‘A brief glow in the dark’: Samuel Beckett's Presence in Modern Irish Poetry

Author: Nixon Mark

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 35, Number 1, 1 January 2005 , pp. 43-57(15)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

This essay examines the ways in which Irish poets writing after the Second World War have responded to the work of Samuel Beckett. It investigates the importance of the republication in the early 1970s of Beckett's essay ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ (1934), which advocates a literature of ‘self-perception’ rather than the propagation of national myths, at a time when sectarian strife forced poets to come to terms with notions of place and displacement, and the role of the artist within society. Beckett's influence can in particular be found in Derek Mahon's work, whose ‘soul landscapes’ owe much to his perception of Beckett as a ‘visual’ writer and whose expression of a ‘metaphysical unease’ builds upon a distinctly Beckettian view of the human condition.

Keywords: Irish poets; Samuel Beckett; Derek Mahon

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Reading

Publication date: 2005-01-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.