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| Sean O'Faolain |
Emigration
has been a fact of Irish life for over one hundred years, so it’s natural that
some writers should have left Ireland too.
However
there were particular reasons why many Irish writers chose exile in the decades
after Independence.
In
many ways, Irish society was already in the process of becoming like any other
English province. The most urgent task for the leaders was to clearly formulate
a new identity. They decided that it should be catholic, Irish-speaking, rural
and moral, drawing its inspiration from its distant heroic past, and its
traditions through the ages.
Twentieth
century materialism should not be allowed to corrupt the Irish people, many of
whom saw themselves as the spiritual saviours of Europe.
Irish
society became less liberal; tolerant and pluralist than it had been. Then in
1929 a censorship act was passed. As a result, any writer whose intellectual or
moral views offended the defenders of the new Irish state was banned. This
state of affairs lasted, gradually improving, for forty years.
More information: Irish Central
The
list of banned books reads like a catalogue of the classics of Irish and
European literature.
Many
Irish writers chose to live in exile abroad, where they could be published and
find an audience for their works.
Source: Why do the Irish? by Fiana Griffin
There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality,
that it makes things happen.
Sean O'Faolain
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