A HERO AMONG HEROES Here is a Youtube clip wherein celebrated Irish artist Dara Vallely gives an insight into the thinking behind his work based on the life of the Irish Iron Age hero Cú Chulainn - the inspiration for my character Maknazpy (especially in Blood from a Shadow, Maknazpy unwittingly relives episodes of Cú Chulainns life). I posted this in an earlier blog: The Cú in Cú Chulainn means hound (the boy warrior Setanta was renamed Cú Chulainn after he killed the ferocious watch-hound of Culann) and Con is interchangeable with Cú. Cú Chulainn is not to be confused with the standard model of a modern hero; he wasnt a wholesome blend of courage and compassion, didnt stand for justice and virtue against the immoral and corrupt. His most obvious characteristic was his Ríastrad, the brutal and indiscriminate battle-rage which could erupt against friend as easily as foe. Maknazpys ríastrad is attributed to PTSD as a result of his experiences in Americas recent crusades to the East. Im not convinced on that score but he certainly isnt a hero in the Jack Reacher mould, or even Philip Marlowe - whatever he is, his lineage stretches back much further than the modern code which excuses/glorifies brute force as long as the victor can construct a sufficient veneer of moral virtue. Kinsellas translation has the Ríastrad as: The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldnt probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a rams fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage. Ciarán Carsons translation is equally gripping: The first Torque seized Cú Chulainn and turned him into a contorted thing, unrecognizably horrible and grotesque. Carson continues, The heros light sprang from his forehead, long and thick as a warriors whetstone, long as a prow, and he clattered with rage as he wielded the shields, urging his charioteer on and raining stones on the massed army. Then thick, steady, strong, high as the mast of a tall ship was the straight spout of dark blood that rose up from the fount of his skull to dissolve in an otherworldly mist like the smoke that hangs above a royal hunting-lodge when a king comes to be looked after at the close of a winters day. Ferdias name offers even better opportunities for the kind of deflected meaning and interpretation I was seeking. Carsons excellent notes (which give his translation the edge over Kinsellas, I think), advise that Ferdia (Fer Diad) is One man of a couple or, possibly, a Man of smoke. Watch Dara speak about his interpretation of the Cú Chulainn story in his recent the exhibition at the Ulster Museum, Belfast. Dara Vallelys exhibition is titled: Laoch na Laochra - (A Hero among Heroes). https://youtube/watch?v=L-S6620tGIg
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 09:52:02 +0000
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