eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 43/2

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
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Narr Verlag Tübingen
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Ireland’s economic boom in the Celtic Tiger era coincided with a memory boom in Irish literary productions of the time. In this regard, recent analyses on memory in the field of Irish literary studies have mainly focused on different memory genres in contemporary Irish literature. Yet, in this memory and genre debate, Irish poetry has been largely neglected. This is particularly the case with the “celebrity of verse form” in contemporary Irish poetry: the sonnet. Thus, despite being utilized by many new Irish poets as a poetic vehicle to express various perspectives on the past, so far, there is no study on the specific potential of the Irish sonnet as a memory genre. This paper introduces one use of the sonnet as memory genre by exemplarily analyzing three poems by prize-winning poet Iggy McGovern. It shall be argued that McGovern uses the sonnet as a memory genre to present involuntary memories. This presentation of involuntary memories, it will further be claimed, becomes an instrument for critically commenting on recent developments in Celtic Tiger society.
2018
432 Kettemann

Fourteen Lines of Memory

2018
Daniel Becker
’ Ireland‟s economic boom in the Celtic Tiger era coincided with a memory boom in Irish literary productions of the time. In this regard, recent analyses on memory in the field of Irish literary studies have mainly focused on different memory genres in contemporary Irish literature. Yet, in this memory and genre debate, Irish poetry has been largely neglected. This is particularly the case with the “celebrity of verse form” in contemporary Irish poetry: the sonnet. Thus, despite being utilized by many new Irish poets as a poetic vehicle to express various perspectives on the past, so far, there is no study on the specific potential of the Irish sonnet as a memory genre. This paper introduces one use of the sonnet as memory genre by exemplarily analyzing three poems by prize-winning poet Iggy McGovern. It shall be argued that McGovern uses the sonnet as a memory genre to present involuntary memories. This presentation of involuntary memories, it will further be claimed, becomes an instrument for critically commenting on recent developments in Celtic Tiger society. Even though the canonical texts of what is today labeled „memory studies‟ can be located throughout the twentieth century (from Maurice Halbwachs, to Aby Warburg, Pierre Nora, and Jan Assmann), the field of Irish Studies has only recently opened its academic gates to the notions of (cultural) memory. More to the point, only in the last ten to fifteen years, Irish Studies scholars have begun to slowly adapt memory theories to gain new perspectives on Ireland‟s past and present. While on some occasions the constructivist nature of Irish history writing has already been pointed out in a few studies around the turn of the century - in particular - 102 Daniel Becker in the realm of a revisionist turn in Irish historiography 1 - the „proper‟ introduction of specific memory concepts was spearheaded by studies such as Ian McBride‟s in 2001, Eberhart Bort‟s in 2004, or Mark McCarthy‟s ’ in 2005. These studies managed to lay the foundation for what, from today‟s perspective, became a persisting memory boom in Irish Studies. More recently, Oona Frawley‟s four-volume conceptualization of a specific “Irish Cultural Memory” (xvi) in (2011-2014) and Emile Pine‟s success with (2011) show the firm establishment of memory concepts in the cultural analysis of Ireland. In this context, it is not surprising to see that the same enthusiasm for memory studies has also „infected‟ one of the largest areas in the field: the analysis of Irish literature. Regarding the study of memory, Irish literary studies recently have mainly followed an international memory trend in analyzing so called memory genres: literary genres, in other words, that, with their specific set of genre features, serve as “conventionalized „formulas‟ for encoding versions of the past” (Erll 2011: 292; trans. D.B.) 2 . Since the publication of Hendrik van Gorp‟s and Ursula Mussarra- Schroeder‟s in 2000, the close interdependence of genre and memory is well-established in the field of literary memory studies. As a “guide to literary composition” (Van Gorp/ Mussara-Schroeder 2000: i) genre also functions as a guide to memory composition, making memory, by its very nature, as Astrid Erll claims, an inherently form of accessing the past (cf. Erll 2004: 4): the form of how one perceives the past is always inextricably bound to the form of the text (i.e. the genre) in which it is mediated. Thus, each memory genre becomes a literary scaffold that provides a particular formula for talking about the past. Yet, by looking at existing research on particular memory genres in Irish literature so far, one can see an imbalance in the attention given to individual genres in the memory and genre debate: analyses of genre and memory in Irish literature have mostly focused either on traditional narrative memory genres and their prose narration of the past (cf. Lynch 2009; Friberg et al. 2007) or on drama and memory as a performative act (cf. Wulff 2009; Collins/ Caulfield 2014). Poetry, on the other hand, as the most formalized, self-referential and structurally dense of the three major genres of literature (cf. Müller-Zettelmann 2000) has only been given a 1 Cf. Brian Walker (1996). ’ ; Patrick O‟Mahony/ Gerard Delanty (1998). (1998); David Lloyd (1999) . 2 In German: “Zweitens dienen bestimmte Gattungen, wie Autobiographie, Biographie oder Epos, als konventionalisierte „Formulare‟ zur Kodierung von Vergangenheitsversionen (‚Gedächtnisgattungen‟)“. 103 Fourteen Lines of Memory marginal position in the genre and memory debate; particularly regarding what Selina Guinness calls “the new Irish poets” (2004: 14), such as David Wheatley, Leanne O‟Sullivan or Mary O‟Donoghue 3 . This essay is a first attempt to counter this lack of research on recent Irish poetry and its diverse memory formulas. Given the spatial restrictions of the present format, the paper will only look at one of the more fashionable subgenres in Ireland‟s poetic scene today: the sonnet. Furthermore, the paper will contribute to a more thorough understanding of the “the new Irish poets” by exclusively focusing on the work of contemporary Irish poet Iggy McGovern who, in all of his vastly popular collections so far, (2005), (2010), (2013) and (2017), uses the sonnet form extensively. It shall be argued that in McGovern‟s use of the sonnet, among other functions, the fourteen lines serve as a formula for encoding involuntary memories. Thus, McGovern uses the sonnet genre to display memories that have been spontaneously and unwillingly triggered in a specific scenario in the present. On this basis, it shall be furthermore argued that this potential of the sonnet to present spontaneous memories in relation to the present context in which they have been triggered becomes an important tool for McGovern to critically comment upon various aspects of Ireland‟s Celtic Tiger society, including its secularization, its blatant consumerism, its business ethics and its changing relationship to the past. The paper proceeds in two steps: after a brief comment on the sonnet in contemporary Irish poetry, the first part defines the concept of involuntary memory and elaborates on the sonnet‟s general genre potential to carefully depict this specific form of accessing the past. In the second part, these theoretical considerations shall be put into practice with the help of three examples from McGovern‟s poetic output. As pointed out above, the analysis will particularly focus on how McGovern utilizes the sonnet as a means for reflecting upon Ireland‟s changing society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. 3 Thus, while some fruitful approaches to poetry and memory exist for pre-Celtic Tiger poets such as Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, or John Montague (e.g. Klein 2007), the "new Irish poets", who published their first collections in the radically changed environment of Celtic Tiger Ireland, have mostly been left out of the genre and memory picture. As such, for example, newer publications on poetry like the from 2012, Nigel Alderman‟s and C.D. Blanton‟s 2009 essay collection or Pat Boran‟s of the same year do not include the insights of memory studies and genre theory in their otherwise extensive discussions on contemporary Irish poetry. 104 Daniel Becker Despite the sheer pluralism of poetic subgenres existing in contemporary Irish poetry today, the sonnet seems to retain a firm hold on its seat in the canon of Irish poetic forms. Starting with prominent examples in W.B. Yeats‟ , the sonnet form soon became a popular poetic form in twentieth century Irish poetry, as exemplified in its extensive use by Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney or the overwhelming number of 224 sonnets in Brendan Kennelly‟s classic collection (cf. Gillis 2012: 567). More importantly, in recent years, in particular in the wake of the Celtic Tiger at the turn of the century, another wave of enthusiastic Irish sonneteers, such as Tom French, Caitrina O‟Reilly or David Wheatley contributed greatly to the advent of another, and so far unprecedented, boom in sonnet writing. According to Alan Gillis, “by the 2010s, it might be easier to count the Irish poets who do not write them [i.e. sonnets] with regularity” (2012: 567). He argues that, by now, Ireland‟s poetic landscape is “saturated with sonnets” and demonstrates that the sonnet has become the “celebrity of verse form” (ibid.). One reason for the sonnet‟s most recent success as a “celebrity of verse form” might be attributed to its frequent use in exploring the past in various ways. Coinciding with a more general memory boom in Irish culture during the Celtic Tiger era (cf. Pine 2011; Whelan 2004), a whole array of sonnets written since then serve as poetic platforms for expressing all sorts of memories. Thus, recent Irish sonnets deal broadly with the past in various forms, ranging from discussions of family history in “Grandfather” by Harry Clifton or “The Omen” by John McAuliffe, to national history in “The Scar” by Tom French, and Dublin‟s urban history in David Wheatley‟s sonnet cycle “Sonnets for James Clarence Mangan”. The sonnet, one might consequently argue, is successively becoming a memory genre in its own right in Irish literature that, despite its strict rules of composition, appears capable of offering a whole array of memory formulas in a rapidly changing Irish culture. One of the numerous memory formulas associated with the contemporary Irish sonnet can be perfectly exemplified in Iggy McGovern‟s poetry. Several of his sonnets, as argued above, showcase the sonnet‟s ability to depict involuntary memories. In order to properly conceptualize this formula, one first needs to clarify what is meant by involuntary memory. For that matter, first some general aspects of memory as an active process 105 Fourteen Lines of Memory shall be discussed, before, in this framework, more specific features of the process of involuntary memory will be analyzed. Regarding memory , one argument re-appears regularly in current definitions: it is the conviction that memory is not an authentic retrieval of what „actually‟ happened in the past, but rather a genuinely reconstructive and interpretive act influenced by personal, political and/ or cultural factors in the present. Andreas Huyssen, for example, states that [h]uman memory may well be an anthropological given, but closely tied as it is to the ways a culture constructs and lives its temporality the forms memory will take are invariably contingent and subject to change. (1995: 2) Memory is inherently founded upon an insurmountable gap between what „actually‟ happened in the past and how the present perspective interprets the past. In that regard, Michael Crang states that “the past is not an immutable or independent object. Rather it is endlessly revised from our present position” (qtd. in Collins/ Caulfield 2014: 5). As such, memory can exclusively provide of the past and the present context, in which an act of memory takes place, serves as the catalyst and center of attributing meaning and form to a reconstruction. Regarding the importance of the present context, Paul A. Cohen even speaks about the “mysterious power” that the present possesses over memory as a reconstructive process, since, depending on the perspective, a remembered version of the past can bend or even break historical facts to be considered as acceptable in the present (cf. Cohen 2014: xiii). This context-sensitivity of memory becomes even more apparent when discussing the specific case of memory. In contrast to planned acts of memory, as, for instance, portrayed in the institutionalized form of public commemoration, the term „involuntary memory‟ refers to a spontaneous recollection of a past situation that has been coincidentally (i.e. non-intentionally) triggered by one or more situational cues. Like with other forms of memory, here as well, the question of how (and what of) the past is spontaneously recollected depends on the present context in which this recollection has been triggered. In that sense, Gerald Echterhoff, for instance, stresses the importance of the of memory for any involuntary recollection of the past. As such, Echterhoff points out, next to internal cognitive information - referring to the fragmentary memory traces of former sensory experiences that have been stored in one‟s cognitive memory system over time - the process of involuntary memory is predominantly defined by external conditions (cf. Echterhoff 2004: 67), most prominently emphasized by the pivotal role play in spontaneously making sense of the past. A cue can be defined as any material object, place, image or language item encountered in the present that an individual has already similarly encountered in a past 106 Daniel Becker situation and that is now „loaded‟ with a certain mnemonic association. Thus, for example, an old toy someone rediscovers by chance in the present can serve as a cue to spontaneously trigger memories of a childhood episode in which this (or a similar) toy played a role in one way or another. A cue, therefore, is a common structural denominator in two temporally distinct situations that directly juxtaposes the past to the present. In this context, Echterhoff argues, a memory cue does not merely function as a neutral stimulus in the present to set off a ready-made memory reaction but becomes an important part in how existing memory traces, triggered by the cue, are interpreted and (re)arranged into a coherent memory episode (cf. Echterhoff 2004: 67). From this perspective, the cue can be defined as a central part for attributing meaning to the past in involuntary memories. Yet, cues are only one element of the involuntary memory picture. Which version of a past situation is triggered by a cue does not only depend on the cue itself but also on how concrete cues interact with other situational factors in the present. In other words: the cue does not appear in isolation, but constantly partakes in a conglomerate of other external conditions that are also relevant for the process of involuntary memory. Without going into details here, these additional aspects may range from prevailing social memory discourses (e.g. what can and cannot be remembered in the speaker‟s society? ) to the communicative situation (e.g. who speaks to whom about the past and what is their relationship? ), to an individual‟s emotional state in the moment of recollection (e.g. the same event might be spontaneously reconstructed differently in different personal moods). With this additional differentiation in mind, involuntary memory, despite of its spontaneous nature, must be understood as an active, complex process of signification that is defined by the constant interaction between (1) general situational aspects, (2) concrete cues and (3) internal cognitive memory traces. After these brief remarks on the phenomenon of involuntary memory, what genre-specific potential can the sonnet offer to depict this process, in which various factors constantly interact? To start with, the question can be answered by briefly looking at the sonnet‟s historical roots. By the time Francesco Petrarca wrote his famous in the fourteenth century, and the sonnet was on its way to gain an international reputation (cf. Kemp 2002: 12), the fourteen-line form and its distinctive features had already been well-established in the canon of Italian/ Sicilian poetry. Thus, since legal deputy Giacomo da Lentini had first introduced the form at the Sicilian court of Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II. in the first half of the thirteenth century, the sonnet quickly became a popular mode of poetic expression in the following decades and was adapted 107 Fourteen Lines of Memory by three generations of poets prior to Petrarca. As such, after da Lentini had produced his sonnets exclusively dealing with love - a theme that would accompany the sonnet throughout its successful history - sonneteers like Guittonne d‟Arezzo, the „master of sonnets‟, or Rustico di Filippo broadened the sonnet‟s topical spectrum to also include political and moral issues of the latter half of the century. Finally, representatives of the , such as Dante Alighieri, more explicitly paved the way for Petrarca‟s romantic wooing of Laura. Without going into details on the exact developmental steps the sonnet took in its early stages 4 , it is most important for the paper at hand to remark that the sonnet in its early development, next to being influenced by the courtship tradition of Sicilian troubadours and their use of the stanza (cf. Borgstedt 2009: 124), was connected to a broader rhetorical and scholastic tradition of the thirteen century (cf. Schulze 1979: 333). Thus, some critics point out, the sonnet‟s genesis as a new poetic genre must be understood in the specific cultural and intellectual climate of the time, when rhetorical prowess, scholastic and mathematical exactness and, more generally, what Scott Brewster labels the “art of persuasion” were held in high esteem (2009: 43). In that sense, not only does Wilhelm Pötters describe the sonnet as the poetic equivalent to geometry - an interest most prevalent at Frederick‟s court (cf. Pötters 1998) - but also do critics like Michael Spiller claim that “[t]he sonnet is shaped at its beginning as a instrument, so to speak: for pleading, arguing, [and] asserting” (1992: 17; original emphasis). As already becomes apparent, for example, in da Lentini‟s sonnet „debate‟ with the Abadate da Tivoli on the contemporary love discourse and the objective nature of love more generally (cf. Borgstedt 2009: 153-154), the sonnet enters contemporary court society as a literary vehicle for elegant persuasion and argumentative purposes, used to decide who can more precisely capture and describe a complex concept. Already at its beginnings, therefore, as in da Lentini‟s case, the sonnet is “a space marked out by lexical connectives indicating and joining the stages of an argument. It is a theatre for intense small arguments, or persuasions, involving a progression of ideas” (Spiller 1992: 18). By combining a precise mathematical formal structure with the will of persuasively “coming to the point” (Spiller 1992: 11), the sonnet represents a rhetorical template for analyzing and epistemologically permeating an argument and/ or a complex subject matter (e.g. love, virtues, art and the process of writing; the latter mostly found in sonnets of early Romanticism), since the fourteen-line form, not unlike an analysis of a geometrical 4 A comprehensive discussion of the sonnet‟s early development can be found in Thomas Borgstedt‟s , as well as in Ulrich Mölk‟s “Die sizilianische Lyrik” (see full references in bibliography). 108 Daniel Becker pattern, can portray the logic behind a complex phenomenon by dissecting the relationship between its individual components. Formally speaking, the sonnet features at least two elements for fulfilling this task at hand: not only does the limit of fourteen lines (ten to eleven syllables each) demand a precise manner of expression, logic and argumentation, but also does the division of its structure into two parts (octave + sestet), three parts (e.g. octave + tercet/ tercet) or four parts (e.g. quatrain/ quatrain + quatrain/ couplet) and its reliance on a / turning point, make it possible to divide the content discussed into its individual components. As such, referring to August Wilhelm Schlegel‟s argument that the sonnet expresses the universal principles of connection and separation (cf. Borgstedt 2012: 42), this poetic form has the potential to dynamically attribute single formal units (e.g. octave to sestet; quatrains to tercets etc.) to different content elements, while, at the same time, keeping their respective relationship and connection in focus in the overall fourteen-line structure. This formal arrangement, as Spiller furthermore points out, is in fact so important for the sonnet, that the sonnet‟s content also needs to show a similar logic of relational components to be successfully portrayed: “it seems clear that both proportion [e.g. six/ eight] and extension [fourteen lines] affect the kind of discursive life that can be lived [in the sonnet]” (1992: 4). This is the point where involuntary memory as a complex interaction of present situational factors and respective memory versions of the past comes in. It is the simultaneity of individual components and complex structures that makes the sonnet capable of depicting involuntary memory as a relational process of present influences, cues and specific versions of a past episode. It becomes a fitting lyrical vehicle for acting as a memory genre since it can examine various situational factors as relational parts of an overall memory process. More concretely, Michael Spiller‟s description of the sonnet‟s relational structure - “six is to eight as conclusion is to proposition, or as development and summing up is to statement” (1992: 5) - fits Iggy McGovern‟s use of the sonnet where present and past function as stimulus and result of a memory process. The sonnet can illuminate the different elements playing a role in involuntary memory in individual formal units, while, simultaneously, portraying their interaction in the overall fourteen-line-structure. The sonnet, therefore, becomes the poetic place to elucidate which aspects trigger and relate to what form of memory, and how, more generally, past and present interact in the creation of involuntary memories. 109 Fourteen Lines of Memory ’ “Joggers” You come upon them suddenly cornering the Rugby Pitch, a phalanx of old warriors who murmur economic chat while turning as a single swarm on syncopated, pounding feet; an early morning phantom mist rising from their banded breath recalls the cattle at Dowra Fair that drove us in a pub doorway; emerging slowly when they‟d passed to marvel at our brush with death, my uncle stared hard after them then checked his pocket watch. (McGovern : 12) The sonnet‟s potential as a vehicle for involuntary memories, as described above, can be traced in various of Iggy McGovern‟s sonnets. “Joggers”, for example, negotiates the interaction between the different factors involved in the involuntary memory process in a classic octave/ sestet structure. More specifically, in this formal setting, the initial octave reflects the present situation (ll. 1-6) in which a memory of the past is spontaneously triggered by a cue (ll. 7-8), while the ensuing sestet describes the speaker‟s personal memory resulting from this situation (ll. 9-14). Like in all instances of involuntary memory, the present-day situation displayed in “Joggers”, as described in the first eight lines, is paramount to the way in which the past is remembered in the second half of the poem. The poem starts with the speaker‟s encounter with a group of joggers “cornering the Rugby Pitch” (l. 2): You come upon them suddenly cornering the Rugby Pitch, a phalanx of old warriors who murmur economic chat while turning as a single swarm on syncopated, pounding feet; (ll. 1-6) As they quickly approach the speaker (“you come upon them suddenly”), he/ she identifies the joggers as representatives of a Celtic Tiger economic elite, who “murmur economic chat” and who, even in the way of doing their physical exercises, are described as stereotypical members of a calculating, rational and efficient business culture in early twenty-first cen- 110 Daniel Becker tury Ireland. They move with the precision of a military formation (“a phalanx of old warriors”) that is “turning as a single swarm/ on syncopated, pounding feet”. It is this image of a tightly-knit collective, in association with the speaker‟s notion of personal threat (they are perceived as “warriors” after all), that becomes the structural „blueprint‟ for the following memory episode. More specifically, as the speaker stands face to face with members of Ireland‟s new, hard-edged , as the general discursive framework of this situation, the “early morning phantom mist/ rising from their banded breath” functions as the concrete visual cue to trigger the memory of a past situation in which the speaker was equally confronted with a threatening collective. In that sense, the speaker‟s sensory and emotional perception of the present scene shapes how the past is remembered in the sestet 5 . The “phantom mist” blurs the lines between present and past - as it, formally speaking, blurs the lines between octave and sestet in the enjambment in lines eight and nine - and the speaker instantly recalls the cattle at Dowra Fair that drove us in a pub doorway; emerging slowly when they‟d passed to marvel at our brush with death, my uncle stared hard after them then checked his pocket watch. (ll. 9-14) The present situation resembles the speaker‟s childhood experience of nearly being killed by wild “cattle at Dowra Fair” (l.9) that left the speaker and his uncle behind speechless. Furthermore, the speaker also remembers the immediate aftermath of the threatening encounter: as they emerge from the doorway, the uncle “stared hard after them/ then checked his pocket watch”; a gesture suggesting the uncle‟s attempt to regain control and stability after this sudden and unexpected confrontation. Without going to further details here, as pointed out above, in McGovern‟s sonnets this depiction of involuntary memory as an interaction between different elements is used to critically reflect on various developments in Celtic Tiger Ireland. In this regard, in poems such as “Joggers”, one feature of the involuntary memory process becomes particularly important: involuntary memory is based on a structural similarity 5 The dynamic relationship between the various factors in the process of memory is additionally reflected on the sonnet‟s formal level, as can, for example, be seen in the sonnet‟s rhythmical composition: the steady and regular rhythm used to support the joggers‟ perfectly coordinated movements in the octave (cf. l.6) is continued in the sestet to describe the movement of the cattle. As much as the present situation serves as the blueprint for the past, the rhythm of the octave „dictates‟ the rhythm in the sestet. 111 Fourteen Lines of Memory between a situation in the past and the present, as spontaneously connected by a cue. In McGovern‟s case, as shall be argued, this spontaneous juxtaposition of two temporally distinct situations, which lies at the core of involuntary memory, is used as an instrument for comparing Celtic Tiger Ireland to a more traditional Ireland. Thus, when looking more closely at the two situations in “Joggers”, the interaction between the octave and the sestet is not merely the spontaneous juxtaposition of two similar personal experiences in past and present. Rather, each situation also contains semantic markers emblematic for the Irish cultural context in which the respective personal experiences are set: while the speaker‟s personal memory of the past is marked by the semiotics of a rural (“cattle at Dowra Fair”), and communal/ familial Ireland (“pub”; “my uncle”), his/ her present-day situation hints at the fast-paced Ireland (“joggers”; “suddenly”) that is dominated by the discourse of economic efficiency (see “economic chat” and the joggers‟ efficient movements). As will be shown below, the scene from rural Ireland stands as a poetic mirror against which the flaws of present Celtic Tiger Ireland are uncovered. In this context, therefore, it is not merely the present that influences the past, but also the past that now reflects on the present. More to the point, the flaws that are uncovered in a comparative manner concern the ethical realm of Celtic Tiger culture. In that sense, the speaker‟s comparison of the Celtic Tiger business men with animals gone wild, next to constituting an unflattering comparison in its own right, resembles the discursive tropes often used by cultural critics criticizing Ireland‟s corroding sense of community and the boom in „business ethics‟ during the Celtic Tiger years. The argument goes as follows: as Ireland swiftly transformed to become a “nation of entrepreneurs” (Kerrigan 2012: 3), Ireland‟s social and cultural values took a turn to the worse. Thus, as Emily O‟Reilly famously states, with Irish society being enthralled by its sudden economic success, it turned into a moral “vulgar fest” that was manifested in “the obscene parading of obscene wealth, the debasement of our civic life […], the fracturing of our community life” (qtd. in Fahey/ Russell/ Whelan 2007: 2). Similarly, in their study (2005), Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling trace a substantial change in Irish cultural values during the Celtic Tiger years, from familial care and communal bonds to the discourse of competitive individualism. In their opinion, this individualist shift quickly achieved a dominant status in Irish society that made it “morally binding, for to doubt, or not to participate, or to underperform, is to let the side down” (145). With this new focus on competitiveness and individual profit in mind, Ireland, other critics argue, was dominated by the “restricted vocabulary of the business studies” (Ging/ Cronin/ Kirby 2009: 4; see “economic chat”). This economic fixation became most apparent in the context of a new social elite of property developers, managers and bankers that prospered in Ireland‟s booming 112 Daniel Becker economic sector: as Fintan O‟Toole claims, the business sector of that time resembled a wild west setting where an „anything is possible‟ mindset and a Darwinian struggle for survival went hand in hand (cf. O‟Toole 2010: 138). In “Joggers”, the comparison of the business men with cattle poetically underlines the ruthlessness of this new business ethos in Celtic Tiger Ireland. More specifically, set on the racing tracks around the “Rugby Pitch”, the poem metaphorically comments on the new social and economic elite that is now (quite literally) „running‟ Ireland. The instinctual behavior of actual cattle without a care for its surroundings, as presented in the past scene, is still maintained and displayed by this elite in the present. Like cattle, the juxtaposition suggests, these businessmen narrowly follow their instincts (for profit and efficiency) without minding any damage that might ensue. In this context, the comparison to cattle adds a strongly Darwinian touch to the description of Celtic Tiger Ireland. The business men‟s symbolic threat (“warriors”) in the octave is enhanced by a component of actual physical threat in the sestet, as the speaker adds the immediate personal “brush with death” to the description. The image of the cattle, therefore, is used here as a familiar cultural script to grasp and understand the new business ethos more closely. The Celtic Tiger is a battleground, where any obstacle in the way (like the speaker in both situations) is prone to be „run over‟ by representatives of a new Irish culture that leaves the speaker alienated and dislocated, since he/ she can neither return to the past (since it is gone for good), nor participate in the present climate: caught in their “restricted vocabulary” (cf. “economic chat”), these joggers do not leave any room for dissenters. Confronted with this closed collective, the observing speaker is positioned in the role of „the other‟ that is now driven out of the way. Instead, the speaker, instantly faced with this new element in Irish culture (the joggers appear “suddenly”), can only “marvel” at his/ her “brush” with representatives of an utterly changed contemporary Ireland. “Arrival” In “Arrival”, from McGovern‟s second volume , the classic octave/ sestet structure is replaced by a tripartite composition of two quintets framing a quartet. O happy accident to have discovered The Grand Hotel, the kind of place where gents will don a jacket and tie for Dinner, and waiters dance around on tippy-toes with trays of hall-marked silver and good delft. Authentic re-creation of „The Big House‟ where your grandfather was head gardener, 113 Fourteen Lines of Memory his child - your mother - buffing each stair-rod till she could see in it the very face you meet these days at every turn-about: here, playing Patience on a sunny terrace; there, linked as far as this low seaside-fence, now threatening a round of Crazy Golf if it keeps good, before the week is out. (McGovern , 41) In this structural framework, the first five lines describe the general setting of the present situation. In lines six to nine, the speaker spontaneously reflects on the family history of a nameless you-persona. Finally, the last five lines return to the present and continue the description of the present setting as commenced at the beginning of the poem. Like in “Joggers”, the present setting in “Arrival” plays an important role for how the past is remembered at the center of the poem. To begin with, “Arrival” is the first sonnet in a five-sonnet cycle called “The Five-Day Break”, in which each sonnet provides a brief day-to-day glimpse into the holiday experiences of an anonymous „you‟-tourist. The first sonnet, as the title suggests, describes the tourist‟s arrival at “The Grand Hotel” (l. 2) at the beginning of his/ her holidays. In this context, the poem‟s communicative situation is particularly noteworthy: it is not the tourist that describes his/ her own impressions of the present locale, but a covert speaker that provides these impressions (as well as the memory episode, see below) for the tourist. Given the touristic backdrop of the sonnet sequence, the speaker in “Arrival”, one might argue, resembles the voice of the hotel‟s brochure that promotes all the advantages of staying at this place to a new customer personified by the you-addressee. In this regard, the speaker describes the hotel as an exciting spectacle that dazzles the you-tourist with its sheer elegance and luxury: O happy accident to have discovered the Grand Hotel, the kind of place where gents will don a jacket and tie for Dinner, and waiters dance around on tippy-toes with trays of hall-marked silver and good delft. (ll. 1-5) With waiters dancing around, men wearing suit and tie, and “trays of hall-marked silver” being presented, this hotel is shown as a splendid appearance in every single visual detail. This focus on the grandeur of the hotel subsequently also informs the memory episode triggered in the following four lines. Thus, the speaker‟s glimpse at the past in lines seven to nine - activated by another advertising cue that proclaims that this hotel is an “[a]uthentic re-creation of „The Big House‟” (l. 6) - adopts the motif of visual grandeur and underlines the hotel‟s present appearance from a 114 Daniel Becker historical perspective: in connection to the visual appearance of the present place, the memory episode accordingly only contains information related to the visual appearance of the original Big House. In that sense, the grandfather and mother of the you-character are only remembered for their work contributions - the grandfather personally surveilling the house‟s surroundings, and the mother caring for the perfect cleanliness within - to make the original place as beautiful as it is in its reconstructed state today: Authentic re-creation of „The Big House‟ where your grandfather was head gardener, his child - your mother - buffing each stair-rod till she could see in it the very face. (ll. 6-9) The positive perception of the hotel in the present, in other words, also influences the positive perspective on the original Big House in the past. Finally, in an enjambment between line nine and ten, the speaker instantly returns to the present to allow the tourist a glimpse at the free-time activities this place has to offer, such as “Patience on a sunny terrace” (l. 11) or “a round of Crazy Golf” (l. 13). Given this close interaction between a situation in the present and a memory episode spontaneously triggered in this situation, how does the poem‟s display of an involuntary memory process factor into a critical perspective on Celtic Tiger Ireland? For starters, the juxtaposition of a past and a present situation, inherent to the spontaneous recollection of memory, is the main aspect to be taken into consideration. Thus, while the present Ireland is defined in touristic terms (see below), the reference to “„The Big House‟” evokes the broader cultural dimension of Ireland under British and Anglo-Irish rule as a point of comparison. Yet, in contrast to “Joggers”, in “Arrival” the critical reflection on the present via the past is not so much established in what is said about the past, than in what is about Ireland‟s history. The term „Big House‟ originally refers to the grand and majestic houses occupied by members of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The houses‟ pompousness, as an architectural signifier of its inhabitants‟ political dominance, would stand in stark contrast to the horrendous living conditions a large proportion of Irish Catholics had to endure under their Anglo-Irish landlords. This contrast repeatedly fueled political and physical confrontations, such as in the context of the Irish Famine and the Land Wars in the midto late-nineteenth century. Therefore, when due to the political activism of Daniel O‟ Connell and the establishment of the Land League and the Gaelic League, disenfranchised Catholics finally found a united voice in the nationalist narrative of Ireland‟s long-lasting suppression, the Big House quickly became a shared symbol for Anglo-Irish treachery and the stre- 115 Fourteen Lines of Memory nuous life under British rule. In the following decades this negative symbolic association became an integral part of Ireland‟s cultural memory and in an equally symbolic gesture by Irish nationalist revolutionaries, many houses were destroyed during the period of Ireland‟s struggle for independence. Yet, in “Arrival”, none of these darker aspects of the Big House are remembered by the speaker. The present Big House is merely depicted as a hotel for tourists who, like the poem‟s character, desire luxury (“silver and good delft”) and entertainment (“Patience”, “Crazy Golf”), but not an accurate portrayal of the place‟s historical heritage. The specific version of the past in lines seven to nine, like in “Joggers”, reflects upon the present situation in which this memory episode has been triggered. The highly-limited perspective on the original Big House, which only depicts its outward appearance reveals the present‟s shallow relationship with its historical antecedent: the Grand Hotel is a mere copy of the original House, yet without the political symbolism attached. In this regard, the poem‟s depiction of the Grand Hotel, and its past, resembles a more general critical discourse on Celtic Tiger Ireland‟s heritage industry. During the Celtic Tiger boom Ireland gained an international reputation of economic and cultural success. Consequently, the heightened global attention on the small nation led to a flourishing tourist sector and, in turn, an increasing commercialization of Irish history for touristic purposes. As critics of Ireland‟s heritage industry remark, this commemorative shift coincided with a problematic process of re-writing certain aspects of the nation‟s past. Thus, Seamus Deane, for example, argues that during the Celtic Tiger years the past became “a kind of supermarket for tourists” (1998: 239) in which, to stay within the metaphor, only the „good parts‟ of the past are offered to the customers, while any components that do not meet the consumer‟s taste, are kept off the shelves. In that sense, as Marc McCarthy furthermore points out, this new “form of popular history” (2005: 3) applies a strongly selective, economic filter on the past through which only those elements of history become visible that increase the present market value of Ireland‟s tourist sector. Taking this narrow economic interest of heritage industry as a starting point, Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin expand the discussion by explicitly drawing attention to the profound lack of an ethical dimension in this form of public memory: it provides an access to the past that simply disregards the traumatic sub-structure of Irish history. This uncritical perspective, according to the authors, ultimately results in sanitized versions of Ireland‟s national past that simply “massage[] conflict out of representations” (2002: 7) and transform an often controversial Irish past into a commodity to be easily consumed by tourists in the present. In “Arrival”, the Big House tradition is similarly depicted as a sanitized commodity, since, here as well, the perspective offered by the 116 Daniel Becker speaker in lines six to nine, “massages conflict out of representations”. The speaker reverses the symbolic order described above and transforms the Big House into a positively connoted asset for the present: now, the hotel does not only offer a classy design, but is also advertised as a place containing a rich and “authentic” cultural heritage. The speaker utilizes only a strictly limited fragment of the Big House past and recontextualizes it in a touristic setting. As such, he/ she counters the old (nationalist) narrative in Irish cultural memory. Accordingly, when the mother stares into the polished stair-rod, she does not see her own reflection, but only the everyday faces of a depoliticized present setting: till she could see in it the very face you meet these days at every turn-about: here, playing Patience on the sunny terrace; there, linked as far as this low seaside-fence, now threatening a round of Crazy Golf, if it keeps good, before the week is out. (ll. 9-14) Any conflict that might linger in recalling this symbolically-loaded episode of Irish history is sanitized and translated into present threats of a surprisingly unthreatening nature: the present offers a safe, apolitical terrain in which the only threat is “a round of Crazy Golf” and the possibility that the weather might change (“if it keeps good”). “Sunday at the DIY Store” We let ourselves be jostled through the porch of the New Jerusalem, to dab in the font of Superglue, the kind that bonds thumb to forefinger making us priests forever. Inside, as I turn right for Tools while you go on to Bath Accessories, I think of how my mother kept her place by the Third Station, my father his in the gloom of the Lady Chapel. Because I fear their certainties I join you in time to choose the splash-back with the mock chrome trim and share the sign of peace. (McGovern , 6) In “Sunday at the DIY Store” McGovern addresses Ireland‟s exhilarated consumerism and secularization during the Celtic Tiger years. Like in “Arrival”, involuntary memory is structurally depicted in a three-part 117 Fourteen Lines of Memory composition of (1) the general setting in the present, (2) cue and memory reaction and (3) the speaker‟s reaction to the involuntary memory. The poem starts with the speaker and his wife going on a shopping tour in a DIY store on a Sunday, one of the most crowded shopping days in Celtic Tiger Ireland. Right from the start, the speaker describes this shopping activity as a form of national ritual with a quasi-religious dimension: We let ourselves be jostled through the porch of the New Jerusalem […]. (ll. 1-2) As soon as the speaker and his partner enter the store, they seem to lose their individuality and become part of a mass movement of worshippers streaming into a new realm of consumerist salvation, as they “let” themselves “be jostled through/ the porch” (ll. 1-2). The first line here already serves as a memory cue: the mass entrance of people into the DIY store reminds the speaker of mass pilgrimages to the „old‟ Jerusalem. Yet, in present-day Ireland, this „old‟ Jerusalem, where the mass was motivated by a search for spirituality, is replaced by the “New Jerusalem”, where people are motivated instead by consumerist desire. As such, the consumer, as a devoted disciple of the materialist cause, is transformed into a priest-like figure: to dab in the font of Superglue, The kind that bonds thumb to forefinger Making us priests forever. (ll. 3-5) The Catholic iconography of church-goers dabbing their fingers into the font of holy water - as the poem‟s first reference to a more traditional Catholic Ireland - is altered in this setting to become the figurative notion of consumers who come to the “the font of Superglue”. Yet, this font is not a source of blessing but of bondage: like the “Superglue”, consumerism is able to “bond[]” its disciples “forever”. In this setting, a memory episode from the speaker‟s own family history is triggered. The situational cue is the following: [i]nside, as I turn right for Tools while you go on to Bath Accessories, (ll. 6-7) Once inside the store, the speaker and his partner immediately separate to search for items appropriate for their (commodified) sense of gender: masculinity is established in practical, manual labour, as depicted in “Tools”, while femininity is related to beauty and cleanliness in form of “Bath Accessories”. This gendered spatial separation becomes the concrete cue for a memory episode in lines eight to ten. Once again, the present situation shows an impact on what is remembered of the past: the 118 Daniel Becker speaker‟s present impression of the DIY store as a quasi-religious site in the first five lines, in connection to the cue of a gender division in lines six to seven, triggers the memory episode of his parents attending the Sunday service: I think how my mother kept her place By the Third Station, my father his In the gloom of the Lady Chapel. (ll. 8-10) The church routine of his parents, like the speaker‟s present Sundayshopping-routine, was based on a gendered spatial separation: they are seated separately, as husband and wife, in different parts of the church (i.e. “Third Station” vs. “Lady Chapel”). With its reference to a Sunday mass, the sonnet once again introduces a more specifically Irish cultural component. As such, the spontaneous juxtaposition of present and past in the first ten lines of the poem evokes an instant comparison between a modern consumerist Ireland and a conservative, Catholic Ireland. Like in the other two sonnets discussed above, in “Sunday at the DIY Store” the past becomes a mirror against which the present Celtic Tiger society is examined more closely. More specifically, the juxtaposition of religion and consumerism underlines the phenomenon of the “property cult” that developed during the Celtic Tiger years (O‟Toole 2010: 3). Starting in the mid-1990s, consumerism pushed religion from its throne as one of the most important features of Irish lifestyle (cf. Inglis 2005: 73). As several scandals involving Catholic priests and a more liberal sexual policy successively weakened the Church‟s position, the economic possibility for seemingly unlimited consumption took religion‟s place in mainstream society. By the early 2000s, as Kieran Keohane and Karmen Kuhling point out, the notion of consumerism has become an all-pervasive force in Irish society that is defended with religious zeal: “our totem, the Celtic Tiger, is a sign of our new strength and confidence. It is taboo to criticize the Celtic Tiger, to doubt its existence is a contemporary form of heresy” (2005: 143). In the same vein, Gene Kerrigan, commenting on the new “theology of neoliberalism”, points out that, like the “priests” in the DIY store, “the country then was full of true believers” in the consumerist cause (2012: 45). It is this notion of consumerism taking the place of religion that is reflected in the poem‟s involuntary memory process. In looking at the two situations in detail, the poem suggests that the two versions of Irish society are not too far apart, as the behavior of its people is strikingly similar to each other. Hence, both situations entail a conventionalized Sunday routine of a collective gathering at a certain place and an act of gendering associated with this habit respectively. Yet, in comparing the similarities between an „old‟ and a „new‟ Ireland, the sonnet also hints at their major difference. Ireland might still seem to follow the same social habi- 119 Fourteen Lines of Memory tus, but the variable of what controls and motivates this habitus has changed completely: consumerism takes up the role formerly fulfilled by religion as it provides meaning and order to Celtic Tiger Ireland (as indicated in the different aisles ordered according to different, gendered commodities), as much as Catholicism would offer order to Ireland in the past (as indicated in the seating order in the church). In that sense, the “gloom” of religion over Irish people (here in form of the “Lady Chapel”) is replaced by the “font of Superglue”. The hierarchy between priest and congregation is dissolved: now, everyone can become a priest, „glued‟ to the deity of consumerism for eternity. In this context, the speaker, by means of comparison, exposes presentday Ireland as a shallow simulacrum of a meaningful relationship between self and world. In that sense, when the speaker returns to the present, after being suddenly confronted with his own family history, he “fear[s] their [his parents‟] certainties” (l. 11) and, in his disheveled emotional state, instantly searches for the company and security of his partner: I join you in time to choose the splash-back with the mock chrome trim and share the sign of peace. (ll. 12-14) The memory episode introduces an ominous moment into the speaker‟s present. His parents‟ situation is uncanny to the speaker as it is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It is familiar as they share a similar, gendered routine, but it is also unfamiliar as their motivation (religion vs. consumerism) is entirely different. The two situations are therefore only similar on a surface level and the parents‟ past threatens to scratch the very surface of the speaker‟s own Sunday routine. In comparison to “their certainties”, based on faith, his own certainty is merely a simulacrum of certainty or, put differently, it is merely “the of peace” (l.14; emphasis added), rather than peace itself. As indicated in the “ chrome trim” (l. 13; emphasis added), the present situation is a mere copy and mimesis of a former religious faith. In this context, Michael Böss and Eamon Mahler claim that Ireland suffered from the “erosion of a collective soul” in recent years (2003: 12). The present is a terrain of surfaces that is spiritually empty: it binds its participants to their consumerist desires, while covering the lack of a more meaningful foundation underneath. Only a glimpse at the past, as a form of „digging‟ below the present surfaces, can uncover this spiritual gap that exposes Irish consumerism as a “mock” religion. 120 Daniel Becker As this essay has shown, Iggy McGovern uses the sonnet as a memory genre to depict involuntary memories. As exemplified with the help of three sonnets from McGovern‟s work, in this poetic memory genre, spontaneously triggered personal memories are reflected in connection to their respective present context of remembrance. These sonnets are defined by showing involuntary memory as an interaction between different situational factors, cues, and existing memory traces. On a formal level, this interaction is expressed in the connection of different formal units in an overall fourteen-line-structure, as well as in the sonnet‟s potential to display correlations between these individual components. Furthermore, McGovern uses this display of involuntary memories as a poetic vehicle for critically commenting upon various social aspects of Celtic Tiger Ireland, ranging from a new business elite, to Ireland‟s recent heritage industry and consumerism. In the spontaneous juxtaposition of different Celtic Tiger situations to memories of similar situations in a more traditional Ireland, McGovern manages to uncover deficits and weaknesses in the Celtic Tiger‟s superficial culture. This essay only provides one example of a poetic sub-genre and its memory potential but there are many other forms which Irish poems use to relate past and present experiences (e.g. the villanelle or the free-verse narrative poem, two forms often found in contemporary Irish poetry). Furthermore, the present analysis of the sonnet as a memory genre is far from exhausted. As pointed out above, this essay is merely beginning to examine the sonnet‟s memory potential, with many paths still left to be explored. Further research, for example, might include addressing the following two questions: (1) how is the sonnet as a memory genre to depict involuntary memories related to other memory formulas of the sonnet in McGovern‟s work, or the work of other new Irish poets (e.g. compared to sonnets that dedicate the entire 14-line space to the past, without any references to the present)? (2) How can the recent revival of the sonnet in Irish poetry in general, and especially the use of the sonnet as a memory genre, be interpreted in the larger context of Ireland‟s immense cultural transformation over the last two decades? Why does this poetic form become so popular at the moment of Ireland transitioning through radical developments regarding its relationship to history or its cultural and political identity? As Hendrik van Gorp and Ursula Musarra- Schroeder point out, the appearance and popularity of literary genres depend on the “cultural problem” that needs to be discussed in a society at a given time in its historical development (2000: ii). Which problem does the sonnet deal with? These (and other) questions remain to be discussed in future research on an innovative new generation of contempo- 121 Fourteen Lines of Memory rary Irish poets that, so far, has mostly flown under the radar of academic attention 6 . Alderman, Nigel/ C.D. Blanton (Eds.) (2009). . Chichester: Blackwell. Boran, Pat (Ed.) (2009). . Dublin: Dedalus Press. Borgstedt, Thomas (2009). . Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Borgstedt, Thomas (2012). “Die Zahl im Sonett als Voraussetzung seiner Transmedialität“. . Ed. Erika Greber and Evi Zemanek. Dozwil: Edition Signathur. 41-59. Bort, Eberhart (2004). . Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Böss, Michael/ Eamon Mahler (2003). “Introduction”. . Ed. Michael Böss and Eamon Mahler. 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