Nótaí na nEagarthóirí: Editor's Notes

Abstract

Nótaí na nEagarthóirí:Editor's Notes David Gardiner Welcome to the autumn issue of the New Hibernia Review. This issue arrives shortly after the summer issue. As an outsider, I feel this timing is entirely appropriate. Having traveled to the North, I was told about fall, even "autumn." And one day, I walked out and saw the oak leaves change and the ash trees glimmer. And then, the next day, the temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit (-11 Celsius). I couldn't help but think, "that was an enjoyable autumn." Not even Keats could have written an ode to the twenty-four-hour autumn. So, having—as I'm told—missed "this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," the New Hibernia Review presents its autumn issue. The most evident and continuing innovation may be its focus on contemporary Irish art. Gillian Morrow's painting Lochlann is our current cover. As stated in the cover notes (page 79), it does not present the "backward glance" but something simultaneously tired, gifted, and forward-looking—something that yields much to consider in today's Ireland, European Union, and United States. Interestingly, while retaining the figurative tradition of Irish art throughout much of the country's history, Morrow is asking us to look beyond. I hope that this issue, and future ones, provides that glance forward. A first forward glance comes from the Cork poet and novelist Thomas McCarthy, who has graciously agreed to have segments of his journals published here. The reader may notice that his selection is slightly longer than typically featured, but his thoughts and observations make him one of the great chroniclers of his generation. McCarthy's journals are followed by another Cork narrative as Paul Delaney views Frank O'Connor's much-read, and revised, "Guests of the Nation" from a writer's perspective. Next, Joanna Jarząb-Napierała considers a work less known in the United States: Mike McCormack's wonderful Solar Bones, which might be [End Page 5] compared to Wittgenstein's Mistress in its engagement with the "tradition" and working at an angle from it. As we hear and pass on one deadline for Brexit after another, Shaun O'Connell's appreciation of Colm Tóibín's work reminds us of the boundaries that exist in both Tóibín's psyche and that of contemporary Irish writing. These boundaries are further addressed in the contentious markers of memorialization that E. Moore Quinn outlines in the story of Grosse Île and the long struggle to recognize this place of separation from Ireland and, indeed, the sickness of life itself. The Irish poet featured in this issue is Bernadette McIntyre. Her poems in Irish and their translations move gracefully from an elegy to the city of Cork to the characters of Jack Kerouac, once again demonstrating the fluidity and power of poetry in Irish. Our final essays reassess the Irish Revival. Steven Hrdlicka has unearthed heretofore unexamined letters from Jack B. Yeats to his friend, and literary benefactor of Maunsel & Co., Joseph Maunsell Hone. In a fascinating account of the letters and illustrations within them, Hrdlicka examines not only some of Yeats's only statements about his own aesthetic but also the state of Irish art as an international artist viewed it at the time. Furthermore, Ronan Crowley's writing on James Stephens, Brinsley MacNamara, and Eimar O'Duffy continues to widen the discussion of Irish writing during the first decades of the twentieth century beyond the Joyce-Yeats polarity and provides a nuanced biocritical reading of the period. Our last article, on George Moore and Elizabeth Gardner, has been contributed by Adrian Frazier, a consummate critic who remains a continually inquisitive and productive scholar. Following through extensive research that explores—as is Frazier's technique—a central conflict, we learn about Moore, his artistic pursuits, and the linchpin of his "Sex in Art," an essay that takes direct aim at artists such as the accomplished Gardner. But that's all summary so that the reader does not have to actually read the journal. This we understand regarding the genre but not the impulse. Indeed, we hope that you enjoy these intellectual walks with...