IRISH literature has received an official imprimatur with the publication last night of that most august of bedside partners, an Oxford Companion.
The Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, (who merits a two page entry wedged between Dermot Healy and Lafradio Hearn) provided the official send off for the new Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, which features 2,000 entries ranging from Abbey Theatre to Zozimus.
Noting that he himself might be considered a bit of an Oxford companion (a reference to his five years as honorary Oxford Professor of Literature), Heaney said: "It's a compilation, sure enough, but it's also a page turner."
Displaying his usual relish as a wordsmith, Heaney delighted the audience packed in Newman House on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, by running through a litany of entries under the letters S and F. Sean nos butted against Secret Societies ("Irish literature in two words"), and Heaney drew a laugh by noting the juxtaposition between Field Day and The Field, John B. Keane's play about a bitter dispute over territory.
Heaney noted the volume "addressed questions of the divided inheritance of Irish literature" and, in its attentiveness to Irish language topics, "marks a process of extension and retrieval in both languages".
In this sense, the Companion "represents a make up, a comeback and a come uppance as well".
A writerly crowd swelled the old physics lecture hall in which a youthful James Joyce whiled away many an hour. Derek Mahon, Brendan Kennelly and Eilean Ni Chuilleanain were among the personified Companion entries roaming the room and offering congratulations to the Companion's editor, Mr Robert Welch, professor of English at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.
