July 24th, 1990:IF IT'S summer it must be time for that antidote to the Irish weather: the summer school. Robert O'Byrne reflected on what they're about and how they differ in this article from 1990.
Two years ago, the then American ambassador to Ireland, Margaret Heckler, officially opened the Patrick MacGill Summer School. In her speech, she noted a linguistic difference between her own country and Ireland. In America, she said, summer schools referred to a kind of seasonal punishment inflicted on backward students; here, though, she had been told by a source in Dublin, summer schools consisted of “a few lectures in between pints”.
This is Ireland, where when two or more are gathered together in the name of art, a drink will be taken. But beyond a common fondness for late-night conviviality, summer schools have widely disparate characters.
Although usually named after a respectably dead writer, not all of the events pay much attention to their ostensible subject. Some, like the John Hewitt Summer School, may have a modest reference or ceremony before turning their attention to other matters.
Some summer schools are intermediate, giving attention both to the author in question and to other matters as well, the whole thing held loosely together by the calendar framework. This year’s George Moore Extravaganza falls into such a category, along with the Douglas Hyde conference. Finally, there are those summer schools which are very strictly literary indeed – the Joyce, Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Swift schools.
How long will it be, one wonders, before the first Beckett international summer school appears? Even now, most likely, plans are under way. Organisers of Irish summer schools may dislike such categorisation – particularly those who take their events very seriously. Again, a division into two classes can be made: the literary and the political.
The literary summer schools tend to favour an august, academic tone. Students are worked very hard, rushing between lectures and seminars; Carol Coulter, of The Irish Times, last year described the Yeats Summer School as “a very serious affair, definitely not for the faint-hearted”. More damaging were Prof Denis Donoghue’s remarks about the same event last autumn. The Yeats Summer School, he said, had become an opportunity “for sounding off on matters that have only a very remote connection with Yeats”, with the poet being celebrated in a “namby-pamby way”. Here is a danger that faces all summer schools – put any author under the spotlight and, after a while, it become hard to tell substance from shadow. . .
Summer schools of politico-economic persuasion court similar dangers. It is clear that some of these events would like to play at being king-makers, believing that they can exert influence in the corridors of power. Speakers are often political heavyweights, senior academics and elderly churchmen; none of these people has ever been known for reticence in public speaking. This year’s MacGill School, for example, will be addressed by a large percentage of the Dáil on the subject of “Ireland in the ’90s: the challenge of change”. It ought to be interesting to compare actions with words.
We Irish love to talk about ourselves, no matter whether the subject is past glories or present ills . . .Where will it all end? Are there sufficient dead writers to go around, or can we expect some to be praised even before burial? It’s hard to tell . . . plans are already advanced for at least two more new summer schools in 1991.
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