Modern literature in Irish

From Wacklepedia - The Free Encyclopedia

Modernist literature was developed further by M?rt? ?Cadhain, a schoolmaster from Connemara, who was the Irish-language litt?ateur ?gag?par excellence. He was not only active in the IRA - he spent the Emergency years, - i.e. the years of the Second World War - at a detention camp in Curach Chill Dara (Curragh, County Kildare) together with other IRA men. At the camp, he wrote his modernist masterpiece, the novel Cr?na Cille - "The Clay of the Churchyard". Reminiscent of some Latin American novels (notably Redoble por Rancas by Manuel Scorza, or Pedro P?amo by Juan Rulfo), this novel is a chain of voices of the dead speaking from the churchyard, where they go on forever quarrelling about their bygone life in their village. The novel is a resounding refutation of the romantic view of the Gaeltacht typical of the early years of the linguistic revival: ?Cadhain shows clearly that there are social conflicts inside the Gaeltachta? too.

In addition to Cr?na Cille, M?rt? ?Cadhain wrote several collections of short stories (one "short" story, Fu?ll Fuine in the collection An tSraith dh?T??l, can count as a short novel): "Idir Sh?radh agus D?r?e", "An Braon Broghach", "Cois Caol?re", "An tSraith dh?T??l", "An tSraith T?tha", "An tSraith ar L?". An important part of his writings are his journalism, essays, and pamphlets, that can be found in such collections as "?Cadhain i bhFeasta", "Caisc?", and "Caithfear ?steacht".

M?rt? ?Cadhain was a great stylistic innovator. Although his Irish was very much his native dialect - even in such contexts where a less dialectal style would have been appropriate - he was not afraid of enriching his Irish with constructed neologisms and loan words from other dialects including Scots Gaelic.