Chun Doirne: Rogha Aisti by Alan Titley, Lagan Press, 203pp, £5.95 in UK
This collection of critical essays comes over as a general challenge. "Put them up," the title says, and from the very first of the eight pieces, "The War against Criticism", Alan Titley lays in with gusto. He is a skilful and lusty wielder of the literary shillelagh and, like all such, enjoys a good fight. His blows are aimed, however, at his opponents' arguments, never at the person. What is being said is always more important to him than who is saying it. This is rare and wonderful in Irish literary debate.
Titley takes on all contenders, from literary theorists - among whom the present reviewer is haplessly included - to trendy poets and pseudo-liberals. He stands resolutely for the independence of literature and for the individuality and individual freedom of the writer. In the final essay, on Merriman's The Midnight Court - which recounts some of the bizarre correspondence in this paper following Frank O'Connor's translation - he fights "from every inch of my heart out" for the autonomy of the work of literature, for its existence in its own right, and not as a mere tract which can be plundered for whatever social, political, historical or religious meanings seem appropriate.
Also, he stands for the independence of both Irish and English literature - they are not symbiotic twins, still less is the latter heir, legitimate or otherwise, to the former. The two are distinct, just as the two languages in which they are written are distinct.
Even so, Titley is not shy of taking on the pretensions of some Anglo-Irish writers and writing, including "Syngespeak". It is Frank O'Connor's comments and theories, however, which come in for the most severe bashing. Such is the power of much of Titley's argument that O'Connor actually appears a soft target - particularly when quoted verbatim - as well as appearing somewhat self-important, and - how can this be? - provincial. Amazingly, O'Connor and many of his generation of writers in English saw Irish literature only in terms of the language in which they themselves wrote. Titley manages to show just how disingenuous their self-propagandising was.
Needless to say, he also wrings a few more changes from The Bell. His argument against be-reasonable-do-it-my-way liberalism can be summed up in his quote from the magazine's first editorial of 1940: "We ban only lunatics and sourbellies. We are absolutely inclusive." But for the fact that Titley would laugh at the word, we could call this a small piece of "deconstruction" - critically exposing the contradictions inherent in a text.
His perspicacity is beyond question. He has little trouble in disposing of the "racist candy-floss" which comprises the idea of the wild imaginative Celt as opposed to the dull, practical Anglo-Saxon, as it comes to us from Polybius to Cambrensis, from Spenser to Arnold, Eliot, and Anthony Burgess.
He is interesting on Irish censorship - as well as Aosdana - in his essay on "The Writer and the State". He has unfashionable views, trying as he does to put things in perspective. Irish censorship was by no means exceptional in the Europe of the Thirties and Forties. To their credit, censors generally believe in the power of books - power to behead someone or, worse still, damn his soul. Censorship is the tribute the State pays to literature. Nowadays, however, we are so liberal that a thought, an emotion, be it ever so revolutionary, beautiful, or detestable, is little more than an ornament. Literature is now safe, aseptic, disembodied.
For all his animus against the pretensions of indifferent pluralism, Titley gives no succour to the reactionaries. No more than Shakespeare or Pasternak does he wish to see "art tongue-tied by authority". There are two positions the writer can adopt towards the State. One is marked by Senator Yeats's fascist marching song; the other by James Joyce's opposition to all States - style above all else.
Of course, Titley aligns himself with the latter. He would like to be recognised from and for his style. Consequently, he plays with words like a bold boy at the back of the class playing with chewing gum. Moulding and stretching their malleable sweetness is indeed enjoyable, but half the pleasure, surely, is annoying the teacher.
Yet for all his froth and fireworks, Titley is a serious and at times profound commentator. As he says, "If what I am saying is a pack of lies, why the big silence?" Since the founding of the State, Irish has formed part of the Leaving Certificate Examination. It should not be beyond the capabilities of many Irish academics, for example, to engage the arguments in this challenging book. Or is it more comfortable to listen to the voices of those with whom we agree, who speak, as it were, the same language? Are not all the rest, after all, either only lunatics or sourbellies?
Liam Mac Coil is a novelist and critic