'An Geimhreadh Thiar?': Máirtín Ó Direáin as a Spenglerian Prophet of Ireland's Decline

Influenced by the anti-modernism of Oswald Spengler, the Gaelic poetry of Ó Direáin rebukes modern Ireland's urban winter in favour of a return to the consciousness of our rural springtime.

Intro

The poetry of Máirtín Ó Direáin is taught in virtually every primary and secondary school Irish language curriculum in the country, but a serious analysis of his cultural perspective is rarely practiced at all. The purpose of this essay is to outline Ó Direáin’s true poetic worldview, which seeks to revive ancient Gaelic springtime as an antidote to modern mechanical decadence.

Ó Direáin’s dissident Gael Influences

The early ecosphere of Ó Direáin within Conradh na Gaeilge and wider Irish language circles are illustrative of his dissident Gael roots, even within De Valera’s reactionary catholic era. His thirst for radicalism began after attending a lecture in 1938 by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, the activist who studied under Rightist Ludwig Mühlhausen, and was ‘a passionate advocate of the Irish-Ireland ideal’, going so far as to equate ‘the cinema with “paganism and filth”’.

But much more significantly, Ó Direáin’s nascent literary activism first took form around Craobh na hAiséirí, the Catholic dissident wing of An Conradh. He organised debates and performed in theatre as part of Aisteoirí na hAiséirí, the branch’s acting group. These entanglements naturally bled into his poetry, with the blooming of his career beginning with the two explicitly political poems: ‘Séamus Ó Conghaile’ and ‘Don Phiarsach’.

These poems, dedicated to the two eponymous 1916 leaders, were written for the 1941 edition of the journal Aiséirighe, which commemorated the Easter Rising 25 years earlier.¹ With the publication selling 15,000 copies, and his published collection of poetry only selling a couple hundred copies, it’s worth noting that Ó Direáin was brought into the public consciousness through dissident Gaelicists.

What’s more, the poems themselves reveal a latent scepticism of the direction of modern Ireland, even in the 1940s, and a yearning for a return to iliberal ideals. In Séamus Ó Conghaile, Ó Direáin bemoans that if Connolly saw Ireland today he would be horrified by the ‘lucht maoin’ (landed elites) happy to see ‘Fir luath’ láidre a’ fághail na tíre, ‘S mná breágh manla ar siubhal mar aon leo’ (Virile young men leaving the country, And lovely women to travel with). The elites have sold out Ireland once again, and so the young Ó Direáin prayed a revolution would arise in the next generation of Gaels, in a ‘córus nua’ (new dawn) where a ‘fír mhóir mhisnigh’ (great man of courage) would come to save them.

The prayers for a return to a type of messianic radicalism continue in Don Phiarsach, where Ó Direáin warns of the return of Erin’s avenging steel:

Ní mhairfidh an staid seo dúinn acht tamall,  Óir toicfaidh spreac’ ‘rís i nGaedhealaibh, ‘S cuirfear ath-uair cath ar Bhéarla.

(This pause will not last for us much longer, For rebellion will arise again in the Gaels, As they wage another battle against English.)

When one considers the cultural context that Ó Direáin is wishing this rebellion will take place in, it is palpably clear this new generational order would not mirror democratic constitutionalism. For that first generation of men and women of the Free State, the new ideology of the Republican border war would probably best be expressed by Sean South, a man in very similar dissident gaeilgeoir circles.

Scholarly depictions of Ó Direáin’s cultural outlook tend to acknowledge a leaning toward iliberalism too. Aiken points out that he went out of his way to condemn the ‘teagasc mallaithe an chumannachais’ (the cursed doctrine of communism) in favor of Catholic Social Teaching, and yet, ‘bhí leisce ar’ (he had hesitation) in condemning ‘claonta faisisteacha Yeats’ (Yeats’ Fascist tendencies). In fact, he defended Yeats’ authoritarianism as a continuation of the elitist heritage of Gaelic poetry:

‘Bhí an Yeatsach é féin ag suirí le faisisteachas, más maith leat, nuair a tháinig na Léinteacha Gorma anseo agus Eoin O’Duffy. Bhí Yeats, agus is dóigh go raibh filí riamh anall, ag smaoineamh ar rudaí mar sin. B’fhéidir gur thúsaigh sé in aimsir na pátrúnachta, na taoisigh, níl a fhios agam.’

(The Yeats himself was flirting with fascism, if you like, when the Blue Shirts came here and with Eoin O'Duffy. Yeats was, and I think there have always been poets, thinking about things like that. Maybe it started in the time of patronage, the pastors, I don't know)²

And when it came to Authoritarian-leanings in Gael circles during the Emergency, he noted he could not think of ‘oiread is Gaeilgeoir amháin a thaobhaigh le na Comhghuaillithe sa gcoimhlint. Facthas dó go raibh ragús Gearmáinise ar a leath.’ (that as much as only one Gael sided with the Allies in the conflict. It seemed to him that half of them were fluent in German).³

While Ó Direáin’s precise views on these topics may never be known, he clearly flourished within a literary form-world which was deeply sceptical of the supremacy of Anglo-American Liberalism.

From Oileán Springtime to Urban Winter

A native of the Aran Islands, it is perhaps natural he retained a deep nostalgic yearning for the soil of old-Ireland, as opposed to the concrete jungle of modern Dublin. This metaphysical dualism is an ever-present stem of his poetry, with idealistic memories of pre-modern Oileán life defining virtually all of his first poems.

The poem Faoiseamh a Gheobhaldsa (Peace) delights in the harmony of the soul when the narrator is ‘i measc mo dhaoine’ (around my people). Similarly, the early poem Cuimhní Cinn (Memories) recounts how he came to know beauty through how ‘ar ghlaine, ar úire, is fós ar bheannaíocht’ (pure, fresh and still blessed) the women attending mass on his native oileán were. And ‘cé go bhfuilid ag imeacht as faisean’ (though they are going out of fashion), ‘Maireann a gcuimhne fós ar m’aigne’ (Their memory live on in my mind). In this sense, the oileán takes on an ethereal, Tír na nÓg type quality, where men and women live in symbiotic consciousness between God and nature.

Nowhere is this metaphysical comfiness more pronounced than in An t-Earrach Thiar (Springtime in the West), easily his most famous poem which continues to be studied for the Leaving Cert. Emphasising the eternal harmony of oileán life, the poem relives the atmosphere of workingmen tending to the rooted soil (‘Fear ag glanadh cré’) while dignified women relax against the glistening sea (‘Mná i lochán’). As the refrain famously puts it:

‘Binn an fhuaim, San Earrach Thiar.’ (Sweet the sound, Springtime in the West.)

The élan vital of the folk is expressed in its men and women, tending to different tasks but all part of the same whole, the self-reinforcing consciousness of love for one’s people and land. This is the peace of Oileáin springtime.

According to the recent Ó Direáin translator and expert Frank Sewell, this ‘springtime’ is undoubtedly related to Spengler: ‘It is no coincidence that the latter's major work is called The Decline of the West, a book that would have simultaneously attracted and unnerved Ó Direáin’.⁴ In fact, he argues that Ó Direáin went so far as to translate each of Spengler’s morphological stages of civilisation in his native Aran Islands Gaelic dialect:

‘For thinkers such as Spengler, Nietzsche, and Mann, ‘culture’ is the spring, summer and autumn of a society, and ‘civilization’ the winter: ‘in the former and the “soul” predominates, in the latter the “intellect” of the city.’ Ó Diréain appears to me to have interpreted such views in his own Aran language and style, substituting ‘Eascar’, ‘Fás’, ‘Feochadh’, and ‘Deireadh’, respectively, for the aforementioned seasons…’Budding-time’, ‘Growing-time’, ‘Withering-time’, and ‘The End’.’⁵

His later oeuvre perhaps begin to explore the naivety of springtime life, and mortal inevitability of ‘Feochadh’ and ‘Deireadh’.

Firstly, the reasonings for the Ó Direáin’s abandonment of this halcyon dream of oileáin life are hinted at in Aráinn 1947, depicting the island overcome with unemployment and loneliness, losing its once harmonious bonds. The naivety of springtime life begins to be dismantled by a new process, that of winter decadence.

Really, these problems can simply be seen as the metastasis of the mechanical world-picture of the great city, Dublin, over native island life. The poem Stoite provides a dire warning of this direction, describing an Irish future of dust and paperwork in an abandoned office-building, instead of the timeless wonders of life-embracing ethnos:

‘Beidh cuimhne orainn go fóill: Beidh carnán trodán, Faoi ualach deannaigh, Inár ndiadh in Oifig Stáit.’

(We’ll be remebered yet: A pile of papers, Buried in dust, Left behind, In a Govt. office.)

His later poem An Gad Stoite expands on this theme, arguing that urbanised industrial life has fundamentally severed our cord with our ancestors, making us less human.

Ó Direáin himself experienced this splintering in a very literal way when he tried to return to his native oileán in the poem Strainséir (Stranger), and found ‘go mba strainséir mé i mo dhúiche feasta’ (that I may be a stranger in my own homeland from now on). The notion of being treated like a foreigner in one’s native land is one many may feel today, in commercialised modern Ireland, with little room for those who see this land as their ethnic home. In the later poem, Deireadh Ré (End of an Era), Ó Direáin describes an experience many loyal Gaels would feel walking through our crowded streets:

’I measc na bplód gan ainm, Gan “Cé dhár díobh é” ar a mbéal, Ná fios mo shloinne acu.’

(Among the nameless crowd, Without "From whom are you descended?" on their lips, They don't know my last name.)

For centuries the Gaels have been denied autonomy in our own lands, made to feel like outsiders for being of native stock and speaking our native tongue. This is the imperialism of the mind. Without regional autonomy we are rootless wanderers, forced to live out lives of individualised transience, automata in an uncaring global superstructure, ashamed to express our authentic ethnic heritage and pride.

The problematisation of life in provincialised Ireland

The way of life which begins to dominate in this modern setting is one which Ó Direán views as the epitome of cultural decadence, a hollowed-out shell of the country that came before. This civilisational winter makes men impotent and weak, while women become debauched and vindictive, the Gods of Money and Materialism cannibalise what is left.

Nowhere is this dystopian critique more scathing than in Ó Direáin’s long-form satire Ár Ré Dhearóil (Our Wretched Era). The poem depicts an Irish future where we are all ‘chime’ (prisoners) to modernity, where rootlessness rules: ‘d’fhágamar slán ag talamh’ (we abandoned our country), and we own nothing: ‘Níl a ghiodán ag neach’ (No one has a plot of land). Gone is the lived ethnos of the oileán folk, communities are reduced to formless biomasses devoid of ancestral linkages, with court documents the only evidence of their existence: ‘Ní luaifear cré a muintire' (Soon no one will remember the soil of their kin) — ‘Ach na céadta comhad’ (But in hundreds of files).

This denial of ethnos and heritage bleeds then into a crisis of virility altogether, with relations between men and women falling apart. Men become emasculated bureaucrats, preferring wagiedom over women: ‘Is cúram an chomaid, In áit chéile chun leapan.’ (Brought a folder home to bed, instead of a wife). Women themselves are split between neutered sterility: ‘Galar a n-óghachta A chuaigh in ainseal orthu’ (Their virginity a disease That turned chronic) — and others selling their bodies: ‘Ba féile faoi chomaoin’ (Generous with their obligations).

Love becomes ironical and contorted, devoid of genuine union — ‘aithris mhagaidh air, Gan ualach dá éis’ (a pale imitation, Engendering nothing). Without authentic love families fall apart, and the nation becomes a self-extinguishing death-cult with declining birthrates, the only colour seeming to come from foreign cultures:

‘I gcúiteamh an tsíl Nach ndeachaigh ina gcré, I gcúiteamh na gine Nár fhás faoine mbroinn, Nár iompair trí ráithe, Faoina gcom, Séard is lú mar dhuais acu, Seal le teanga iasachta’

(To compensate for the seed, That didn't enter their flesh, To compensate for the child, That didn't grow in their womb, That wasn't carried full term, The least that they expect Is a spell at foreign languages)

Ó Direáin ends the poem praying that ‘Dhia mhóir’ (God Almighty) can guide us back home, away from the ‘chathair fhallsa’ (false city) of modernity. He goes on to paint the path ahead of us if we refuse to turn back, if we continue to allow decadence to overcome our age, as an eschatological nightmare:

‘Óir is sinn atá ciontach, I bhásta na beatha, Is é cnámh ár seisce, An cnámh gealaí, Atá ar crochadh thuas, I dtrá ár bhfuaire, Mar bhagairt.’

(For we are guilty, Of wasting life, And the symbol of our sterility, Is the bone-shaped moon, Hanging over us, Stranded in our apathy, Like a warning.)

The sense of impending doom for society was already touched upon in Ó Direáin’s poem Deireadh Oileán (Island’s End) where he wrote: ‘Tá an saol céadra i ngach áit Ag meath go mear gach lá’ (There is life everywhere, Declining rapidly every day). A nation which was once virile and full of life has fallen into a modern malaise of materialism. As Heidegger said, perhaps ‘Only a God can save us now’.

The two paths of the dissident Gael: Ó Móna or Ó Direáin?

Between his cultural pessimism and regional nostalgia, one could be forgiven for thinking Ó Direáin only wrote in moralistic proclamations, unable to acknowledge the complexity of stepping forward, beyond decadence. However, a reading of his later poem, Ó Mórna, demonstrates this isn’t true.

Commonly considered his magnus opus, in Ó Mórna Ó Direáin uses the life of the degenerate landowner James O’Flaherty, who had his cattle stolen from him during the 1881 Land War, as the basis for his titular protagonist. As a character study, Ó Mórna appears as a horrid anti-hero, exemplifying the worst of the parasitic rentier class the country is still plagued with today. He is described as ‘boilg chun léithe’ (fat and grey), a misogynist who partakes in ‘Ag réabadh comhlan na hóghachta’ (despoiling and deflowering maidens) and leaves only ‘cadhal ag gach truán’ (peelings for the poor).

Strangely, Ó Direáin’s scorn is largely reserved for those ‘d’éis cogar ban’ (women’s whispers) and ‘glúin na sean’ (old folks) that spread the negative stories of Ó Mórna. As Sewell describes:

‘Ó Direáin's characterization of O'Flahetty in the form of Ó Mórna provides, all in one, an unforgettable depiction of a sexually charged Gothic monster, a realistic portrayal of one of Yeats's hardriding country gentleman, and a sympathetic account of a lonely outsider whose birth and nature (not his nurture) drive him beyond the pale of the community. Somewhat surprisingly, this dissolute landlord who drinks, whores, and curses himself into the ground maintains Ó Direáin's sympathy throughout.’⁶

Instead of his former denouncements made against modern decadence, Ó Direáin insists that readers ‘Ná fág…gan tuarisc an fhir a bheith leat’ (Don’t leave…Without hearing the man’s story) and pleads ‘Ná bí dtaobh le comhrá cáich’ (Do not trust the general consensus). It seems as though Ó Direáin chose one of the most morally base individuals in local Irish history and insisted on developing an epic apologetic in his defense — and so the question arises: why?

One explanation comes from the late great Trotskyist, and Sticky-adjacent intellectual and philosopher, Tomás Mac Siomóin, who emphasized the Nietzschean tendencies in the poem. Along with other Leftist critics, Mac Siomóin pointed out the Ó Mórna allowed Ó Direáin to explore a vitalstic, Nietzschean form of Gaelic masculinity, with little attachment to morality or bounds of any description:

‘the primacy assigned to 'will' and 'passion' in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche no doubt encouraged the poet in his portrait of a 'hard-riding country gentleman' but the creation of Ó Mórna as an alter ego enabled the poet to give expression to what can only be described as a glorification of the male sexual drive’⁷

Certainly, upon first reading, the poem appears to glorify hedonistic individualism — however, when one digs further a more multi-layered satire may be seen. Ó Direáin himself said, about his interest in the Ó Mórna character, that ‘since the creative bug ["cruimh"/worm] started goading me more and more, I took an interest in the O'Flahetty as a man’.⁸ This notion of this philosophical ‘cruimh’ (worm) is ever-present in the poem, reminding the reader of the potential hidden kernel of story, and is particularly present in the final verse, when Ó Direáin states:

‘An chruimh a chreim istigh san uaigh tú, A Uí Mhórna mhóir, a thriath Chill Cholmáin,

Níorbh í cruimh do chumais ná cruimh d’uabhair Ach cruimh gur cuma léi íseal ná uasal.’

(The worm that gnawed you in the grave, Great Ó Mórna, Lord Cill Comán, Was not the worm of your power or pride But a worm that heeds not caste or class.)

In this the tragedy, Ó Mórna’s fall becomes clearer. The ‘cruimh’ (worm) haunting Ó Direáin as well as his Ó Mórna character is that of unstoppable fate and the apparent inevitability of civilisational decline. The rise and fall of the great Ó Mórna is seen as ‘charting morphological stages common to all individuals, to his class and to all classes and societies’ — and perhaps all poets. From the elite ranks of the Gaelic art-world to the debasement of the Leaving Cert, Ó Direáin became infatuated with what will remain for his posterity once he and his generation return to the soil of the grave.

Perhaps Ó Mórna is, because of his isolation from the rooted muintir agus tuath (community and hearth) of the masses, uniquely suited to confront the gnawing worm of existential mortality. In one of the first stanzas of the poem, Ó Direáin is warning of ‘Is guais a shóirt ar a uaigneas’ (The dangers of isolation to his kind) — this ‘kind’ being those aristocrats of the soul, who through their estrangement from modern tedium can live on beyond their transient physical lives. It reminds one of Thomas MacDonagh, who argued he represented ‘the intellect and soul of Ireland’, not ‘the mass of the people’.

Ó Direáin’s solution: Bardic Caesarism?

For Ó Direáin, the Gaelic Bard and the degenerate Ó Mórna are both éasc aduain (strange fish), which for Prút represents ‘the symbol of the poet who sustains his art off the backs of other people but who enriches the whole people with his gift of poetry.’⁹ They’re both confronted with the third rail, that of mortality — whether of our individual life of sin, or the wider collective sins and damnation of our people.

If Ó Mórna mirrors the poet’s isolation — then is Ó Direáin simply glorifying vitalistic hedonism as an answer to decadence, as Mac Siomóin and others interpret?

In my view, Ó Direáin is offering quite the contrary lesson. The poem is pointing to the dichotomous inner-path laid for those who confront the decadence of civilisation: do we lean into immorality, the destruction of cities and degenerate vitalism, or do we follow an alternative path, that of the Elite Gaelic bard, who guides his people through paternalistic grace?

Sewell makes the distinction clear, between the love of the poet to his people, and the disdain of the pervert outcast:

‘Ó Mórna has the ‘aithinne is lasair’/fire and spark (D p. 145) that Ó Direáin admires and he also stands out from the crowd, but he uses his knowledge of the underclass to exploit them—his path is, therefore, destructive to himself and others. Ó Direáin, on the other hand, uses his knowledge of the people (including Ó Mórna or, in real life, the O’Flahetty) creatively, remembering and sometimes celebrating them in his poems.’¹⁰

When one moves beyond this dichotomy, Ó Direáin appears to suggest the resurgence of Gaelic civilisation lies in a renaissance of the bardic spirit. His much later 1966 poem, Cloch Choirnéil, may hold the key to what he wished for, in a very similar future to that which he prayed for his very first poems, the return of the warrior-poet Gael:

‘Is é mo ghéarghuí, Roimh éag dom féin, Go dtiocfaidh fear, De mo chime fáin…Dá ndeonaíodh Dia a theacht, Ghéillfinn go réidh don imeacht.’

(My dearest wish before I die, Is for a man of my own exiled stock to come along…If God grant us such a one, I’d be ready and willing to pass on.)

While cryptic, there is a clear takeaway: Ó Direáin’s lifework was one of reviving the Gaelic poem, as without our teanga agus nós, our country is meaningless.

1. Aiken, p. 17.

2. p. 131, Ó Direáin, M. Ó hAnluain, E. (eag.) (2002) Ón Ulán Ramhar Siar. Clóchomhar Tta, Baile Átha Cliath

3. Aiken, p. 18.

4. Sewell, p.109.

5. Sewell, p.110.

6. Sewell, p.109.

7. Ibid.

8. Sewell, p.102.

9. Prút, p.50.

10. Sewell, p.113.