"OU la, la, c'est superbe!" A woman from Bordeaux was just one of an ecstatic audience at the packed St Patrick's Eve concert in the Grande Halle of La Villette in Paris last Saturday.
Irish music is wonderful," she told me. "I visit Ireland often, and I love going into pubs to listen to the music.
Sharon Shannon, Donal Lunny, Cooney and Begley, Mairead Ni Dhomhnaill and Nollaig Casey drew ecstatic cheering, stomping and waving of a large tricolour from a crowd of more than 5,000. The biggest cheer of the night was for Breton singer Gilles Servat, who joined the Irish musicians towards the end of the concert. Looking and sounding like the French equivalent of Ronnie Drew, he gave a spirited rendition of Dirty Old Town with the crowd singing along.
The concert was the musical debut of L'Imaginaire Irlandais, which was launched on Friday evening with a reading at the Academic Francaise by John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, John Banville and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. Each of the writers read a section of their work, accompanied by a French translation. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, who often reads her work together with the English translation, said later that she was very pleased with the more seamless twinning of her poetry in Irish and French, because of the similarity of the Latin roots of certain words in these languages. Such a linguistic combination was clearly a novelty within the walls of the Academic.
Over the weekend, the French media was choc a bloc with reports on the six month, country wide festival of Irish art, which has cost the Irish and French governments an estimated £3 million and will involve 600 Irish artists from a variety of disciplines. Le Monde even produced a special supplement on Ireland on Saturday, but chose not to challenge the traditional image of Ireland, with photographs of the usual sheep, stone walls and men carrying currachs.
In spite of all the coverage, many French people are unaware that this multi faceted Irish festival has just hit their shores. "I am here because I like Celtic music, said one young man at the concert on Saturday night. "I have not heard about L'Imaginaire Irlandais." Another woman said that she did not know about the festival, but she would love to go horse riding in Ireland next summer. A man said that Irish music was not what you would call "a la mode" in Paris, but does have a devoted following among an increasing number of French people.
Certainly the delight of the audience on Saturday was palpable, with most people staying after the concert for a massive ceili of Irish and Breton dancing. In spite of the inevitable chaos that such a large number of people engenders, a fair number were attempting passable versions of the Walls 91 Limerick before the night was over, encouraged by instructions and demonstrations from the stage, courtesy of dancers from the Brooks Academy of Dublin. Music was provided by the Templehouse Ceili Band.
Friday night's affair was more formal, with an audience of about 100 of (mostly) invited guests in the august environs of the Acadamic. A note of welcome levity was brought to the occasion by Academic member Michel Deon, the Galway based author of Le Taxi Mauve, who introduced the evening by giving a brief and irreverent history of the Academic, with its prestigious membership of historians and scientists as well as writers. Monsieur Deon explained that ever since the Academic was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in the 17th century, its members have been compiling a dictionary, which is still only at the letter M. Smiling at the Academic's strict rules on the preservation of the French language, he also confessed that its first woman member was not elected until 1980.
THIRTY FIVE Irish writers will be involved in L'Imaginaire Irlandais, both in Paris and in other parts of France. There is a series of readings taking place in La Maison de la Poesie, which will host Seamus Heaney on Saturday. On Friday Heaney will be made Commandeur des Arts et Lettres de la Legion d'Honneur at a private ceremony by the French Minister of Culture, Monsieur Philippe Douste Blazy. Meanwhile other Irish writers will visit different parts of the country on residencies next month Colm Toibin will go to Perpignan and Paula Meehan will visit Montpelier.
Such visits will be very important, believes Paul Brennan, Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Caen and director of Irish Studies at the Sorbonne "French students have been more interested in Irish politics for the last 15 years, but now there is a reorientation towards Irish culture and literature. We had John McGahern visit Caen last year, and 500 students came to hear him speak. He had them in the palm of his hand, telling stories about Leitrim."
John McGahern is one of Ireland's most popular writers in France, with nine of his works translated into French since 1971, and his novel, The Barracks, on the syllabus for student teachers doing the French equivalent of the H Dip. Professor Brennan believes that McGahern's success in France is due to his ability to illustrate the main source of the close relationship between France and Ireland "the strong rural, Catholic, anti British tradition".
But are the French open to, the work of younger Irish writers whose subject matter is slightly different? Professor Brennan is looking forward to finding out with the visits of Anne Enright and Eoin MacNamee to Caen later in the year. In the meantime he has co edited an anthology of essays on contemporary Ireland by writers such as Julia O'Faolain and Fintan O'Toole, entitled Desirs d'Irlande, which was launched last Friday night.
The main visual arts events of L'Imaginaire Irlandais have yet to come, with the opening of a group show of 16 Irish artists in May at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts by the President Mrs Robinson, and President Jacques Chirac. But last Thursday the opening of a new exhibition by Louis le Brocquy at the Espace Paul Ricard in Paris attracted a throng of close to 1,000, which the 80 year old, France based Irish artist found "very moving". The exhibition depicts perspectives of the heads of Joyce, Yeats, Heaney and Bacon, mostly in oils, with the addition of three Images Humaines, representing le Brocquy's most recent work starkly haunting, red, open mouths, with the merest suggestion of nose and cheekbone. Le Brocquy is certainly Ireland's best known painter in France, and will exhibit with his wife, the artist Anne Madden, in a joint show in Galerie Maeght in May.
Meanwhile an exhibition of the work of three Irish artists Mary Lohan, James O'Connor and Charles Tyrell is on at the Galerie Mediart in Paris.
"Irish art is not well known in France, and this is not a good time for private galleries here, because people are not buying," said Padraig O'Curry, who was hosting a St Patrick's Day party in the gallery on Sunday. Nevertheless, several of Mary Lohan's moody seascapes in oils have sold since the exhibition opened on March 7th.
"I like the work of Mary Lohan," said a Swedish visitor to the gallery. "She paints with her belly, and in her paintings I sense a wildness and strength that comes from her Irishness."
Also on view at the moment is The Lie of the Land, a group show organised by the Gallery of Photography in Dublin which is at the Centre National de la Photographic in Paris. The photographs range from scenes in an RUC station by Paul Seawright to, Padraig Murphy's gritty images of fleeting, resigned faces with railings, slagheaps and walls.
"When we think of Ireland, we expect to see sheep and countryside" said a young man who was visiting the show. He had not heard of L'Imaginaire Irlandais, but having heard the title of the festival and having been particularly moved by the latent violence in Seawright's photographs of [guard dogs and target practice, he commented "Perhaps the title of the festival is wrong. This exhibition is more about the reality of, Ireland than the way which French people imagine it."
Alice Maher, who has been short listed for the Glen Dimplex award, is currently on a six month residency at the Credac Ivry, a gallery in the south of Paris which was originally a cinema. Her show, Swimmers, a sculptural installation, will open there later this month. It is made up of a scenes of the tops of swimmers heads, complete with long wet hair, cast in bronze. Since arriving, in Paris, she has been invited to contribute to Grandeur Nature, an outdoor show of temporary work next summer in the Parc de la Courneuve. She is now working on a series of swimming heads, called The Daughters of Jupiter, to be made in orange plastic like buoys, which will be placed in the, lake "It is going to be installed especially by frogmen," she laughs. "It's brilliant. In Ireland we are so used to doing every last thing ourselves."
SHE believes that the main advantage of her residency has been the opportunity to become better known in the French art world, which has led to invitations such as this commission for Grandeur Nature. She also appreciates the opportunity to "be out of my stable and feel freer to make changes in my work". As for the impact of L'Imaginaire Irlandais as a whole, she feels that the real benefits will be long term "France is such a big country, we can't expect to make an impact right away. But we will create long term waves of influence, not just in the area of the visual arts, but also in a field like theatre, where new plays by Sebastian Barry and Marina Carr are being translated. It is nice to think of French theatre companies putting on contemporary Irish plays in the years ahead."
Com O Briain, Cultural Adviser to Michael D. Higgins, who, is on the board of L'Imaginaire Irlandais, stressed that from the start, the aim of the festival was to work in tandem with existing French cultural bodies, rather than parachuting in "a package of Irish art". Representatives of various arts institutions had been invited to Ireland to make their own selections in order to integrate events within their existing programmes. "As a result of this we have set up a network of contacts which will have a long shelf life, with implications for tourism and the economy as well," he concluded.
Tonight sees the start of the Irish Film Festival with the French premiere of Gerry Stembridge's Guiltrip, which will go on general release in Paris later this month. Also tonight, Daghda Dance Company and Mandance open at the Pompidou Centre, and for the next week, there will be Irish publishers and authors a plenty at the Salon du Livre, where many newly translated works by Irish writers will be available.
In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether, in the words of Michael D. Higgins, the festival will create an awareness in France of the dynamic, innovative and complex contemporary Irish imagination. The woman from Bordeaux at Saturday night's concert had no doubt in her mind as to what she loved about Ireland "The ballads. My favourite is I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen." Plus ca change.
