Galway and Thoor Ballylee

W. B. Yeats is one of the primary poets I have been studying in Ireland, and his works have always interested me because of their acute political and social resonances. His relationships with women are particularly interesting; it is arguable that his work would never have amounted to much had it not been for the women (especially political revolutionary Maud Gonne) who scorned his advances. It would seem that this heartbreak and misery inspired much of Yeats's best work.

After trying to visit one of the museums in Dublin and finding it closed for the day, I stumbled across the National Library of Ireland by accident. This is when I got really lucky: there was a temporary exhibit of the world's largest collection of Yeats material! I spent hours in the exhibit, paying special attention to the poet's drafting process and the nearly indiscernable nature of his handwriting.

These are the final lines of the poem "Under Ben Bulben." Yeats wrote
his own epigraph, and these words are now engraved on his
tomb near the mountain Ben Bulben.

The Yeats exhibition provided valuable insight into the poet's life and his relation to the people and events that surrounded him. This was the perfect way to prepare for my brief journey to the west coast of Ireland. After finally adjusting to Dublin, it was time to travel to County Galway in pursuit of Thoor Ballylee, the stony Norman tower in the countryside that was the summer home of Yeats in his later years. The tower is Yeats's self-proclaimed symbol, and it appears in many of his works of poetry, my favorite being "Meditations in Time of Civil War." This poem is included in a collection of poems called, well, The Tower, published in 1928.

I was nervous for this journey due to the necessity of coordinating three different types of public transportation in one day to arrive at a site situated in the midst of miles of farms and country estates. I took a coach bus from Dublin to Galway (only about 2.5 hours to travel across the entire country!), a city bus from Galway to a small town called Gort, and then a hackney cab from Gort to Thoor Ballylee. A local Irish guy about my age offered to call the taxi service for me, which was nice until he offered me some weed and suggested we get a drink together later that evening. He gave me his contact information, which I willfully forgot as soon as I got into my cab.

Thoor Ballylee was beautiful, and the people who volunteer there were wonderfully hospitable. I loved walking up the winding staircase and seeing the very rooms where Yeats lived with wife George and their two children. I was even offered a complimentary cup of tea and some cinnamon toast just for visiting.

Yeats's wife George used to hold a fishing pole out of the tower
windows to catch fish from the river.

This is the winding staircase that appeared as a symbol
in many of Yeats's late poems.

The lovely reception room brings guests from all over the world
to discuss their journeys over tea and toast.

When I finally got back to Galway city, I was relieved for successfully navigating and not getting lost/stranded somewhere. Galway is a beautiful, small coastal city known for its great food scene and its nightlife. I spent most of my time sitting in Eyre Square park and breathing in the fresh ocean air.

I sat along the bay for a while, which earned me a nice sunburn.

I left Galway without having had much time to explore the city, but it was nice to get back to Dublin. Next I'll be going to a few other museums and exploring the modern resonances of my favorite Irish writers.

Dublin, Ireland

After arriving in Dublin a few days ago, I'm finally adjusting to life here (and to the five-hour time difference). I packed for chilly, rainy weather, but it has been sunny and cloudless every day that I've been here! A local man I met in the beautiful St. Stephen's Green park told me that this is the nicest weather he has seen in Dublin in 15 years. I'll take his word for it, as he has lived in Dublin for 71 years. On my first day in Dublin, I was so tired from traveling that I had no energy to do anything at all. Instead of going to bed in the middle of the afternoon, I went to the local movie theatre to see the new Jurassic World movie, which, let's be honest, I would have done even if I had had the energy to go to a thousand museums.

I'm staying in a hostel on the south side of the Liffey River, which is an ideal location for walking to all of my places of interest. A friend told me that Dublin was a very "walkable city" when she visited last year, so I made the executive decision not to bother with public transportation when I can easily travel by foot.

However, my visit to the Kilmainham Gaol a couple of days ago threw a wrench into these plans when I thought that two miles would take me no time at all, but I ended up having to hurriedly hail my first taxi on the wrong side of the road in order to make it in time for my sold-out tour. I didn't realize that "two miles along the river" meant "will probably take you over an hour and land you on the outskirts of the city," but I made it in time!

The Kilmainham Gaol was never part of my itinerary, but after reading reviews about it and learning its close connection with the revolt against British rule, I knew I had to visit. The jail housed hundreds of prisoners in poor conditions, and after the Easter Uprising of 1916 in central Dublin, the jail was home to several radicals who advocated for Irish independence. Only a few days after their arrests, these political prisoners were executed. These unjust executions threw the city, and the entire country, into even deeper political turmoil, but a halfway-solution would not be negotiated until 1922 with the separation of Northern and Southern Ireland, the former remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the latter claiming independence as a free state, the Republic of Ireland. I learned all of this on my tour of the jail, a cold, stony, eerie building with blood and violence as the mortar between the stones. Ireland's bloody political history is pervasive in Irish literature, not only from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also in contemporary works, so this tour gave me some helpful context for my research.

After my tour of the jail, I opted to walk back to central Dublin at a leisurely pace this time -- quite a lovely walk along the Liffey, which only smells a little bad when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I do like Dublin a lot so far. It's not so much a city with "sights" to see but rather a city to wander and experience. The winding cobblestone streets filled with pubs and coffee shops have a unique history that is worth unraveling.

St. Stephen's Green, a lovely park in central Dublin
where I spend a lot of my spare time.

I'm here in Dublin primarily to study the dwellings and landscapes that are immortalized in the works of my favorite Irish writers, including but not limited to James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett. Between my long walks and too-frequent coffee breaks, I do try to do some research. Yesterday I went to the Dublin Writers Museum, a small building with a two-room exhibit at the exorbitant price of 12 euro. While the museum did include a self-guided audio tour, interesting information about the evolution and revival of Irish literature, and some very old books, I think it could be much better considering the rich history of the city. I did find a beautiful copy of Joyce's Ulysses printed in 1930 by Sylvia Beach, the founder of Shakespeare & Company, which was my favorite place in Paris during my trip last year! Lots of connections being made purely by accident.

To take a break from the bustle of the city, I took a trip to the west coast of Ireland to see the beautiful Cliffs of Moher. Over a million visitors flock to see the cliffs each year, and it's not hard to see why -- towering over the Atlantic at just over 700 feet at their maximum, the Cliffs of Moher are breathtaking and exhilarating. Before we got to the cliffs, the bus let us off at a small fishing village for a quick break, and I found a couple of donkeys resting in the shade!

When we finally arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, I ventured beyond the boundary walls with the other brave tourists and tried to find the least stable cliff ledges to sit on. I can't explain how incredible it was on the top of the windy cliffs. It was such a beautiful and sunny day, and I now face the ultimate irony: my fair Irish skin was burned by the hot Irish sun. But it was absolutely worth it.

I made a new friend at the cliffs, Iya. She's from Japan, but
she has been working with horses for a year in Ireland.

Now I'm back in Dublin, and I have plenty of things planned for the next few days. Tonight, I'm seeing a production of Ulysses at the historic Abbey Theatre. I won't be doing much else, though -- a half-pint of Guinness was plenty for me for a while.