Abstract
In his essay ‘The War Years in Ulster’ John Montague argues that it is impossible to write a poem about the atom bomb which is not unconsciously ‘drawn to its dark power’, and suggests that ‘if nuclear horror is only to be an excuse for rhetoric’, it should be left to ‘more public media like the cinema, the press and television’ (1989: 35). He then cites the French director Alain Resnais as the only artist he can think of ‘who has found anything approaching a redemptive language to deal with what is, in a historical and moral sense, man’s supreme challenge to himself’. Resnais’s movie Hiroshima mon amour was released in 1959, and its autobiographical, self-referential subplot is based on the fact that it is impossible to document the tragedy of Hiroshima. Besides the inspirer of the nouvelle vague, Montague alludes to the ‘redemptive language’ of Marguerite Duras, who interpreted and enhanced the director’s talent with her brilliant screenplay. If one agrees with Montague that no Irish poet has yet equalled Resnais’s achievement – saying the unsayable – there are nevertheless several authors who have approached the subject of the nuclear holocaust. As has been shown in Chapter 3, Ciaran Carson’s ‘The Rising Sun’ awakens the horrific memory of ‘a maiden of Hiroshima’ with elongated bones ‘who played / The hammer dulcimer like psychedelic rain’ (Carson 1998b: 20). Chapter 2 focuses entirely on Derek Mahon’s ‘The Snow Party’ (1975) and how he gradually decided not to write a poem about Hiroshima.
Chapter PDF
Copyright information
© 2012 Irene De Angelis
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kinsella, T., Watters, E., Glavin, A. (2012). Tu n’as Rien Vu à Hiroshima. In: The Japanese Effect in Contemporary Irish Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230355194_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230355194_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-59063-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-35519-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)