{"id":13619,"date":"2020-10-02T10:54:54","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T09:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/the-martyr-the-last-of-liam-o-flaherty-s-banned-novels-to-see-the-light-in-ireland\/"},"modified":"2020-10-02T10:54:54","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T09:54:54","slug":"the-martyr-the-last-of-liam-o-flaherty-s-banned-novels-to-see-the-light-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/the-martyr-the-last-of-liam-o-flaherty-s-banned-novels-to-see-the-light-in-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"The Martyr: the last of Liam O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s banned novels to see the light in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jenny Farrell <\/strong>introduce Liam O\u2019Flaherty’s\u00a0<\/em>The Martyr, Nuasc\u00e9alta 2020.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Liam O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s banned novel The Martyr <\/em>has just been republished by Nuasc\u00e9alta, eighty-seven years since its first and only edition in 1933.<\/p>\n

With this sensational republication of The Martyr<\/em>, Nuasc\u00e9alta publishers complete their epic task of restoring the remaining three major O\u2019Flaherty novels on the index of the Irish state. The other two novels reprinted by them were the first book to be banned under the Censorship of Publications act, the Galway novel The House of Gold<\/em>, and O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s insightful and scathing Hollywood satire Hollywood Cemetery<\/em>. This publication makes available, for the first time since the 1930s, the entirety of Liam O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s novelistic work and moves towards a restoration of a panorama of this author\u2019s work for a global audience.<\/p>\n

Banned writings were dangerous to come by for many decades, and the long-term effect of such an establishment ban on literary works radiates to this day, as once censored novels can still be rare on library and bookshop shelves. O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s novels, mainly written in the 1920s and 30s, address significant events in Irish history and the newly emerging Free State. He was the first Irish artist to seriously confront the realities of the Famine and he wrote the important anti-war novel Return of the Brute<\/em>. He examined the emergence of a fundamentalist Catholic State his books were banned and a whole people systematically kept in ignorance by a state betraying the ideals of independence.<\/p>\n

Nuasc\u00e9alta\u2019s return of The Martyr<\/em> to the reading public comes at a time when we commemorate \u2013 controversially \u2013 the centenary of the War of Independence and the Civil War. The Martyr <\/em>gives O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s take on the battle to control the country\u2019s destiny. The novel, written just ten years after the Civil War, brings to life the nationwide Free State attack on the anti-Treaty forces. One such offensive was the landing at Fenit in Kerry. Liam O\u2019Flaherty fictionalises this incident at \u201cCarra Point\u201d and \u201cSallytown\u201d (Tralee). Events around the Free State troop landing and its sequel are seen through the eyes of Sallytown\u2019s defenders and its townspeople, clerical and lay. In the author\u2019s imaginative reconstruction, professional Free State troops face Sallytown\u2019s ill-trained, badly led and poorly equipped volunteer defenders.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s point of view, here as in his other novels, is always informed by his understanding of class and class interests. He writes from the point of view of the ordinary people \u2013 fishermen, peasants, workers. As part of this perspective, he leaves no doubt on which side in the civil war the gombeen class stood:<\/p>\n

Every one of these peasants felt that Tracy was fighting for Ireland and that Sheehan was not. Down in their souls they felt it, by instinct; \u2026 It was all very well for posh fellows in Dublin, he felt, to mock at these ignorant poor people; but all the same the poor people\u2019s instincts were always right in the long run.<\/em><\/p>\n

O\u2019Flaherty presents the reader with the complexities of each class, as erstwhile comrades find themselves on the opposing sides of this tragic conflict: Sheehan<\/p>\n

was about the same age as Tracy and he had an equally brilliant record as a guerrilla fighter. He came from a village on the coast of Cork and he had been a fisherman before he became a revolutionary. He had been admitted into the ranks of the Republican Brotherhood for a very skilful landing of some arms right under the eyes of a British gunboat.<\/em><\/p>\n

This central conflict of the novel, that between Tracy and Sheehan, comments memorably on how differently the civil war could have ended: Sheehan refuses to kill Tracy and defies any military order to do so.<\/p>\n

The group of revolutionaries around Tracy as their central player is diverse. Some, like Rourke are simply farmers, others like Crosbie are devout Christians, and others again have been soldiers, guerrilla fighters and imprisoned. There is also an informer among them.<\/p>\n

The Martyr is a rare Irish Civil War novel that presents some fighters on the anti-Treaty side as informed by the socialism of Connolly, indeed declared atheists and communists, and Tracy and Sailor King have most in common with O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s own thinking. However, O\u2019Flaherty combines all these diverse people into a group around Tracy to shape a group hero, as opposed to the idealised individual hero that dominates the bourgeois novel. This band of revolutionaries includes women, although there is a certain degree of stereotyping in these female characters, including the rather startling portrayal of Constance Markievicz.<\/p>\n

Brian Crosbie, Sallytown\u2019s ineffectual Republican leader, is also based partly on an historical character \u2013 Terence Mac Sweeney. Crosbie, who becomes the martyr after whom the novel is named, is central to the plot. Mac Sweeney was a deeply devout Catholic, who described Ireland\u2019s struggle for independence as a religious crusade and his goal as a new Catholic state. Laid out in his coffin, he wore underneath his IRA uniform the rough brown habit of a Franciscan monk.<\/p>\n

Crosbie\u2019s ineffectuality arises from his Catholic nationalism, an issue of immediate relevance to O\u2019Flaherty at the time he wrote the book. An extensive dialogue between Crosbie and his Free State army torturer Tyson, reminiscent of Satan and Christ in the desert, paves the way for the novel\u2019s shocking ending.<\/p>\n

This raw novel provides a gripping contemporary account of events that defined Irish history. It contradicts revisionist presentations of those times and suggests that, at a time when History is being removed from school curricula, one should read literature. It is unlikely to find favour among the descendants of the \u2018Stater\u2019 camp, and could make for an uncomfortable reminder for the modern offspring of the anti-Treaty movement. Following the recent general election, the media, along with the politicians of Fiana F\u00e1il and Fine Gael, trumpeted about overcoming the divisions of the past, in an effort to exclude from government the party that aspires to achieve the goals of the anti-Treaty party of the Civil War. O\u2019Flaherty reminds us of what this was all about.<\/p>\n

The Martyr is available as an ebook from Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Farrell introduce Liam O\u2019Flaherty’s\u00a0The Martyr, Nuasc\u00e9alta 2020. Liam O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s banned novel The Martyr has just been republished by Nuasc\u00e9alta, eighty-seven years since its first and only…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":13617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1661],"tags":[2420,2421],"class_list":["post-13619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction-2","tag-irish-civil-war","tag-terence-mac-sweeney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}