Dublin 6

July 19, 2010

Rain outside my window. On the last day of the journey I may finally be using my canary yellow raincoat, which looks like it belongs to a 6 year old and takes up the most space in my suitcase.

Drank at the Shakespeare around the corner, which is owned by Koreans, has a fascinating Korean-Old Ireland decor, and reminded me constantly of Katherine Min’s proposition that the Koreans are the Irish of Asia. In some inexplicable way, the Shakespeare, with videos of a Korean kid playing the guitar, had the sweetest ambience of all pubs I’ve visited. Did nothing particularly Irish with my evening. Entered the Savoy to see a fil-em, as the Irish say, Get Him to the Greek, a surprise on many levels, being sweet and truly funny, and revealing that Russell Brand can really act, and Jonah. . . well, that fat guy . . . is for all the appearances against him, a movie star. I mean to see Loretto today, or at least her gallery, and to eat nothing that will make me sick on the journey tomorrow. Modest goals, I think, and easily met.

The banisters on which one must support oneself dragging up and down three storeys in the air are, one notes, in several places worn almost through. Read Keats’ reminiscence of his journey to Ulster, and it was mostly about squalor, though he did remark that the presbyterian squalor of Scotland was more soul-destroying than the Catholic squalor of Ireland. What will it take to bring Ireland dependable prosperity? Dublin is shabbier, poorer, barer, emptier than it was ten years ago.

Left at the interval a production of The Death of a Salesman at the Gate. It was a fine production, and I do not dispute that it is a great play (though possibly not at great as all that), but I find it impossible to watch. It is too hopeless, too foreordained. Pity does not moderate my contempt for Willy Loman, and I think the play expects that it should. Besides, the old couple in front of me would not stop digging around in a bag of candy. Instead, I walked a final time the streets of Dublin, down Henry to Jervis–the Spike behind me like God behind the Israelites-- and then to the river. It may have been the most beautiful evening I have ever seen in Dublin. The rain had passed, and the pale sky was thickened by clouds that seemed either to be pink or deep powder blue. A rosy gold radiance suffused everything, and the top of the buildings were scarlet and gold from the sun that had dropped under the clouds. Away in the south, over Parliament Street, a great rainbow burned with many colored fire. As I watched, that rainbow paled and another ignited farther east, toward the sea. A moon waxing past half appeared huge, details of light and dark blindingly etched, over the Temple bar. Crossing O’Connell Bridge, I laughed, for I had been growing all tragic and sad at the fading beauty, until I said to myself, “Weren’t you planning to come back in September anyway?” Stopped at Madigan’s for a drink, where a miracle happened: the good giant of a bartender remembered what I ordered, and brought it to me before I opened my mouth. I felt the conqueror.