should change out of those wet clothes. I've got to go. I've got to
see Doalty Da n Doalty. HUGH Wha t about? OWEN I'll be back soon.
[As OWEN exits.] HUGH Take care, Owen. To remember everything is a form of madness. [He
looks around the room, carefully, as if he were about to leave it forever. Then he looks at JIMMY, asleep again.]
The road to Sligo.6 A spring morning. 1798.' Going into battle. Do you remember, James? Tw o young gallants with pikes across their shoulders and the Aeneid8 in their pockets. Everything seemed to find definition that
5. The decree of the commander [Latin; Friel's note]. 6. Port town south of County Donegal. 7. That year a force of Catholics and Protestants known as the United Irishmen launched a rebellion throughout Ireland. After the British quashed the uprising, the Irish Parliament was abolished, and two years later the Act of Union incorporated Ireland into the United Kingdom.
8. Virgil's epic, about the Trojan hero Aeneas, who escapes the destruction of Troy and founds Rome.
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25 10 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
spring?a congruence, a miraculous matching of hope and past and present and possibility. Striding across the fresh, green land. The rhythms of perception heightened. The whole enterprise of consciousness accelerated. We were gods that morning, James; and I had recently married my goddess, Caitlin Dubh Nic Reactainn, may she rest in peace. And to leave her and my infant son in his cradle?that was heroic, too. By God, sir, we were magnificent. We marched as far as?where was it??Glenties!9 All of twenty-three miles in one day. And it was there, in Phelan's pub, that we got homesick for Athens, just like Ulysses. The desiderium nostrorum?the need for our own. Our pietas,1 James, was for older, quieter things. And that was the longest twenty-three miles back I ever made. [Toasts JIMMY.] My friend, confusion is not an ignoble condition.
[MAIRE enters.]
MAIRE I'm back again. I set out for somewhere but I couldn't remember where. So I came back here.
HUGH Yes, I will teach you English, Maire Chatach. MAIRE Will you, Master? I must learn it. I need to learn it.
HUGH Indeed you may well be my only pupil. [He goes towards the steps and begins to ascend.] MAIRE When can we start?
HUGH Not today. Tomorrow, perhaps. After the funeral. We'll begin tomorrow. [Ascending.] But don't expect too much. I will provide you with the available words and the available grammar. But will that help you to interpret between privacies? I have no idea. But it's all we have. I have no idea at all. [He is now at the top.] MAIRE Master, what does the English word 'always' mean? HUGH Semper?per omnia saecula.1 The Greeks called it 'aei'. It's not a word I'd start with. It's a silly word, girl. [He sits.] [JIMMY is awake. He gets to his feet. MAIRE sees the Name- Book, picks it up, and sits with it on her knee.] MAIRE When he comes back, this is where he'll come to. He told me this is where he was happiest. [JIMMY sits beside MAIRE.]
JIMMY Do you know the Greek word endogameinl It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you don't cross those borders casually?both sides get very angry. Now, the problem is this: Is Athene sufficiently mortal or am I sufficiently godlike for the marriage to be acceptable to her people and to my people? You think about that. HUGH Urbs antiqua fuit?there was an ancient city which,'tis said, Juno3 loved above all the lands. And it was the goddess's aim and cherished hope that here should be the capital of all nations?should the fates perchance allow that. Yet in truth she discovered that a race was springing from Trojan
9. A region of intersecting glens on the coast of rative of Virgil's Aeneid. Here Juno angrily foresees central Donegal. the destruction of Carthage by Aeneas's Roman 1. Piety [Friel's note]. The Latin term for the trait descendants ('a race was springing from Trojan associated especially with Virgil's dutiful hero blood') and the extension of Roman rule over this Aeneas. The story of Ulysses', or Odysseus', ten-North African colony (Rome and Carthage fought year wandering on the way home is told in Homer's the Punic Wars in the 3rd and 2nd centuries Odysse)'. B.C.E.). While vaunting Rome's imperial mission to 2. Always?for all time. Aei, always [Friel's note]. civilize the world, Virgil's epic also includes a tragic 3. In Roman mythology queen of the gods, who love story: Aeneas and the Carthaginian queen loved ancient Carthage (now in Tunisia) above all. Dido fall in love, but she commits suicide after he Hugh's recitation is from the beginning of the nar-abandons her for his imperial duty.
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BRATHWAITE: [NATION LANGUAGE] / 252 3
blood to overthrow some day these Tyrian4 towers?a people late regem belloque superbum?kings of broad realms and proud in war who would come forth for Lybia's5 downfall?such was?such was the course?such was the course ordained?ordained by fate . . . What the hell's wrong with me? Sure I know it backways. I'll begin again. Urbs antiquafuit?there was an ancient city which,'tis said, Juno loved above all the lands.
[Begin to bring down the lights.]
And it was the goddess's aim and cherished hope that here should be the capital of all nations?should the fates perchance allow that. Yet in truth she discovered that a race was springing from Trojan blood to overthrow some day these Tyrian towers?a people kings of broad realms and proud in war who would come forth for Lybia's downfall . . .
[Black.]
4. I.e., Carthaginian. Carthage had been founded anon), by Phoenicians from the city of Tyre (now in Leb- 5. Carthage's. KAMAU BRATHWAITE
b. 1930 As a poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite has been the most prominent West Indian spokesman for 'the literature of reconnection': he has sought to recover and revalue the African inheritance in the Caribbean?a religious, linguistic, and cultural inheritance seen as embarrassing or taboo through most of the twentieth century. In History of the Voice, a lecture first delivered in 1979, Brathwaite argues that Afro-Caribbeans, their ancestors uprooted by slavery, were further cut off from their specific history and their local environment by Standard English models of language and literature. He proposes 'nation language,' a creolized English saturated with African words, rhythms, even grammar, as a crucial tool for writers to recuperate Afro-Caribbean history and experience. His own poetry draws on West Indian syncopations, orality, and musical traditions, but also adapts imported models, such as the modernist dislocations of persona, rhythm, and tone in T. S. Eliot's verse.
