Writers’ Paradise
When I lived here in the 1970s, I was taken with all the great Irish writers--poets, playwrights, novelists, lyricists. This is a land that reveres writers--that hasn’t changed. Last night I went to my first arts festival event, which honoured the life of Roger Casement through the work of a variety of Irish writers.
Casement grew up in England and in Country Antrim and was of Anglo-Irish descent. He worked for a private company in the Congo before joining the British foreign service. Like Joseph Conrad, he believed European colonisation would save Africans "from slavery, paganism and other barbarities.” Both quickly changed their views. Casement was hired to investigate Belgian atrocities under King Leopold II and traveled to the country’s interior to interview victims of the rubber trade. He wrote a scathing report that is regarded as the beginning of international humanitarian rights activism. From wiki:
"In the longer term, Casement's report would prove instrumental in mobilizing the international pressure that forced Leopold in 1908 to relinquish his personal holdings in Africa.”
Casement went on to do similar work in defense of the Putumayo Indians of Peru, also being brutalised by rubber barons. He earned a knighthood for his work, however during the first world war he made common cause with Ireland’s rebels. If you understand the foundation of imperialism in Africa and Latin America, it’s hard not to see the same pattern in Ireland--England’s first colony. He went to Germany to solicit arms ahead of the 1916 rebellion. When he returned to Ireland on a German submarine, he was captured and put on trial for treason.
His family appealed to the most famous Irishman of his day--George Bernard Shaw--to help in his defense. Shaw wrote a speech for Casement to deliver at his trial, however, Casement didn’t read it on the advice of his counsel. An Irish actor read it to us last night and it was passionate and brilliant. Had he delivered it, you wonder how the jury could have sent him to his death. Which they did. The English prosecutor made sure Casement’s homosexuality was known to any potential defenders, extinguishing any possibility of mercy.
Current Irish writer Fintan O’Toole, who writes for the Irish Times, wrote two monologues that were delivered by a formidable Irish actress. One imagined Casement in Berlin, suffering from a fever (he suffered bouts of malaria), dreaming of his time in the Congo and Peru and anticipating his capture. The second imagined him observing the spectacle of his bones being disinterred from an English prison grave in 1965 and returned to Ireland for burial. Both essays were powerful, just like Shaw’s writing, weaving together so many emotions and political perspectives. He cleverly incorporated a discussion of tantalum, also mined in the Congo. While the Congolese were tortured to bring forth rubber from the heart of darkness, providing tires when mass production of cars began, so now are they tortured in the production of tantalum, a critical component in cellphones.
The third piece was by celebrated Irish writer Colm Toibin. It was set to music and was performed by two men (bass and baritone) playing Casement and Conrad. I didn’t enjoy this one as much. The two men were singing in an aggressive operatic style that I’m not keen on--I had a hard time making out what they were saying.
Still, three out of four pieces were excellent, mixing all the tragedy and passion and joy and absurdity and poetry at the heart of so much Irish art. AND I had chocolate.
10-20