The Landscape of Literature

Last Sunday I went with the local outdoor club, called the "Outdoor Pursuits Club", to visit the Burren in County Clare. The Burren is the desolate area on the west coast where a limestone escarpment meets the sea. We had to drive through a town called Ennis to get there, and I realized that a reel I was learning was called "the Siege of Ennis" and there we were driving through it, so I whistled that to myself for awhile. Then we had to drive through Lindisvoorna, and there was a sign that said "Lindisvoorna 15 km" and I remembered that I know a jig called "The Road to Lindisvoorna", so I whistled that one. Once we arrived at the Burren, I remembered that there is a very mournful song called "the West Coast of Clare" and, hey, that's where we were. So I sang that to myself as I walked around. That evening, on our way home from the day out, we stopped in a town called Doolin to have a pint, and there were two accordian players, a bodhran player, and a guitar player having a bit of a session. They played the Siege of Ennis and the Road to Lindisvoorna. It was wonderful to look around and be in the very places where these tunes came from. I am more and more convinced of the power of landscape in the evocation of art. I was so excited about this idea that I proposed it for my paper this morning in the Literary Revival class. The Professor (who I think is younger than me) raised his eyebrows, looked at me from the sides of his glasses, and said, "Okay: that's an interesting idea." I guess it was off the beaten literary track, and when I went to do the research, I found that it is not the lit folks writing much about this, it is cultural geographers and tourist industry people! So, I am very interested to put together a ten minute (ha ha) presentation on the idea for the lit class on Yeat's evocation of landscape in a romantic (re)construction of Irish landscape during the 19th and early 20th century Irish Literary Revival.

Anyway, the Burren is this limestone landscape that is sort of like the Slickrock area of Utah, only white, not red. This is where the cliffs of Moher are, which you must now pay to visit. However, just down the coast, in view of the Cliffs of Moher, it is free to climb down the cliffs and see the raging sea. It was a grey day with a stiff wind (they call it a "fresh breeze" here) and short periods of drenching horizontal rain blowing through (they call them "spotty showers"). We were rock climbing on the sea cliffs. The rock was sharp limestone cracks, and it was great good fun to climb. I got bored waiting in line for a belay, so I took some crash pads out to sort of boulder around. Some of the Gnarly Climber Dudes (Czech) joined me. One guy was very enthusiastic. He jammed his hands right into the cracks to motor right along. This was a mistake because the rock was pretty sharp, and instead of leaving a trail of chalk along the route, he left a trail of blood. When I pointed this out to him, as I was grossed out about having to follow what had become a rather slimey route, he looked at his abraded knuckles and seemed rather impressed with himself. He wandered off comtemplating, but not treating, the backs of his oozing hands.

A small group walked up further into the hills, and there were long stretches of dry-laid stone walls enclosing nothing. They were just walls stretching up the hillsides. These were left over from the 1840's during the famine time when the Whig government offered food for the poor, but they had to do work projects to earn the food since they did not want to seem to be handing out charity to starving people as that might encourage loafing or sloth or something sinful. It was stated in the government policy that the works could not have any practical purpose. If they did, then they would have had to pay wages for the work, and this was charity. No wait, it wasn't charity, but it couldn't be real work. It was a complicated and confusing time for everybody. Anyway, here were these walls, and it was clear that it took a lot of effort to make them. It was very sad to think about in the grey driving rain. The song called "the west coast of Clare" starts out: "Sorrow and Saddness/bitterness, grief/ memories I have of you/won't leave me in peace."