Two Languages of Irish Poetry Through the Poetry of Michael Hartnett

Abstract

Using the example of the poet Michael Hartnett, the article explores parts of the language issue in Ireland, which is a subject often addressed in modern Irish literature. Hartnett was already established as an English language poet when he announced in mid 1970s that he would no longer publish works in English. He turned to writing in Irish, which was not his mother tongue. Through some of Hartnett’s poems and papers, this article presents the poet’s relationship to the English and Irish poetic traditions and his position between the two, since, as he himself writes in one of the poems in the sequence “A Farewell to English,” both have left their mark on contemporary Ireland. The article thus highlights certain elements of Irish literary and cultural heritage that are embedded in Hartnett’s poetics. It also touches on the issue of translating into a third language and what this act implies for the preservation of the poem’s connotation, which points to the rift, caused by the loss of the historically predominant language. On the one hand, translation bridges this gap, as the readers cannot perceive whether the poem is written in the language of the colonizer or in the language that no longer has many native speakers; on the other hand, though, translation can obscure the issue of language, one of the central issues in Irish poetry during a certain period.