Showing another side to Cork writer Frank O'Connor

 It collects all 121 translations in full for the first time, as well as the Irish-language sources, along with literal translations, enabling the reader to see what O’Connor started from. Schirmer, a retired US academic now based in Ballylickey, Co Cork, has written books on Austin Clarke and William Trevor and also edited After the Irish: An Anthology of Poetic Translation, published by Cork University Press in 2009. It was while working on this book that he discovered the extent of O’Connor’s poetic translations.

“I was surprised because I had read a lot of O’Connor, the stories and the autobiographies and so forth, but I did not know much about his translations. Not only did he do a lot of them but he was also very very good, maybe one of the best,” says Schirmer. “I did a book on The Midnight Court [Brian Merriman] in 2015 and of course, O’Connor did a famous translation of that. It gave me another chance to compare and study and look at O’Connor in the context of the whole tradition of poetic translation from the Irish. That led me into thinking somebody should do an anthology and make the case once and for all for O’Connor as a major translator.”

 Schirmer says that O’Connor’s mastery of the Irish language and his ability as a translator is remarkable for someone who was largely self-taught. Born Michael O’Donovan, he had a chaotic childhood; his father was an alcoholic constantly in debt, while his mother supported the family as a cleaner. While attending St Patrick’s School on Gardiner’s Hill, O’Connor was taught by Daniel Corkery, who introduced him to the Irish language and poetry. O’Connor later fought for the anti-treaty forces in the Civil War and was interned in Gormanston, where he taught Irish to others in the camp.

West Cork-based Gregory A Schirmer.

O’Connor worked consistently on the translations throughout his career. Schirmer says he was driven by a desire to reclaim the poetry of early Ireland and communicate its relevance to an indifferent public.

““As he said himself, he couldn’t understand how this whole literature going back to the 8th century could disappear and how there could be so little interest in Irish,” says Schirmer. “His real interest was in old and middle Irish, 8th to 12th century, half of the poems are in that period. He does move into the 17th century and does a bit in the 18th century; he did a couple of poems by Raftery in the 19th century but that is where he stops.

"It is interesting because when he was doing this work, people like Seán Ó Riordáin and Mairtín Ó Direáin were well-established as Irish language poets but he never translated them — because his interest in translation was essentially in recovery. He was puzzled by the how most people didn’t even know that this great tradition of literature in the native tongue was even there. He had that kind of almost archaeological desire to make it known.”

 Schirmer says that conversely, the fact that O’Connor wasn’t a committed poet also helped him to master the art of translation.

“Unlike a lot of people who do this kind of poetic translation, he wasn’t really a poet. He did publish some poetry but it’s not where his strengths were. Most people in that tradition are people who were poets first. Because he didn’t have an established recognised distinctive voice as a poet, he was able to get closer to the Irish original than some others. The best example would be someone like Paul Muldoon who is a remarkable and wonderful translator of Irish poetry and also a first-rate and very distinctive poet. When he translates a poem, you know that it is done by Paul Muldoon. That is not so true of O’Connor.”

 A profound love of the Irish language is also evident in O’Connor’s translations. The value of our native tongue is still a hotly debated topic; what would O’Connor make of the continuing struggle to preserve the language, one wonders.

“Of course, people say a lot of it had to do with the way it was taught in school in the middle decades of the 20th century. But on the other hand, I have been in this country long enough to know that there weren’t always things like TG4 and Raidió na Gaeltachta….there are also lots of things being published in Irish. It is beyond my boundaries but I am told that things like rap and pop music, a lot of it is being done through Irish now. I do think there are many causes for optimism. 

Looking Back To Look Forward, by Gregory A Schirmer. 

"People might not use it in their daily lives very much but I do not think it will disappear. O’Connor would probably agree with that but he would also say ‘wait a minute, we have this whole literature back there that people don’t know about’ and it is more Irish than what we think of as Irish literature — Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and all the rest of it.” 

Schirmer has also made his own effort in regard to the native tongue, familiarising himself further with the Irish language when working on the translations. He also attends a conversational Irish group in Bantry which has been a help.

“I can read it easily enough of course and I can make myself understood but I still have a little trouble with oral comprehension. It’s alright, I wish it were better,” he says.

Schirmer has been extremely gratified by the reaction to the anthology, and says it shows that there is still a huge interest in Frank O’Connor’s work.

“It sold out the first printing, that is why we are doing this second paperback edition. It was released in April and gone by Christmas, so it just goes to show that Frank O’Connor is a significant and major figure in Irish literature. Needless to say, as an academic I had never written a book that had sold out the first printing,” he laughs. “I am very pleased.” 

Look Back to Look Forward: Frank O’Connor’s Complete Translations from the Irish, edited by Gregory A Schirmer, published by Lilliput Press, is out now.