Rebel Women: Brendan Kennelly's Versions of Irish Tragedy

Abstract

Camus asks, What is a rebel? and he answers, A man who says no-He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself. Rebellion can not without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.' For Camus, may lead to an equitable society. (1951) Camus went one step further than in his Myth of Sisyphus (1942), which locat ed man squarely in an absurd universe. Camus called his final chapter of Beyond Nihilism and in it he expands his earlier pessimistic view to encompass some creative change. Camus critically demolished the Utopian dreams of Marxism, but substituted something in their place. He had a vision that just progress was possible only by an idealistic revolution that did not vio late its own principles as it was established. Camus corrected Descartes' adage think therefore I am to therefore we exist (R 216). Further he says, In order to exist, man must rebel (R 22). Seeing as both a social phe nomenon and as an assertion of individual existence, Camus shares Karama zov's cry If all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only? (R107-8). Camus admired the Greeks, who had a respect for nature and like them he considered himself a Mediterranean, since he was born in Algeria. He opposes Mediterranean thinking to Germanic thought, which for him is mainly Friedrich Nietzsche and the disastrous Hitler regime that sought to subdue nature rather than come to terms with it, as the Greeks did. Camus also saw lit erature and art as furthering the ends of rebellion, and in his chapter on Rebel lion and Art he claims that The procedure of beauty, which is to contest real ity while endowing it with unity, is also the procedure of rebellion (R296). Irish literature well illustrates his claim. the twentieth century, there were written close to fifty Irish versions and translations of Greek tragedy in English and close to fifty more in Irish. Frank McGuinness notes that recently poets are turning to Greek tragedy: would say