He protested that the Irish prayer was "a childish performance," since, like him, most of the senators didn't know the language and were unlikely to learn it.
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When Yeats was serving in the Senate of the newly independent Irish Free State in 1923, he spoke against a proposal that the prayer at the start of every session be delivered in Irish as well as English. He actively promoted dramatic performances in Irish.īut he knew that much of Ireland's literary life, and even more of its practical business, had been carried on in English for over a century. Like many of his countrymen, he was at times drawn to the image of Ireland as a nation speaking its own language. The language issue was a vexed one for Yeats. Having once made a stab at memorizing the Hebrew alphabet, he would later lament having forgotten his Hebrew. He was never fluent in French, for example, but he talked breezily about the latest French book once his friends had read it to him. On the whole, Yeats was less than rigorous in the way he represented his own linguistic abilities. He didn't even know the language well enough to read it. There's just one hitch: Yeats didn't write his poems in Irish. It feels as if he's extracting a gift of hope for her out of the bedrock of Ireland's nearly forgotten language.
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Eastwood's character when he labors to translate the poem from the Gaelic for Maggie. The dream can survive, as Yeats puts it, only "in the deep heart's core." In the movie, the dream is mined by Mr. In "Lake Isle," as in "Million Dollar Baby," the dream of escape finally slams against the hard facts of real life. Yeats's poem also reflects on the more rugged emotional landscape the film exposes. For Yeats, the fantasy retreat is a rustic cabin in a "bee-loud glade." In the movie, it's the "little place in the cedars, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye," imagined by the character played by Morgan Freeman. Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree" from the little Irish-language book he carries like a talisman throughout the movie.Īn achingly beautiful poem, "Lake Isle" expresses a yearning for escape that fits perfectly with the movie's hope that it may be possible to build a new life. Eastwood's character finally reveals the meaning of "Mo Cuishle," and when he translates W.B.
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The most moving of these moments occurs when Mr. Eastwood hinges the movie's emotional peaks on the longing held in the Irish language.
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In the shorthand of the film, the Irish, scattered by hardship in their home country but strangely united by the trials that threw them apart, stand for a culture of underdogs, and the language that was once the common idiom in Ireland becomes the watchword of the movie's romantic idea of the hero.Īs Maggie's boxing career builds to its climax, Mr. That sort of popular reaction makes sense.
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Around Valentine's Day, in particular, many Web surfers were frantic to learn how to address their darlings in Irish. In the last few weeks some queries about the phrase have arisen on the Internet, and students of the language are coming out of the woodwork. After seeing the movie, I overheard whispered conversations about "Mo Cuishle." A few of the moviegoers confessed that they hadn't even known there was an Irish language apart from English, but they were captivated by the sound of it. All we know is that the words emblazoned - and some argue misspelled - on the back of her robe are important to a lot of people.Īpparently they still are. Swank's character doesn't know that yet and neither do we. The name is a shortened form of the phrase "A chuisle mo chroí," "O, pulse of my heart," or as Frankie will put it more concisely, "My darling." But Ms. BEFORE the bell has sounded at the start of her first title fight in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-nominated film "Million Dollar Baby," the scrappy, big-hearted boxer Maggie Fitzgerald, played by Hilary Swank, finds herself cheered into the ring by shouts of "Mo Cuishle," the Irish Gaelic moniker she's been given by her manager, Frankie Dunn, played by Mr.