REMARKS BY MARY McALEESE, PRESIDENT OF IRELAND AT THE OPENING OF THE BECKETT FESTIVAL
REMARKS BY MARY McALEESE, PRESIDENT OF IRELAND AT THE OPENING OF THE BECKETT FESTIVAL, AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE, LONDON
Is ócáid speisialta í so domsa agus tá mé iontach sásta bheith anseo libh tráthnóna inniu chun an fheile seo a oscailt go hoifigiúil.
It is a great pleasure for me to be here this evening for the opening of the Beckett Festival and to mark with you the start of a wonderful celebration of the dramatic work of one of the defining writers of our century. I am particularly pleased that I am joined this evening by Minister Síle de Valera, whose portfolio includes Arts and Heritage. Her presence is an indication of the importance attached to this occasion by the Irish Government and the people of Ireland.
The life of Samuel Beckett spanned more than 80 years of this century and his work seems to lie at the heart of the preoccupations of the twentieth century. It confronts us with the stark moral and spiritual dilemmas of our age, sometimes with savage humour, sometimes it seems with bleak despair but never without a deep humanity and concern for the human condition. It is a testament of our time and will continue to stand as such in the history of our literature and in our understanding of ourselves.
In Ireland we take pride in our writers and in the fact that, during this century, Ireland has produced four winners of the Nobel prize for literature: Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and most recently Seamus Heaney. Yet Beckett, like the other great Irish writer of this century, James Joyce, consciously rejected the cultural environment of the Ireland of his era – that proud yet sometimes narrow and burdensome legacy - and chose to live and work on the Continent. The tensions and liberations of this choice provide the backdrop to his work. As a graduate of Trinity College Dublin he came from the university which educated Berkeley, Swift, Goldsmith, Congreve, Burke, Wilde, and Synge. He is, therefore, the heir to a glorious intellectual and literary tradition in the English language and yet in his writing, whether in English or in French, he strives to reduce it, to distil it and to pare it away to the essential.
These contradictions make Beckett at once the most Irish of writers and the most international of writers: an Irish writer, an Anglo-Irish writer, certainly, but a writer who transcends these categories and even defies them, bringing a heady sense of freedom and innovation to these terms. We need more of that capacity to transcend expected boundaries as we pave a new pathway on the cultural landscape of these islands in the next Millennium.
It is an appropriate first step in that process for an Irish company to stage his dramatic work for an international audience; to bring our sense and understanding of his work to the wider world and to receive back an enriched interpretation of that work.
Many of you here will know of the Gate Theatre in Dublin, founded some seventy years ago by the legendary Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir, (the latter an Englishman who consciously opted into Irish culture). In recent years the Gate has flourished under the inspired direction of Michael Colgan. It was Michael who put together the Beckett Festival in Dublin at the beginning of this decade and who brought it to triumphant acclaim to New York. It now comes in a further incarnation to London.
It feels right to bring it here to London, one of the world centres of drama and a city where Beckett worked and where some of his dramatic material was first performed in English. It is also surely right for it to be here in the Barbican, one of the great cultural centres of Europe, committed to showing the best international work in the arts. I know the Barbican programme has included Irish work over the past number of years ranging from traditional music to Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme... and I am really delighted to have this opportunity to thank John Tusa and his team for their commitment and imagination in exploring the complexity of the Irish cultural experience.
- Over the past decade the cultural life of Ireland has experienced a dynamic period of growth and change - and the work of the Gate Theatre under Michael Colgan reflects this and has contributed enormously to it. It is a time of reinterpretation, a time of experimentation and innovation in all media and art forms. It is an exciting and invigorating time and I hope that excitement and that vigour will touch you tonight and throughout the rest of the festival. I hope too that all of you here who have not yet experienced Ireland’s renaissance at first hand will come as welcome visitors soon to experience what is going on. It is no exaggeration to say that when Ireland is on the move, the reach is global, the stay not local or parochial but universal.
It is time for speeches to end and for the Beckett Festival to begin. It is a great joy to share this evening with you all.
Tá súil agam go mbainfidh sibh sult agus taitneamh as an trathnóna agus as an fhéile ar fad. Go raibh maith agaibh.