Volume 10 129
tle tells readers that the cultural awakening de-
scribed here led Hartnett to turn away from using
English to express himself, and to embrace his Irish
identity.
Culture Clash
Writing in English, as it is presented in this
poem, is polishing “the complex cause,” which im-
plies both the sense of urgency that a cause would
have and the dedication to minute details that
comes with complexity. The English-language poet
is considered a “polisher,” a “wizard” and a “war-
lock”: all of these imply someone who makes
things out of reality, instead of just appreciating it
as it is found. Irish language, in the other hand, con-
trols the poet, rather than being in his control: the
“minute interlock of word and word” pulls him in.
He is not able to manipulate reality because the
words are “sunk.” The culture clash presented here
is between one group that understands the past and
another that has no use for the past because it is
busy controlling the present. It is natural that an in-
tellectual poet would work in English. It is also nat-
ural that the poet, aware of his feelings, would be
drawn to a deep understanding of the Irish culture,
as Hartnett is here. As it is presented, English is
about thought and Irish is about experience.
Consciousness
The speaker of this poem is evidently an in-
telligent, self-aware person, a “polisher of the com-
plex cause,” who knows how to control his per-
ception of reality by manipulating words in
English. Still, his experience with the true force of
Gaelic awakens in him a new kind of conscious-
ness about his cultural identity. It starts with a fairly
common situation; sitting in a pub, admiring a
pretty bartender, listening intently to her. But in
lines 8-11 he becomes more aware of how the mu-
sical sound of the Gaelic language connects him
with the tradition of his people, and he becomes
conscious of how his life is intertwined with the
traditions of centuries gone by. It is a vague aware-
ness that he has felt before: “This feeling was not
new,” he explains. Still, having the feeling and
opening his consciousness up to what it means are
two different things. He is not able to achieve full
awareness of his link to the past because he has
never had the right words to describe the way he
feels. The few Gaelic words that he knows take him
in the direction of consciousness, but, as he points
out, they are cliches. Even though they come close,
they are never able to capture the feeling exactly.
In the end, he is able to fully open his conscious-
ness up to his Irish heritage, and he becomes more
conscious of the shortcomings of the Anglo-Saxon
language, which had previously been his chosen
method of expression.Style
It is interesting to note that this poem, which praises
the Irish language for its “gentle mechanism of
verse” and faults English for its “metric laws,” is
written in the most common meter that there is in
English, iambic pentameter. “Iambic” means that
means that the basic unit of rhythm in the poem is
the “iamb,” which consists of one unstressed syl-
lable followed by one stressed syllable. For exam-
ple, in the first line of the poem, the even-num-
bered syllables receive greater emphasis when read
aloud: “her eyeswere coinsof por-ter.” Pentame-
ter” means that there are five of these units, five
iambs, per line, adding up to a total of ten sylla-
bles in each line. In some cases, the rhythm might
not seem to be strictly iambic. For instance, the sev-
enth line, taken by itself without the context of the
poem, would begin with the first three and the sev-
enth syllables stressed: and her moun-tainy bo-dy.”
Overall, though, iambic pentameter is the dominant
rhythm, which sometimes forces readers to adjust
their pronunciations of words to fit the pattern.
The iamb is the most naturally-occurring
rhythm in English speech. Iambic pentameter is the
most common meter used in English poetry. It is
possible that Hartnett used this form to capture the
simplistic sound of English, while working against
this language’s simplicity with the multi-syllabic
complexity of the Irish words he includes. This
shows off their free-floating grace in contrast to the
English language’s more rigid formality.Historical Context
The Division of Ireland
Many Irish people had been opposed to the
country’s domination by Great Britain ever since it
had been annexed in 1801. Most of the history of
Ireland during the twentieth century is marked by
the violent struggle for independence. A turning
point came in 1916 with the Easter Rebellion, dur-
ing which several Irish nationalists took over key
government buildings, to protest the British taking
away Irish political power a few years earlier. TheA Farewell to English