Riding my bike through the heart of the city on a night several weeks ago, I paused at a traffic signal (trust me!) and spotted a notable character leading the way, also pedalling a Dublin Bike. “Could it be my friend Bridget Hourican?”, I questioned the silhouette. Indeed, it was.
In our fleeting interaction, she hinted at forwarding her recently published book to me. Curious, I enquired, “What’s the content?”
Her response being “James Clarence Mangan”, I struggled to recall a single verse from the famous Irish wordsmith, unlike the instant recollection of “Stony Grey Soil” when the subject of Patrick Kavanagh arises in a conversation.
Unfortunately, I drew a blank, most likely due to the fact that Mangan, once revered as Ireland’s “National Poet”, had been phased out from the syllabus around the time I was at school.
Consequently, I found myself delving into “A Vision of Connacht in the 13th Century” that same evening.
It turned out to be a fortuitous venture as shortly after, I had to hurriedly compile “A History of Ireland in 100 journeys” (Diary, August 16th) in the frenzy of a fast-approaching deadline.
This piece of literature offered a crucial link between the early and later medieval phases, earning the phrase “I walked entranced through a land of morn” a surprise spot at number seven on my journey list.
In comparison, my late exposure to Mangan’s work is unexciting when set against Bridget’s tale. As narrated in her book, she discovered Mangan during a raucous gathering in a Liberties pub in 2008, with none other than Shane MacGowan, and involved intoxicants stronger than poetry.
A book that MacGowan and others had been discussing that evening, somehow ended up with Bridget. When she regained her senses after a long 20 hours, she found herself not only nursing a severe MDMA induced headache, but also the beginnings of a passion for Mangan’s poems.
The poem ‘A Vision of Connacht in the 13th Century’ resonated not only through my consciousness like an unyielding mantra from a dream, but also appeared to cause the text on the pages of Shane’s book to warp and dance. This, undoubtedly, was amplified by my altered state due to the effects of the MDMA and the fact that I was reading with a single contact lens.
The very same poem had, more than a hundred years ago, brought about a profound revelation in the life of Patrick Kavanagh. He bore witness to a young girl reciting the initial verse of this poem in school. He subsequently documented this in his work, ‘The Green Fool’. This scene was beautifully encapsulated by his biographer, Antoinette Quinn: “‘A Vision of Connacht in the 13th Century’, expressed in the first person and seemingly without the aid of any written material, had a transfixing power that magically illuminated the familiar view of sunlit cornfields from his rural childhood.”
Quinn noted that from then on, the child who couldn’t express his obscure fondness for the sight of lilacs in a gloomy fireplace or the Easter sun pirouetting upon the dewy fields, found his secretive sentiments vocalised and understood.
Kavanagh later ascended to replace Mangan as the National Poet for a while. In addition, he tread in Mangan’s singularly recognisable footsteps along Dublin’s streets, although never quite matching his flamboyant style. Mangan was renowned for an assortment of eccentricities including his penchant for wearing a cloak, green-tinted spectacles, and a tall, pointed hat reminiscent of a witch’s. His tragically premature death was in no small part due to an opium addiction, cementing his status as a precursor to today’s rock stars.
The commentary here is embedded in an exceptionally well-composed, nuanced work of considerable depth that justifies an obsession spanning a decade and a half which sparked into being on a fateful night in McGruder’s pub.
The book, to a degree, ponders the typically unreliable essence of biographies. It also serves as a form of spectral narrative, underscored by the recurrent voids in Mangan’s existence and his occasional apparitions since, including how he continues to preoccupy the writer.
Additionally, it presents an authentic account of a romance. This results in the book’s other significant revelation that elicited a certain thrill in this reader: “And then, Frank entered my life.”
The individual referenced isn’t me. The author referred to Frank Callanan – a distinguished lawyer, Parnellite history enthusiast, and a scholar of Joyce, who, from 2011 onward, was the cherished one of her heart.
Before his abrupt and deeply grieved death in 2021, Callanan was somewhat of a familiar figure on the streets of Dublin, often spotted peddling around the city, with shopping bags hanging perilously from bicycle handles, dressed in purple socks.
The beloved Joyce’s fondness for the poet and Mangan’s “subtle” influence on Irish history, especially during the Parnellite era, was something Callanan understood despite not being able to recite a single verse from Mangan’s work.
He gave his nod of approval to Hourican’s decision of initially penning a concise biography aimed at scholarly publishing, which later, akin to their blossoming affair, evolved into something more profound. The author confesses, “If I was in a quest for a topic to connect me to Frank, I couldn’t have found a more fitting one.”