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Sweeney: An Intertonguing, Rody Gorman’s much-anticipated new poetry collection, challenges the notion of translation and transmission at a time when old dualisms are breaking apart.

English or Gaelic? Literal or literary translation? Ireland or Scotland? Through the prism of Q-Celtic and its English neighbour, all boundaries are blurred as Gorman reinterprets Buile Shuibhne, or ‘The Madness of Sweeney’, a medieval Irish adventure story.

For this interview, the GRB were pleased to bring award-winning poet Josie Giles on-board, who is currently learning Gaelic in Skye. A translator from Orcadian Scots, and an admirer of Gorman’s work, she delivers a searching first glance into Sweeney‘s explosion of source, language and place.

The interview is followed by an excerpt from the book.

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GRB: To begin with, what made you want to write a new Sweeney? With so many different translations and adaptations already, what did you want to bring to the text (or what did it give to you)?

RG: I suppose I was taken by it because it involves, amongst other things, Gaelic, language, poetry and connections between Ireland and Scotland. I read Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds – he wanted to call it Sweeney Among the Trees – years ago, and studied a couple of pages of James O’Keefe’s edition of Buile Shuibhne at university but that was for language only and I didn’t get very far.

In 2011, Noel Monahan mentioned he was doing a drama piece Suibhne Faoi Bhodhrán Gealaí and asked if I’d be interested in doing a Scottish Gaelic version, so I went back for another look at the story. But then as I looked into it I realised there was no complete version, not O’Keefe’s or Heaney’s. I reckon that O’Brien’s version, while omitting certain not insignificant sections, is the best, and there are also some good passages in Padraic Colum’s The Frenzied Prince, and the late Feargal Ó Béarra’s modernisations in Mé Suibhne are really very good.

And scholars had been asking for it: Flann Mac an tSaoir in 1951: ‘Cé dhéanfas aon scéal amháin fileata as Fleadh Dhún na nGé, Cath Maighe Rath agus Buile Shuibhne?’, and Susan Sailer said there should be ‘a gathering of scholarship new since O’Keefe’s translation, as well as a new translation’. So I was thinking of a faithful academic and creative enlargement of the text. It’s always relevant – the other day Mary O’Malley called it ‘the myth of our age’.

GRB: When I was reading, the first thing that struck me was the madness of the poetry: the repetition, the free association, the sudden shifts of language and register. I haven’t felt that madness from Sweeney before — but it was completely right. Is that what you wanted from the reader? What does that madness of language mean to you?

RG: I don’t know about the reader but the repetitions seem to me to be a significant element, with both psychological and literary aspects, more common in the sections in prose. The variant polysemantic forms of a single word in intertonguing – or Sweenese – relate to the theme of shape-shifting throughout.

This relates also to Sweeney’s translocation (which has a linguistic connotation) and crossing of frontiers, and his assumption of avian or bestial forms. It might also be said that this shape-shifting and language shift correspond to the different aesthetic or intellectual levels of the texts and, in particular, of the poems.

The constant revision of the text on my part, as translator, creator and editor mediating between (a) two texts and (b) text and notional readership, might also be considered a form of shape-shifting.

GRB: Although the style of your Sweeney is full of play and jokes, and although the writing is sometimes dizzying, in exactly that way it is more faithful to the source material than others I’ve read. There’s no smoothing of the text, and this Sweeney is challenging and resistant as much as fun and delightful. Is faithfulness to the source important to you? How did you approach that?

RG: Yes, It is presented as a normalised text. In my opinion, the version by Flann O’Brien – to use a shape-shifting form of his name –is the most faithful and the nearest in spirit to that of the original.

This relates in particular to playfulness and linguistic exuberance. Ciaran Carson compared the ‘playful weightiness’ of the original, the ‘playfulness’ of O’Brien, and ‘psychological seriousness’ of Heaney with one another. I’ve retained the content throughout but changed the form here and there, mainly by versifying prose passages, something Heaney does to great effect in Sweeney Astray.

Then you get extraneous elements like Austin Clarke’s sailmaker and shovels, Jack Foley’s fish-dragons and panthers, Heaney’s ‘dreamed strange migrations’, Trevor Joyce’s ‘cave of pain’, the excesses and abstractions of Robert Graves and others, and appropriation by John Kinsella et al – I wanted to avoid those kind of things.

The original text is sparse of metaphor and there are only a few simile flourishes – as in §16 and §36. I thought if I was to have extraneous elements in my version – after a few years at it, I have to say – that they would be there for a good reason, such as the rendering in verse of the psychiatric evaluation of Sweeney by Thanos Didaskalou, and the Santōka sequence in §88 (the original ends with §87, by the way).

Nor did I want to discard reasonably clear archaisms – cacht, crocaireacht, dímhigin, fuathróg, ionar, leann and so on, you’ll find them all in modern dictionaries, marked accordingly. The version in modern Irish by Seán Ó Sé and that in Scottish Gaelic by William Neill, in their attempts at modernisation and familiarisation – nothing wrong with that – tend to infantilism at times. Neill’s (under-)translation doesn’t include any of the poems, which are the essence of the original text.

I get pissed off when I’m told Buile Shuibhne has already been translated into Scottish Gaelic – it hasn’t, it’s been partially paraphrased at best. So I was conscious of that lacuna as well. I like the fragments in Tormod a’ Bhocsair’s ‘Seann Chrònan’, but. Analogues – many of them in ‘Who Are You, Man?’ in §82 – and other insights owe as much to scholars like Alexandra Bergholm, Dennell Downum, Bryan Frykenberg, Joseph Nagy, Pádraig Ó Riain, Bridget Slavin and others as to poets and translators. (I make reference to section numbers here because there’s so much repetition of titles and phrases throughout my version.)

And ‘resistant’ is right – Lawrence Venuti says that a resistant translation uses ‘forms that are not frequent in the target language’ and that this ‘involves including unidiomatic usage and other linguistically and culturally alienating features in the translated text so as to create the impression of foreignness’.

I also like Philip Lewis’ concept of ‘abusive fidelity’ which, he says, ‘tampers with usage, seeks to match the polyvalencies or plurivocalities … of the original by producing its own’. For all the abuses and subversions, however, I have been faithful to the original text with no loss of meaning, in a sort of reverent emulation – as Donald Davie said about  Ezra Pound – motivated partly by the extent to which other versions deviate from it. My version may be said, accordingly, to contain fidelity and abusiveness simultaneously.

GRB: There’s Irish, Scottish and Manx Gaelic in the book, along with your own lingua gadelica and intertongued English. There’d be few readers fluent in all those languages! What’s the aim of this multilingual approach? What do you particularly hope readers get from it?

RG: The Manx Gaelic piece is just experimental.(Mind you, the whole thing’s an experiment). There’s more – recursive translations from Heaney and Joyce, phonemic translations, interpolations, creative dinnseanchas, historical semantic shifts, footnotes rendered in verse, full rhyme between the two main forms of Gaelic, as, for example, between ‘loin’ (Irish Gaelic) and ‘coin’ (Scottish Gaelic) in §32, and so on. I’m just writing for myself, maybe.

GRB: Much of the poetry is praise of the environment and the places of the Gàidhealtachd. That appears in your other work, but there it is often fairly quiet and contemplative. Here, although there are quiet haikus, there are also vast floods of song. What was that like to write? Was it different for you, or another route to the same thing?

RG: Sweeney has always attracted composers – Frank Corcoran, Shaun Davey, Peter Maxwell Davies, Neil Martin, Gerard Victory and the like. And I sang/recited/said some Sweeney stuff with Thatchers of the Acropolis at the Errigal Festival a few years back.

Songs and poems, of course, are, to a large extent, undifferentiated in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition, and a lot of the new poems are in song form as well. I’ve always liked, as a frustrated musician, having a go at song lyrics – including versions of stuff by Bob Dylan and down-home country blues boys and ‘Strange Fruit’ – and now I’ve got Diane Cannon and Seán MacErlaine working with me on Sweeney, what more would I want?

GRB: Lastly, is it a curse or a blessing that Sweeney got? Should all poets be so lucky?

RG: A bit of both – he’s acquired the poetry and the awareness and paid the price. Maybe he should have remained a murderous petty king. And it depends on whether or not you consider Christian redemption a reward or a punishment.

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FROM: SWEENEY, AN INTERTONGUING

Nasg

Ged a tha mi saor
A dhol air fainneal agus air foluain
’S mi ri cuartachadh is ag imrich
Gach àirde de dh’àirdean Èireann,
Chan eil mi saor bhon a tha ’n dàn dhomh
Gun cuir sibh orm nasg
Ged a bhiodh e gun chuibhreach
Gun ghlas agus gun gheimheal
A bhith ’n seo gach là ’s gach feasgar
Agus tighinn thugaibh, a Mholing,
Ach an cuir sibh sìos mo shaoghal,
Mo sgeul ’s m’imeachdan ann an sgrìobhadh.

Airsealringchained-dogtie-bandpledge

Though I’m free as a joiner to go fannelignorancebewildermentastray and giddyrunskipping as I visitwhirlabout and emigrateflit through every airtpoint of the airtpoints of Ireland, I’m not free at all as it’s poemfated for me that you put an airsealringchained-dogpledgetie-band on me even though it has no slaveryharness or watergreengreyfetterlock or prisonchain to be here evey day and night and come to you, Moling, so that you can put down my worldlife, my story and my placeboundaryjourney in writing.

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Gàir na Gairbhe

Alltan àlainn aoibhinn
A’ lìonadh le bainne làn,
Am mac-talla ’s mìorbhail
Is gàir binn na Gairbhe.

Ros Bhroc is Tonn Ruairidh,
Druim Leathad agus Dairbhre
’S èisteachd ris an aifreann
Far am buailear clag gun bhailbhe.

Dùrdan daimh duinn Dàmhair
Oidhche fhuar gheamhradail
Is Inbhir Dhùghlais oidhche fhuar 

Is dearcan donn air darach ann.

An sìon air bhàrr Beinn Boirche
’S gàir muir na fairge
’S ceilear aig eòin-chalaidh,
’S oirfeid dham anam e.

’S binn leam loin a’ ceileireadh,
Osnadh gaoithe ’s ceòl nan salm ann
Mar fhuaim doininn fon darach
Air leacannan Ghleann Bhalgain.

Eas Ruaidh gu Eas Dhubhthaich
Gus an tug mi ceann mo bhàire,
Guthan aoibhinn eunlaith,
Cò ’n eas as glaine gàire?

The Resoundroar of Fiercerough Garf Water

A beautiful hotcockle-streamlet linen-netfilling with a tidefull milkdropcurrent, the cliffsonecho is a miraclemarvel and the hoppermelodytruesweet resoundroar of  fiercerough Garf Water. Dungarvan and Dundrum Bay, Drumleid and Darvery and listening to the chapelhousemass where not-so-dumb-bells are rung. The teasingmotesing-songmurmur of the surlybrown oxbeamstag rutting in October on a rawcold wintry night and Inveruglas on a rawcold night with pregnantbrown eyeberries on a treeoghamDoaktree. The stormweather on the harvestcropcreamtop of the bison-elk Mournes and the resoundroar of the stormsea and the sonnetwarbling of the ferrybayharbourshore birds are music to my soul. I love the blackbirds warbling, the soughing of the wind and the music of the psalms there like the sound of the storm under the oaks on the slopes of Glenbalkan. Assaroe to the Falls of Duich till I came to the headend of my ruttingbattlegamepath, the sweeteven bardvoice of the birds, what water-fallstream is a purewhiter resoundroar?

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