Irish Arts Review

The Great Book of IrelandAuthor(s): Gene LambertSource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, (1991/1992), pp. 149-151Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492682 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE GREAT BOOK OF IRELAND

The Great Book of Ireland is a venture without precedent in Irish art and

poetry. At once the inheritor of our in digenous tradition of manuscript-making and a subversion of that tradition, the Book links us also to the tradition of the Livre d'Artiste among whose exponents in this century we may note Picasso, Matisse and Chagall.

A single work, on vellum, of more than 250 pages, The Great Book brings to gether in a heady mixture the work of 120

artists and 140 poets, their contributions made directly onto the huge pages, the whole enlivened and unified by the work of a single calligrapher, Denis Brown. A gallery and an anthology between covers, the Book is bound between elm boards taken from a tree planted by Yeats at

Thoor Ballylee. Rooted in Ireland's most ancient art tradition, the Book is equally an artefact of the late twentieth century, an index to our troubled preoccupations and a digest of our most characteristic

themes. Among the contributors we may note,

inter alia, Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Col lins, Tony O'Malley, Basil Blackshaw, T P Flanagan, Robert Ballagh, Michael Mulcahy, Pauline Bewick and Anne Mad den among the painters; Samuel Beckett, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, John Montague, Anthony Cronin, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley among the poets. Interleaved with these, the poets and painters of the rising and established generations who together make up the new Irish renais

sance. Conceived originally by Eamonn Mar

tin and Gene Lambert of Clashganna Mills Trust, and Theo Dorgan of Poetry Ireland, the Book started life as a combin ing of talents artistic, poetic and ad

ministrative towards two practical ends: the construction of a new wing in

Clashganna's ambitious facility for peo ple with disabilities and the building of a National Poetry Centre in Dublin's Tem ple Bar district. From simple beginnings, the project soon began to shape itself,

with each fresh wave of contributors pushing the horizons outward, each tech nical difficulty encountered yielding not only its own solution but a recasting of the

Book's identity and nature. Now in its

final shape, the work is a compendium of

diverse talents, a rich sampling of an Irish

art practice that is confidently, at one and

the same time, Irish and internationalist.

Gene Lambert introduces The Great Book of Ireland,

a unique volume, celebrating contemporary Irish art and poetry.

4''

W, ......... ...P

_ ft

AOAO -tAW-. A.

Samuel Beckett wrote this quatrain, Der tagte es, three weeks before his death on 23 December 1989; Louis le Brocquy's

Image of Samuel Beckett was painted on 25 December 1989.

Old myths were exploded in the making, myths of insularity, of selfishness, of refusal to subjugate the individual ego to the demands of a collective work. Martin, together with Lambert and

Dorgan, the Book's final editors, gathered around them a team which included

Trevor Scott as design consultant and A G Cains of Trinity College's restoration department, the binder and maker of the finished Book. Beyond this inner core, however, it is true to say that the 260 con

tributors had each of them a role to play in determining the eventual shape and nature of the Book. Contributing their work freely, many of the participants gave

equally freely of their advice, bringing in other participants, making technical sug gestions, restlessly querying and probing, helping to refine the nature and scope of what was in hand. At an early stage it was

decided to include in the book poems in their own hands by visiting poets, so that here among the pages one can find the

Russian Bella Akhmadulina, the Czech Miroslav Holub, the British poet laureate Ted Hughes... each of these contributions serving to underline what was to become one of the Book's most important themes, the ability of art, of poetry, to flow beyond boundaries into a free zone of the spirit.

Early commentators feared pastiche, degeneration into a kind of Celtic mist; their fears proved groundless. Rigorous design concepts demanded of the con tributors that each should contribute on ly what was characteristic of her or his

work. There was to be no illustration: poem and image unified by the calli graphic response, would constitute a dialectic on the page, each challenging the other, neither subordinated, each breathing freely in its own air. The result has surpassed all expectations, a book which exists not only as a priceless arte fact in itself but as a sign and marker in a

process of making which is steadily deepening and widening as the insular traditions crumble, and the latest in heritors of Ireland come into their own.

At the time of writing, the Book's even tual destiny is uncertain. On offer at

IR?1.2m, the makers certainly hope it will find a home in Ireland. A number of

locations suggest themselves for what is already a great national treasure - the Irish Museum of Modern Art at the RHK

(where the Book goes on exhibition in June '91); the revitalised National Library; Trinity College, where it might sit proudly next to the Book of Kells;

Dublin Castle; even the newly-refurb ished Government Buildings. Here is an icon for the new Ireland: the question is,

who will keep it in its proper home?

Gene Lambert

Gene Lambert, of the Clashganna Mills Trust, is one

of the editors of the Great Book of Ireland.

ILLUSTRATIONS OVERLEAF

-149

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