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Character forming: ‘As a poet, I felt like a trespasser in the realm of the novel’

James Harpur on the challenges of writing his John McGahern Prize-shortlisted debut novel, The Pathless Country

James Harpur

James Harpur
Wed Sep 21 2022 - 05:00

I remember some years ago, back in 2010, speaking to a bright, youngish Irish Jesuit priest in Monte Carlo – where else? – not at the Casino, sadly, but in the Princess Grace Irish Library, discussing the outline of a novel I’d had in mind for years. He listened kindly and, crucially, didn’t pour scorn or outrage on the idea itself: the Gospel of Luke transposed to pre-Rising Ireland.

As it would turn out, my book followed another path; but the initial idea continued to haunt me and came to form a bass line to the new story. I’d been struck by parallels between ancient Judea and early 20th-century Ireland. Both regions were controlled by powerful empires – Roman and British – and governed by proxy figures, the Procurator and Lord Lieutenant. Both had religious groups that were more, or less, loyal to their political rulers. In Judea, the Sadducees (more pro-Roman) and the Pharisees (more anti-Roman) matched the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Both regions had hardliners: the Zealots and the IRB. And both regions were full of ‘messianic expectation’. In Judea the mantle fell on Jesus of Nazareth for a while; in Ireland Parnell seemed to be the knight in shining armour until his fall from grace. It remained to be seen who would take up Parnell’s baton.

As someone who had written poetry for many years, and virtually no fiction, I felt like a trespasser in the realm of the Novel, daunted by the prospect. But there was one area of fiction I was looking forward to having a go at: the chance to enter a character’s psyche and let him or her dictate thoughts, moods and words. This became particularly fascinating with historical figures, who kept emerging in my story. For example, what kind of character would a person have who spoke this sort of rhetoric: ‘So when England talks of peace, we know our answer: “Peace with you? Peace while your one hand is at our throat and your other hand is in our pocket? Peace with a footpad? Peace with a pickpocket? Peace with the leech that is sucking our body dry of blood? Peace with the many-armed monster whose tentacles envelop us while its system emits an inky fluid that shrouds its work of murder from the eyes of men? The time has not yet come to talk of peace.”’

Pádraig Pearse stirred an audience in Limerick with those words in 1913. As my book’s hero, a youthful dreamy Galwegian named Patrick Bowley, observes, the man looked like a civil servant, but his words had the force of a king before a battle.

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By contrast with Pearse’s words, Patrick hears the following in the Queen’s Hall in London in 1911, a few weeks after his arrival there from Galway: ‘From pulpit after pulpit we hear the longing for a great teacher who shall draw men’s hearts together and make the brotherhood of religions an actuality in the world … Do not put a check on the love that flows out ... If you do not see Him it is your eyes that are blinded.’ This was part of a speech given by Annie Besant, the proto-Suffragette and supporter of Home Rule for Ireland and India, as well as the head of the Theosophists, an esoteric spiritual group who believed a young Indian teenager called Jiddu Krishnamurti was the new messiah.

Pearse and Besant give clues to the would-be writer about the way they think, move and have their being through their public words; their physical forms are also well documented – Pearse short of stature but deceptively powerful in his double-breasted suit and with his trim, dark hair; and Annie Besant imperious in her long, white gown matching the colour of her short, crinkly hair.

But some historical characters leave few clues. One such is the painter, Grace Henry, wife of Paul Henry, whom Patrick encounters in the wilds of Achill Island in 1915. By this time, with Europe labouring under the Great War and Ireland becoming more militant, Patrick has become a peacenik, a soap-box preacher, full of ideals; however, after a brutal encounter with the RIC in Limerick he decides to get away to a remote part of the country. In Keel on Achill’s coast, he comes across the Henrys and develops a fascination for Grace. What was she like? How would I describe her?

The Long Road of Destiny by Grace Henry

One vivid detail I did find out about Grace was that she used orange-coloured lamps to illuminate her canvases in the evening light when she was painting out of doors. Other than that she is a bit of an enigma. In the end I found myself turning to one of her paintings, the rather haunting The Long Road of Destiny (above) to give me an insight into her character, as I hope this short extract shows. One evening Patrick bumps into her during a stroll from his lodgings in Keel.

‘He sees the familiar soft orange light. As he is approaching the bridge Grace Henry puts down her brush and palette and turns to face him. She adjusts her hat as if to look at him more clearly. He goes over to her and utters a greeting, which she reciprocates with a voice that has a slight Scottish accent. Her eyes are full of concentrating thought, her light blue smock bright in the glow. She stares at him as if she, or he, has committed an indiscretion. He waits for her to say something, since it is she who has turned to address him. But she says nothing, as if there is too much going on in her head and she doesn’t know where to start. She looks several years older than himself and has an attractive, womanly figure, though it is difficult to picture her smiling. She turns her head to the painting she is working on as if about to introduce it to him as a companion … He feels the silence of the painting, the stillness of the depicted night, and the lack of people or animals. Just sky, cloud, mountain and human dwellings. He tries to picture people in cottages staring at hearth fires, but there’s no trace of smoke, as if the cottages are deserted or it’s the dead of night and the fires have gone out. He shivers and feels an urge to hold Grace’s hand, as much to absorb its warmth as to convey to her the human touch her painting lacks. But he doesn’t reach out. Both of them stare at the picture.’

Patrick becomes increasingly drawn to Grace, but as a line of Yeats, which continues to haunt him, advises: ‘Our souls are love and a continual farewell.’ Patrick has further paths to tread before he can reach what Jiddu Krishnamurti has described as the ‘pathless country’. The tension between love and duty awaits him, as does a long dangerous pilgrimage in the cause of peace, a journey that will take him across the midlands of the country to the coast and up towards Dublin, which he will reach just in time for Easter. 1916.

James Harpur has published several books of poetry and is a member of Aosdána. He lives in west Cork. The Pathless Country is published by Cinnamon Press / Liquorice Fish. jamesharpur.com

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