{"id":6261,"date":"2016-12-12T12:23:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T17:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6261"},"modified":"2017-01-11T08:13:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T13:13:26","slug":"irelands-easter-rising-reimagined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6261","title":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Easter Rising Reconsidered"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Easter

The dying C\u00fa Chulainn, photo: wikimedia<\/p><\/div>\n

2016 marked the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, when Irish Republicans staged an armed insurrection aimed at achieving independence from Britain and establishing a separate Irish Republic. At the same time, many Irish citizens were fighting in World War I.<\/p>\n

For that anniversary, two Boston College professors\u2014novelist and philosopher Richard Kearney and artist Sheila Gallagher\u2014created a performance in images, music, and words to expand the perception of those events. Called \u201cTwinsome Minds: Recovering 1916 in Images and Stories<\/a>,\u201d they presented it last week at Princeton University, their 16th performance, I believe.<\/p>\n

What did I think? I liked all the pieces\u2014images, music, words\u2014but was the whole more than the sum of the parts? Did the underlying conceit work? The idea for \u201cTwinsome Minds\u201d comes from a line in James Joyce\u2019s Finnegan\u2019s Wake<\/em>. \u201cIrish imagination is at its best, said Joyce, when moving between two \u2018twinsome\u2019 minds\u2014that is, when it has \u2018two thinks at a time\u2019 opening onto a third,\u201d Kearney said. In that it was partially successful.<\/p>\n

I most liked the stories, and found the images alternately beautiful and distracting. Clipping headlines wanted to be read. Abstract images wanted to be interpreted. Art made on-the-spot wanted to draw attention to technique. Many of Gallagher\u2019s images featured a raven, which sits of the shoulder of the dying C\u00fa Chulainn, in the memorial to the Easter Rising.<\/p>\n

The double meaning of twinning was that, as in any civil war brothers, cousins, friends, schoolmates, neighbors for various reasons found themselves on opposite sides. While some thought rebellion was the only way to achieve an independent Ireland, others though enlisting in the Royal Irish Fusiliers and fighting for the British in France better supported that goal. While 500 lives were lost in the six days of the Rising (more than half of them civilians), 3,500 Irishmen were killed in the battle of the Somme in one day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Gallagher showed photos of Ireland\u2019s men and women on opposite sides in this conflict. Poet Francis Ledwidge from County Meath, who died in France, suggested the depth of the divide\u2014and perhaps a sprinkle of contempt\u2014between partisans on the two sides: \u201cI joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see the whole thing<\/a> (75 minutes) on YouTube and see for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2016 marked the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, when Irish Republicans staged an armed insurrection aimed at achieving independence from Britain and establishing a separate Irish Republic. At the same time, many Irish citizens were fighting in World War … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Ireland's Easter Rising Reimagined in words, images, and music","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[266,268,60,104],"tags":[509,740,741,416,129,427],"class_list":["post-6261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","category-storytelling","category-the-morgue","tag-dublin","tag-easter-rising","tag-irish-republic","tag-real-life","tag-wars-and-conflicts","tag-world-war-i"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1CZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6266,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6261\/revisions\/6266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}