Evening star., 1949-02-20
Reviewing The New Books

His Place Among
The ImmortuIs
MIsHFALLEN, FARE THEE
WELL
BY Sean o'Casey. fThe Macmil-
Ian Co.: $3.75J
Reviewed by
MARY McGRORY.
The fourth installment in Sean
O'Casey's magnificent autobiog-
raphy is like its predecessors, a
grand bout of words, sweeping and
singing, written by man who is
as much q poet as he Is a play
wright, q rebel and q dreamer.
But what it will probably do more
than anything Is to increase ad-
miration for what has gone before
and sharpen interest in what is
to come. For here O'Casey. on
the eve of leaving Ireland for
England is paying of old debts
and paying OF old scores, having
decided instead Of trying to form
Ireland's life, he would shape his
own"
The high mood of exaltation
that carried Drums Under the
Window" when Ireland arose to
throw off its English oppressors.
has given way here to a mood of
fierce disillusion. The dregs of
the glorious Easter Rising are bit
ter as ashes to O'Casey. The
theme Of the book is Yeats
matchless line on the martyrs of
1915, "A terrible beauty is born. ?"
Yes, says Sean, THE terrible
beauty of a top-hat is born to
Ireland" That was after the
senseless and savage civil war
during which Irish Catholics rent
their brothers with a ferocity
never exceeded by the Black and
Tans. O'Casey shows the madness
Of that struggle between Republi-
cans and Free Staters through
the shooting down Of man by
his former comrades In arms.
Then the killing gave way to a
frock-coated gentility which fair
drives him mad.
A Note Of Elegy.
The book opens on a note of
elegy. Scans old mother, de-
prived of the few comforts he
might have bought her with money
owed him for his first book.
died. in their wretched little room,
leaving Sean to remember her
young, fresh. cleaning laughter,
so strange from one who had gone
through so hard. bitter and
thankless a life for nearly 80
years years that withheld
Joy. raiment. food, and even
hope"
In that pious, conservative
country. q nationalist in religion,
and q Communist in politics, Sean
was nonetheless making his way
as q dramatist. The audience
rioted at the Abbey presentation
Of THE Plough and the Stars
and had to be quieted by Yeats;
the critics lashed him as a "slum
dramatist. q gutter-s -snipe who
could jingle a few words together"
Still he had the friendship Of Lady
Gregory and he gives as kind and
fair a picture of that durable
good angel of the Abbey as could
be asked. She was. he said. "a
better playwright than most of
them, acting the part Of a char
woman with a star on her breast" :"
An Impassioned Record.
Ferociously, unalterably anti
clerical. he pours the full tor
rent of his hatred and scorn on
the Irish clergy. Yet he loved DR..
Walter Mcdonald. a teacher of
theology for 40 years at Maynooth
College, and he writes with a cold
rage of the silence which greeted
DIR. McDonald's attempts to recon-
cile traditional theology with the
findings of science.
Other personalities appear.
humble and great, all vivid enough
to step of the pages. But Sean,
scorned by the critics. at odds with
the Abbey players, and out of step
with the new republic left Sweet
Inishfallen, having found there
was no making love to Kathleen,
daughter of Houlihan now, un-
tidy termagant. brawling out her
prayers"
Time has not tempered
O'Casey's bitterness nor his fire.
He writes as though 1t had hap
pened yesterday. No more i'm
passioned record has ever come
from his eloquent race. and few
more likely to enrage them more.
We shall probably never see its
like in memoirs again.