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diff --git a/old/syngy10.txt b/old/syngy10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..62ad8e5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/syngy10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1414 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Synge And The Ireland Of His Time +by William Butler Yeats + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Synge And The Ireland Of His Time + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8557] +[This file was first posted on July 23, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SYNGE AND THE IRELAND OF HIS TIME *** + + + + +E-text prepared by David Starner, Charles Franks, Juliet Sutherland, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +SYNGE AND THE IRELAND OF HIS TIME + +BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS + +WITH A NOTE CONCERNING A WALK THROUGH CONNEMARA WITH HIM +BY JACK BUTLER YEATS + + + + + + + +CHURCHTOWN +DUNDRUM +MCMXI + + + +PREFACE + + +At times during Synge's last illness, Lady Gregory and I would speak of +his work and always find some pleasure in the thought that unlike +ourselves, who had made our experiments in public, he would leave to the +world nothing to be wished away--nothing that was not beautiful or +powerful in itself, or necessary as an expression of his life and +thought. When he died we were in much anxiety, for a letter written +before his last illness, and printed in the selection of his poems +published at the Cuala Press, had shown that he was anxious about the +fate of his manuscripts and scattered writings. On the evening of the +night he died he had asked that I might come to him the next day; and my +diary of the days following his death shows how great was our anxiety. +Presently however, all seemed to have come right, for the Executors sent +me the following letter that had been found among his papers, and +promised to carry out his wishes. + + +'May 4th, 1908 + +'Dear Yeats, + +'This is only to go to you if anything should go wrong with me under the +operation or after it. I am a little bothered about my 'papers.' I have a +certain amount of verse that I think would be worth preserving, possibly +also the 1st and 3rd acts of 'Deirdre,' and then I have a lot of Kerry +and Wicklow articles that would go together into a book. The other early +stuff I wrote I have kept as a sort of curiosity, but I am anxious that +it should not get into print. I wonder could you get someone--say ... who +is now in Dublin to go through them for you and do whatever you and Lady +Gregory think desirable. It is rather a hard thing to ask you but I do +not want my good things destroyed or my bad things printed rashly-- +especially a morbid thing about a mad fiddler in Paris which I hate. Do +what you can--Good luck. + +'J.M. Synge' + + + + +In the summer of 1909, the Executors sent me a large bundle of papers, +cuttings from newspapers and magazines, manuscript and typewritten prose +and verse, put together and annotated by Synge himself before his last +illness. I spent a portion of each day for weeks reading and re-reading +early dramatic writing, poems, essays, and so forth, and with the +exception of ninety pages which have been published without my consent, +made consulting Lady Gregory from time to time the Selection of his work +published by Messrs. Maunsel. It is because of these ninety pages, that +neither Lady Gregory's name nor mine appears in any of the books, and +that the Introduction which I now publish, was withdrawn by me after it +had been advertised by the publishers. Before the publication of the +books the Executors discovered a scrap of paper with a sentence by J.M. +Synge saying that Selections might be taken from his Essays on the +Congested Districts. I do not know if this was written before his letter +to me, which made no mention of them, or contained his final directions. +The matter is unimportant, for the publishers decided to ignore my offer +to select as well as my original decision to reject, and for this act of +theirs they have given me no reasons except reasons of convenience, which +neither Lady Gregory nor I could accept. + +W.B. Yeats. + + + * * * * * + + + + +J.M. SYNGE AND THE IRELAND OF HIS TIME + +On Saturday, January 26th, 1907, I was lecturing in Aberdeen, and when my +lecture was over I was given a telegram which said, 'Play great success.' +It had been sent from Dublin after the second Act of 'The Playboy of the +Western World,' then being performed for the first time. After one in the +morning, my host brought to my bedroom this second telegram, 'Audience +broke up in disorder at the word shift.' I knew no more until I got the +Dublin papers on my way from Belfast to Dublin on Tuesday morning. On the +Monday night no word of the play had been heard. About forty young men +had sat on the front seats of the pit, and stamped and shouted and blown +trumpets from the rise to the fall of the curtain. On the Tuesday night +also the forty young men were there. They wished to silence what they +considered a slander upon Ireland's womanhood. Irish women would never +sleep under the same roof with a young man without a chaperon, nor admire +a murderer, nor use a word like 'shift;' nor could anyone recognise the +country men and women of Davis and Kickham in these poetical, violent, +grotesque persons, who used the name of God so freely, and spoke of all +things that hit their fancy. + +A patriotic journalism which had seen in Synge's capricious imagination +the enemy of all it would have young men believe, had for years prepared +for this hour, by that which is at once the greatest and most ignoble +power of journalism, the art of repeating a name again and again with +some ridiculous or evil association. The preparation had begun after the +first performance of 'The Shadow of the Glen,' Synge's first play, with +an assertion made in ignorance but repeated in dishonesty, that he had +taken his fable and his characters, not from his own mind nor that +profound knowledge of cot and curragh he was admitted to possess, but +'from a writer of the Roman decadence.' Some spontaneous dislike had been +but natural, for genius like his can but slowly, amid what it has of +harsh and strange, set forth the nobility of its beauty, and the depth of +its compassion; but the frenzy that would have silenced his master-work +was, like most violent things artificial, the defence of virtue by those +that have but little, which is the pomp and gallantry of journalism and +its right to govern the world. + +As I stood there watching, knowing well that I saw the dissolution of a +school of patriotism that held sway over my youth, Synge came and stood +beside me, and said, 'A young doctor has just told me that he can hardly +keep himself from jumping on to a seat, and pointing out in that howling +mob those whom he is treating for venereal disease.' + + + + +II + + +Thomas Davis, whose life had the moral simplicity which can give to +actions the lasting influence that style alone can give to words, had +understood that a country which has no national institutions must show +its young men images for the affections, although they be but diagrams of +what it should be or may be. He and his school imagined the Soldier, the +Orator, the Patriot, the Poet, the Chieftain, and above all the Peasant; +and these, as celebrated in essay and songs and stories, possessed so +many virtues that no matter how England, who as Mitchell said 'had the +ear of the world,' might slander us, Ireland, even though she could not +come at the world's other ear, might go her way unabashed. But ideas and +images which have to be understood and loved by large numbers of people, +must appeal to no rich personal experience, no patience of study, no +delicacy of sense; and if at rare moments some 'Memory of the Dead' can +take its strength from one; at all other moments manner and matter will +be rhetorical, conventional, sentimental; and language, because it is +carried beyond life perpetually, will be as wasted as the thought, with +unmeaning pedantries and silences, and a dread of all that has salt and +savour. After a while, in a land that has given itself to agitation +over-much, abstract thoughts are raised up between men's minds and Nature, +who never does the same thing twice, or makes one man like another, till +minds, whose patriotism is perhaps great enough to carry them to the +scaffold, cry down natural impulse with the morbid persistence of minds +unsettled by some fixed idea. They are preoccupied with the nation's +future, with heroes, poets, soldiers, painters, armies, fleets, but only +as these things are understood by a child in a national school, while a +secret feeling that what is so unreal needs continual defence makes them +bitter and restless. They are like some state which has only paper money, +and seeks by punishments to make it buy whatever gold can buy. They no +longer love, for only life is loved, and at last, a generation is like an +hysterical woman who will make unmeasured accusations and believe +impossible things, because of some logical deduction from a solitary +thought which has turned a portion of her mind to stone. + + + + +III + + +Even if what one defends be true, an attitude of defence, a continual +apology, whatever the cause, makes the mind barren because it kills +intellectual innocence; that delight in what is unforeseen, and in the +mere spectacle of the world, the mere drifting hither and thither that +must come before all true thought and emotion. A zealous Irishman, +especially if he lives much out of Ireland, spends his time in a +never-ending argument about Oliver Cromwell, the Danes, the penal laws, +the rebellion of 1798, the famine, the Irish peasant, and ends by +substituting a traditional casuistry for a country; and if he be a +Catholic, yet another casuistry that has professors, schoolmasters, +letter-writing priests, and the authors of manuals to make the meshes +fine, comes between him and English literature, substituting arguments +and hesitations for the excitement at the first reading of the great +poets which should be a sort of violent imaginative puberty. His +hesitations and arguments may have been right, the Catholic philosophy +may be more profound than Milton's morality, or Shelley's vehement +vision; but none the less do we lose life by losing that recklessness +Castiglione thought necessary even in good manners, and offend our Lady +Truth, who would never, had she desired an anxious courtship, have digged +a well to be her parlour. + +I admired though we were always quarrelling on some matter, J.F. Taylor, +the orator, who died just before the first controversy over these plays. +It often seemed to me that when he spoke Ireland herself had spoken, one +got that sense of surprise that comes when a man has said what is +unforeseen because it is far from the common thought, and yet obvious +because when it has been spoken, the gate of the mind seems suddenly to +roll back and reveal forgotten sights and let loose lost passions. I have +never heard him speak except in some Irish literary or political society, +but there at any rate, as in conversation, I found a man whose life was a +ceaseless reverie over the religious and political history of Ireland. He +saw himself pleading for his country before an invisible jury, perhaps of +the great dead, against traitors at home and enemies abroad, and a sort +of frenzy in his voice and the moral elevation of his thoughts gave him +for the moment style and music. One asked oneself again and again, 'Why +is not this man an artist, a man of genius, a creator of some kind?' The +other day under the influence of memory, I read through his one book, a +life of Owen Roe O'Neill, and found there no sentence detachable from its +context because of wisdom or beauty. Everything was argued from a +premise; and wisdom, and style, whether in life or letters come from the +presence of what is self-evident, from that which requires but statement, +from what Blake called 'naked beauty displayed.' The sense of what was +unforeseen and obvious, the rolling backward of the gates had gone with +the living voice, with the nobility of will that made one understand what +he saw and felt in what was now but argument and logic. I found myself in +the presence of a mind like some noisy and powerful machine, of thought +that was no part of wisdom but the apologetic of a moment, a woven thing, +no intricacy of leaf and twig, of words with no more of salt and of +savour than those of a Jesuit professor of literature, or of any other +who does not know that there is no lasting writing which does not define +the quality, or carry the substance of some pleasure. How can one, if +one's mind be full of abstractions and images created not for their own +sake but for the sake of party, even if there were still the need, find +words that delight the ear, make pictures to the mind's eye, discover +thoughts that tighten the muscles, or quiver and tingle in the flesh, and +stand like St. Michael with the trumpet that calls the body to +resurrection? + + + + +IV + + +Young Ireland had taught a study of our history with the glory of Ireland +for event, and this for lack, when less than Taylor studied, of +comparison with that of other countries wrecked the historical instinct. +An old man with an academic appointment, who was a leader in the attack +upon Synge, sees in the 11th century romance of Deirdre a re-telling of +the first five act tragedy outside the classic languages, and this +tragedy from his description of it was certainly written on the +Elizabethan model; while an allusion to a copper boat, a marvel of magic +like Cinderella's slipper, persuades him that the ancient Irish had +forestalled the modern dockyards in the making of metal ships. The man +who doubted, let us say, our fabulous ancient kings running up to Adam, +or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he had +doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so ignorant, +that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to drive away +amid familiar applause, all those had they but found strange truth in the +world or in their mind, whose knowledge has passed out of memory and +become an instinct of hand or eye. There was no literature, for +literature is a child of experience always, of knowledge never; and the +nation itself, instead of being a dumb struggling thought seeking a mouth +to utter it or hand to show it, a teeming delight that would re-create +the world, had become, at best, a subject of knowledge. + + + + +V + + +Taylor always spoke with confidence though he was no determined man, +being easily flattered or jostled from his way; and this, putting as it +were his fiery heart into his mouth made him formidable. And I have +noticed that all those who speak the thoughts of many, speak confidently, +while those who speak their own thoughts are hesitating and timid, as +though they spoke out of a mind and body grown sensitive to the edge of +bewilderment among many impressions. They speak to us that we may give +them certainty, by seeing what they have seen; and so it is, that +enlargement of experience does not come from those oratorical thinkers, +or from those decisive rhythms that move large numbers of men, but from +writers that seem by contrast as feminine as the soul when it explores in +Blake's picture the recesses of the grave, carrying its faint lamp +trembling and astonished; or as the Muses who are never pictured as +one-breasted amazons, but as women needing protection. Indeed, all art +which appeals to individual man and awaits the confirmation of his senses +and his reveries, seems when arrayed against the moral zeal, the confident +logic, the ordered proof of journalism, a trifling, impertinent, +vexatious thing, a tumbler who has unrolled his carpet in the way of a +marching army. + + + + +VI + + +I attack things that are as dear to many as some holy image carried +hither and thither by some broken clan, and can but say that I have felt +in my body the affections I disturb, and believed that if I could raise +them into contemplation I would make possible a literature, that finding +its subject-matter all ready in men's minds would be, not as ours is, an +interest for scholars, but the possession of a people. I have founded +societies with this aim, and was indeed founding one in Paris when I +first met with J.M. Synge, and I have known what it is to be changed by +that I would have changed, till I became argumentative and unmannerly, +hating men even in daily life for their opinions. And though I was never +convinced that the anatomies of last year's leaves are a living forest, +or thought a continual apologetic could do other than make the soul a +vapour and the body a stone; or believed that literature can be made by +anything but by what is still blind and dumb within ourselves, I have had +to learn how hard in one who lives where forms of expression and habits +of thought have been born, not for the pleasure of begetting but for the +public good, is that purification from insincerity, vanity, malignity, +arrogance, which is the discovery of style. But it became possible to +live when I had learnt all I had not learnt in shaping words, in +defending Synge against his enemies, and knew that rich energies, fine, +turbulent or gracious thoughts, whether in life or letters, are but +love-children. + + + + +VII + + +Synge seemed by nature unfitted to think a political thought, and with +the exception of one sentence, spoken when I first met him in Paris, that +implied some sort of nationalist conviction, I cannot remember that he +spoke of politics or showed any interest in men in the mass, or in any +subject that is studied through abstractions and statistics. Often for +months together he and I and Lady Gregory would see no one outside the +Abbey Theatre, and that life, lived as it were in a ship at sea, suited +him, for unlike those whose habit of mind fits them to judge of men in +the mass, he was wise in judging individual men, and as wise in dealing +with them as the faint energies of ill-health would permit; but of their +political thoughts he long understood nothing. One night when we were +still producing plays in a little hall, certain members of the Company +told him that a play on the Rebellion of '98 would be a great success. +After a fortnight he brought them a scenario which read like a chapter +out of Rabelais. Two women, a Protestant and a Catholic, take refuge in a +cave, and there quarrel about religion, abusing the Pope or Queen +Elizabeth and Henry VIII, but in low voices, for the one fears to be +ravished by the soldiers, the other by the rebels. At last one woman goes +out because she would sooner any fate than such wicked company. Yet, I +doubt if he would have written at all if he did not write of Ireland, and +for it, and I know that he thought creative art could only come from such +preoccupation. Once, when in later years, anxious about the educational +effect of our movement, I proposed adding to the Abbey Company a second +Company to play international drama, Synge, who had not hitherto opposed +me, thought the matter so important that he did so in a formal letter. + +I had spoken of a German municipal theatre as my model, and he said that +the municipal theatres all over Europe gave fine performances of old +classics but did not create (he disliked modern drama for its sterility +of speech, and perhaps ignored it) and that we would create nothing if we +did not give all our thoughts to Ireland. Yet in Ireland he loved only +what was wild in its people, and in 'the grey and wintry sides of many +glens.' All the rest, all that one reasoned over, fought for, read of in +leading articles, all that came from education, all that came down from +Young Ireland--though for this he had not lacked a little sympathy--first +wakened in him perhaps that irony which runs through all he wrote, but +once awakened, he made it turn its face upon the whole of life. The women +quarrelling in the cave would not have amused him, if something in his +nature had not looked out on most disputes, even those wherein he himself +took sides, with a mischievous wisdom. He told me once that when he lived +in some peasant's house, he tried to make those about him forget that he +was there, and it is certain that he was silent in any crowded room. It +is possible that low vitality helped him to be observant and +contemplative, and made him dislike, even in solitude, those thoughts +which unite us to others, much as we all dislike, when fatigue or illness +has sharpened the nerves, hoardings covered with advertisements, the +fronts of big theatres, big London hotels, and all architecture which has +been made to impress the crowd. What blindness did for Homer, lameness +for Hephaestus, asceticism for any saint you will, bad health did for him +by making him ask no more of life than that it should keep him living, +and above all perhaps by concentrating his imagination upon one thought, +health itself. I think that all noble things are the result of warfare; +great nations and classes, of warfare in the visible world, great poetry +and philosophy, of invisible warfare, the division of a mind within +itself, a victory, the sacrifice of a man to himself. I am certain that +my friend's noble art, so full of passion and heroic beauty, is the +victory of a man who in poverty and sickness created from the delight of +expression, and in the contemplation that is born of the minute and +delicate arrangement of images, happiness, and health of mind. Some early +poems have a morbid melancholy, and he himself spoke of early work he had +destroyed as morbid, for as yet the craftmanship was not fine enough to +bring the artist's joy which is of one substance with that of sanctity. +In one poem he waits at some street corner for a friend, a woman perhaps, +and while he waits and gradually understands that nobody is coming, sees +two funerals and shivers at the future; and in another written on his +25th birthday, he wonders if the 25 years to come shall be as evil as +those gone by. Later on, he can see himself as but a part of the +spectacle of the world and mix into all he sees that flavour of +extravagance, or of humour, or of philosophy, that makes one understand +that he contemplates even his own death as if it were another's, and +finds in his own destiny but as it were a projection through a burning +glass of that general to men. There is in the creative joy an acceptance +of what life brings, because we have understood the beauty of what it +brings, or a hatred of death for what it takes away, which arouses within +us, through some sympathy perhaps with all other men, an energy so noble, +so powerful, that we laugh aloud and mock, in the terror or the sweetness +of our exaltation, at death and oblivion. + +In no modern writer that has written of Irish life before him, except it +may be Miss Edgeworth in 'Castle Rackrent,' was there anything to change +a man's thought about the world or stir his moral nature, for they but +play with pictures, persons, and events, that whether well or ill +observed are but an amusement for the mind where it escapes from +meditation, a child's show that makes the fables of his art as +significant by contrast as some procession painted on an Egyptian wall; +for in these fables, an intelligence, on which the tragedy of the world +had been thrust in so few years, that Life had no time to brew her sleepy +drug, has spoken of the moods that are the expression of its wisdom. All +minds that have a wisdom come of tragic reality seem morbid to those that +are accustomed to writers who have not faced reality at all; just as the +saints, with that Obscure Night of the Soul, which fell so certainly that +they numbered it among spiritual states, one among other ascending steps, +seem morbid to the rationalist and the old-fashioned Protestant +controversialist. The thought of journalists, like that of the Irish +novelists, is neither healthy nor unhealthy, for it has not risen to that +state where either is possible, nor should we call it happy; for who +would have sought happiness, if happiness were not the supreme attainment +of man, in heroic toils, in the cell of the ascetic, or imagined it above +the cheerful newspapers, above the clouds? + + + + +VIII + + +Not that Synge brought out of the struggle with himself any definite +philosophy, for philosophy in the common meaning of the word is created +out of an anxiety for sympathy or obedience, and he was that rare, that +distinguished, that most noble thing, which of all things still of the +world is nearest to being sufficient to itself, the pure artist. Sir +Philip Sidney complains of those who could hear 'sweet tunes' (by which +he understands could look upon his lady) and not be stirred to 'ravishing +delight.' + + 'Or if they do delight therein, yet are so closed with wit, + As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it; + Oh let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in Wonder's schools + To be, in things past bonds of wit, fools if they be not fools!' + +Ireland for three generations has been like those churlish logicians. +Everything is argued over, everything has to take its trial before the +dull sense and the hasty judgment, and the character of the nation has so +changed that it hardly keeps but among country people, or where some +family tradition is still stubborn, those lineaments that made Borrow cry +out as he came from among the Irish monks, his friends and entertainers +for all his Spanish Bible scattering, 'Oh, Ireland, mother of the bravest +soldiers and of the most beautiful women!' It was as I believe, to seek +that old Ireland which took its mould from the duellists and scholars of +the 18th century and from generations older still, that Synge returned +again and again to Aran, to Kerry, and to the wild Blaskets. + + + + +IX + + +'When I got up this morning' he writes, after he had been a long time in +Innismaan, 'I found that the people had gone to Mass and latched the +kitchen door from the outside, so that I could not open it to give myself +light. + +'I sat for nearly an hour beside the fire with a curious feeling that I +should be quite alone in this little cottage. I am so used to sitting +here with the people that I have never felt the room before as a place +where any man might live and work by himself. After a while as I waited, +with just light enough from the chimney to let me see the rafters and the +greyness of the walls, I became indescribably mournful, for I felt that +this little corner on the face of the world, and the people who live in +it, have a peace and dignity from which we are shut for ever.' This life, +which he describes elsewhere as the most primitive left in Europe, +satisfied some necessity of his nature. Before I met him in Paris he had +wandered over much of Europe, listening to stories in the Black Forest, +making friends with servants and with poor people, and this from an +aesthetic interest, for he had gathered no statistics, had no money to +give, and cared nothing for the wrongs of the poor, being content to pay +for the pleasure of eye and ear with a tune upon the fiddle. He did not +love them the better because they were poor and miserable, and it was +only when he found Innismaan and the Blaskets, where there is neither +riches nor poverty, neither what he calls 'the nullity of the rich' nor +'the squalor of the poor' that his writing lost its old morbid brooding, +that he found his genius and his peace. Here were men and women who under +the weight of their necessity lived, as the artist lives, in the presence +of death and childhood, and the great affections and the orgiastic moment +when life outleaps its limits, and who, as it is always with those who +have refused or escaped the trivial and the temporary, had dignity and +good manners where manners mattered. Here above all was silence from all +our great orator took delight in, from formidable men, from moral +indignation, from the 'sciolist' who 'is never sad,' from all in modern +life that would destroy the arts; and here, to take a thought from +another playwright of our school, he could love Time as only women and +great artists do and need never sell it. + + + + +X + + +As I read 'The Aran Islands' right through for the first time since he +showed it me in manuscript, I come to understand how much knowledge of +the real life of Ireland went to the creation of a world which is yet as +fantastic as the Spain of Cervantes. Here is the story of 'The Playboy,' +of 'The Shadow of the Glen;' here is the 'ghost on horseback' and the +finding of the young man's body of 'Riders to the Sea,' numberless ways +of speech and vehement pictures that had seemed to owe nothing to +observation, and all to some overflowing of himself, or to some mere +necessity of dramatic construction. I had thought the violent quarrels of +'The Well of the Saints' came from his love of bitter condiments, but +here is a couple that quarrel all day long amid neighbours who gather as +for a play. I had defended the burning of Christy Mahon's leg on the +ground that an artist need but make his characters self-consistent, and +yet, that too was observation, for 'although these people are kindly +towards each other and their children, they have no sympathy for the +suffering of animals, and little sympathy for pain when the person who +feels it is not in danger.' I had thought it was in the wantonness of +fancy Martin Dhoul accused the smith of plucking his living ducks, but a +few lines further on, in this book where moral indignation is unknown, I +read, 'Sometimes when I go into a cottage, I find all the women of the +place down on their knees plucking the feathers from live ducks and +geese.' + +He loves all that has edge, all that is salt in the mouth, all that is +rough to the hand, all that heightens the emotions by contest, all that +stings into life the sense of tragedy; and in this book, unlike the plays +where nearness to his audience moves him to mischief, he shows it without +thought of other taste than his. It is so constant, it is all set out so +simply, so naturally, that it suggests a correspondence between a lasting +mood of the soul and this life that shares the harshness of rocks and +wind. The food of the spiritual-minded is sweet, an Indian scripture +says, but passionate minds love bitter food. Yet he is no indifferent +observer, but is certainly kind and sympathetic to all about him. When an +old and ailing man, dreading the coming winter, cries at his leaving, not +thinking to see him again; and he notices that the old man's mitten has a +hole in it where the palm is accustomed to the stick, one knows that it +is with eyes full of interested affection as befits a simple man and not +in the curiosity of study. When he had left the Blaskets for the last +time, he travelled with a lame pensioner who had drifted there, why +heaven knows, and one morning having missed him from the inn where they +were staying, he believed he had gone back to the island and searched +everywhere and questioned everybody, till he understood of a sudden that +he was jealous as though the island were a woman. + +The book seems dull if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays +do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so completely to my +senses the man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments +when every line of his face, every inflection of his voice, grows so +clear in memory that I cannot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer +when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, +unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart +reflects itself as in the still water of a pool. Thought comes to him +slowly, and only after long seemingly unmeditative watching, and when it +comes, (and he had the same character in matters of business) it is +spoken without hesitation and never changed. His conversation was not an +experimental thing, an instrument of research, and this made him silent; +while his essays recall events, on which one feels that he pronounces no +judgment even in the depth of his own mind, because the labour of Life +itself had not yet brought the philosophic generalization, which was +almost as much his object as the emotional generalization of beauty. A +mind that generalizes rapidly, continually prevents the experience that +would have made it feel and see deeply, just as a man whose character is +too complete in youth seldom grows into any energy of moral beauty. Synge +had indeed no obvious ideals, as these are understood by young men, and +even as I think disliked them, for he once complained to me that our +modern poetry was but the poetry 'of the lyrical boy,' and this lack +makes his art have a strange wildness and coldness, as of a man born in +some far-off spacious land and time. + + + + +XI + + +There are artists like Byron, like Goethe, like Shelley, who have +impressive personalities, active wills and all their faculties at the +service of the will; but he belonged to those who like Wordsworth, like +Coleridge, like Goldsmith, like Keats, have little personality, so far as +the casual eye can see, little personal will, but fiery and brooding +imagination. I cannot imagine him anxious to impress, or convince in any +company, or saying more than was sufficient to keep the talk circling. +Such men have the advantage that all they write is a part of knowledge, +but they are powerless before events and have often but one visible +strength, the strength to reject from life and thought all that would mar +their work, or deafen them in the doing of it; and only this so long as +it is a passive act. If Synge had married young or taken some profession, +I doubt if he would have written books or been greatly interested in a +movement like ours; but he refused various opportunities of making money +in what must have been an almost unconscious preparation. He had no life +outside his imagination, little interest in anything that was not its +chosen subject. He hardly seemed aware of the existence of other writers. +I never knew if he cared for work of mine, and do not remember that I had +from him even a conventional compliment, and yet he had the most perfect +modesty and simplicity in daily intercourse, self-assertion was +impossible to him. On the other hand, he was useless amidst sudden +events. He was much shaken by the Playboy riot; on the first night +confused and excited, knowing not what to do, and ill before many days, +but it made no difference in his work. He neither exaggerated out of +defiance nor softened out of timidity. He wrote on as if nothing had +happened, altering 'The Tinker's Wedding' to a more unpopular form, but +writing a beautiful serene 'Deirdre,' with, for the first time since his +'Riders to the Sea,' no touch of sarcasm or defiance. Misfortune shook +his physical nature while it left his intellect and his moral nature +untroubled. The external self, the mask, the persona was a shadow, +character was all. + + + + +XII + + +He was a drifting silent man full of hidden passion, and loved wild +islands, because there, set out in the light of day, he saw what lay +hidden in himself. There is passage after passage in which he dwells upon +some moment of excitement. He describes the shipping of pigs at Kilronan +on the North Island for the English market: 'when the steamer was getting +near, the whole drove was moved down upon the slip and the curraghs were +carried out close to the sea. Then each beast was caught in its turn and +thrown on its side, while its legs were hitched together in a single +knot, with a tag of rope remaining, by which it could be carried. + +Probably the pain inflicted was not great, yet the animals shut their +eyes and shrieked with almost human intonations, till the suggestion of +the noise became so intense that the men and women who were merely +looking on grew wild with excitement, and the pigs waiting their turn +foamed at the mouth and tore each other with their teeth. + +After a while there was a pause. The whole slip was covered with amass of +sobbing animals, with here and there a terrified woman crouching among +the bodies and patting some special favourite, to keep it quiet while the +curraghs were being launched. Then the screaming began again while the +pigs were carried out and laid in their places, with a waistcoat tied +round their feet to keep them from damaging the canvas. They seemed to +know where they were going, and looked up at me over the gunnel with an +ignoble desperation that made me shudder to think that I had eaten this +whimpering flesh. When the last curragh went out, I was left on the slip +with a band of women and children, and one old boar who sat looking out +over the sea. + +The women were over-excited, and when I tried to talk to them they +crowded round me and began jeering and shrieking at me because I am not +married. A dozen screamed at a time, and so rapidly that I could not +understand all they were saying, yet I was able to make out that they +were taking advantage of the absence of their husbands to give me the +full volume of their contempt. Some little boys who were listening threw +themselves down, writhing with laughter among the sea-weed, and the young +girls grew red and embarrassed and stared down in the surf.' The book is +full of such scenes. Now it is a crowd going by train to the Parnell +celebration, now it is a woman cursing her son who made himself a spy for +the police, now it is an old woman keening at a funeral. Kindred to his +delight in the harsh grey stones, in the hardship of the life there, in +the wind and in the mist, there is always delight in every moment of +excitement, whether it is but the hysterical excitement of the women over +the pigs, or some primary passion. Once indeed, the hidden passion +instead of finding expression by its choice among the passions of others, +shows itself in the most direct way of all, that of dream. 'Last night,' +he writes, at Innismaan, 'after walking in a dream among buildings with +strangely intense light on them, I heard a faint rhythm of music +beginning far away on some stringed instrument. + +It came closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with +an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound +began to move in my nerves and blood, to urge me to dance with them. + +I knew that if I yielded I would be carried away into some moment of +terrible agony, so I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees together +with my hands. + +The music increased continually, sounding like the strings of harps tuned +to a forgotten scale, and having a resonance as searching as the strings +of the 'cello. + +Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my +limbs moved in spite of me. + +In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes. My breath and my +thoughts and every impulse of my body became a form of the dance, till I +could not distinguish between the instrument or the rhythm and my own +person or consciousness. For a while it seemed an excitement that was +filled with joy; then it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was +lost in the vortex of movement. I could not think that there had been a +life beyond the whirling of the dance. + +Then with a shock, the ecstasy turned to agony and rage. I struggled to +free myself but seemed only to increase the passion of the steps I moved +to. When I shrieked I could only echo the notes of the rhythm. At last, +with a movement of uncontrollable frenzy I broke back to consciousness +and awoke. + +I dragged myself trembling to the window of the cottage and looked out. +The moon was glittering across the bay and there was no sound anywhere on +the island.' + + + + +XIII + + +In all drama which would give direct expression to reverie, to the speech +of the soul with itself, there is some device that checks the rapidity of +dialogue. When Oedipus speaks out of the most vehement passions, he is +conscious of the presence of the chorus, men before whom he must keep up +appearances 'children latest born of Cadmus' line' who do not share his +passion. Nobody is hurried or breathless. We listen to reports and +discuss them, taking part as it were in a council of state. Nothing +happens before our eyes. The dignity of Greek drama, and in a lesser +degree of that of Corneille and Racine depends, as contrasted with the +troubled life of Shakespearean drama, on an almost even speed of +dialogue, and on a so continuous exclusion of the animation of common +life, that thought remains lofty and language rich. Shakespeare, upon +whose stage everything may happen, even the blinding of Gloster, and who +has no formal check except what is implied in the slow, elaborate +structure of blank verse, obtains time for reverie by an often +encumbering Euphuism, and by such a loosening of his plot as will give +his characters the leisure to look at life from without. Maeterlinck, to +name the first modern of the old way who comes to mind--reaches the same +end, by choosing instead of human beings persons who are as faint as a +breath upon a looking-glass, symbols who can speak a language slow and +heavy with dreams because their own life is but a dream. Modern drama, on +the other hand, which accepts the tightness of the classic plot, while +expressing life directly, has been driven to make indirect its expression +of the mind, which it leaves to be inferred from some common-place +sentence or gesture as we infer it in ordinary life; and this is, I +believe, the cause of the perpetual disappointment of the hope imagined +this hundred years that France or Spain or Germany or Scandinavia will at +last produce the master we await. + +The divisions in the arts are almost all in the first instance technical, +and the great schools of drama have been divided from one another by the +form or the metal of their mirror, by the check chosen for the rapidity +of dialogue. Synge found the check that suited his temperament in an +elaboration of the dialects of Kerry and Aran. The cadence is long and +meditative, as befits the thought of men who are much alone, and who when +they meet in one another's houses--as their way is at the day's +end--listen patiently, each man speaking in turn and for some little time, +and taking pleasure in the vaguer meaning of the words and in their sound. +Their thought, when not merely practical, is as full of traditional +wisdom and extravagant pictures as that of some Aeschylean chorus, and no +matter what the topic is, it is as though the present were held at arms +length. It is the reverse of rhetoric, for the speaker serves his own +delight, though doubtless he would tell you that like Raftery's whiskey- +drinking it was but for the company's sake. A medicinal manner of speech +too, for it could not even express, so little abstract it is and so +rammed with life, those worn generalizations of national propaganda. +'I'll be telling you the finest story you'd hear any place from Dundalk +to Ballinacree with great queens in it, making themselves matches from +the start to the end, and they with shiny silks on them ... I've a grand +story of the great queens of Ireland, with white necks on them the like +of Sarah Casey, and fine arms would hit you a slap.... What good am I +this night, God help me? What good are the grand stories I have when it's +few would listen to an old woman, few but a girl maybe would be in great +fear the time her hour was come, or a little child wouldn't be sleeping +with the hunger on a cold night.' That has the flavour of Homer, of the +Bible, of Villon, while Cervantes would have thought it sweet in the +mouth though not his food. This use of Irish dialect for noble purpose by +Synge, and by Lady Gregory, who had it already in her Cuchulain of +Muirthemne, and by Dr. Hyde in those first translations he has not +equalled since, has done much for National dignity. When I was a boy I +was often troubled and sorrowful because Scottish dialect was capable of +noble use, but the Irish of obvious roystering humour only; and this +error fixed on my imagination by so many novelists and rhymers made me +listen badly. Synge wrote down words and phrases wherever he went, and +with that knowledge of Irish which made all our country idioms easy to +his hand, found it so rich a thing, that he had begun translating into it +fragments of the great literatures of the world, and had planned a +complete version of the Imitation of Christ. It gave him imaginative +richness and yet left to him the sting and tang of reality. How vivid in +his translation from Villon are those 'eyes with a big gay look out of +them would bring folly from a great scholar.' More vivid surely than +anything in Swinburne's version, and how noble those words which are yet +simple country speech, in which his Petrarch mourns that death came upon +Laura just as time was making chastity easy, and the day come when +'lovers may sit together and say out all things arc in their hearts,' and +'my sweet enemy was making a start, little by little, to give over her +great wariness, the way she was wringing a sweet thing out of my sharp +sorrow.' + + + + +XIV + + +Once when I had been saying that though it seemed to me that a +conventional descriptive passage encumbered the action at the moment of +crisis. I liked 'The Shadow of the Glen' better than 'Riders to the Sea' +that is, for all the nobility of its end, its mood of Greek tragedy, too +passive in suffering; and had quoted from Matthew Arnold's introduction +to 'Empedocles on Etna,' Synge answered, 'It is a curious thing that "The +Riders to the Sea" succeeds with an English but not with an Irish +audience, and "The Shadow of the Glen" which is not liked by an English +audience is always liked in Ireland, though it is disliked there in +theory.' Since then 'The Riders to the Sea' has grown into great +popularity in Dublin, partly because with the tactical instinct of an +Irish mob, the demonstrators against 'The Playboy' both in the press and +in the theatre, where it began the evening, selected it for applause. It +is now what Shelley's 'Cloud' was for many years, a comfort to those who +do not like to deny altogether the genius they cannot understand. Yet I +am certain that, in the long run, his grotesque plays with their lyric +beauty, their violent laughter, 'The Playboy of the Western World' most +of all, will be loved for holding so much of the mind of Ireland. Synge +has written of 'The Playboy' 'anyone who has lived in real intimacy with +the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings in this play are +tame indeed compared with the fancies one may hear at any little hillside +cottage of Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay.' It is the strangest, the +most beautiful expression in drama of that Irish fantasy, which +overflowing through all Irish Literature that has come out of Ireland +itself (compare the fantastic Irish account of the Battle of Clontarf +with the sober Norse account) is the unbroken character of Irish genius. +In modern days this genius has delighted in mischievous extravagance, +like that of the Gaelic poet's curse upon his children, 'There are three +things that I hate, the devil that is waiting for my soul, the worms that +are waiting for my body, my children, who are waiting for my wealth and +care neither for my body nor my soul: Oh, Christ hang all in the same +noose!' I think those words were spoken with a delight in their vehemence +that took out of anger half the bitterness with all the gloom. An old man +on the Aran Islands told me the very tale on which 'The Playboy' is +founded, beginning with the words, 'If any gentleman has done a crime +we'll hide him. There was a gentleman that killed his father, & I had him +in my own house six months till he got away to America.' Despite the +solemnity of his slow speech his eyes shone as the eyes must have shone +in that Trinity College branch of the Gaelic League, which began every +meeting with prayers for the death of an old Fellow of College who +disliked their movement, or as they certainly do when patriots are +telling how short a time the prayers took to the killing of him. I have +seen a crowd, when certain Dublin papers had wrought themselves into an +imaginary loyalty, so possessed by what seemed the very genius of satiric +fantasy, that one all but looked to find some feathered heel among the +cobble stones. Part of the delight of crowd or individual is always that +somebody will be angry, somebody take the sport for gloomy earnest. We +are mocking at his solemnity, let us therefore so hide our malice that he +may be more solemn still, and the laugh run higher yet. Why should we +speak his language and so wake him from a dream of all those emotions +which men feel because they should, and not because they must? Our minds, +being sufficient to themselves, do not wish for victory but are content +to elaborate our extravagance, if fortune aid, into wit or lyric beauty, +and as for the rest 'There are nights when a king like Conchobar would +spit upon his arm-ring and queens will stick out their tongues at the +rising moon.' This habit of the mind has made Oscar Wilde and Mr. Bernard +Shaw the most celebrated makers of comedy to our time, and if it has +sounded plainer still in the conversation of the one, and in some few +speeches of the other, that is but because they have not been able to +turn out of their plays an alien trick of zeal picked up in struggling +youth. Yet, in Synge's plays also, fantasy gives the form and not the +thought, for the core is always as in all great art, an over-powering +vision of certain virtues, and our capacity for sharing in that vision is +the measure of our delight. Great art chills us at first by its coldness +or its strangeness, by what seems capricious, and yet it is from these +qualities it has authority, as though it had fed on locust and wild +honey. The imaginative writer shows us the world as a painter does his +picture, reversed in a looking-glass that we may see it, not as it seems +to eyes habit has made dull, but as we were Adam and this the first +morning; and when the new image becomes as little strange as the old we +shall stay with him, because he has, beside the strangeness, not strange +to him, that made us share his vision, sincerity that makes us share his +feeling. + +To speak of one's emotions without fear or moral ambition, to come out +from under the shadow of other men's minds, to forget their needs, to be +utterly oneself, that is all the Muses care for. Villon, pander, thief, +and man-slayer, is as immortal in their eyes, and illustrates in the cry +of his ruin as great a truth as Dante in abstract ecstasy, and touches +our compassion more. All art is the disengaging of a soul from place and +history, its suspension in a beautiful or terrible light, to await the +Judgement, and yet, because all its days were a Last Day, judged already. +It may show the crimes of Italy as Dante did, or Greek mythology like +Keats, or Kerry and Galway villages, and so vividly that ever after I +shall look at all with like eyes, and yet I know that Cino da Pistoia +thought Dante unjust, that Keats knew no Greek, that those country men +and women are neither so lovable nor so lawless as 'mine author sung it +me;' that I have added to my being, not my knowledge. + + + + +XV + + +I wrote the most of these thoughts in my diary on the coast of Normandy, +and as I finished came upon Mont Saint Michel, and thereupon doubted for +a day the foundation of my school. Here I saw the places of assembly, +those cloisters on the rock's summit, the church, the great halls where +monks, or knights, or men at arms sat at meals, beautiful from ornament +or proportion. I remembered ordinances of the Popes forbidding drinking- +cups with stems of gold to these monks who had but a bare dormitory to +sleep in. Even when imagining, the individual had taken more from his +fellows and his fathers than he gave; one man finishing what another had +begun; and all that majestic fantasy, seeming more of Egypt than of +Christendom, spoke nothing to the solitary soul, but seemed to announce +whether past or yet to come an heroic temper of social men, a bondage of +adventure and of wisdom. Then I thought more patiently and I saw that +what had made these but as one and given them for a thousand years the +miracles of their shrine and temporal rule by land and sea, was not a +condescension to knave or dolt, an impoverishment of the common thought +to make it serviceable and easy, but a dead language and a communion in +whatever, even to the greatest saint, is of incredible difficulty. Only +by the substantiation of the soul I thought, whether in literature or in +sanctity, can we come upon those agreements, those separations from all +else that fasten men together lastingly; for while a popular and +picturesque Burns and Scott can but create a province, and our Irish +cries and grammars serve some passing need, Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, +Goethe and all who travel in their road with however poor a stride, +define races and create everlasting loyalties. Synge, like all of the +great kin, sought for the race, not through the eyes or in history, or +even in the future, but where those monks found God, in the depths of the +mind, and in all art like his, although it does not command--indeed +because it does not--may lie the roots of far-branching events. Only +that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not +persuade, which does not condescend, which does not explain is +irresistible. It is made by men who expressed themselves to the full, and +it works through the best minds; whereas the external and picturesque and +declamatory writers, that they may create kilts and bagpipes and +newspapers and guide-books, leave the best minds empty, and in Ireland +and Scotland England runs into the hole. It has no array of arguments and +maxims, because the great and the simple (and the Muses have never known +which of the two most pleases them) need their deliberate thought for the +day's work, and yet will do it worse if they have not grown into or found +about them, most perhaps in the minds of women, the nobleness of emotion, +associated with the scenery and events of their country, by those great +poets, who have dreamed it in solitude, and who to this day in Europe are +creating indestructible spiritual races, like those religion has created +in the East. + +W. B. Yeats. + +September 14th. 1910. + + + * * * * * + + +WITH SYNGE IN CONNEMARA + + +I had often spent a day walking with John Synge, but a year or two ago I +travelled for a month alone through the west of Ireland with him. He was +the best companion for a roadway any one could have, always ready and +always the same; a bold walker, up hill and down dale, in the hot sun and +the pelting rain. I remember a deluge on the Erris Peninsula, where we +lay among the sand hills and at his suggestion heaped sand upon ourselves +to try and keep dry. + +When we started on our journey, as the train steamed out of Dublin, Synge +said: 'Now the elder of us two should be in command on this trip.' So we +compared notes and I found that he was two months older than myself. So +he was boss and whenever it was a question whether we should take the +road to the west or the road to the south, it was Synge who finally +decided. + +Synge was fond of little children and animals. I remember how glad he was +to stop and lean on a wall in Gorumna and watch a woman in afield +shearing a sheep. It was an old sheep and must have often been sheared +before by the same hand, for the woman hardly held it; she just knelt +beside it and snipped away. I remember the sheep raised its lean old head +to look at the stranger, and the woman just put her hand on its cheek and +gently pressed its head down on the grass again. + +Synge was delighted with the narrow paths made of sods of grass alongside +the newly-metalled roads, because he thought they had been put there to +make soft going for the bare feet of little children. Children knew, I +think, that he wished them well. In Bellmullet on Saint John's eve, when +we stood in the market square watching the fire-play, flaming sods of +turf soaked in paraffine, hurled to the sky and caught and skied again, +and burning snakes of hay-rope, I remember a little girl in the crowd, in +an ecstasy of pleasure and dread, clutched Synge by the hand and stood +close in his shadow until the fiery games were done. + +His knowledge of Gaelic was a great assistance to him in talking to the +people. I remember him holding a great conversation in Irish and English +with an innkeeper's wife in a Mayo inn. She had lived in America in +Lincoln's day. She told us what living cost in America then, and of her +life there; her little old husband sitting by and putting in an odd word. +By the way, the husband was a wonderful gentle-mannered man, for we had +luncheon in his house of biscuits and porter, and rested there an hour, +waiting for a heavy shower to blow away; and when we said good-bye and +our feet were actually on the road, Synge said, 'Did we pay for what we +had?' So I called back to the innkeeper, 'Did we pay you?' and he said +quietly, 'Not yet sir.' + +Synge was always delighted to hear and remember any good phrase. I +remember his delight at the words of a local politician who told us how +he became a Nationalist. 'I was,' he said plucking a book from the +mantlepiece (I remember the book--it was 'Paul and Virginia') and +clasping it to his breast--'I was but a little child with my little book +going to school, and by the house there I saw the agent. He took the +unfortunate tenant and thrun him in the road, and I saw the man's wife +come out crying and the agent's wife thrun her in the channel, and when I +saw that, though I was but a child, I swore I'd be a Nationalist. I swore +by heaven, and I swore by hell and all the rivers that run through them.' + +Synge must have read a great deal at one time, but he was not a man you +would see often with a book in his hand; he would sooner talk, or rather +listen to talk--almost anyone's talk. + +Synge was always ready to go anywhere with one, and when there to enjoy +what came. He went with me to see an ordinary melodrama at the Queen's +Theatre, Dublin, and he delighted to see how the members of the company +could by the vehemence of their movements and the resources of their +voices hold your attention on a play where everything was commonplace. He +enjoyed seeing the contrite villain of the piece come up from the bottom +of the gulch, hurled there by the adventuress, and flash his sweating +blood-stained face up against the footlights; and, though he told us he +had but a few short moments to live, roar his contrition with the voice +of a bull. + +Synge had travelled a great deal in Italy in tracks he beat out for +himself, and in Germany and in France, but he only occasionally spoke to +me about these places. I think the Irish peasant had all his heart. He +loved them in the east as well as he loved them in the west, but the +western men on the Aran Islands and in the Blaskets fitted in with his +humour more than any; the wild things they did and said were a joy to +him. + +Synge was by spirit well equipped for the roads. Though his health was +often bad, he had beating under his ribs a brave heart that carried him +over rough tracks. He gathered about him very little gear, and cared +nothing for comfort except perhaps that of a good turf fire. He was, +though young in years, 'an old dog for a hard road and not a young pup +for a tow-path.' + +He loved mad scenes. He told me how once at the fair of Tralee he saw an +old tinker-woman taken by the police, and she was struggling with them in +the centre of the fair; when suddenly, as if her garments were held +together with one cord, she hurled every shred of clothing from her, ran +down the street and screamed, 'let this be the barrack yard,' which was +perfectly understood by the crowd as suggesting that the police strip and +beat their prisoners when they get them shut in, in the barrack yard. The +young men laughed, but the old men hurried after the naked fleeting +figure trying to throw her clothes on her as she ran. + +But all wild sights appealed to Synge, he did not care whether they were +typical of anything else or had any symbolical meaning at all. If he had +lived in the days of piracy he would have been the fiddler in a pirate- +schooner, him they called 'the music--' 'The music' looked on at every +thing with dancing eyes but drew no sword, and when the schooner was +taken and the pirates hung at Cape Corso Castle or The Island of Saint +Christopher's, 'the music' was spared because he _was_ 'the music.' + +Jack B. Yeats + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SYNGE AND THE IRELAND OF HIS TIME *** + +This file should be named syngy10.txt or syngy10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, syngy11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, syngy10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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