An Irishman's Diary

LIKE MUCH Romantic poetry, Thomas Moore's oriental epic, Lalla Rookh, is almost unread today. Some might say that it is in fact unreadable. But in its heyday, 190 years ago, it was a commercial success of Riverdanceproportions. And as works of art do, it took on a life of its own: one its creator could not have foreseen.

Even as the poem's literary popularity dimmed, after about 1835, its latent musicality inspired a series of European composers, most notably Robert Schumann. One section in particular, Paradise and the Peri, so enraptured the German that he turned it into an oratorio of the same name and said: "My life's blood is bound up in this work".

Schumann's version was in turn a huge success, the breakthrough in a career until then dogged by failure. And its popularity is no surprise, according to musicologist and self-confessed "Moore maniac" Una Hunt, who describes Schumann's Perias: "gorgeous, lyrical, romantic, lush, magical, elfin-like, bewitching and very accessible." In time, however, it too fell badly out of favour. So much so that when the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Choir present the work in Dublin tomorrow night, bringing Schumann's Moore back home in a sense, its performance will be an extreme rarity in Ireland, if not a first.

The problem in this case is at least partly political, since the oratorio’s many past admirers included the German military of both world wars, and especially the second.

Although Moore’s story is fanciful in the extreme – in Persian mythology, a “peri” is the ethereal offspring of the union between a fallen angel and a human, and the poem describes the repeated attempts of one such creature to earn admission to paradise (I won’t give the plot away completely, except to say that the tears of a repentant lecher are key to the denouement) – the Nazis were impressed by its propaganda potential.

Goebbels commissioned an arrangement emphasising the idea of sacrificial death of behalf of the fatherland. Thus life mirrored art again. Since the Nazis’ fall, the Peri – tainted by their DNA – has struggled to make it back into paradise, or at least into public favour. Last year’s performance by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic was a big step in the rehabilitation process. Tomorrow night’s concert will, it is hoped, continue the revival.

Popular as the poem was in its time, not everyone liked Lalla Rookh, even then. Its oriental setting – the name means "Tulip Cheek", after the princess whose wedding is its central event – was apparently lost on one of Moore's English friends, Lady Holland, who remarked: "I have not read your Larry O'Rourke, I don't like Irish stories." In fact, she was not far off. As with much of Moore's work, Lalla Rookhdid have a political subtext in his country's struggle for independence: with the poem's rebel Ghebers (the original inhabitants of Persia) representing the Irish and their Arab oppressors, the English.

Politics aside, however, the canny Moore also, as usual, had one eye on the market. A few years earlier his friend Lord Byron, had told him: “Stick to the East”. Passing on the advice of a shrewd third party, Byron added: “The North, South, and West have all been exhausted . . . the public are orientalising.”

So it proved. The first edition of Lalla Rookhsold out the day it appeared in 1817, followed by five more editions that year. It was just as successful in America, where the poem was said to have "pushed forward with the Bible to the frontier".

There were also dozens of translations: French, German, Polish, Russian, even Arabic, included; and multiple stage versions.

In his recent biography of Moore, Ronan Kelly describes the extent of the poem’s celebrity cult: “Admirers sent Moore geese, pickles, clotted cream, and apples; one poor girl sent three pounds with her unsigned letter – as much to her, Moore guessed, as 300 was to another. Bristol barmaids had it by heart; a European prince slept with it under his pillow. East India Company ships were named after it, Turner and Maclise painted its scenes . . . a Balbriggan priest raffled the book to pay for repairs to his chapel, while elsewhere it was cited in an adultery trial.”

Sic transit gloria mundi. The mass popularity of the work lasted just long enough for Schumann to read it as a boy: possibly in a translation by his father. But as I say, not many people read Lalla Rookhtoday. And fortunately we don't have to, because we have heroic individuals like Una Hunt to do it for us.

A missionary for Moore, she admits that history has not been kind to the poem, which she concedes is “excessively long and possibly sometimes absurd”. But she insists it is also “very imaginative”, “a perfect vehicle for Moore’s lively wit and storytelling” and that furthermore, she was “pleasantly surprised to find it easy to read”. Una may attempt to convince us further along these lines in a talk on the poem and the music it inspired at the National Concert Hall tomorrow at 7pm. The main event, which is part of the Schumann bicentenary celebrations, immediately follows, with the RTÉ NSO and Philharmonic Choir joined by soprano Sinéad Mulhern. Further details are at www.nch.ie.