Irishness of Elizabeth Bowen

Madam, - David Alvey (April 28th) says the Poles do not claim Conrad. Does anybody claim him? Yes, the world

Madam, - David Alvey (April 28th) says the Poles do not claim Conrad. Does anybody claim him? Yes, the world. That should be sufficient.

Who claims someone like Isaac Bashevis Singer - one of the most haunting voices of the 20th century - who wrote in Yiddish? The Poles? The Jews? The Americans? We can all claim him. When Beckett was asked was he an Englishman he replied, "Au contraire". That didn't imply he was French. Politically, he was more interested in the French Resistance than in the Irish Resistance, but politics isn't everything.

Surely it's a matter of where the heart is and it is not always easy to define the heart's place geographically. The artist's imagination does not recognise fixed national boundaries. Singer's heart belonged to more than one place and - indeed - more than one time.

David Alvey's letter appeared in the same edition in which Eileen Battersby reported on Cúirt, welcoming new and old voices from eastern Europe. Some contemporary Estonians writers have been looking East, as it happens, not West, and their writing is all the more interesting because of that. Will future Irish writers find the labels Irish, Anglo-Irish or English to be meaningful or will they be happy to be classified simply as European, whether they write in Irish or English? What elements in their writing will qualify them to use the label "European"? It is, perhaps, far too early to say. - Yours, etc.

READ MORE

GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK,

Gleann na gCaorach,

Co Átha Cliath.