James Stephens as Poet

The Observer, 9 June 1918, page 4, 1,565 words

Reincarnations. By James Stephens. (Macmillan, 6s. 6d. net)

(By George Moore.)

Mr. James Stephens tells us in a note printed as an Epilogue that his book of verses ought to be called “Loot” or “Plunder” or “Pieces of Eight” or “Treasure Trove,” and he relates that many pens were broken in his efforts to translate Irish poems into English. He thinks that only two pieces of this volume can be regarded as translations: “In the others,” he says, “I owe no more than a phrase, a line, half a line to the Irish, and around these I have blown my bubble of verse and made my poem.”

We are glad that Mr. Stephens turned aside from the impossible task of verse translation, and, though the hope may be a vain one, we cannot repress the hope that the English literary conscience will, like the French, become some day possessed possessed of the belief that verse cannot be translated into verse and remember that the body and substance and atmosphere of the foreign poem may be conveyed in prose.

If anything in our world of uncertainties is certain, it is that the substitution of English rhythms for French obliterates at once our sense of the French original, even if the translation should be word-for-word translation, which it never is, of course. We confess to looking upon all attempts to translate verse into verse as an amateurish adventure, and would defend our prejudice against verse translations by calling attention to the fugitive life of these, as unrememberable are they as the snows of yester-year, never more than the amusement of a season. But beautiful English poems have arisen out of foreign poems, as anybody who takes upon himself the pleasure of comparing Fitzgerald’s poem with Omar’s will perceive. If he will then turn to “Reincarnations” he will perceive, too, that Mr. James Stephens’ practice is the same as Fitzgerald’s and is attended with equally happy results.

***

Omar’s Persian enabled Fitzgerald to escape from the English poetic tradition of his time, and the Irish writers upon whom Mr. Stephens relies have helped him in much the same way. And this is a great gain, for although the Irish poetic tradition is as old as the English, it has not been written in so much; it is not so threadbare; and Ireland, being a poor country, is nearer to life than England. Raftery, Keating, O’Rahilly, and O’Bruadair were beggar poets; Raftery was blind, and although we are aware that blindness and beggary will not create a poet, we cling to the tradition that attributed blindness and beggary to Homer, deeming both to be appropriate to poetry, and that a blind beggar is more likely to be a poet than a king or a merchant or a statesman. As we feel this to be the truth there must be some reason for the feeling, and if we trouble to think the matter out we find ourselves saying to ourselves: “Poverty brings the poet into close touch with essentials; a beggar is uneducated, and his poetry, if he be a poet, comes out of his own heart. And Raftery’s longings to revisit the County of Mayo were strong enough and simple enough to inspire a very beautiful poem, for the journey was but a few miles, and a short journey is more likely to inspire a poem than a long one, and a journey on foot is more likely to inspire a poem than a journey by coach. At most Raftery could hope for was a lift in a passing cart, and if he got one he paid for it with a tune on his fiddle.

***

Now listen to the poem that comes out of his longing to see the County of Mayo once again: —

THE COUNTY MAYO.

Now with the coming in of the spring the days will stretch a bit,

    And after the Feast of Brigid I shall hoist my flag and go,

For since the thought got into my head I can neither stand nor sit

    Until I find myself in the middle of the County of Mayo.

In Claremorris I would stop a night and sleep with decent men,

And then go on to Balla, just beyond, and drink galore,

And next to Kiltimagh for a visit of about a month, and then

    I would only be a couple of miles away from Ballymore.

I say and swear my heart lifts up like the lifting of a tide,

    Rising up like the rising wind, till fog or mist must go,

When I remember Carra and Gallen close beside,

    And the Gap of the Two Bushes, and the wide plains of Mayo.

To Killaden, then, to the place where everything grows that is best,

    There are raspberries there and strawberries there and all that is good for men;

And if I were only there in the middle of my folk my heart could rest,

    For age itself would leave me there and I'd be young again.

We may read this poem again and again; we must, indeed, read it again and again to appreciate it, for in this poem we are at the heart of life, and life, as it always was, is, and always will be. Is there anything more essential in man than a longing for a change of neighbourhood, for a change of talk? and it seems to us that this feeling will never find more homely expression than it does in these few lines.

***

It will do everybody good who is interested in poetry to compare Raftery’s journey of a few miles with the accounts of the long journeys he has heard narrated, journey’s that have cost hundreds of pounds, though famous mountain passes, through legended cities. We have heard Memphis related as it appeared by moonlight, but the allusions to dynasties vast as the desert did not move us, nor did the accident that befell the travellers who wandered lost for nearly an hour! For a whole hour they rode in a search of their encampment till at last a hullo answered their hullo, and when they found their encampment what do you think they found awaited them there? A five-course dinner! All the same, in spite of the five courses our hearts were not touched, nor were our bellies moved. We had dined, but we were young again when we read of Raftery’s cherished project of stopping a night in Claremorris with decent men and going on to Balla, drinking galore, and hence to Kiltimagh for a month; and it was as if a hand gripped our hearts when we read the last lines: —

And if I were only there in the middle of my folk my heart could rest,

    For age itself would leave me there and I'd be young again.

It will be said, of course, that the talent of the poet counts for everything, and that circumstance is nothing. Mayhap it is so and mayhap we are creatures of circumstance and that the beauty of Raftery’s poem is part and parcel of his beggar’s lot.

***

Here is another poem, and its appeal to common humanity is almost as direct: —

“COOLUN.”

Come with me, under my coat,

    And we will drink our fill

Of the milk of the white goat,

    Or wine, if it be thy will;

    And we will talk until

Talk is a trouble, too,

    Out in the side of the hill,

And nothing is left to do,

    But an eye to look into an eye

And a hand in a hand to slip,

    And a sigh to answer a sigh,

And a lip to find out a lip:

    What if the night be black

And the air on the mountain chill,

    Where the goat lies down in her track

And all but the fern is still!

    Stay with me under my coat,

And we will drink our fill

    Of the milk of the white goat

Out on the side of the hill.

It is true that the versification of this poem is as complete and as perfect as the versification of the poems of our “faultless and flawless” young poets, but it seems to us that we have something here that they do not give us. “Coolum” is nearer to the substance out of which life came. Wherefore we cry out. “The craft of the poet is mere weariness if he does not tell us of life at its spring. Agreed that you possess the instrument, now let us hear how life, real life, has come to you. And as no new story is told, at least not to our ears, we turn from the poets of to-day to the poets of yesterday; we remember many memorial poems, masterpieces every one of them, feats of rhythm and rhyme, but without the heart-break that we hear in the dozen lines when the Irish beggar tells his love of Anthony O’Daly: —

Since your limbs were laid out

    The stars do not shine,

The fish leap not out

    In the waves!

On our meadows the dew

    Does not fall in the morn,

For O’Daly is dead;

    Not a flower can be born,

Not a word can be said,

    Not a tree have a leaf;

Anthony, after you

There is nothing to do,

    There is nothing but grief.