Abstract
This article reconstructs an early reception of Brian Ó Nualláin’s An Béal Bocht (1941) in which the novel was hailed as a breakthrough work that advanced the Irish-language prose tradition and promised to win new readers of Irish. The story of how this initial enthusiasm hardened into a critical diminishment of Ó Nualláin’s achievement as an obscure parody involves the author’s own efforts to associate the novel with Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s An tOileánach, the dampening of the optimism which surrounded the Irish language in the 1940s, and the impact of Patrick C. Power’s translation, The Poor Mouth, on how An Béal Bocht was understood. By charting the evolution of An Béal Bocht’s reception history, this article furthers contemporary scholarship on the promise Ó Nualláin’s novel still holds for Irish-language prose.
Highlights
In the eighty years since its first publication, An Béal Bocht has generated a substantial archive of reviews and responses, beginning with the multitudinous interventions of Ó Nualláin himself as editor, commentator, and perhaps reviewer
An Béal Bocht was first rejected by publishers Browne and Nolan following vigorous criticism by its appointed readers, for one of whom Ó Nualláin was ‘the veriest tyro in the Irish language.’[1]. The novel was subsequently published in 1941 by An Preas Náisiúnta (The National Press)
In 1975, this English-language version was republished by Picador with illustrations by Ralph Steadman and, in 1975, Dolmen brought out a hybrid fourth edition in Irish which restored the 1941 text but substituted the typeface Ó Nualláin devised for a standard Roman script
Summary
In the eighty years since its first publication, An Béal Bocht has generated a substantial archive of reviews and responses, beginning with the multitudinous interventions of Ó Nualláin himself as editor, commentator, and perhaps reviewer. His review corrects the many errors and misreadings in the Swedish version which are the result of a translator working from the English translation who is neither ‘competent in the original language,’ nor ‘familiar with the content matter, whether technical or cultural.’[59] The most dangerous product of such a translation of a translation is the simplification of Ó Nualláin’s intentions, such as the comment in the Swedish translator’s postscript that An Béal Bocht attacks ‘irländska nationalisterna’ (Irish nationalists) Such ‘interpretations,’ writes McKendry, ‘tend to be too static, simplistic, and outdated, fitting into the kind of neat little boxes which Brian Ó Nualláin spent his literary life displacing.’[60]. Original novel were overshadowed in readings that emerged at the time of a translation which brought The Poor Mouth to a much larger international audience
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