In the light of the South - Done into English - Collected Translations by Pearse Hutchinson

BY Mícheál MacDonncha

Gallery Press

Two related myths are still peddled by certain opponents of efforts to support the Irish language and by some supporters of the EU superstate project. The first is that Irish in the education system is a hindrance to our children learning other European languages. The second is that to be critical of the EU project is to be anti-European.

The poet Pearse Hutchinson is a living refutation of both of these bunkum arguments. A poet in Irish and English, he is a true European but also has an internationalist outlook. This is not to say he is a propagandist poet — far from it. His is a unique voice and a keen eye. There is no false boundary here between the personal and the political. He was a child of revolutionary Ireland but also of the conservative Ireland which followed our failed revolution. He is conscious of how that shaped his life and reflects it in his poetry.

As a young man, Pearse travelled to Catalonia and over the years learned much of the people and languages suppressed under fascism. Catalan, Galician and Basque were outlawed. The parallels with the fortunes of the Irish language were obvious. This helped to give Pearse's poetry a particular capacity for challenging tyrannies and pomposities of all kinds. It allowed him to see our experience in a Southern European light.

In this collection of translations he provides a window to the literature of those formerly suppressed languages and to others - Galaico-Portugese, Portugese, Italian, Milanese, Furlan, Venetian, Triestine, Dutch/Flemish, French and Spanish. You don't have to be familiar with any of these languages to appreciate this fine book. I liked in particular the translations from the work of the Catalan poet Joseph Carner (1884-1970). Here is one which seems appropriate after our washed out summer:

Heat

A cluster of fennel

growing by the road,

a vine tired

of summer dust.

A swallow in flight,

a setter sleeping near

a croft rich

in heart's ease.

And the proud, sensitive

poplar's joy

burning alive

out over the river.

Joseph Carner