July 13, 2024
On our last full day in Ireland including an Irish Writers Literary Walking Tour that Bob had booked in advance with Tours by Locals. We highly recommend our guide, Adam Ladd, who was fantastic.
We started out by paying homage to the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). We walked by the Giant's Garden Playground, named after a fairy tale written by Wilde called "The Selfish Giant." It tells of a giant who returns from a trip and finds children playing in his garden. Not wanting to share, he builds a very high wall to keep them out. His actions cause a continual winter to descend upon the garden, so not even the giant can enjoy it. When the children sneak back into the garden, the trees are so happy that they bloom and spring returns. The giant realizes the error of his ways and tears down the wall, making the garden forever available to all the children.
Most of us think of Oscar Wilde as a bit caustic, but his fairy tales present a different side of him!
In Merrion Park, not far from the Giant's Garden, is the Oscar Wilde I think most of us are more familiar with: Oscar Wilde the Dandy. There he is, lounging on a big quartz boulder and smiling sardonically at passers-by.
Many materials from multiple places were used to create this likeness. Oscar's head is white jadeite. Green nephrite jade from British Columbia, Canada, and pink thulite from Norway form the torso. Norwegian blue pearl granite makes up the legs, and Indian chamockite forms the shoes with bronze used for the shoelaces. Oscar is wearing a Trinity College tie made from glazed porcelain. He has on three rings: a wedding ring, a scarab for good luck, and a scarab for bad luck.
I am quite sure Oscar would approve of the over-the-top presentation.
Wilde's witticisms (some serious and some not) are engraved on the pedestals, each in the handwriting of another famous author.
Here are a few of my favorites:
I can resist everything except temptation.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Who, being loved, is poor?
It seems to me we all look at Nature too much and live with her too little.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Just across the street from Merrion Square and this Oscar Wilde tribute is the writer's childhood home where he lived from 1855 (age 8 months) to 1878 (age 24).
Next up was St. Stephen's Green. On our way, Bob stopped to greet three enormous Irish wolfhounds being walked by someone very important (judging by his get-up).
Do these folks look a little skinny to you? (The ones in the foreground, not the ones in the background.) This is the Famine Memorial, also by artist Edward Delaney. It was erected in 1967 to commemorate the victims of the Great Famine of 1843-1853, which took the lives of over a million Irish and led to a surge in immigration that greatly benefitted the United States.
St. Stephen's Green comprises 22 beautifully landscaped acres. Set aside as park land in the 17th century, it took its name from a nearby medieval leper hospital.
Aha! There she is! The first woman elected to Parliament (1918-1922) in the United Kingdom--Constance Markievicz. She also served as Minister of Labour, making her the second female cabinet minister in Europe. In addition to being a politician, she was a revolutionary, nationalist, and suffragist. She was also a socialist! Fusilliers' Arch, modeled after the Arch of Titus in Rome, is dedicated to soldiers in the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The names of the 222 dead are inscribed inside the arch
We caught a glimpse of Dublin Castle, but didn't have time to go inside. The first castle was constructed on this site in 1204. It sits on the highest point in central Dublin and more recently served as the administrative seat of the British government in Ireland until 1922.
When we stopped for a bite to eat, we got into a conversation with our guide about Ireland's omnipresent Guinness. He explained all the "laws" related to serving it, such as that it must be served in a cool, branded Guinness glass, and it must be poured at a 45° angle (something to do with the harp) to create a certain amount of foam on top, and then it must settle before being topped off. Then he told us about Guinness 0.0, the non-alcoholic version of Guinness. He swore it tastes exactly like the real thing. We had no idea what the real thing tastes like, but we decided to try the non-alcoholic version.
UGH. The stuff is awful. Worse than cough syrup. Worse than horehound candy. I guess you have to have grown up on the stuff to appreciate it. No doubt root beer tastes as bad to Europeans as Guinness tasted to me in that pub.
After we were rehydrated (although not really, as we could not drink very much of this without gagging), we made our way to St. Patrick's Park Literary Parade, where a long brick wall dotted with arched alcoves honors a dozen of Ireland's finest writers. Each niche has a brass oval plaque that features the portrait of an artist and some salient information. A marker on site reads: "One of Dublin's major contributions to European civilisation has been in the area of literature. It is remarkable that so many writers of world renown were born here, including three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This Literary Parade honours some of our distinguished sons of literature."
I didn't take photos of all twelve, but here are a few, starting with Samuel Beckett (1906-1989):
The three Nobelists born in Dublin referred to on the marker are William Butler Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), and Samuel Beckett (1969). Ireland has produced a fourth Nobelist in Literature, Seamus Heaney (1995), but he was born in a village in Northern Ireland, which I suppose some people don't consider to be Ireland at all.
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