dealing with artistic, cultural and socio-political issues and at the same time gave them access to cultural developments abroad.

In addition to an abundance of magazine articles on literary issues and several books about Ireland, Ó Faoláin wrote three great novels about Ireland in addition to a comedy , which depict the image of Ireland in the decades after the independence and civil war ( A Nest of Simple Folk , Bird Alone , Come Back to Erin ). In addition, he mainly wrote short stories that are set in the middle and lower classes of Ireland. In particular, he addressed the dark side of the Irish national movement and Catholicism on the island, but also the repression policy of the English at the beginning of the century. His first short story volume ( Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories ) was published in 1932, another volume followed in 1937 ( A Purse of Coppers ). The anthology The Finest Stories of Sean O'Faolain , which has been reprinted several times, was published for the first time in 1957. It contains almost thirty stories chosen by Ó Faoláin himself and, from a literary point of view, can be counted among the highlights of short story literature in Ireland.

Like many other Irish writers, he was unable to free himself for a long time from the traumatic experiences of the time of the struggle for independence. “Flight and persecution, fear, betrayal, physical deprivation, but above all the disillusionment of the idealist who sees his goals perverted by political practice,” are among the central motifs of his early works.

In his later work he dealt with the issue of the emigration of many Irish to America and the problems resulting from it. In 1976 he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works

Original editions

• Midsummer Night Madness , 1932
• Nest of Simple Folk , 1933
• Bird Alone , 1936
• Irish Journey , 1940
• Come Back to Erin , 1940
• Great O'Neill , 1942
• The Irish , 1947
• The Man Who Invented Sin , 1947 (short story)
• Short Story , 1948
• Man Who Invented Sin and Other Stories , 1948
• Newman's Way , 1952
• Autumn in Italy , 1953
• Vive Moi , 1965
• Talking Trees , 1970
• Foreign Affairs and Other Stories , 1975
• Selected Stories , 1978
• And again? , 1979

German editions

• First and last love , OT: Come Back to Erin, translator Elisabeth Schnack , Benziger Verlag 1951
  • also as Come Home to Ireland , 1964
• The loner , OT: Bird Alone, translator Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes Verlag 1965
• Nest full of little people , OT: Nest of Simple Folk, Translator Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes Verlag 1966
• The first kiss. Eight Stories , Translated by Elisabeth Schnack, Nymphenburger Verlag 1958
• Dividends. Nine love stories , trans. Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes Verlag 1969
  (contains: among others, so innocent so beautiful; the young generation; the rush chair; in the heart of the country; one night in Turin; dividends)
  • also as drinkers and dreamers , Diogenes Verlag, ISBN 3-257-20741-7
• Sinners and singers. Stories , trans. Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes Verlag, ISBN 3-257-20231-8
• Liars and lovers. Stories , trans. Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes Verlag, ISBN 3-257-20742-5
  • contain: u. a. Kitty wren; Miracles don't happen twice; The man who invented sin ; The false god; Feed my lambs; Bombproof thing; The lonely woman; His pigeons; The egoists
• Elisabeth Schnack (Ed.): Irish narrators , Manesse Verlag 9th edition 1995, ISBN 3-7175-1200-5
  • contains from Seán Ó Faoláin: The silent valley and an afterword

See also

• Anti-Irish Racism
• Irish War of Independence

literature

• Elisabeth Schnack: Seán Ó Faoláin . In: Do artists have to be lonely ?, pp. 29–46. Pendo Verlag, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-85842-191-X
• Maurice Harmon: Sean O'Faolain: [a life] , London: Constable, 1994, ISBN 0-09-470140-7
• Paul Delaney: Seán O'Faoláin: literature, inheritance and the 1930s , Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7165-3267-5

Web links

• Literature by and about Seán Ó Faoláin in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sean O'Faoláin (1900-1991) . On: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved October 31, 2013.
2. ↑ Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 254-265, here p. 254.
3. ↑ Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 254.
4. ↑ See more detailed Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 254.
5. ↑ See more detailed Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 254f. and The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature , edited by Robert Welch, p. 428 ff
6. ^ ^{A b} Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 255.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Heinz Kosock: The Irish short story in the 20th century . In: In: Arno Löffler, Eberhard Späth (Hrsg.): History of the English short story. Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-7720-3370-9 , pp. 246-271, here p. 260.
8. ↑ See details Heinz Kosok: "Sean O'Faolain · The Man Who Invented Sin". In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . Bagel Verlag Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 255.