Speech at the Conferring of Torc on Edna O‘Brien, Imogen Stuart and William Trevor
The Arts Council, Merrion Square, 15 September 2015
`It is a great privilege to have the honour of recognising Saoithe`
Táim buíoch don Chomhairle Ealaíon as an bhfailte croíúil a bhfuaireas anseo inniu, go deimhin as an bhfáilte a bhíonn romham gach uair is a thrasnaím a dtairseach. Táim buíoch, thairish sin, do Thoscaireacht Aosdána, dos na baill atá i lathair agus daoibhse, a aoianna, a bhfuil bailithe anseo le gur féidir linn uilig an lá a cheiliúradh.
We are gathered here for the formal presentation to the three new Saoithe of Aosdána the symbolic Torc that signifies of course excellence of their craft but, above all else, the high esteem in which they are held by their peers.
The position of Saoi is reserved for artists who have made, in the judgement of their fellow members, a significant, remarkable, and enduring contribution by their work. When I recall that among those so honoured in the past have been Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney and that the present Saoithe are Anthony Cronin, Brian Friel, Camille Souter and Seóirse Bodley, you will understand that the designation of Torc is a high honour indeed.
We are, I think, fortunate to have a body such as Aosdána, a gathering of some of the country´s finest and most dedicated artists. I had the pleasure of addressing the General Assembly earlier this year, and perhaps what struck me most was that I was in the company of men and women whose dedication to their calling has been unswerving, rigorous, courageous and wholehearted, and powerfully generous too, in the commitment to the role culture must hold, and the importance creativity must be accorded in our capacity to live and reflect together through our dreams, our hopes and our grief.
That we are in a position as a society to offer assistance in the pursuit of their gifts to artists of this calibre is a sign that we still hold to the observation of ourselves as a civil society, as a culture, indeed as a civilisation. When we think of ancient Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, of all the great societies of the past, it is remarkable how much of what endures is sourced and is founded in cultural work. It is why we recoil in a particular way at the destruction of cultural heritage.
Support for Aosdána comes through The Arts Council, and is an integral element in a whole span of supports for the individual artist to which the Council has long been committed. We should bear always in mind that while it is not only right and proper but necessary to support a whole range of cultural institutions, we must never lose sight of the lives on which they are based, and thus need to support the lone, courageous, individual who embarks on a life as an artist.
We are here today, as I have already said, so that I may present to three great artists the Torc which signifies the honour that has been conferred on them by their fellow artists.
The first of our honourees, William Trevor, cannot be with us today for health reasons. He is, of course, a writer of world renown, of great distinction, of towering achievements. I send him my compliments on the honour he receives here today, together with my very best wishes for a speedy return to good health in the circumstances.
I am delighted now to say that we have the very considerable pleasure of having the other two honourees in our midst, that is to say Ms. Edna O´Brien and Ms. Imogen Stuart.
In a characteristically acute phrase, John Banville has called Edna O´Brien ‘the poet of vulnerability’.
The judgement is indeed acute, for one of the signal achievements of Edna O´Brien´s considerable body of work has been the portrayal of vulnerability as the mirror-twin of strength, a truth that has always been evident to the best of her readers but which has sometimes escaped those who reach first for cliché when faced with a woman writer.
Edna O’Brien has been and continues to be a fearless teller of truths, a celebrant of life´s mysteries with their moments of beauty rescued from repression and the price of contradictions inherited and continued, the darkness as it is delivered, and defeated. She has continued to write, undaunted by culpable incomprehension, authoritarian hostility and sometimes downright malice. She has had the courage always to pursue the truth of the fit and the wonder between life and words in perfect works of art. In more than 20 books now, with Ireland and Irishness always in the background, she has striven to give us ‘the beauty and sorrow of the larger world‘.
Eimear McBride, writing recently in The Irish Times, spoke of falling in love with ‘the deep, beautiful humanity of her prose and the incautious honesty of her portrayal of the Irish female experience’. That is well put, and mirrors the reactions of so many of us here today whom, I imagine, have been both captivated, and instructed by Edna O´Brien´s books and have had our sense of humanity enlarged and deepened.
Among her many, many awards Ms. O´Brien can number The European Literature Prize, the American National Arts Gold Medal for Lifetime Contribution and the Writers Guild of Great Britain Best Novel Award. Today, she receives yet another honour, but this time at home, among her own, and by decision of her own peers, the honour of being named a Saoi of Aosdána.
Imogen Stuart has been a revered and honoured member of the visual arts community in Ireland for so long now that it will come as something of a surprise, even to some who know her, to learn that she was born in Berlin in 1927. Hers has been, and continues to be, an astonishingly productive life – indeed in some sense a hidden and modest life conducted in plain sight.
Many thousands of Irish people are intimately familiar with her work, without, perhaps, being aware of the artist´s identity: this, of course, is because an important patron of her sculpture has been the Catholic Church. Many may be familiar, perhaps with the Stations of The Cross at Ballintubber Abbey, the large bronze of Pope John Paul II in Maynooth, the bronze doors on Galway Cathedral and the 16 ft. Penal Cross in Lough Derg.
I know that the artist herself is still deeply influenced by the experience of having worked with the revered, much loved and respected architect Liam McCormick on a number of churches, including Burt Church which was voted ‘Irish Building of the Twentieth Century’.
Brian Fallon said of Ms. Stuart ‘She is, in a sense, an eclectic and a traditionalist, yet her style is strongly fingerprinted and recognisably her own’.
This tribute is well-merited as, has so often been noted, her depictions of biblical stories and figures are often playful and tender, and at the same time infused with a deep and generous spirituality.
Her portrait bust of President Mary Robinson is in the Francini Corridor in Áras an Uachtaráin. In this work and in many other secular works, if I might put it like that, Imogen Stuart´s deep humanity is the overriding signature of her work. I am always struck by how often, when Imogen Stuart´s sculpture comes up for mention in conversation among the many artists I have had the privilege of knowing as friends, praise for the work goes hand in hand with a profound and moving affection for the artist.
Imogen Stuart is Professor of Sculpture at The Royal Hibernian Academy. She has received honorary doctorates from TCD, UCD and NUI Maynooth, she has been conferred with the McAuley Medal in recognition of her lifetime contribution to the arts, and today she receives, from her peers in Aosdána, the honour of being conferred as a Saoi.
I would like to congratulate our three new Saoithe, and I thank them for the profound and distinctive contribution each of them has made to the cultural dimension of our society.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.