Angry green island
Angry Green Isle (originally Famine ) is an Irish novel about the Great Famine in Ireland . The work of the Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty first appeared in 1937. The German translation by Herbert Roch was published in 1972 and has been reprinted several times since then.
content
The work deals with the Great Famine in Ireland from 1849 to 1852 from the perspective of a family.
action
The Kilmartin family live in a cottage in the Black Valley. She runs a small farm , with the proceeds of which she pays the rent to the British landowners. The members of the family live, like so many other Irish people , on potatoes and a small garden . Little by little, rumors spread that the “ potato pest ” has found its way into the neighboring valley .
"It's the strange disease," she said, "that people talk about, that it's spreading all over the country and destroying everything." "The potato paste?" Asked Brian. ,
It is not long in coming for this plant disease to reach the Black Valley. Thanks to small reserves and livestock, the family is able to compensate for this plague in the first year. The lease could be paid and there were enough healthy potatoes to be used in the new year. The new year was announced well. The potato plants were more promising than ever in bloom.
Old Kilmartin was thrilled. "What did I always say?" He shouted, pouring a small bowl of potatoes onto the kitchen floor. “ God never leaves us hungry for long. He only sends hunger to remind us of our sins . But when we repent do he drops riches in our lap. " ,
But then something terrible happened. The sky darkened, there was heavy rain, and it became as cold as in winter. A dark cloud descended, spreading fear over the valley, dust particles spread and it smelled strongly of sulfur. Dogs remembered their wolfish past and began to howl. Almost from one moment to the next the ghost was over, only the sulphurous smell would not leave the valley.
As a result, however, the new harvest was over. The English continued to demand grain and cattle for lease. Unrest broke out in the Black Valley as a result of which the family's son had to flee to the mountains.
It is said that the Irish state provided late and inadequate aid to the victims of this disaster. Only the cornmeal coming from America and senseless job creation measures should bring help to the injured. So-called Quakers traveled from England to the valley and distributed bread.
Many people became apathetic, many people died. Dogs attacked the deceased in their distress and humans ate nettles, cats and dogs.
The daughter-in-law finally left the house, the farm and those who remained behind and drove with her husband and a piece of mortar to the promised land on the other side of the Atlantic.
He stared at the piece of mortar and said, "I will do my best to make his name no shame there in the New World." ,
worldview
As a result of the Plantations (colonists from the British Kingdom appropriated land in Ireland), Irish farmers had to deliver grain and cattle to British landowners until the beginning of the 20th century. They themselves used the remaining monoculture soil to plant potatoes and largely fed their families with it.
The discovery of the potato as a mass food had led to a surge in population (doubling within 40 years) on the Emerald Isle. look here
Far away on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa , the Tambora volcano erupted 34 years earlier with an intensity of seven (second highest) (compared to the Pompeii eruption had an intensity of five). This volcanic eruption had a lasting impact on the world climate. It stands to reason that the author incorporated the consequences of the volcanic eruption into his work as described above. The year without a summer came in 1816 . Bad harvests were the rule in the years that followed. First America was affected, later also Western Europe (Württemberg and especially Central Switzerland). As a result of the monoculture with potatoes, Ireland was almost defenseless against the disease-causing fungus coming from America . An irony of fate is that during the Great Famine, Ireland exported more wheat than ever before, while the country was starving or fleeing. look here
Since then, the country has never reached the same population as it had before the disaster. Almost half of the Irish died at the time or emigrated. The roots of the inner-Irish conflict can largely be traced back to the Great Famine. look here
shape
chronologically
Cover design
Diogenes: William Turner, The Shipwreck, 1805
Position in literary history
Classification in the work of the author
from Liam O'Flaherty : Liam O'Flaherty was one of the most popular novels and short story writers in Ireland in the 1920s . Some of his stories were made into films, especially in the late 1930s. The most famous film was The Traitor by John Ford from 1935, based on his novel The Informer. Although O'Flaherty's first language was Irish , he wrote most of his literary works in English.
- He published his first novel as early as 1923. Although he belongs to an important Celtic tribe, Flaherty takes the side of the "little man" in his work.
expenditure
- Liam O'Flaherty : Angry Green Isle . Irish saga . Diogenes Taschenbuch, Zurich 1987, chap. 55 , p. 434 ( Great Famine in Ireland ).
- Famine (English original edition), Victor Gollancz, London 1937
- The brown sail, Safari-Verlag, 1942, translation by Herbert Roch
- The Black Valley, Dulk, 1952
- Famine, Diogenes Zurich, 1965
A current paperback edition was published by Wolfhound Press, Dublin 1994, ISBN 0-86327-043-3
literature
On the subject of: Great Famine in Ireland
- Jonatha Ceely: Mina. Delacorte Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-385-33690-X .
- German translation: Mina. Historical novel. Blanvalet, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-442-36102-8 (translated by Elfriede Peschel).
- Ann Moore: Leaving Ireland. Putnam Penguin, New York 2002, ISBN 0-451-20707-6 .
- German translation: Farewell to Ireland. List, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-471-79489-0 (translated by Franca Fritz and Heinrich Koop).
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Joseph O'Connor : Star of the sea. Farewell to Old Ireland. Vintage Press, London 2003, ISBN 0-09-946962-6 .
- German translation: The crossing. Novel. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 3-10-054012-3 (translated by Manfred Allié and Gabriele Kempf-Allié).
- Jörg Rademacher (ed.), Alexander Somerville: Ireland's great hunger. Letters and reports from Ireland during the famine in 1847. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 1996, ISBN 3-928300-42-3 .
On the volcanic eruption and its consequences
- Gillen D 'Arcy Wood: Volcanic winter 1816. The world in the shadow of Tambora. Translated from the English by Hanne Henninger and Heike Rosbach. Theiss, Darmstadt on February 15, 2015.
review
A grandiose demonstration of sympathy for the eternal struggle of people for bread, freedom and human dignity. W. Plomer