Madam, – The reference to An Long by Pádraig de Brún in An Irishman’s Diary (August 10th) and Gearoid O’Brien’s letter (August 19th) pointing out that the poem was a translation of Oliver St John Gogarty’s The Ship continue a debate about the nature and function of translation that began over 90 years ago.
The Ship, as Mr O’Brien rightly notes, was first published in 1918, and in August of that year An Long appeared in Fáinne an Lae, signed “An Brúnach”, with no indication that it was a translation. In 1920, bearing the title Valparaiso, it was included, again without any reference to Gogarty, in Cuisle na hÉigse, an anthology designed to showcase the best of modern Irish-language poetry. Subsequent decades witnessed its inclusion in numerous school textbooks.
In 1955, Comhar, the Irish-language periodical, published an increasingly acerbic correspondence between Seán Ó Lúing and Tomás Ó Floinn, who agreed that An Long was a translation but disagreed on whether it was best regarded as a derivative copy or as an excellent poem in its own right.
That it was a translation seems not to have been an issue for readers who participated in an Irish Times poll in 1999, leading to the inclusion of An Long, as only one of a handful of Irish-language entries, in The Irish Times Book of Favourite Irish Poems in 2000.
Following the publication of The Valparaiso Voyage in 2001, which included an extract from Theo Dorgan’s translation of An Long, the controversy reopened in the correspondence page of The Irish Times, between the novel’s author, Dermot Bolger, and Gogarty’s biographer, Ulick O’Connor.
While Gogarty’s ship has sunk into relative oblivion, An Long has cast off the anchor of its source, capturing the imagination of generations of students of Irish. Surely some of the credit for the hauntingly evocative memory of the enchanting vessel from Valparaiso must go to de Brún? – Yours, etc,