REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE OILEÁIN ÁRANN EXHIBITION, ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE OILEÁIN ÁRANN EXHIBITION, ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM, SOFIA
Добър ден уважаеми гости, даме и господа!
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good day!
I am really delighted to have this opportunity – on my first visit to Bulgaria, and the first by an Irish Head of State - to open this exhibition about the Aran Islands. I would like to thank the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Ethnographic Museum for so graciously hosting the exhibition in this historic building.
Above all, however, I should like to thank one man and that is Ivo Hadjimishev. I was already familiar with his superb work from the exhibition on Bulgarian Medieval manuscripts which was mounted in the State Guest House in Dublin during the State Visit of President Parvanov in 2005. I did not know then that Ivo would undertake a very personal journey to Aran and record his own view of the islands and their people. But his work makes the point of how important are these human contacts, these bridges of handshakes and cultural curiosity made person to person between nations and cultures.
The Aran Islands occupy a special place in Irish history and literature. For centuries they have fascinated visitors because of their remoteness, their rugged beauty and, above all, the resilience of their people who have managed to create a vibrant society and culture from barren rock. In the 19th century, with a growing interest in ancient tradition and culture, people came to the islands to learn the Irish language and to learn about a way of life that seemed untouched by the modern world.
W.B. Yeats, our great poet of the Irish literary revival, records that he instructed the young John Synge to “go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression”. That life had of course found expression on its own soil but its audience expanded rapidly with the creation of some of the great dramatic works of Irish literature, indeed of world literature.
I like to think that Ivo, by going to the Aran Islands too, has expressed something that has never before found exterior expression. As a Bulgarian artist, he brings a fresh eye and a new perspective to the islands. For me this exhibition symbolises the rich potential for engagement and exchange that now exists as Ireland and Bulgaria get to know each other better.
Today our artists continue to be fascinated by the islands. Our Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, has written a haunting poem ‘Lovers’ on Aran. It is short and I do not expect our interpreter to try to translate it but I hope the sound will convey the magic of the poem and of the islands themselves, just as the photography displayed here also captures their magic:
“The timeless waves, bright sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas
To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush
To throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?
Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves’ collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity”.
- Thank you.
- Мерси много!
- Thank you very much