136 Poetry for Students
dominance of Ireland by England, even though he
previously established that the Irish sow was not
unwilling. The final line of this stanza casts doubt
once again over Hartnett’s intention. The mias-
matic spectacle of dwarf-riding dwarves racing to-
ward an obscene prize ends in a “dead heat.” Fig-
uratively, this means that nothing was decided, no
resolution reached. But even the two words con-
sidered separately present a paradox. “Dead”
means the absence of life. The absence of life in a
human would leave the body cold, with no heat.
Additionally, “heat” connotes the same sexual im-
ages that Hartnett supplied in the first stanza with
the sensual bartender. It also reminds us of the sow
“in heat.” A “dead heat,” then, is an oxymoron and
further representation of the paradox presented
throughout this poem.
At last Mr. Hartnett leaves his political dis-
course for a more personal one. In his final lines,
he seems to consider—more than art or country or
politics—his own heart and mind. Is he clear here?
No more than in the preceding stanzas. He says that
he has “made my choice / and leave with little
weeping: / I have come with meager voice / to court
the language of my people.” Even in the final line,
Hartnett’s meaning is enigmatic. Consider the use
of the word “court” in the final line. Is Hartnett
simply rounding out the poem, finishing it nicely
by alluding back to the intimate encounter between
the poet and the beautiful woman he is possibly
“courting”? Perhaps. Or, perhaps his diction is in-
tentionally conflicting. “Court” has numerous
meanings. One would be the pursuit of a romantic
interest, but another would be a place of law, a po-
litical place. Hartnett may be saying that he still
has not made a decision; he has not quite commit-
ted himself to the language of his heart, Irish, or
the language of his “well-oiled” previous poetry,
English. And what does he think of his English po-
etry: is it simply “smooth,” or is it mechanical?
If Hartnett’s honest intention was to cast off
English and use only his Irish poetic heritage, why
did he not make a final transition back to the Gaelic
he had used in the first stanza of the poem? Is it
because some of his readers might not understand
Gaelic or because he could not say precisely what
he wanted to say without using the English?
This last question will remain unanswered, but
the question of whether Hartnett would compose in
English or Irish was answered finally in later
works. He chose the language of his people, Gaelic,
almost exclusively after 1975. This decision could
not, as evidenced by the raging conflict within this
poem, have been one made lightly.One cannot deny the power of this poem, “A
Farewell to English.” No scathing governmental re-
port, no angry editorial could lay claim to the ef-
fectiveness of Hartnett’s assertion that “We woke
one morning / in a Dublin digs / and found we were
descended / from two pigs.” Furthermore, only rare
prose could capture the image Hartnett put forth
when he described the governments of Ireland and
England as “horribly deformed dwarfs” racing “to-
wards the prize, a glass and concrete anus.” These
descriptions are written in English; would they lose
or gain impact if written in Gaelic?
Certainly not. They may lose the slightest bit
in translation, but no more so than a melody trans-
posed to a different key—especially if the transla-
tor is one as gifted as Hartnett. Language is a tool
only, employed by a poet as Bach employed notes.
Does Bach’s genius disappear if a piece is per-
formed on a piano as opposed to an organ or a harp-
sichord? I do not believe so. I do not believe Hart-
nett’s poetry achieves its heights because of the
language in which he wrote. In fact, I propose that
the language of the poet, the poet’s ability to elicit
intense feeling with a minimum of words and a
wealth of image and sound, is a language unto it-
self.
Hartnett is an artist. His work rises above the
scrutiny of government censors, breaks the bonds
of language, and transcends the page. Consider
once again the beautiful maid in stanza one. At the
same time that “her West / Limerick voice talked
velvet” and she wore “with grace her Sunday-night-
dance best,” her “mountainy body” “cut the froth
from glasses with a knife / and hammered golden
whiskies on the bar.” Her paradoxical description
brings to mind Haphaestus, huge and disfigured,
using hammer and anvil and brute strength to turn
out spectacular metal ornaments for the gods of
Olympus.
That is what Hartnett accomplished in “A
Farewell to English.” Shackled by a language
which he feels inferior, which cripples him, he still
delivers a thing of beauty.
Source:Karen D. Thompson, in an essay for Poetry for Stu-
dents,Gale, 2001.Sources
Bradley, Anthony, “Irish Poetry,” in The New Princeton En-
cyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics,Princeton University
Press, 1993.A Farewell to English