Anthology: Books should be, if possible, entertaining, well written and true - or should at least contain such truths or such measure of truth as may promote reflection and thought.
Nobody interested in the provoking city of Cork (and who isn't?) could fail to be entertained, instructed and challenged by this book. The editors, Joachim Fischer and Grace Neville, had the happy thought of trawling through continental literature and journalism for a series of reflections by travellers on their experiences of Cork.
The pieces, some of them brief and incidental, others quite lengthy meditations, span nearly nine centuries, from Brother Marcus in 1149 to Martin Alioth in the Neue Zuricher Zeitung, 2005, taking in en route, to my surprise I must confess, Alexis de Tocqueville. The thoroughness of their researches does the editors credit, but they deserve even higher praise for their artful choice of material.
Neville's sober summary, as quoted by Alioth, is that these foreign eyes see "spectacular landscapes, spectacular hospitality, spectacular poverty", and this is largely true. The majority of commentators are taken by the city's situation, most often described, and not just by German visitors, as Rhenish; many give testament to the lavish hospitality they enjoy as guests in the city, and a very large number comment on the quite extraordinary and even brutish poverty of the common people, this latter remarked on up to quite recent times.
In this regard, it is instructive to see how the foreign commentator will sometimes attribute the desperate situation of the poor to some racially derived weakness in the Irish character, when another, more politically-conscious, will see in squalor and powerlessness the direct result of colonial policy and poorly-imagined development.
In general, these visitors bring to their sojourns in Cork the prejudices and perspectives native to them: hence the Galician nationalist Antón Losada Diégues (1921) is moved beyond words by the self-sacrifice of Terence MacSwiney, and Alfred Duquet (1872) is much cheered by the pro-French sentiments of the people of the city at the time of the Franco-Prussian War.
I was entertained by the frequency with which so many travellers saw fit to praise the excellent prisons of Cork city, with more than one commenting also on the administration's excellent provisions for the mad.
I was equally entertained, and convinced, by the frequent references to the beauty and intelligence of the city's women as one of its most salient characteristics, as true today as it ever was in the city's history.
The editors, together with their sub- editors and translators, have worked diligently and meticulously to give us a book deliberately free of such preconceptions, good or bad, as might have been expected from British visitors. They give us authors of French, German, Czech, Polish, Danish, Italian, Dutch, Austrian, Spanish, Galician, Hungarian, Scandinavian and Romanian provenance, a rich kaleidoscope that leaves us to assemble our own picture of the evolving city from a wealth of contradictory impressions.
There is no doubt that, insofar as Cork is indeed the centre of the universe, Cork people might do well sometimes to play down their pride in the genius of the people, the rich complexity of the city's character (and characters), the wooded hills, the majestic river and harbour with which nature has gifted them. A little modesty, however tactical, might be, on occasion, a good thing, and there is much in the history of the city as laid out here to give pause for sober reflection. Cork today is indeed a shining city set on a hill, on several hills to be precise; its industry is thriving, its cultural, civic and sporting life is thriving - but it is also a place where racist and alarmist views can find room, if not support, where the business and professional classes are often as lacking in civic-mindedness as were their forebears in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Above all else, however, and fittingly as the city's tenure as European Capital of Culture has now drawn to a close, this book is testament to the fact that Cork, whatever else it has been, is a quintessentially European city, an Atlantic port whose imagining of itself is fed from the wide Europe beyond our neighbouring island.
Theo Dorgan's Sailing For Home is now in paperback; Songs of Earth and Light, translations of Barbara Korun, is published by Southword Editions, Cork
As Others Saw Us: Cork Through European Eyes Edited by Joachim Fischer and Grace Neville The Collins Press, 427pp. €18.95