Review of Lament for Art O’Leary in The Irish Times:
“My interest in the story is partly topographical,” says John Fitzgerald in his introduction to his new translation of The Lament for Art O’Leary (Gallery, €11.95). Fitzgerald grew up near Macroom, his feet familiar with the ground covered by the main players, his ear attuned to subtleties of the local accent.
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s great keen for her murdered husband has been widely translated yet every version of the Lament “tells a different story”. Fitzgerald’s “desire to transfer the grief at the heart of the Caoineadh through the three-stressed line” was sparked by Seamus Heaney’s observation of how the Lament’s “three-stressed line” inspired his translation of Sophocles’ Burial at Thebes.
Primary school was where Fitzgerald first heard the Caoineadh read in the “captivating west-Muskerry baritone” of his teacher, John Brown. His palpable excitement drives this fresh, powerful version, evoking those local accents. According to Angela Bourke, the keen is similar to a rap and Fitzgerald’s version feels exactly like that, physically on its feet, the speaker rocking back and forth on the three-stressed line, gathering momentum as the poem builds from the insistent “you” at the end of every line in the first stanza, echoing the original “thú”.
As the sense of grief and loss builds, the assonance and alliteration so vital to the original Irish is released in exhilarating waves, “your sword ennobled you, your gold-roped hat, /fine leather boots/and double-fold coat,/all fashioned abroad for you.” Short prescriptive lines express urgency, strong verbs piled high add to the sense of mobility, “rise up at this moment, /put on your fine suit of the clearest white bolt,/fix your black beaver,/pull up your gauntlets/and straighten your whip”. Fitzgerald’s unmistakable, strong Cork accent works here like a charm beside Jack B Yeats’s original watercolours which first appeared in Frank O’Connor’s translation almost a century ago.
— Martina Evans, The Irish Times
