Ireland is a strange country, observes Seamus Deane, one of its most complete writer-commentator-critics, near the close of Seβn ╙ M≤rdha's new documentary, Portrait of the Irish Artist.
The same may be said of the programme to be shown tomorrow night. It is as interesting and as inconclusive as such sweeping studies tend to be. It is also difficult to admire fully or endorse, or even accept as cohesive analysis. There is no script, no overview, much of the footage is not in context and, true to ╙ M≤rdha's unobtrusive style, he allows his contributors to speak. The past seems stronger than the present. And of course it is.
Still, there are no easy answers. Instead, the programme unfolds in the form of an opinionated if diverse conversation that at times makes a great deal of sense, on occasion strays off the central thesis - always a problem with using previous footage - and, curiously, seems prone to tone shifts.
Some of the contributors defer to history, others to personal experience and anecdote. The living and the dead are juxtaposed. Archive and more recent film footage features the great Seβn ╙ R∅ordβin in a sequence that captures the poet's frustrations as a writer working in Irish and therefore denied an audience, while writers such as Edna O'Brien and John McGahern speak tellingly of the contexts in which they experienced censorship.
The roll-call of writers may seem to comprise the usual suspects, but ╙ M≤rdha has called on Hugh Leonard, an Irish writer with more than 40 years experience of working in Ireland as a playwright, novelist and journalist, who is seldom included in such cultural reassessments. The author of A Life seems pleased to be involved and sees O'Casey's decision not to return to Ireland after Yeats's rejection of The Silver Tassie as marking the beginning of the Abbey's "dark period". Leonard also talks about censorship in action, including the banning of film magazines with "leggy covers".
Some 12,000 books and publications were banned from 1929, often for the daftest reason, and Leonard cites Kate O'Brien's The Land of Spices.
There are multiple ironies. And some humour. Austin Clarke recalling Lady Gregory "looking like Queen Victoria on a bad penny" presiding over the half empty Abbey Theatre. Clarke often noticed Yeats, aloof and remote, looking about the crowd - not because he wanted to see who was there; he was more interested in how many.
Ernest Blythe, in a wonderful piece of archive material, describes the day in 1924 that Gregory and Yeats approached him in his capacity as minister for finance in order to hand over the Abbey, the National Theatre having never paid its way. There was a problem: this time England couldn't be asked to take over, as Ireland was on her own.
An emerging state is observed making its way. The defining force was the power exerted by both Church and State on a people attempting to assert itself, particularly its identity. The Catholic church and the Irish language appear as two rods used to beat the people. De Valera, whose strict methods now appear to have the tinge of desperation about them, intones on more images from the archives, "love your country, love your language".
Determined efforts to rescue and restore the Irish language proved more damaging than helpful. One of the star contributors of the documentary is Phyllis Ryan, actor, theatre producer, director and author of The Company I Kept, who remarks that no one seemed interested in telling people about the beauty of the Irish language. It was more a case of "If you don't do it, you don't get your exams". She describes the arrival of Hilton Edwards and M∅cheal MacLiammoir in Dublin and their collective impact on Irish theatre.
Irish artists, like artists all over the world, always reacted to their societies. Ryan's reading of Irish culture and society is among the strengths of the documentary, and she expresses her fears about the cultural implications of "Celtic wealth".
Art has always suffered from, and benefited by, the essential tensions imposed by society and the State. But the Irish story is presented as that bit more complex, more confusing. No doubt because it is. Here is a country that lost its language. In contrast to the excitement and subversion that marks so many artistic movements throughout history and across the world, there is a prevailing tone of sourness. Culture seemed to be recruited as a way of filling the void left by Charles Stewart Parnell. According to ╙ M≤rdha, during the making of this documentary, Leonard suggested the film be called "Parnell's Children".
The Irish artist appears to be angrier than most; or is it more simple than that, are we better at remembering the angry ones? The anger of Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien is more legend, but one of the most powerful images of rage in this documentary is that of ╙ R∅ordβin responding to his artistic dilemma.
The starting point for the programme, and for this reading of the emergence of a concerted effort at the creation of an Irish cultural heritage, is a meeting that took place in Paris. The playwright J.M.Synge spoke to W.B.Yeats of his desire to serve Ireland. The poet advised the playwright to visit the Aran Islands; and the rest is more than history, it is absolutely the story of how a contemporary literature was born. The riots that greeted The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 reveal much about a people anxious to forget and move on.
The contribution of the Yeats brothers - the poet as Free Stater, the painter as Republican - is also highlighted by London-based academic and Synge biographer W.J.McCormack, who features throughout the programme as the central commentator and remarks on the brothers' great contribution: "they never agreed". On several levels, this documentary can be seen as a postscript to ╙ M≤rdha's award-winning series, Seven Ages, which is how he intended it to be seen. This programme confirms the difficulty of attempting to corral a story as diverse as this into an hour.
Viewers looking for fresh insights and contributions from the younger generation of Irish writers and commentators will note the high percentage of archive material and footage from ╙ M≤rdha's previous films. While Brian Lenihan's memo of 1966, advising the dropping of the Censorship Act, is correctly recognised as the nation's "growing up", the crucial 26-year period between Samuel Beckett's Nobel prize and that of Seamus Heaney's is not explored. The absence of William Trevor, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Paula Meehan and Tom Murphy, never mind Paul Mercier, Billy Roche and Marina Carr will be noted. Much will be familiar: the history, the faces, the remarks. Yet ╙ M≤rdha says that, even if he had had unlimited resources, he would have used the same material he draws on here.
Of his use of the living and the dead he says: "The living and the dead make up the garment of cultures and civilisation that is a cornerstone of the history of this State". John Banville, Brien Friel, Kate O'Brien, John McGahern and Thomas Kinsella - all of whom would have a lot to say on the topic - are represented by material taken from elsewhere. ╙ M≤rdha points out that neither Friel nor Kinsella participate in television interviews. Charles Haughey, however, is included; explaining how the tax exemption for artists was intended as a gesture by the State to show "we value the artist".
It is a television essay for a general interested viewership, says ╙ M≤rdha, whose strength is for exact linear biographical portraits rather than for thematic studies. Among the shifts in an evolving story is the point where identity yields to the twilight status of women. ╔il∅s N∅ Dhuibhne talks about her experiences in a south Dublin Catholic girls school, in which religion and the Irish language were all powerful, and about her realisation at university of the lack of women writers. Curiously, she is the only writer of the under-50 generation who comments on being an Irish writer now.
But is literature central to any of this? It is difficult to ignore that, for all the claims and, in some instances, sheer heroics of Irish writing in the 20th century (and Yeats worked hard on his country's behalf) there is no concealing that economics - not culture, nor even nationhood - determined Ireland's narrative. McCormack points out the damage done in the name of freedom. One of the most chilling observations comes from archive footing of Seβn ╙ Faolβin remarking on the relative apathy that marked the reaction of Irish writers to the second World War.
Deane's contribution is so impressive as to make one wish he had been engaged as the central commentator. It is he who confers a sense of cohesion: from Jonathan Swift and Edmund Burke, to James Joyce and Beckett, to Flann O'Brien. But the question that is not asked is who now?
Artist Sean McSweeney, down-to-earth and direct, also makes an outstanding contribution. He not only points out the relative low profile of the visual arts, but also speaks about the value of place. While working in Spain, he began to wonder why he was painting scenes that bore no relation to his experiences, whereas in Ireland he knew the men who owned the very fields he was painting. His fellow great Irish painter, the late Patrick Collins, makes the point of not having gone to France as much as having left Ireland. But notions of the artist in self-imposed exile are not central to this documentary. Instead the emphasis is on self expression and survival.
Comments about the embittered Flann O'Brien's demands for recognition, about his awareness of the 20 years that passed before At Swim-Two-Birds was reprinted, are as poignant as his rage is obvious. Deane's tribute to O'Brien's comic genius is more than a graceful eulogy, it is a statement of fact. O'Brien's representation of a lunatic world may well be the most accurate picture of Ireland.
Far more material, however, should have been directed at the ugly story of conflict in the North and its legacy for Irish writers. Speaking of Heaney's first exile from the North, Deane says: "it was necessary for him to leave the North in order to inhabit it". The inclusion of Heaney's Nobel presentation in 1995 is presented as some sort of benchmark - but, curiously, the three previous Irish prize-winners, Yeats, G.B.Shaw and Beckett, are not referred to as laureates. Among the moments of beauty and hope, such as composer Seβn ╙ R∅ada fishing in the west and explaining his decision to live there, are too many sweeping gestures and statements, and unconnected footage.
Attempting to give answers based on observations offered by the living and the dead, with only some of the living responding directly to ╙ M≤rdha's interviewing skills - which, judging by the contributions he has garnered from Deane, Ryan, McSweeny and Leonard, must be considerable - is difficult, because Ireland's cultural story is based on a complex litany of fear, anger, betrayal, forgotten opportunities and ignored responsibilities.
Parnell's Children might have been a better title. But, as Deane warns, his strange Ireland, a place that has recruited Yeats and Joyce as tourism icons, the only majority Catholic, English-speaking country in the world, the only western European country with a true colonial experience, it is "dangerous to believe that now we are free, history is over". Such programmes are compelling, if not wholly convincing and often too glib. ╙ M≤rdha has begun an interesting analysis of the Irish artist's role in relation to the State and of the influence of that role, but he has not fully explored it.
Portrait of the Artist is on RT╔ 1 at 10.20p.m. tomorrow