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Liam O'Flaherty ~
Aran Islands
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LIAM O'FLAHERTY was a
child of the nineteenth century, and a man of the twentieth.
Born in rural poverty, he died in urban comfort. Passionate
in his love of nature, he abhorred everything brutish in
man. An exquisite writer of short stories about man and
beast on Ireland's western seaboard, ironically he is best
known for The Informer, his novel of squalid Communist
intrigue in the back streets of Dublin (thanks largely to
the famous film version by his cousin John Ford). Yet
Famine, calmly dispassionate on the horrors of the Great
Hunger, is regarded by all his readers as his greatest work.
He was a man with a divided nature; even the Gaelic language
of his childhood village was not the language his father
wanted in the home. |
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Solitary, he tried for many
years to gain a foothold in crowded Hollywood. An
individualist to the core, spontaneous and restless, by
inclination a wanderer, he espoused the fervent Communism so
typical of those early twentieth-century writers who were
filled with generosity and purity of heart; he was still
reading Sartre and Le Drapeau Rouge in the last years of his
life. Yet it was a cause that failed him, as it did so many
other admirers of Lenin and Trotsky. In touch to his nerve
ends with the tides and eddies of creation, he loathed with
great bitterness all organised religion, yet spent years
studying for the priesthood. In the end he died with the
blessing of a priest, reconciled with God if not with the
institution he had so long rejected.
Liam was born on the remote Gort na gCapall,
Inishmore on
the Aran Islands. Like many people in Ireland at that time,
Liam was also born into poverty. Growing up, Liam spoke the
Irish language. However, he was not encouraged to do so by
members of his family.
In 1908 at the age of twelve, he attended one of three
different colleges. The first, Rockwell was followed by
enrollments to Holy Cross and the University of Dublin.
According to The Sunday Times, it was said he also attended
Belvedere and Blackrock College. He never attended any of
the earlier two schools for long. Among his studies, he took
up the study of religion and had intended on joining the
priesthood. In 1917, he left school and joined the Irish
Guards regiment of the British Army. During this time, he
fought in World War I and was injured. He also suffered from
a barrage of attacks by the enemy which led to a battle with
shell shock. In 1933 he suffered from mental illness which
most believe to be a result of the shock suffered in World
War I.
O'Flaherty made other changes after the war as well. Another
of these changes was that he left Ireland and moved to the
United States, where he lived in Hollywood for a short
period of time. A cousin was the famous director John Ford,
who later turned Flaherty's novel, The Informer, into a
movie.
In 1923, Liam O'Flaherty published his first novel, Thy
Neighbor's Wife. This piece of work is thought to be one of
his best. Many of his works have the common theme of nature
and Ireland. In fact, some of his work was written in his
native language, Gaelic, the very language his father did
not want him to utter. In later years, in a letter to The
Sunday Times, he confessed that writing in his native tongue
of Gaelic, never truly amounted to much. In fact, in the
letter he spoke of other Irish writers who received little
accolades for their writing in Gaelic. This led to some
attacks on his character.
In 1929, his novel The Informer (for which he had been
awarded the 1925 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
fiction) was turned into a movie again, but this time by his
cousin. Over the next couple of years, he published other
novels as well as short stories. In 1933, at this time in
his life, he suffered from the first of two mental
breakdowns.
Throughout 1923 and 1950, he published many works. He also
travelled the United States as well as Europe. Posthumously,
many letters he wrote while on these trips were published.
It is documented that he had a love of French and Russian
culture. This is one of the possible reasons why he may have
turned to communism.
On September 7, 1984, in Dublin, Liam O'Flaherty died. After
his death, many of his works were re-released as well as
some of his letters. Today, Liam O'Flaherty is remembered as
a profound writer of the twentieth century by those who have
been exposed to him and his work. Liam O'Flaherty is also
remembered as strong voice in Irish culture. |
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