The Vanishing World of the Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia

The Vanishing World of the Islandman focuses on the anthropological and folkloric journey of an indigenous memoir from an island off the west coast of Ireland into a wider world.  The Islandman(An tOileánach) refers to a memoir written in Irish by Tomás Ó Criomhtain in the early decades of the twentieth century. With the publication of An tOileánachin 1929, a literary journey began that still continues today and Tomás’s life-story has been translated into English, Swedish, Danish, French, German, Italian and (partly) Spanish. Given that almost a century has passed since the original publication of the book, I was keen to explore why an “ordinary” life-story written by a peasant fisherman still has global appeal. 

What inspired you to engage with The Islandman memoir in particular?

As a young student of Irish in Ireland, my school required that I spend a month living with an Irish-speaking family in the Gaeltacht(Irish-speaking region of Ireland). I have always had a fascination with islands and although the Great Blasket Island was constantly on my horizon during my time in the Kerry Gaeltacht, it was some years later before I actually visited it. That first island trip sparked a life-long interest in a traditional way of life that has effectively disappeared. Later, as an undergraduate in University College Cork, An tOileánach, was a core reading for my Arts degree. When subsequently, I focused on this memoir for my master’s degree, I began a love-affair with an island that has not diminished over time. A revised version of my thesis  was published as An tOileánach Léannta(The Learned Islandman) (Nic Craith 1988). Since that time, my interest in autobiographies has emerged regularly, most notably in my previous monograph, which explored contemporary multilingual writers and their experience of living (and writing) on the cusp of two or more languages (Nic Craith 2012).

While writing the book, were there any new themes that emerged? 

As my book was being written, the theme of nostalgia emerged unexpectedly as a “thread” uniting many of the chapters. I began with an exploration of the exo-nostalgia that prevailed in the field of anthropology a century ago and the interest of (primarily American) anthropologists in “vanishing races” (frequently Native American). This nostalgia was hardly confined to the US, and some Harvard anthropologists came to Ireland in the early twentieth century in search of the vanishing Celtic people.  At the time of the publication of Tomás’s memoir, the Irish state had just emerged from many centuries under British colonialism. As a newly independent state, a chief aspiration of the Irish government was the restoration of the Irish-speaking, Catholic, peasant idealisation of Ireland’s precolonial past which had still survived on the Great Blasket Island. This could be regarded as a form of restorative nostalgia. Along with the promotion of Irish language, a native Irish literature and a national system of education, Tomás’s memoir  was very useful tool in promoting Irish ideals and an authentic peasant lifestyle. 

However, the memoir  also attracted  readers on the continent where the appeal of a simple, peasant lifestyle, which was disappearing in the wake of industrialisation and urbanisation, prompted European contemporaries of Tomás such as Knut Hamsun and Hermann Hesse to write fiction highlighting the relationship between man and the natural environment. Such continental nostalgia (for a pre-industrial society) may have sparked the European interest in Tomás’s memoir. 

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, contemporary interest in the sublime motivates visitors today to visit the Blasket Interpretative Centre in the Dingle Peninsula, which has recently been designated part of Ireland’s “Wild Atlantic Way.” This centre highlights the material culture prevalent during Tomás’s lifetime as well as some artistic responses to excerpts from his memoir.  Some of the visitors to the Blasket Centre include descendants of original islanders now living in the US. Although living in a new homeland, these Irish-Americans maintain a strong connection with the island and are proud of its literary heritage. While they are nostalgic for the way of life on the Great Blasket Island, this form of nostalgia is more reflective than restorative, and there is no longing to return to a way of life that was extraordinarily challenging! While the narrative of nostalgia in relation to this book has lasted almost a century, it has changed form over time. 

Were there any surprises? 

Yes. While the comparison with Native American literature was not new, it was still a little surprising for me to find how much indigenous Irish and Native American memoirs have in common. In the Vanishing World,  I take the opportunity to deepen a comparison between Tomás and Black Elk, a renowned Oglala Lakota medicine man, who had collaborated with John Neihardt on the publication of a memoir entitled Black Elk Speaks.  Both Tomás and Black Elk were regarded as pioneers in developing a literary heritage for their respective peoples.. I am keenly interested in this Native American connection and am now developing an anthropological research strand on placenames in both indigenous Irish and Native American contexts. 

Mairéad Nic Craith is Prof of Cultural Heritage and Anthropology at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. A visiting scholar at the Celtic Studies Department in Harvard University in 2018, She is currently working on the theme of indigenous languages and sustainability. 

References

Nic Craith, M. (1988) An tOileánach Léannta, Baile Átha Cliath: Clóchomhar Teo. 

Nic Craith, M. (2012) Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language: An Intercultural Perspective, New York: Palgrave.

Nic Craith, M (2020) The Vanishing World of the Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia. Bern: Springer.