RIDERS TO THE SEA(葬身海底)

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RIDERS TO THE SEA

by J. M. SYNGE

RIDERS TO THE SEA

INTRODUCTION

It must have been on Synge's second visit to the Aran Islands that he

had the experience out of which was wrought what many believe to be his

greatest play. The scene of "Riders to the Sea" is laid in a cottage on

Inishmaan, the middle and most interesting island of the Aran group.

While Synge was on Inishmaan, the story came to him of a man whose

body had been washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by

reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island.

In due course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the

manner described in the play, and perhaps one of the most poignantly

vivid passages in Synge's book on "The Aran Islands" relates the incident

of his burial.

The other element in the story which Synge introduces into the play is

equally true. Many tales of "second sight" are to be heard among Celtic

races. In fact, they are so common as to arouse little or no wonder in the

minds of the people. It is just such a tale, which there seems no valid

reason for doubting, that Synge heard, and that gave the title, "Riders to

the Sea", to his play. It is the dramatist's high distinction that he has

simply taken the materials which lay ready to his hand, and by the power

of sympathy woven them, with little modification, into a tragedy which,

for dramatic irony and noble pity, has no equal among its contemporaries.

Great tragedy, it is frequently claimed with some show of justice, has

perforce departed with the advance of modern life and its complicated

tangle of interests and creature comforts. A highly developed civilisation,

with its attendant specialisation of culture, tends ever to lose sight of those

elemental forces, those primal emotions, naked to wind and sky, which are

the stuff from which great drama is wrought by the artist, but which, as it

would seem, are rapidly departing from us. It is only in the far places,

where solitary communion may be had with the elements, that this

dynamic life is still to be found continuously, and it is accordingly thither

that the dramatist, who would deal with spiritual life disengaged from the

environment of an intellectual maze, must go for that experience which

RIDERS TO THE SEA

will beget in him inspiration for his art. The Aran Islands from which

Synge gained his inspiration are rapidly losing that sense of isolation and

self-dependence, which has hitherto been their rare distinction, and which

furnished the motivation for Synge's masterpiece. Whether or not Synge

finds a successor, it is none the less true that in English dramatic literature

"Riders to the Sea" has an historic value which it would be difficult to

over-estimate in its accomplishment and its possibilities. A writer in The

Manchester Guardian shortly after Synge's death phrased it rightly when

he wrote that it is "the tragic masterpiece of our language in our time;

wherever it has been played in Europe from Galway to Prague, it has made

the word tragedy mean something more profoundly stirring and cleansing

to the spirit than it did."

The secret of the play's power is its capacity for standing afar off, and

mingling, if we may say so, sympathy with relentlessness. There is a

wonderful beauty of speech in the words of every character, wherein the

latent power of suggestion is almost unlimited. "In the big world the old

people do be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but in

this place it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them that do

be old." In the quavering rhythm of these words, there is poignantly

present that quality of strangeness and remoteness in beauty which, as we

are coming to realise, is the touchstone of Celtic literary art. However,

the very asceticism of the play has begotten a corresponding power which

lifts Synge's work far out of the current of the Irish literary revival, and

sets it high in a timeless atmosphere of universal action.

Its characters live and die. It is their virtue in life to be lonely, and

none but the lonely man in tragedy may be great. He dies, and then it is

the virtue in life of the women mothers and wives and sisters to be

great in their loneliness, great as Maurya, the stricken mother, is great in

her final word.

"Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the

Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards,

and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at

all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied." The pity and the

terror of it all have brought a great peace, the peace that passeth

RIDERS TO THE SEA

understanding, and it is because the play holds this timeless peace after the

storm which has bowed down every character, that "Riders to the Sea"

may rightly take its place as the greatest modern tragedy in the English

tongue.

EDWARD J. O'BRIEN.

February 23, 1911.

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摘要：

RIDERSTOTHESEA1RIDERSTOTHESEAbyJ.M.SYNGERIDERSTOTHESEA2INTRODUCTIONItmusthavebeenonSynge'ssecondvisittotheAranIslandsthathehadtheexperienceoutofwhichwaswroughtwhatmanybelievetobehisgreatestplay.Thesceneof"RiderstotheSea"islaidinacottageonInishmaan,themiddleandmostinterestingislandoftheArangroup.Whil...

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