134 Poetry for Students
American Indians has already been mentioned,
with the late-found respect for their ways, which
were nearly obliterated by a few well-meaning peo-
ple and many racist enemies. It took Hartnett’s gen-
eration, raised in the shadow of World War II and
its subsequent revelations about the Nazis’ plan to
erase all signs of the gypsies, Jews, and homosex-
uals from the land they conquered, to realize that
an entire culture could in fact be erased as if it had
never existed. Since then, there have been plenty
of examples, from Pol Pot’s Cambodia to the mas-
sacre of the Hutus by the Tutsis of Rwanda to the
tragedy of the former Yugoslavia to illustrate the
need for people like Hartnett to defend dying cul-
tures against genocide.
A third benefit is that his shift to Gaelic, though
it did not last, made Michael Hartnett a better writer,
a more introspective poet, in tune with the world
around him. In a little collection calledTen Irish
Poetspublished just before “A Farewell to English,”
James Simmons acknowledged Hartnett’s popular-
ity, but was himself unimpressed. “He seems to me
to have considerable talent and dedication, perhaps
a little turned in on himself and obscure,” Simmons
wrote. “There is certainly a strong ambition to be a
poet which is well on the way to being fulfilled.”
Hartnett became an important writer during his ten
years away from English. This might have been a
result of working with a language that was more at-
tuned to what he had to say, as he anticipated in his
“Farewell.” It might have been the natural matura-
tion process, taking him to that point he was “well
on the way to” anyway. Most likely, though, the
very act of making a choice about language and
identity, of looking deeply at who he was and what
he wanted to say, had more to do with his devel-
opment than his connection with the faded language
of centuries gone by.Source:David Kelly, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.Karen D. Thompson
In this essay Thompson discusses the ambigu-
ities that cast doubt upon Hartnett’s intention to
bid farewell to English language, politics, and
poetry and embrace his Irish heritage.Geometry students learn early that any point
on a line can be divided into an infinite number of
points. Some students may further understand that
since every point can be infinitely divided, a line
actually has no finite beginning, middle, or end.
Those students may go on then to make connec-
tions and end up pondering a similar quality of in-
finity in, for example, history class. When does a
war actually begin? Did World War II (1939-1945)
really start with ill feeling over the Treaty of Ver-
sailles (1919)? If that’s so, then isn’t the real first
cause of World War II the end of World War I be-
cause without it there would have been no Ver-
sailles Treaty? And on and on and on. Ultimately
the conclusion may be drawn that every beginning,
middle, and end is likewise ambiguous and cannot
be discussed in finite terms, but only in terms of
defining moments.
This theory transposes nicely upon the work
of Hartnett. At some time in his life, a civil war be-
gan to rage within the writer between poetry and
politics, Irish and English, heart and head. He
chronicled this war in “A Farewell to English,” and
as is the case with most wars, the battle rages back
and forth; and even when it reaches its supposed
end, there is an uncertain peace and a great many
unanswered questions.
Astute readers, those who pay attention to the
nuances of language, first question Hartnett’s true
intentions after considering the title “A Farewell to
English.” If the reader knows anything of Ireland’s
tempestuous relationship with England or of Hart-
nett’s poetic background, the reader rather quickly
deduces that Hartnett intends to take leave of Eng-
lish influence, including English poetry, language,
and politics. Yet the word “farewell” is gentle and
conveys connotations of amicable partings and kind
wishes. “Farewell” is an unusual word to use in re-
gard to a conflict as passionately violent as that be-
tween things English and things Irish.
Readers become more uncertain of Hartnett’s
intentions by the end of the first stanza. Visually,
readers are prepared for a ballad, definitely Irish,
by the poem’s appearance on the page and its di-
vision into short stanzas. The beautiful woman atA Farewell to EnglishI 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 itself.”