REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF THE AOSDÁNA TORC ON MR. BRIAN FRIEL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF THE AOSDÁNA TORC ON MR. BRIAN FRIEL WEDNESDAY, 22 FEBRUARY, 2006
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá lúcháir orm bheith anseo libh inniu ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Is cúis áthais fé leith dhom é go bhfuilimid bailithe le chéile inniu le h-onór a bhronnadh ar dhuine des’ na scríbhneoirí is fearr agus is tabhachtaí a saolaíodh in Éirinn lenár linn.
Eminent members of Aosdána, honoured guests, there is a hierarchy among days and duties and this day, this duty, makes the top of the pile. I hope you will forgive some Ulsteritis here as I take special pride in conferring on that great Northerner the Torc which signals his election as Saoi of Aosdána.
I came across a critique of Brian which starts thus-
“The Irish playwright Brian Friel is known to be quiet and an infamous recluse….”
If you Google the name Brian Friel you get 662,000 references within ten seconds – not exactly evidence of a life lived anonymously! But maybe it is proof positive that it is, after all, the quiet ones you have to watch.
Out of Ulster he came with words so deeply and brilliantly crafted that he internationalised the world of Ballybeg, that borderland of Derry, Donegal and Tyrone so memorably described by Seamus Deane as a place “where a largely Catholic community leads a reduced existence….”
The dowsing rod of Brian’s imagination had always the uncanny ability to divine and reveal the emotional, the psychological, the spiritual uisce fé talamh. In a country for which the phrase ‘mutual incomprehension’ could have been coined, and probably was, Brian Friel has fearlessly, but with pity, explored the chaotic maps by which our paths have been, and are, charted.
Seamus Heaney, the third St. Columb’s man to be mentioned in as many minutes, has said of Brian’s work that it “manifests a passionate engagement with the political and historical condition of Irish society … He has been exemplary in the purity of his dramatic intent, managing always to grant his characters an inner freedom and linguistic energy that allow them to pit their individuality against their social and ideological circumstances.” In the same letter, Seamus borrows words from Yeats to say that Brian’s plays have “engrossed the present and dominated memory”.
Brian has never been given to pronouncements. He makes his points within his art. He confronts the great issues of Ireland, its history, religion, politics, its past, its present, and its future on his own terms. He explores idealism, relationships, emotions, moods, hopes and disappointments with a breathtaking deftness which has seen him recognised around the world as one of the finest playwrights in the English language and a seminal influence on Irish theatre, Irish thinking and thinking about Ireland.
If Brian, the person, consistently asserts, as is his right, a personal reticence, his outstanding literary canon of plays and stories speaks with an outstanding power, wisdom, clarity and a vindicating accessibility that has made a household name of works like Philadelphia Here I Come, The Freedom of The City, Faith Healer, Aristocrats, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, Molly Sweeney, The Home Place and so many more. His search through the Field Day Theatre Company for a way out of entrenchment, for fresh possibilities, helped prise open a space through which a new future for this island is beginning to squeeze.
He has, as we all know, been widely honoured before now. His house is covered wall to wall with Honorary Doctorates. His shelves are groaning under the weight of Tony Awards. He has been appointed to the Senate, elected a member of The Irish Academy of Letters, made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, all in an effort to let him know, not just how great he is, but how great he makes us feel. And now his colleagues in Aosdána have chosen him as their newest Saoi, a choice that surely will have heads nodding in approval in all four provinces of Ireland and around the world where two or more Irish men and women of whatever persuasion are gathered.
The gold Torc is an emblem of honour so appropriate for this most honourable of men whose quiet scholarly forensic genius has, in a world of cut and paste, of easy epithets and instant analysis, drawn us confidently back to more studied reflection, a more stringent probing of things which masquerade as sole truths and realities. Through the most difficult terrain Brian has been a steady and a demanding Sherpa, a skilled leader, whose contribution to his art and to Ireland has been utterly outstanding. I now proclaim Brian Friel a Saoi and I confer on him this golden Torc, the seal and sign of his golden achievements and the distinction, the hope, they have brought to his native home.
Gurb fhada buan a mharfaidh sé, go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.