Filed under Fantaisíocht (Fantasy) …

May 17 2012
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Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Teilifís (Television)

Jeremy Brett – The Quintessential Sherlock Holmes

I’ve always been a bit of a Sherlock Homes fan (or the much more impressive Irish form, Searbhlach de Hoilm!), especially since he was born of the imagination and pen of an Irish-Scots writer, one Artúr Iognáid Conán Ó Dúill or Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Doyle’s relationship with his ancestral homeland was problematic, to say the least, and there is a strong argument that he tapped into the anti-Irish prejudices of his day for the Sherlock Home’s stories, most tellingly in the Irish surnames he choose for Holmes’ two chief protagonists: Moran and Moriarty. He himself veered in his politics over the span of a lifetime from un-apologetic British Imperialist and Unionist to possessing somewhat more nuanced and socially liberal views of the world and Ireland in particular (by 1911 Doyle was convinced of the need for Home Rule or limited autonomy for Ireland within the so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, though that is as far as he could bring himself to go).

Arthur Conan Doyle’s interests in Irish revolutionary movements and the covert (and at times not so covert) war between them and the British colonial state in Ireland clearly influenced his writing. The Fenians in particular, both the Irish and Irish-American arms of the movement, were a major concern to him and at times he allowed himself caught up in the hysteria of the late Victorian age and its obsession with “Irish secret societies” (the surnames of Moran and Moriarty were identified in the British press with alleged Fenian officers operating in Britain in the late 1800s). In some ways the “Irish question” became central to the Sherlock Holmes canon, always implied though rarely stated.

Scholar Catherine Wynne details the Irish influences in the works of Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes’ tales in particular with her short study Mollies, Fenians, and Arthur Conan Doyle, which I highly recommend for any enquiring Sherlockian – or indeed anyone interested in how British society and culture viewed (and feared) the Irish people in the late 19th century. You can also read a full account of all this in her excellent book The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism and the Gothic, especially the section Imperial War and Colonial Sedition (preview via Google Books).

All this has helped me in my own writing (with a nod to Kim Newman), in particular my subversion of the Sherlock Holmes tales by turning them on their head and writing them from the point of view of Professor Moriarty, or rather Séamas Ó Muircheartaigh, 19th century Irish famine-child and exile turned revolutionary (and the efforts of his arch-nemesis to thwart him: the conflicted British Imperial agent Sherlock Holmes, and his baleful older brother Mycroft). Whether those tales of mine will ever see the light of day is of course another matter ;-)

But for now, a slight twist, as I turn to the Guardian and an excellent article on the late great Jeremy Brett, the British actor who for many of us was Sherlock Holmes. A true thespian (and a genuinely courageous person who overcame many personal problems and tragedies in his life until his untimely death), he defined what Holmes should look like, sound like and act like for a whole generation of television viewers (and still does). From the retrospective by Natalie Haynes:

“You can keep Basil Rathbone, fond as I am of him. You can keep Robert Downey, Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Cushing. You can even keep Michael Caine in Without A Clue (my secret favourite portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the big screen). You know why you can keep them? Because, in exchange, I get Jeremy Brett, the Sherlock for the connoisseurs.

Jeremy Brett is the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood, and perhaps (as with the Doctor or James Bond) we simply attach ourselves to the first one we see. But I don’t think so. In the ITV series which began in 1984, and ran until a year before Brett’s early death in 1995, Sherlock Holmes was as close to his literary roots as he has ever been on screen.

Brett understood completely how mercurial Holmes could be. And he could play every variant of him: loyal friend, relentless pursuer, bored logician, avenging angel and mischievous impersonator. Brett’s performance is an astonishing exercise in dynamics: he murmurs advice, whispers hints, bellows irritation, barks laughter. He is also the master of the subtextual glance. When the King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia, series 1, episode 1) wishes Irene Adler was his social equal, Brett turns to him with every facial sinew screaming contempt, for just a fraction of a second. Then he agrees, with such seeming politeness that the king is impervious to his real meaning, that Adler was indeed on a very different level. No wonder Adler leaves the country, declaring him too formidable an opponent, even though she knows she has beaten him in this encounter.

Even if Brett had not been so ill when filming the series, his Holmes is intrinsically fragile: he really looks like he forgets to eat for days on end, and that he carries the lead weight of ennui between cases.

In re-watching The Red-Headed League last week, I also detected a disdain for poshness that verges on the revolutionary. He describes John Clay (Tim McInnerny) thus: “His grandfather was a royal duke and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. So, Watson, bring the gun.” And because he is Jeremy Brett, he slightly rolls the r of “bring”, just so we know Holmes knows that he is funny.”

This weekend I will be indulging my Brettian-Holmes passion by watching the British television drama The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes back-to-back (thanks to a lovely DVD collection grabbed – quite literally – for a ridiculously cheap 10 euros), but here, for the rest of you, is a mere taster:

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May 11 2012
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Leabhair (Books), Seanchas (Irish Mythology)

In Praise Of An Hobad – But Why The Awful Gaelicisations?

The J.R.R. Tolkien fansite, TheOneRing.net, carries some news on the release of An Hobad, the Irish language version of Tolkien’s children’s classic the Hobbit. Very interesting it is, including details on some of the issues around finding a suitable word to translate the term Elf as Tolkien employs it.

“Part of the evening was taken up by media interviews with the extraordinary people involved in the translation. Professor Nicholas Williams (who previously translated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) explained that a particular difficulty in the translation was the absence in Irish mythology of an exact equivalent of Tolkien’s Elves. The search for a suitable word resulted in a years-long delay while Professor Williams and the publisher, Michael Everson (himself a formidable linguist, typesetter and font designer) sought to find common ground on the matter. In the end, a new word was created, Ealbh, based on a borrowing into Scottish Gaelic from Norse – a solution Tolkien might well have approved of!”

Maybe Tolkien would approve of it but I certainly don’t. What a terrible decision. And an awful Gaelicisation. Yes, I know it’s based upon an original Scottish word ealbhar, so has genuine Gaelic roots, but that word in turn is a borrowing from Old Norse álfr “elf”; and in Scottish the original borrowing now means “a good for nothing”. I should also point out that ealbh is an alternative spelling of the existing Irish word ealbha which means “a drove or herd of cattle”. Is that a suitable root for the Eldar of Middle-earth? And one that Tolkien the philologist would approve of?

As for the claim that there is no exact equivalent of Tolkien’s Elves in Irish mythology, stuff an’ nonsense. Tolkien’s Elves are straight out of Irish mythology, via the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Aos Sí.

There are many Irish terms for the Otherworld Folk which would have been entirely suitable for the Elves of Middle-earth and all derived from the base word Sí “Otherworld”. I have listed most of them here. Yes, some might say it is “culturally” incorrect (and perhaps confusing) to apply the same word for the supernatural race of Irish, Scottish and Manx myth to J.R.R. Tolkien’s imaginative creations. But since that imaginary race is so heavily based on its Irish counterpart, and since context would clearly indicate which race is being discussed, I see no harm in it.

In any case there are plenty of now fairly obscure Irish Otherworld terms that could have been used: and with far more gravitas and authenticity. Ealbh is right up there with rampaí as an indicator of our lack of confidence in our own language and culture. One only has to look at other non-English versions of The Hobbit to see the ready use of culturally-specific translations without the need for awful bastardisations. Elf would have been rendered far better in Irish as Sióg or Síogaí than the mongrelised Elabh. Or if they were felt too modern or too loaded with other connotations then one could have used Síodhaí, Síodhbróg or even Sídheog (all meaning an inhabitant of the Otherworld or an Otherworld domain).

Of course one could point to the translation of the term Hobbit itself: Hobad. Why? It is perfectly clear that the Halfling Hobbits of Tolkien’s Middle-earth have a close role-model in the Little People of Irish Folklore, the Lucharacháin or Leipreacháin. Yes, that’s right: Leprechauns. However the more literary term Lucharachán for Hobbit would surely have been more suitable, and more indicative to an Irish-speaking reader, than the utterly meaningless Hobad.

I wish the translators of An Hobad every success. They have done wonderful work and so far I have heard nothing but praise for the job they have done (a job, in fact, apparently superior to many other translations made of Tolkien’s first published work of Middle-earth legendarium). I will certainly be purchasing it and I recommend others do the same.

I’m just hoping that Ealbh dies the linguistic death it so richly deserves. But I doubt it.

UPDATE: Two videos on the release of An Hobad, one from Grafton Media and the other from Club Leabhar via Gaelchultúr (focusing mainly on the translation Eachtraí Eilíse i dTír na nIontas or “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by the same translator of The Hobbit).

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Jul 25 2011
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Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Ficsean Eolaíochta (Science-Fiction), Greannáin (Comics), Leabhair (Books)

Alan Moore And The League In 1969

The Guardian holds an excellent Q&A with comics’ writer Alan Moore, one of the modern doyens of the genre, focusing in particular on his series of comics and graphic novels beginning with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and how he views the third volume in the saga:

‘When we started the third volume of League, we got a vague idea of how the plot would progress and would enable us to use characters and situations from respective Leagues – 1910, 1969 and 2009. But as the book has actually progressed as it has been written, the prevailing thing about it seems to be a critique of culture. And the most noticeable thing is the decline if you like – diversification. It’s always the most healthy thing for a species and it’s probably the same for culture as well.

When we start out in 1910 we have a fairly rich background to draw from – we’ve got Brecht’s Threepenny Opera which was set around that time, we’ve got all of those wonderful occult characters that were being created around then. By the time we get to 1969 we’ve got some equally interesting characters but they’re a kind of different category. They’re more often drawn from popular culture, because of course popular culture has expanded incredibly in the 50 years since 1910 when culture was still largely the preserve of an educated elite. But changes in society over the first 50 years of the century meant that by the middle years culture had changed. Certainly by 1969 where pop culture was predominant and previous culture was perhaps in danger of becoming increasingly marginalised. And by the time we return to the League story in 2009, it’s a much bleaker cultural landscape still.

So I suppose inevitably you’re going to find in this book that there are contrasts that are going to arise between the different eras. And there’s also a marked sense that culture is possibly contracting in certain areas. There is the thing of the richness of the Victorian or the Edwardian era. That the range of characters and ideas to draw upon have nowhere near the same breadth that they seem to back in the day. This is something that has purely emerged from the story. Wasn’t anything that we necessarily set out to write. But it seems to be the case.’

He also talks about working with long time creative partner and acclaimed comics artist Kevin O’Neill:

‘It is an absolute pleasure to work with Kevin. He is one of the finest and most distinctive comic book artists this country has ever turned out. Also, he is the only one of my mainstream collaborators who is from a similar background to myself and who has ever taken my side in any of my bust-ups with the comic companies. This is why Kevin is the only person that I’m still working with. During the unpleasantness with DC, he was taking the brunt of it. Because I’d walked off and he still had to finish the book. They were very angry that we got sick of them and were taking it to another publisher. He is as good an individual as he is an artist.’

For some more on graphic novels and comics visit here.

 

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Jul 17 2011
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Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Leabhair (Books)

China Miéville: Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!

In this 2002 article British Fantasy author China Miéville, l’enfant terrible of the so-called New Weird generation of writers, rallies against the orthodoxy of the field with an examination of the man who helped define its modern form: J.R.R. Tolkien.

‘In 1954 and 1955 a professor of English at Oxford University published a long, rambling fairy story in three hardbacks. And nothing much happened. This was the 1905 of fantastic literature – a dress rehearsal for the revolution. That revolution came in earnest ten years later, when the book, The Lord of the Rings, was published in the US in cheap, pirate paperbacks, along with rapid response authorised versions. And they sold. A generation of students, hippies and potheads found hidden meanings in legends of power, wisdom, magic and secret knowledge. They reconfigured the texts, and turned a quaint, portentous 1950s fable into a key counter-culture text of the 1960s – to the avuncular professor Tolkien’s bemused horror.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien belonged in the rarefied air of Oxbridge, from where he wrote scholarly works, smoked his pipe and constructed his imaginary world, Middle Earth. It would be hard to imagine a man less at home among his new readers, whom he called the ‘lunatic fringe’.

The influence of The Lord of the Rings on modern literature and culture has been enormous and controversial. Its iconography is everywhere, constantly stolen and ripped off. But when it topped a recent poll as ‘book of the century’, many highbrow types were appalled that such a ‘childish’ work of fantasy was so honoured. The literary establishment’s incoherent critique combines snobbish disdain for popular culture with an ahistorical philistinism. It sees the fantastic as pathological, as sub-literary, rather than as one mode of expression among many. Those of us who skulk by those garish shelves in the bookshop have all been told that we’ll grow out of it, or asked when we’re going to start reading real books. And there is a left variant of this dismissal, which follows the Marxist critic Lukács in seeing the fantastic as decadent or socially ‘irresponsible’. But if, as radical critics of both bourgeois respectability and Stalinist agitprop, we defend science fiction and fantasy, does that mean we should be rallying under the banner of ‘Socialists for Tolkien’? Hardly.’

Well worth reading.

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Jul 16 2011
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Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Ficsean Eolaíochta (Science-Fiction), Leabhair (Books), Scannáin (Movies)

John Carter Of Mars Gets The Disney Treatment… Cry Now, Or Later?

John Carter of Mars holds a special place in the history of Science-Fiction. The hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ series of Barsoom novels he is one of the archetypal figures of the genre, a character who has been reimagined numerous times and under numerous guises in the works of other authors. So it was with more than a little trepidation that I read the news last year of Disney Picture’s planned movie version of the first book, A Princess of Mars (1912). Looking at the pre-release teaser for John Carter it would seem that my worse fears may well be realised. Oh dear…

 

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Jul 16 2011
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Ealaín (Art), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Ficsean Eolaíochta (Science-Fiction)

Chris Foss

The Guardian features a piece on legendary Science-Fiction artist Chris Foss, whose work illustrated some of the best SF book covers of the 1970s and ’80s (most of which are still dotted around my bookshelves). Here is a link to the fantastic official site too.

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Jun 06 2011
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Scannáin (Movies), Seanchas (Irish Mythology), Uafás (Horror)

An Fomhórach – The Fomorian

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Jun 06 2011
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Stair (History)

An Táin – The Graphic Novel

Still widely available is Colmán Ó Raghallaigh’s An Táin, the ground-breaking Irish language graphic novel or Úrscéal Grafacha illustrated by Barry Reynolds. A superb visualisation of the ancient Irish epic it is highly recommended and for those who are learning Irish there is an excellent online English language translation provided by the publisher Cló Mhaigh Eo.

For another take on the Táin Bó Chuaille (in the English language) try the webcomic of Irish writer and artist Paddy Brown with his The Cattle Raid of Cooley.

A very different take is the French-based Cú Chulainn, a manga style of illustration producing some visually arresting images (just don’t expect too much historical accuracy). Several other related titles are also published by the very interesting (and multi-lingual) Oghme comics collective and are well worth visiting.

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Jun 03 2011
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Ficsean Eolaíochta (Science-Fiction), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Uafás (Horror)

It’s Sci-Fi – Irish Sci-Fi!

I’ve written several articles about the long tradition of Irish language authors working in the Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres and will post them here soon. In the meantime here is some interesting essays which touch on the subject from the Celtic Cultural Studies journal. Interesting question: when does Mythology and Folklore cross over into literary genre? Does Irish Mythology qualify as Fantasy?

More of this from me anon but in the meantime we have:

Garland Kimmer, “‘For We Have New Worlds Here’: Ireland, Myth, and Alternative Heroism in Fantasy Fiction”

Kate Hennessey, “Star-Crossed Lovers or Gun-Toting Gangsters?: Paul Mercier’s Adaptation of The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne”

Philip O’Leary, “Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Irish Language”

C.W. Sullivan III, “Conscientious Use: Welsh Celtic Myth and Legend in Fantastic Fiction”

I have a lengthy appreciation of the wonderful British-born Irish language writer Cathal Ó Sándair - whose prodigious body of quality works would shame most other writers, in any language – that I will post here as well.

Meanwhile here is a link to the blog of Irish Sci-Fi author Peadar Ó Guilín, whose new children’s book The Deserter (image at the top) is receiving a lot of positive press at the moment.

And if you like your Science-Fiction or Fantasy with a hefty dose of Irish and Celtic inspiration try these gems:

Julian May’s Saga of the Exiles

Jack Vance’s The Lyonesse Trilogy

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