In Sunlight and in Shadow

Irish history casts a long shadow on contemporary Irish culture. amidst the bright prosperity of recent years that shadow has sometimes receded from view. and in youthful stylish dublin, with its ubiquitous mobile phones and thriving Internet cafes, it often seems to have vanished. But, in two recent books on Irish history, literature, and culture, the shadow of the past is not only present but very much in the foreground. richard tillinghast’s Finding Ireland is a gathering of memoirs, travelogues, reviews, “letters from Ireland,” and familiar essays, in which the american poet explores Irish culture mainly through the works of modern Irish writers. a longtime sojourner in Ireland, tillinghast now lives in retirement in County tipperary. In the manner of an informed “blow-in” speaking to the less informed, he endeavors to cross what he calls the “oceans of sentimentality and prejudice [that] keep us from seeing the Irish in their true complexity.” In tones ranging from the professorial to the celebrative to the elegiac, he writes with authority on subjects as diverse as the poetry of derek Mahon, the fiction of William trevor, the plays of Brian friel, the felicities of Irish traditional music, and the surviving pleasures of rural Irish life, where “there is still a place by the fire and a cup of tea for the visitor in a farmhouse kitchen.” though his book has the look of a miscellany, its center of gravity may be found in the poet’s intellectual passions, namely anglo-Irish culture and modern Irish poetry. Jonathan swift, the first major anglo-Irish writer, described his people as “strangers in a strange land.” and Yeats, two centuries later, spoke of “angloIrish solitude.” In “Who Were the anglo-Irish?” tillinghast embraces these descriptions, portraying a culture that enjoyed its heyday in the late eighteenth century and declined thereafter, becoming ever more isolated and insecure. distrusted by the Irish and english alike, the anglo-Irish lived apart in their