boho

Éirinn go Brách

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Éirinn go Brách

Happy Saints Patrick’s Day. My family has deep Irish roots. I can trace my mothers father’s line back to County Galway and the Conamara Mountains, where they left for Charleston in 1705.

It has always bugged me that the rich heritage gets obscured during this day of the year. All we think about is beer, corn beef, and mystical creatures. Since college and Taura Napier’s World Literature and Irish Literature classes, I always think of John Millington Synge and his great play, The Playboy of the Western World. Ireland is a rich land of music, letters, food, and history. Let us remember these today and not green beer. I will think of my long roots in Ireland today as I go about my day. I have the red hair of my Irish forefathers, their Catholic faith and love of literature.

“… it’s great luck and company I’ve won me in the end of time — two fine women fighting for the likes of me — till I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.” — Christy

“Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law.” — Sara Tansey

“A daring fellow is the jewel of the world….” — Michael Flaherty
“…the blow of a loy, have taught me that there’s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed.” — Pegeen

Quotes from Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.

Bohemian Woolf

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I am asked one of two questions when someone new learns of my love for Virginia Woolf: a) are you afraid of Virginia Woolf, b) why do you like her, she is so odd and hard to read. Well the answer to question is: no and the play really has nothing to do with her. That is query is usually asked by those who have no idea who she is. The second one is have you read her work, have you read about her.
Her work stands as a seminal in the course of western literature. This little jaunt down a topic frequently expounded on, will focus on her life. Virginia was born into a scholar family, in the end of the Victorian age in England. She was born into a world where women were not educated formally but at home. Her father Sir Leslie Stephens was a world renowned literature scholar and critic. Her mother’s aunt was a famed Victorian photographer. She was into a world of art. However, writing in the stream of consciousness style she made famous, it was her bohemianism that I love. She and her fellow Bloomsburies set out to change English society. They lived by their own terms in their own manner. These were the most forward thinking men and women in the nation. Their likes were Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, E.M Forest, Clive Bell, and Leonard Woolf. These men and women set out to experiment in a new way of life and the very much did.
I applaud Virginia for her writing but also for her experiments in living, her pugniousness to write about her own mental illness, long before it was fashionable. She and her Vanessa were the forerunners of the British Feminist movement. Here is a woman who is mostly known for her writing, that in and of itself was revolutionary, but her manner of living, was remarkable. To really know and understand Virginia read her diaries and her letters. There you meet the revolutionary Woolf face to face. I applaud her, because reading her diary, have finally give me the courage to let my Bohemian flag fly high and proud.