Chapter two Translations
In this chapter, Translations, the best-known play of Friel’s, will be examined in order to see how he represents Irishness in the lives of Irish people in 1833. In 1833 Ireland was undergoing Anglicization from England, which was replacing the Irish hedge schools with new national schools that taught English, and which was also executing the ordnance survey, changing all the Irish place names into English. In fact, these acts of Anglicization started much earlier than 1833. The ordnance survey began in 1824, and went on for more than twenty years. And in 1831 the British government passed laws on the system of national schools, which demanded that students in national schools in Ireland be taught in English rather than Gaelic. Under such circumstances, Irish people had to at the same time face the dominance of British colonization, and think about how to tackle with it. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Friel’s attitude towards the representation of Irishness is different from that of his predecessors. He does not picture Ireland as a Gaelic-speaking fairyland with mythological heroes, nor does he resort to nationalist hostility toward British colonial power.
In this play, I will argue that Friel tries to represent Irishness in the following three major
aspects. First, he tries to show that Ireland has its own causes of destruction from within,
which facilitates British language dominance and cultural colonization. Second, he sets out to
represent Ireland’s hybridized situation. As discussed in the first chapter, hybridization has
been the status quo in many postcolonial situations, and it has also been part of the colonized
people’s strategy in saving their own cultural heritage. In the play, hybridity involves many
different aspects. I will argue that on the political level, hybridization takes place when the
colonized have different attitudes toward the colonizer, and vice versa. On the language level,
the process of translation, as seen between Owen and Lancey and between Manus and Lancey,
is shown to be far more complex than what we might expect. It involves mistranslation, the
untranslatable element, the new meaning produced through the process, and the purposeful and necessary concealment during the process. These all contribute to the hybridized situation of the language conflict. Also, in a similar way, the process of naming, which is characteristic of the ordnance survey, is a process of hybridization in that the renaming of Irish places into English often produces something neither English nor Gaelic. Also hybridization takes place when the naming process shows at the same time the colonizer’s language dominance and its failure to translate the untranslatable. And on the personal level, the communication between two cultures, as seen between Maire and Yolland and between Jimmy Jack and Athena, raises the problem of how much hybridization it takes for two cultures to fully understand each other, and whether or not such an understanding is possible at all. Third, we may conclude from the play that Friel himself suggests that Irish people stay in their homeland, learn English, appropriate English and make it speak for their newly established Irishness and identity. Friel does not search in the past for a spiritual hero like Yeats did, nor does he embrace the changes brought about by the colonizer. This attitude of Friel’s also speaks for the Field Day Theatre, and this play is worthy of its name as the inauguration speech for Field Day. These three aspects will be examined respectively in this chapter.
Ireland’s causes of destruction from within, in this play, take many different forms. The
first impression Friel tries to make of the hedge school for the audience is already
contradictory to what we may imagine about a Gaelic fairyland full of happy peasants. In the
hedge school we have Hugh, who always drinks a lot, and who is “the erudite hedge school
master about to become obsolete” (McGrath 190). Also we have Manus, the always tragic
character, who is in the first place lame, and who holds the hedge school dear with his vain
reluctance to accept the English language and the new world. Also, Manus is, in Richard
Harp’s words, “to varying degrees the victim, if not of acts of betrayal, of at least the
self-centered acts of those around him: his father’s hopeless pursuit of the national school teaching position, Maire’s abandonment of him for Yolland, Sarah Johnny Sally’s telling him of Maire and Yolland’s tryst after the dance” (Harp/Evans 23-7). Also we have Maire, who, contrary to Manus, advocates learning English: “We should all be learning to speak English…the sooner we all learn to speak English the better…The old language is a barrier to modern progress” (Tr 334-5). She, however, fails to keep Yolland beside her, and even causes him to be assassinated by the Donnelly twins, since people in Baile Beag cannot allow her to be taken by Yolland. Another student in the hedge school is Sarah, who does not seem to have any identity in the stage directions: “Sarah’s speech is so bad that all her life she has been considered locally to be dumb and she has accepted this: when she wishes to communicate, she grunts and makes unintelligible nasal sounds. She has a waiflike appearance and could be any age from seventeen to thirty-five” (Tr 320). One of the most famous observations about Sarah comes from Seamus Heaney: “It is as if some symbolic figure of Ireland from an eighteenth-century vision poem, the one who once confidently called herself Cathleen Ni Houlihan, has been struck dumb by the shock of modernity” (Harrington 559). In the play Sarah is indeed struck dumb, by Captain Lancey, the cold-blooded British lieutenant:
“Lancey: Who are you? Name! [Sarah’s mouth opens and shuts, opens and shuts. Her face becomes contorted.] What’s your name? [Again Sarah tries frantically]” (Tr 368-9). F. C.
McGrath agrees with Heaney that while Sarah is struck dumb by Lancey, her problem
“suggests the ‘hidden Ireland’ that in 1833 had begun to be devastated in the next decade by the famine years” (McGrath 192). Therefore, it is very clear that Friel is not blind to the influence of modernity and the economic crisis that have changed the life of Irish people, and he has no desire to mourn for the past or look into the past for Irishness. Even his characters cannot manage to change a little bit of their life with their knowledge about Latin and Greek.
Here we can see there is nothing fairy or mythological about Friel’s Baile Beag in 1833.
Claire Gleitman points out that “they are […] a collection of cripples, mutes and drunks; they exhibit, Friel has remarked, ‘a physical maiming which is a public representation of their spiritual deprivation’” (Kerwin 236). Besides the physical maiming, Gleitman believes that there are inner social problems that cause the decay of the colonized culture:
The playwright implicitly attributes the act of imperial dispossession that Translations chronicles to an attitude of mind on the part of the peasantry that made the country ripe for colonizing. In addition, Translations establishes its context with reference to three general sources of instability operating concurrently with colonization: the economics hardships that pressured the young to abandon their country in increasing numbers; the incipient resistance movement that threatened community stability from within as did the imperialist presence from without; and the imminent blight of the potato, the staple of the community’s diet. (Kerwin 236)
While Gleitman sees the inner economic and political instability of the Irish society as the cause of the decay, F. C. McGrath attributes the erosion partly to the language itself:
“Friel is neither naïve nor simplistic in attributing the erosion of Gaelic Ireland to the obvious
distortions caused by Anglicizing the names. There are more subtle kinds of erosion at work
as well. Even within the Irish language the connection between the names and the
significance of places has begun to erode. Owen points out that Tobair Vree, the Gaelic name
for a crossroads, is a corruption of “Brian’s Well” (Tobair Bhriain); but the well, long since
dried up, was never at the crossroad’s anyway and the story of the Brian connected to it has
been all but forgotten” (McGrath 190). This deromanticization of Gaelic Ireland also finds its
speaker in Hugh, the master of the hedge school. In the play Hugh shows his proficiency in
Latin and Greek, and his desire to teach his students to speak these languages, but even he
has to admit that learning English is a matter of survival, since the old languages are dead.
While Hugh is proud of his own language and literature: “Indeed, Lieutenant. A rich language.
A rich literature. You’ll find, sir, that certain cultures expend on their vocabularies and syntax acquisitive energies and ostentations entirely lacking in their material lives. I suppose you could call us a spiritual people,” (Tr 350) he at the same time sees what limits the development of his language: “Yes, it is a rich language, Lieutenant, full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception─a syntax opulent with tomorrows. It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to…inevitabilities” (Tr 350). In the end of the play, Hugh fully recognizes the need to learn English, and advocates it to his people: “We must learn those new names…We must learn where we live. We must lean to make them our own. We must make them our new home,” (Tr 372) but when Maire asks when they will start the English class, Hugh answers her in a more or less pessimistic tone:
“We’ll begin tomorrow…But don’t expect too much. I will provide you with the available words and the available grammar. But will that help you to interpret between privacies? I have no idea. But it’s all we have. I have no idea at all” (Tr 374). Hugh’s attitude seems to be that the old world has no other way but to give in to the new world, whether it is good or bad.
Again, this attitude of a hedge school master, who is, in Richard Kearney’s words, “a minister of names
1, and by extension, a transmitter, guarantor and guardian of the community’s cultural identity,” (Kerwin 92) shows that the Irish society can no longer go back to their tradition and literature and mythology for survival, for this self-deception will only lead to the fading of their culture, like that of Latin and Greek. Here we can see Friel deliberately chooses a different speaker from Yeat’s Cathleen ni Houlihan to narrate his postcolonial strategy. For him Gaelic Ireland needs renewing energies to face the change brought by the colonization. Gleitman’s observation may well conclude the discussion on the first aspect of
1
Hugh goes to a christening and helps choosing a name for a baby, and the choice of name is seen as a means
of deciding the dubious identity of the child’s father. Also, Hugh believes that Nora Dan has completed her
education since she has learned to write her name.
Friel’s representation of Irishness: “Friel suggests that the struggle between old and new worlds is won by the new not only because of its efficient brutality, but because the old is exhausted and effete, and indulges in fantastic self-deception rather than finding practical methods to adapt to a changing world” (Kerwin 236).
The second aspect of Friel’s representation of Irishness is that of the hybridized state.
Friel does not intend to make the point that recognition of hybridity is the solution to all the colonial problems in Ireland, as some critics do in suggesting that hybridity is the realm where the colonized can speak and ask for equality. Friel leaves that question unanswered. He only manages to represent in the play the state of hybridity in the Irish society, in the hope that recognition of the hybridized state can make his people question problems of colonization, language, communication, culture, and power, not from the traditional Irish past, not from the British modernization, but from all the conflicts that exist in the Irish society today. In Translations, it becomes clear that hybridization takes place in Baile Beag at all levels, from the political to language and to communication between individuals and cultures.
One of the evidences is that people in the hedge school have different attitudes towards the
construction of new national schools and learning English. Manus, older son of Hugh, is
representative of the Irish people who are against any change brought by the British, who
want Gaelic rather than English, hedge schools rather than national schools, old place names
rather than new ones. He wants to stay in the hedge school as long as he can, and refuses to
apply for a teaching position in the new national school, despite what Maire insists. His
counterpart is Owen, his younger brother, who left Ireland at an early age, who is educated in
England, who works for the British army, and whose job is to “translate the quaint, archaic
tongue you people persist in speaking into the King’s good English” (Tr 338). The
contradiction between the brothers is first seen in the play when Owen is translating what
Lancey says about the ordnance survey in a way that disguises its malicious purpose:
Manus: What sort of translation was that, Owen?
Owen: Did I make a mess of it?
Manus: You weren’t saying what Lancey was saying!
Owen: ‘Uncertainty in meaning is incipient poetry’─who said that?
Manus: There was nothing uncertain about what Lancey said: it’s a bloody military operation, Owen! And what’s Yolland’s function! What’s
‘incorrect’ about the place-names we have here? (Tr 342)
Tim Gauthier also observes that “Manus and Owen represent different ideological perspectives on the role of the British, and their differences in interpretation are revealed in their very language. Owen sees in the British the chance for progress, while Manus can only see the threat to all he holds dear” (Harp/Evans 345). But here we must note that Owen cannot be simply categorized as the English-lover, since he exhibits the quality and intention to go between and interpret between two cultures. His purposeful mistranslation of Lancey’s announcement is the best example. Richard Kearney believes that “Owen plays a double language-game, commuting with apparent ease between the two parties….In reality, Owen’s linguistic duality entails a fundamental duplicity. He mistranslates Lancey’s message, winnowing off its mercenary implications in order to make it more palatable for the locals.
Yet at the same time Owen is sufficiently circumspect to withhold his real name from the English officers, operating under the pseudonym of Rolland” (Kerwin 95). So we can see that while Manus and Owen, with so different attitudes, add to the hybridized complexity of the Irish society, Owen himself plays this hybridized role between the two cultures. Seamus Heaney sees Owen’s language manipulation as a result of the existing language hybridity:
“Owen…begins to act as go-between and interpreter. This allows Friel to show, at times
comically and at times angrily, that there are still two kinds of speech within what appears to
be a common language shared by the two islanders” (Harrington 558). Owen’s role as a living
hybridized figure between different cultures and languages, however, does not bring him all the good. As the play goes on, we can find out that Owen at the end has to translate all the English place names back into Gaelic, when Lancey is reading the list of places the British army will destroy. Seamus Heaney sees Owen’s role now as both the betrayer and the betrayed:
“Owen…is a key figure in the dispossession/abandonment of uncertainty. His brother Manus sees him as a betrayer, his father, more cautiously, sees him as a kind of success, and he cannot quite manage to see himself. Significantly, he cannot settle for a name: he is Owen to the natives but his soldier friends call him Roland and he does not quite deny them their mistake. There is a lovely moment at the end when the place-names he has anglicized are read out by Captain Lancey in their new versions and Owen must translate them back into Irish for the benefit of his neighbors. It is a list of places that the army is now intent on devastating in retaliation for the presumed killing of Lieutenant Yolland. The betrayer is betrayed.” (Harrington 558)
For F. C. McGrath, “Later Owen’s naivete is smashed by the tragic consequence of his
work…Owen realizes too late what he has been willing to barter away in order to advance
himself in his colonial situation” (184). Here we can see Friel deliberately makes Owen the
victim of his own hybridization, and this leads us to believe Friel may be implying that
although hybridity is the status quo, it may still be problematic. In discussing Owen’s
linguistic strategy of ambiguity that foreshadows his own fate, Richard Kearney notes: “Friel
touches here, with characteristic and unpretentious irony, on the crisis of cultural ambiguity
which so indelibly hallmarks the modern Irish psyche” (Kerwin 95). Once again, Friel leaves
the problem unsolved. It is more of his concern to represent Irishness as it is, rather than
taking sides and leaving out some parts.
Besides Owen, one other advocator of learning English is Maire. At an early stage of the play she already makes her attitude clear, as previously quoted. As the play goes on, we know that Maire is disappointed at Manus’s not applying for a teaching job at the new national school, hopes for emigration to America, and in the end develops a love affair with Yolland. Richard Kearney says of Maire: “Maire belongs to the emerging generation of aspiring peasants tired of treading the timeless mudtracks of oppressed Gaeldom” (Kerwin 93). She is representative of the Irish people who embrace British power and wish to learn English, while the Gaelic culture no longer holds any attraction to them. In the play, Maire is the character that most heartily embraces the opposing culture. Still, Maire and Owen together stand as the representative of the Irish people in favor of English and modernity, as opposed to Hugh and Manus, who are more in favor of the older heritage. Maire and Owen, says Tim Gauthier, “serve to raise the question of the degrees to which the English act of translation was an act of violent suppression and the extent to which it was openly welcomed by the Irish people” (Harp/Evans 345).
While the colonized have different attitudes towards the colonizer, the colonizer does
not always see the culture of the colonized as backward and barbaric. In Translations, the two
characters from England, Yolland and Lancey, exhibit a very obvious difference between their
attitudes towards the Irish culture. Lancey is the British captain in charge of the ordnance
survey, and he has completely no desire to learn anything about the Gaelic culture. Richard
Kearney says of Lancey: “Captain Lancey is a hardnosed military expert with little or no
culture. He mistakes Jimmy’s Latin for Gaelic and is only interested in language in so far as it
may prove a useful instrument in the colonial conquest of a landscape by means of a
mechanistic mapping system”(Kerwin 94). From Lancey’s announcement of his purpose in
the beginning of the play, we can see that language for Lancey is only a tool for disguising
the actual “bloody military operation” of the colonizer, and from Lancey’s announcement of
his threat to level out the whole Baile Beag in the end of the play, we see more clearly his conqueror mentality and total lack of respect for the colonized culture. While Lancey is well representative of a typical colonizer, Yolland exhibits another side of the colonizer. First of all, we are told by the stage directions that Yolland is “a soldier by accident.” Also, when he is asked to speak in front of the hedge school people, his words are very different from Lancey’s: “Very kind of you─thank you …I can only say that I feel─I feel very foolish to─
to─to be working here and not to speak your language…I think your country is─is─is─is
very beautiful. I’ve fallen in love with it already. I hope we’re not too─too crude an intrusion
on your lives. And I know that I’m going to be happy, very happy, here” (Tr 341). Also we
see him say sorry for not understanding Maire’s Gaelic. And during the naming task while he
works with Owen, we see his desire to learn Irish and become part of Irish: “I had moved into
a consciousness that wasn’t striving nor agitated, but at its ease and with its own conviction
and assurance. And when I heard Jimmy Jack and your father swapping stories about Apollo
and Cuchulainn and Paris and Ferdia─as if they lived down the road─it was then that I
thought─I knew─perhaps I could live here” (Tr 346). Also, he shows his appreciation of the
Gaelic culture during the process of naming: “I feel so cut off from the people here. And I
was trying to explain a few minutes ago how remarkable a community this is. To meet people
like yourself and Jimmy Jack who actually converse in Greek and Latin. And your place
names─what was the one we came across this morning?─Termon, from Terminus, the god
of boundaries. It─it─it’s really astonishing” (Tr 350). At a point Yolland recognizes the fact
that he will never be able to become Irish even if he learns to speak Irish: “Even if I did speak
Irish I’d always be an outsider here, wouldn’t I? I may learn the password but the language of
the tribe will always elude me, won’t it? The private core will always be…hermetic, won’t
it?” (Tr 348-9) but this does not keep him from pursuing Irishness and the love affair with
Maire. Even though his pursuit of these things in the end brings him terrible results, we cannot overlook the fact that the state of hybridization exists even among colonizers. Actually, hybridity on the colonizer’s part may be more of a political situation than of a personal choice.
It is not easy for England to treat Ireland in the same way it treats other colonies. As Terry Eagleton points out, “Britain and Ireland at least shared in common the crisis of identity which each partner catalyzed in the other; whereas if the Irish had been black, unintelligible and enclosed on another hemisphere, savages of the desert rather than the doorstep, their presence might have proved rather less unnerving” (Connoly 79). This similarity of race and geography presumably leads to a more unclear relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. The result of such obscurity between the border is the interchangeable relationship between the two, where the colonizer can be as merciless as Lancey and at the same time as romantic as Yolland. “The Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland,” says Eagleton,
“has commonly been figured as a sexual coupling; but it is a peculiarly incestuous form of congress, in which the border between difference and identity, alienness and intimacy, is constantly transgressed, and subject-positions (strangers, siblings, parents, spouses, partners) become dizzyingly interchangeable” (Connoly 79).
In addition to the hybridity on the political level, in Translations more focus is given to the hybridity on the language level. The title itself suggests the significance of translation in the play. The issue of the ordnance survey, which involves naming, also makes clear Friel’s focus on language. Also, as audience, we understand that the play is about Gaelic being replaced by English, and the English we hear the hedge school students speaking is supposed to be Gaelic, while Friel insists that Gaelic and English not be heard on stage at the same time.
All these raise a number of issues about language, and by doing so, Friel manages to
represent the fact that language, the media of communication between individuals and
between cultures, is also of hybridized state in the Irish society, which makes a purely Gaelic
society or a purely English society impossible. And it is within this hybridization of language that English and Irish can be at peace with each other and Irish people can reconstruct their Irishness from appropriating the English they learn. McGrath’s citation of Friel’s own words on the play best exemplifies the concern on language representation: “Friel himself has said that, while the political and historical thematics are obviously relevant to the atmosphere of the play, he had no desire ‘to write a play about Irish peasants being suppressed by English sappers,’ or ‘to write a threnody on the death of the Irish language.’ It is not that Friel lacked interest in Ireland’s Gaelic past. On the contrary, he knew that for the play to work he had to capture ‘the wholeness, the integrity, of that Gaelic past.’ But he constantly worried about turning Translations into a political play, because for him ‘the play has to do with language and only language. And if it becomes overwhelmed by that political element,’ he says, ‘it is lost.’ In the end, his concerns about the politics of the play were justified” (McGrath 181-2).
Language, in the play, serves to represent the hybridized situation of the Irish society.
Rather than writing about the simple fact of Gaelic being replaced by English, Friel manages to present the mentality, the conflict, the nature, and the difficulty of communicating in two different languages from two different cultures. The process of translation is the best example.
In the play, the first translation takes place when Owen translates Lancey’s announcement into English (which is quoted on page 22), but as we can see, Owen does not say exactly what Lancey says. Owen on the one hand reduces Lancey’s official use of English to simpler, more everyday use of Gaelic, and on the other hand conceals Lancey’s sinister, military purposes, and reproduces his announcement as that of England’s good will towards Ireland. This purposeful act of translation, however, does not pass unnoticed by Manus, who reads Lancey’s announcement from the Gaelic point of view, and who sees the obvious “bloody military” purpose of it.
The two brothers’ different translations of Lancey’s words exemplify how translation
can be distorted, concealed, and mistranslated between the colonizer and the colonized, but this also shows the fact that both translations can exist within the same hybridized postcolonial state. Homi Bhabha believes that translation changes with time and space:
“Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication…And the sign of translation continually tells, or ‘tolls’ the different times and spaces between cultural authority and its performative practices. The ‘time’ of translation consists in that movement of meaning” (Bhabha 228, emphasis original). As Owen’s and Manus’s translations are both
“hybrid performative enunciations,” their different translations, when put together, say more about the power relation and mentality of the colonizer and the colonized. And this also creates a hybrid space, or in Bhabha’s terms, a “transnational and translational sense of the hybridity of imagined communities,” in which new histories will be written and negotiation between different cultures will take place. In Bhabha’s eyes, this hybridty also has its subversive function: “Cultural translation desacralizes the transparent assumptions of cultural supremacy, and in that very act, demands a contextual specificity, a historical differentiation within minority positions” (Bhabha 228, emphasis original). In this way, cultural supremacy,
or the relation between the colonizer and the colonizer, is subverted. F. C. McGrath goes furthur to point out that the translations of both Owen and Manus are acts of subversion, “one subverting his own culture and the other subverting the culture of the Other. In the process, both cultures are being rewritten and neither survives intact” (McGrath 185).
While Owen’s translation of Lancey’s words is a purposeful mistranslation, Yolland and Owen’s act of renaming the Gaelic place names into English shows the “hermetic code”
that is untranslatable between different cultures. As we find out that Yolland is a lover of the
Gaelic culture, and is more or less reluctant to translate the beautiful Gaelic sound into
English, so as to keep the Gaelic meaning of the place name, we understand that there is
something that just cannot be translated, and that loses its meaning if translated. For example,
Yolland and Owen come across a place named Bun na hAbhann, which in Gaelic means the mouth of the river, and have difficulty translating it into English.
Yolland: Let’s leave it alone. There’s no English equivalent for a sound like that.
Owen: What is it called in the church registry?
[Only now does Yolland open his eyes.]
Yolland: Let’s see…Banowen.
Owen: That’s wrong. [Consults text.] The list of freeholders calls it Owenmore─
that’s completely wrong: Owenmore’s the big river at the west end of the parish. [Another text.] And in the grand jury lists it’s called─God!─
Binhone!─wherever they go that. I suppose we could Anglicize it to Bunowen; but somehow that’s neither fish nor flesh. (Tr 343)
They finally settle on Burnfoot, which is exactly “neither fish nor flesh,” and which bears no meaning at all to the place name. As Bun na hAbhann is untranslatable, the relation between word and meaning becomes arbitrary, and renaming Gaelic place names becomes a meaningless act. Another example takes place when Owen reveals to Yolland that his name is never Roland but Owen. While Yolland is surprised to hear that, Owen begins to like the name of Roland. And as this reminds them of their naming task, Owen jokingly suggests that they can write in the Name Book neither Owen nor Roland but Oland. This assumed naming power is then celebrated by the two:
Manus: What’s the celebration?
Owen: A christening!
Yolland: A baptism!
Owen: A hundred christenings!
Yolland: A thousand baptisms! Welcome to Eden!
Owen: Eden’s right! We name a thing and─bang!─it leaps into existence!
Yolland: Each name a perfect equation with its roots.
Owen: A perfect congruence with its reality. (Tr 353)
While Owen and Yolland suppose they have the naming power like God, this ironically shows the loose relationship between word and meaning. The British army may Anglicize the whole Irish place names, but they cannot keep any of the meaning that is connected with the place name in the original language. The result is Oland, neither Owen nor Roland, which does not mean anything to each other’s culture. Here we see the untranslatable part of a language, or like Yolland says, the “hermetic core” of Irish that will always elude him even if he learns to speak Irish. This representation of incommensurability between cultures finds its theoretical evidence from After Babel, written by George Steiner, which is believed to be of great influence on Friel in his composing Translations. In After Babel, Steiner writes,
There are innumerable near-identities or, more strictly speaking, overlaps of associative content which Englishmen share by virtue of historical or climatic experience but which an American, emitting the same speech-sounds, may have no inkling of. The French language, as self-consciously perhaps as any, is a palimpsest of historical, political undertones and overtones. To a remarkable degree, these embed even ordinary locutions in a ‘chord’ of associations which anyone acquiring the language from outside will never fully master. (Steiner 172) What Steiner refers to as undertones and overtones is, in Bhabha’s terms, the signifier and signifier that are not shared by two cultures, and this causes the different relationship between the signifier and the signified in different cultures. Bhabha says,
The complementarity of language as communication must be understood as
emerging from the constant state of contestation and flux caused by the
differential systems of social and cultural signification. This process or
complementarity as the agonistic supplement is the seed of the ‘untranslatable’─
the foreign element in the midst of the performance of cultural translation.
(Bhabha 227)
In the play, Friel represents this problem of the untranslatable not only in the naming process, but also in the communication between two cultures. At the end of the second Act, we know that Yolland and Maire become fond of each other─or each other’s culture─and try to communicate with each other even if they know very little about each other’s language.
Maire tries to speak Latin, and then the three English words that she knows─water, fire, and earth─and in the end the only one line of English that she knows: “In Norfolk we besport ourselves around the maypoll.” Yolland, on the other hand, starts communicating with Maire with the Gaelic place names he has learned from the renaming task. And they assume they understand each other:
Maire: Don’t stop─I know what you’re saying.
Yolland: I would tell you how I want to be here─to live here─always─with you─always, always.
Maire: ‘Always?’ What is that word─‘always’? (Tr 360)
This scene is typically Friel: the problem of communication is raised without any answer given. Here critics have different points of view about the possibility of communication between two cultures, and this fact, in my opinion, also serves Friel’s purpose of representing the hybridized situation in Ireland. McGrath’s attitude is not optimistic: “The attempt by Maire and Yolland to express their love for each other by trying to use, insofar as they are able, each other’s language suggests the ideal of two cultures reaching out to each other, trying to communicate with each other and to understand each other─a naïve and romantic ideal that, as Friel well knows, has rarely if ever been achieved in world history and politics”
(McGrath 186). Richard Kearney directly points out the impossibility of such cross-cultural
communication: “In this second exchange Friel highlights the tragic impossibility of ever attaining an ideal system of language capable of decoding semantic differences into some common, transcultural identity…The irony is of course that this common source of semantic agreement is precisely the issue which so tragically divides their respective tribes” (Kerwin 98). Kearney goes on to point out that Maire herself is the victim of such communication, since she does not feel at home in her own community and she cannot leave with Yolland either since he is killed later as we are told. Also, echoing what Maire says in the third Act about Yolland: “…the last thing he said to me─he tried to speak in Irish─he said, ‘I’ll see you yesterday’─he meant to say ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And I laughed that much he pretended to get cross and he said ‘Maypoll! Maypoll!’ because I said that word wrong,” (Tr 366) Kearney argues that “This mistranslation is a poignant symptom of the tragic historical fact that in the colonial conflict between England and Ireland the time was out of joint. Or to put it in another way, linguistic discrepancies are the inevitable consequence of historical ones” (Kerwin 99).
Kathleen Hohenleitner also sees two things tragic about the communication: “First, that the Irish language is only represented to the audience through English, as it has largely been lost as a result of the Empire’s effective nineteenth-century mapping campaign. Second, ironically, tragically, both truly are speaking the same language, like the warring sects in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and ‘80s, yet neither side can comprehend the other entirely”
(Harp/Evans 373). Declan Kiberd believes this “same language” is what divides the two countries: “Once Anglicization is achieved, the Irish and English, instead of speaking a truly identical tongue, will be divided most treacherously by a common language” (Kiberd 622).
However, there are other critics who see the communication of Maire and Yolland a sure sign
of transcending language barriers. Tim Gautheir, for example, says “The problem, of course,
is that they do not share a common language. This does not prevent them from speaking,
however, and the connection they achieve in those brief moments is meant to transcend whatever conflicts the play has presented” (Harp/Evans 346). Despite that, Gauthier also sees the problems of the irony of the communication, which is achieved through speaking the place names that have been translated into the colonizer’s language, and also of the ambivalence of the scene: “In this crucial scene, Friel reveals an ambivalence that lies at the heart of the play. Language is shown to be an unnecessary component of communication (an idea Friel will take up again in The Communication Cord) while remaining symbolic of all that is being lost” (Harp/Evans 346).
Still other critics go outside of the play text to question the communication between different cultures. For George Steiner, an expert of linguistics, linguistic difference is very hard to transcend, since it is closely connected with cultural difference. He argues in his After Babel: “Time and again, linguistic differences and the profoundly exasperating inability of
human beings to understand each other have bred hatred and reciprocal contempt…languages
have been, throughout human history, zones of silence to other men and razor-edges of
division…It may be that cultural traditions are more firmly anchored in our syntax than we
realize, and that we shall continue to translate from the past of our individual and social being
whether we would or not” (Steiner 467). Homi Bhabha, on the other hand, argues that
mistranslation applies to all colonial situations, in which the language of the colonizer is
never translated “transparently” into the language of the colonized. And this mistranslation,
which is always transformed and partial, or in Derrida’s words, different and deferred, is
exactly what constitutes the hybridity between the colonizer and the colonized. And Bhabha
sees this mistranslation as a “strategic reversal of the process of domination through
disavowal” (Bhabha 188). Terry Eagleton, on the other hand, sees the mistranslation not as
Bhabha’s “strategic reversal” but as the result of Ireland’s favoring the Irish text even if it is a
mistranslation from English: “[The] failure of assured translation between the two nations is
nowhere more vividly exemplified than in the present-day Irish constitution, an Irish-language text which assumes that in the event of an interpretive conflict between its meaning in Irish and in English, the Irish version will be deemed to take precedence over the English. But the Irish text is widely suspected to be itself a translation from the English; so that, by some Derridean logic of supplementarity, the derivative takes precedence here over the original. If a discrepancy arose from the Irish document having mistranslated the English, then a mistranslation would hold sway over the translated text” (Connoly 77-8). From the critics mentioned above, here we can see that mistranslation can be a purposeful act, as in Owen’s translation of Lancey’s words, and can also be an inevitable result of the cultural difference, as in Yolland’s inability to rename Gaelic place names, and in Maire and Yolland’s communication, which has its brief moments of understanding, but which also shows the barrier between the languages and cultures, since Yolland is killed by people in Baile Beag, and Maire has to give up her desire to leave Ireland with Yolland.
But communication between two cultures is not always so frustrating. Like I mentioned, Friel does not want to write a play about the death of Gaelic, or the futile effort of England to Anglicize Ireland. Rather, he raises questions about whether or not Irishness is dead with the Anglicization, and whether or not Ireland and England can manage to understand each other.
In the end of the play, Friel has Jimmy Jack, the Infant Prodigy, talk about the love between Maire and Yolland:
Jimmy: Do you know the Greek word endogamein? It means to marry within the
tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you
don’t cross those borders casually─both sides get very angry. Now, the
problem is this: Is Athene sufficiently mortal or am I sufficiently godlike
for the marriage to be acceptable to her people and to my people? You
think about that. (Tr 374)
Even though the thought of marrying Athene for love of ancient cultures never enters Friel’s head, and Jimmy Jack’s proficiency of dead languages is not going to help him survive in the new world, we can feel from his words the effect of the colonial change on the characters─even Jimmy Jack has to wake up from his ancient wonderland and think about the possibility of communication between different communities. Also, from what Jimmy Jack says, we cannot tell if communication between two cultures, like that between Maire and Yolland, will be likely to take place, but we feel Friel is hinting at the fact that simply learning a new language cannot complete the job. It also takes two open minds of both sides to “accept the marriage,” which is not impossible but difficult. At the same time, the communication will take place not between the pre-colonial Ireland and England, but within the new context of the postcolonial Ireland. British remapping of Ireland, despite the untranslatable place names, changes the “landscape of facts,” in Hugh’s words. As Steiner says, “Metaphors are new mappings of the world, [and] they reorganize our habitation in reality” (Steiner 23), the English place names might not match the Gaelic story behind each name, but the Irish people have no other way but to accept the fact and learn to make the new place names their home. And by doing so, in time new meaning will come about from the new English place names, and the result is a hybridized state, where two cultures can manage to communicate and learn from each other. This echoes what McGrath says, “the miscognition involved in the renaming process well illustrates how translation produces an entirely new meaning that is neither of one culture nor the other but a new entity that is a hybrid, that duplicates with a difference, that replicates both cultures without being either one,” (McGrath 189-190) or what Bhabha says, “less than one and double” (Bhabha 97).
The hope, the new meaning, the new home, all depend on the effort on the part of the
Irish people to adapt to the change, and this is the third aspect of Friel’s representation of
Irishness. The best example of this is the many lines delivered by Hugh, telling his people to
go out of the nationalist anger and the limits of language, so that they can survive and build new Irishness. For example, Hugh says to the class, “But remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen─to use an image you’ll understand─it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of …facts,” and “Hugh: It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language….We must never cease renewing those images; because once we do, we fossilize” (Tr 351, 373). This shows Hugh’s giving in to the new world, despite the fact that he himself is a symbol of Gaelic cultural heritage, as McGrath says, “Hugh, in other words, understands that the ordnance survey is remapping Ireland in many ways other than geographically and that Gaelic, despite the richness and spiritual qualities he finds so alluring in it, must give way to the political and economic realities of an Anglicized Ireland” (McGrath 191). Here the idea of Hugh’s words may also be taken by Friel from Steiner, who in After Babel discusses how a language can get dead, which is applicable to Gaelic:
In certain civilizations there come epochs in which syntax stiffens, in which the available resources of live perception and restatement wither. Words seem to go dead under the weight of sanctified usage; the frequence and sclerotic force of clichés, of unexamined similes, of worn tropes increases. Instead of acting as a living membrane, grammar and vocabulary becomes a barrier to new feeling. A civilization is imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches, or matches only at certain ritual, arbitrary points, the changing landscape of fact.
(Steiner 190)
Also, in the very end of the play, following Jimmy Jack’s comment about marriage
without the tribe, Hugh starts relating to a story from Virgil’s Aeneid, which to the effect tells
how the goddess of Juno loved a city called Carthage very much, and that she thought this
city should be the capital of all nations. But what actually happened is that the Trojans came to destroy the city. And, in Hugh’s words, “such was─such was the course─such was the course ordained─ordained by fate” (Tr 374). Here we see a direct parallel between the city of Carthage and Baile Beag. The destruction of Carthage by fate makes Hugh lament the inevitable fate of Baile Beag, and of being the colonized. However, McGrath sees this story more than just a lament: “…the irony is that Latin, the language Hugh is quoting and translating, the language that signifies his own erudition, is the language of the conquering Romans; and Virgil wrote the Aeneid not to lament the destruction of Carthage but to celebrate the triumph of Roman civilization” (McGrath 194). Here we can see the flow of world histories: older civilizations were overthrown by Latin-speaking Romans, and after that the language of Latin got dead and replaced by English. It is therefore that the Irish people, rather than lamenting their fate, should learn to speak English and adapt to the change; since no civilization can last forever, and the power relations among countries is in a constant flux, limiting oneself within one culture only leads to quicker death.
Besides Hugh, Maire also tries to keep her hope of learning English, despite the fact that her love with Yolland becomes impossible. Maire shows her determination:
Maire: I’m back again. I set out for somewhere but I couldn’t remember where.
So I came back here.
Hugh: Yes, I will teach you English, Maire Chatach.
Maire: Will you, Master? I must learn it. I need to learn it. (Tr 373-4)
Even though Hugh cannot guarantee that English will help Maire “interpret between
privacies,” this is the only choice. Unlike Maire, Sarah, another female character in the play,
represents the Gaelic culture that is to be replaced. While she tries successfully to speak her
name in the first Act with Manus’s encouragement, she is totally struck dumb by Lancey in
the end of the play. Many critics draw the parallel between Sarah and Cathleen ni Houlihan,
who symbolizes the old Gaelic culture. Her being unable to speak her name in front of Lancey is also seen by most critics as the death of Gaelic and the need for Irish people to learn English for survival.
2McGrath believes that Hugh, rather than Manus, Owen, Yolland, Maire or Sarah, is a closer representative of Friel in his attitude toward the new world brought by the English:
“Hugh is much closer to Friel, who neither accepts a futile allegiance to the old Gaelic traditions (the position of Manus and, in Irish history, of someone like Daniel Corkery and the Irish Ireland tradition); nor does he approve of converting to the culture of the colonial power (the position of Owen and of writers like Shaw and Wilde); nor would he choose the route of exile or emigration (the choice of Maire in the play and of Joyce and Beckett in their lives). Instead Friel would remain in Ireland and reappropriate the English language for Irish culture” (McGrath 195). Through the lines of Hugh, Maire’s determination to learn English no matter what, and Sarah’s inability to respond to the power of the colonizer, we see Friel’s effort to make his own people think about the questions of Irish being replaced by English, place names being renamed, and also of the possibility of reconstructing Irishness within the hybridized postcolonial situation. There have been different opinions about the idea of hybridity in the Irish society from other critics, among whom Tim Gauthier argues that
“Before hybridity can be applied as a theoretical practice, one must recognize what has been lost in the process,” (Kerwin 348) while some others criticize Friel’s hybridized Irish society is a historical blasphemy of the Gaelic past. But learning to speak in the hybridized context is the only choice for the Irish people, because it is, in McGrath’s words, “a future in which the rewriting of colonial narratives and subjectivities becomes possible” (McGrath 193).
In this chapter I discussed the three aspects of Friel’s representation of Irishness in Translations, which are the inner destructive factors in the Irish society, the hybridized state
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